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• Limiting TCP sends with a "to-be-sent" queue and other design issues.

  - by Poni

  Hello all! This question is the result of two other questions I've asked in the last few days. I'm creating a new question because I think it's related to the "next step" in my understanding of how to control the flow of my send/receive, something I didn't get a full answer to yet. The other related questions are: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/3028376/an-iocp-documentation-interpretation-question-buffer-ownership-ambiguity http://stackoverflow.com/questions/3028998/non-blocking-tcp-buffer-issues In summary, I'm using Windows I/O Completion Ports. I have several threads that process notifications from the completion port. I believe the question is platform-independent and would have the same answer as if to do the same thing on a *nix, *BSD, Solaris system. So, I need to have my own flow control system. Fine. So I send send and send, a lot. How do I know when to start queueing the sends, as the receiver side is limited to X amount? Let's take an example (closest thing to my question): FTP protocol. I have two servers; One is on a 100Mb link and the other is on a 10Mb link. I order the 100Mb one to send to the other one (the 10Mb linked one) a 1GB file. It finishes with an average transfer rate of 1.25MB/s. How did the sender (the 100Mb linked one) knew when to hold the sending, so the slower one wouldn't be flooded? Another way to ask this: Can I get a "hold-your-sendings" notification from the remote side? Is it built-in in TCP or the so called "reliable network protocol" needs me to do so? Again, I have a loop with many sends to a remote server, and at some point, within that loop I'll have to determine if I should queue that send or I can pass it on to the transport layer (TCP). How do I do that? What would you do? Of course that when I get a completion notification from IOCP that the send was done I'll issue other pending sends, that's clear. Another design question related to this: Since I am to use a custom buffers with a send queue, and these buffers are being freed to be reused (thus not using the "delete" keyword) when a "send-done" notification has been arrived, I'll have to use a mutual exlusion on that buffer pool. Using a mutex slows things down, so I've been thinking; Why not have each thread have its own buffers pool, thus accessing it , at least when getting the required buffers for a send operation, will require no mutex, because it belongs to that thread only. The buffers pool is located at the thread local storage (TLS) level. No mutual pool implies no lock needed, implies faster operations BUT also implies more memory used by the app, because even if one thread already allocated 1000 buffers, the other one that is sending right now and need 1000 buffers to send something will need to allocated these to its own. This is a long question and I hope none got hurt (: Thank you all!

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• Custom Online Backup Solution Advice

  - by Martín Marconcini

  I have to implement a way so our customers can backup their SQL 2000/5/8 databasase online. The application they use is a C#/.NET35 Winforms application that connects to a SQL Server (can be 2000/2005/2008, sometimes express editions). The SQL Server is on the same LAN. Our application has a very specific UI and we must code each form following those guidelines. There’s lots of GDI+ to give it the look and feel we want. For that reason, using a 3rd party application is not a very good idea. We need to charge the customer on a monthly/annual basis for the service. Preferably, the customer doesn’t need to care about bandwidth and storage space. It must be transparent. Given the above reqs., my first thoughts are: Solution 1: Code some sort of FTP basic functionality with behind the scenes SQL Backup mechanism, then hire a Hosting service and compress-transfer the .BAK to the Hosting. Maintain a series of Folders (for each customer). They won’t see what’s happening. They will just see a list of their files and a big “Backup now” button that will perform the SQL backup, compress it and upload it (and update the file list) ;) Pros: Not very complicated to implement, simple to use, fairly simple to configure (could have a dedicated ftp user/pass) Cons: Finding a “ftp” only hosting plan is not probably going to be easy, they usually come with a bunch of stuff. FTP is not always the best protocol. more? Solution 2: Similar to 1, but instead of FTP, find a cloud computing service like Amazon S3, Mosso or similar. Pros: Cloud Storage is fast, reliable, etc. It’s kind of easy to implement (specially if there are APIs like AWS or Mosso). Cons: I have been unable to come up with a service optimized for resellers where I can give multiple sub-accounts (one for each customer). Billing is going to be a nightmare cuz these services bill per/GB and with One account it’s impossible to differentiate each customer. Solution 3: Similar to 2, but letting the user create their own account on Amazon S3 (for example). Pros: You forget about billing and such. Cons: A mess for the customer who has to open the Amazon (or whatever) account, will be charged for that and not from you. You can’t really charge the customer (since you’re just not doing anything). Solution 4: Use one of the many backup online solutions that use the tech in cloud storage. Pros: many of these include SQL Server backup, and a lot of features that we’d have to implement. Plus web access and stuff like that will come included. Cons: Still have the billing problem described in number 2. Little of these companies (if any) offers “reseller” accounts. You have to eventually use their software (some offer certain branding). Any better approach? Summary: You have a software (.NET Winapp). You want your users to be able to backup their SQL Server databases online (and be able to retrieve the backups if needed). You ideally would like to charge the customer for this service (i.e. XX € a year).

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• MVVM Light V4 preview (BL0014) release notes

  - by Laurent Bugnion

  I just pushed to Codeplex an update to the MVVM Light source code. This is an early preview containing some of the features that I want to release later under the version 4. If you find these features useful for your project, please download the source code and build the assemblies. I will appreciate greatly any issue report. This version is labeled “V4.0.0.0/BL0014”. The “BL” string is an old habit that we used in my days at Siemens Building Technologies, called a “base level”. Somehow I like this way of incrementing the “base level” independently of any other consideration (such as alpha, beta, CTP, RTM etc) and continue to use it to tag my software versions. In Microsoft parlance, you could say that this is an early CTP of MVVM Light V4. Caveat The code is unit tested, but as we all know this does not mean that there are no bugs This code has not yet been used in production. Again, your help in testing this is greatly appreciated, so please report all bugs to me! What’s new? The following features have been implemented: Misc Various “maintenance work”. All WPF assemblies (that is .NET35 and .NET4) now allow partially trusted callers. It means that you can use them in am XBAP in partial trust mode. Testing Various test updates Added Windows Phone 7 unit tests Note: For Windows Phone 7, due to an issue in the unit test framework, not all tests can be executed. I had to isolate those tests for the moment. The error was reported to Microsoft. ViewModelBase The constructor is now public to allow serialization (especially useful on the phone to tombstone the state). ViewModelBase.MessengerInstance now returns Messenger.Default unless it is set explicitly. Previously, MessengerInstance was returning null, which was complicating the code. Two new ways to raise the PropertyChanged event have been added. See below for details. Messenger Updated the IMessenger interface with all public members from the Messenger class. Previously some members were missing. A new Unregister method is now available, allowing to unregister a recipient for a given token. RelayCommand RaiseCanExecuteChanged now acts the same in Windows Presentation Foundation than in Silverlight. In previous versions, I was relying on the CommandManager to raise the CanExecuteChanged event in WPF. However, it was found to be too unreliable, and a more direct way of raising the event was found preferable. See below for details. Raising the PropertyChanged event A very much requested update is now included: the ability to raise the PropertyChanged event in a viewmodel without using “magic strings”. Personally, I don’t see strings as a major issue, thanks to two features of the MVVM Light Toolkit: In the DEBUG configuration, every time that the RaisePropertyChanged method is called, the name of the property is checked against all existing properties of the viewmodel. Should the property name be misspelled (because of a typo or refactoring), an exception is thrown, notifying the developer that something is wrong. To avoid impacting the performance, this check is only made in DEBUG configuration, but that should be enough to warn the developers in case they miss a rename. The property name is defined as a public constant in the “mvvminpc” code snippet. This allows checking the property name from another class (for example if the PropertyChanged event is handled in the view). It also allows changing the property name in one place only. However, these two safeguards didn’t satisfy some of the users, who requested another way to raise the PropertyChanged event. In V4, you can now do the following: Using lambdas private int _myProperty; public int MyProperty { get { return _myProperty; } set { if (_myProperty == value) { return; } _myProperty = value; RaisePropertyChanged(() => MyProperty); } } This raises the property changed event using a lambda expression instead of the property name. Light reflection is used to get the name. This supports Intellisense and can easily be refactored. You can also broadcast a PropertyChangedMessage using the Messenger.Default instance with: private int _myProperty; public int MyProperty { get { return _myProperty; } set { if (_myProperty == value) { return; } var oldValue = _myProperty; _myProperty = value; RaisePropertyChanged(() => MyProperty, oldValue, value, true); } } Using no arguments When the RaisePropertyChanged method is called within a setter, you can also omit the property name altogether. This will fail if executed outside of the setter however. Also, to avoid confusion, there is no way to broadcast the PropertyChangedMessage using this syntax. private int _myProperty; public int MyProperty { get { return _myProperty; } set { if (_myProperty == value) { return; } _myProperty = value; RaisePropertyChanged(); } } The old way Of course the “old” way is still supported, without broadcast: public const string MyPropertyName = "MyProperty"; private int _myProperty; public int MyProperty { get { return _myProperty; } set { if (_myProperty == value) { return; } _myProperty = value; RaisePropertyChanged(MyPropertyName); } } And with broadcast: public const string MyPropertyName = "MyProperty"; private int _myProperty; public int MyProperty { get { return _myProperty; } set { if (_myProperty == value) { return; } var oldValue = _myProperty; _myProperty = value; RaisePropertyChanged(MyPropertyName, oldValue, value, true); } } Performance considerations It is notorious that using reflection takes more time than using a string constant to get the property name. However, after measuring for all platforms, I found the differences to be very small. I will measure more and submit the results to the community for evaluation, because some of the results are actually surprising (for example, using the Messenger to broadcast a PropertyChangedMessage does not significantly increase the time taken to raise the PropertyChanged event and update the bindings). For now, I submit this code to you, and would be delighted to hear about your own results. Raising the CanExecuteChanged event manually In WPF, until now, the CanExecuteChanged event for a RelayCommand was raised automatically. Or rather, it was attempted to be raised, using a feature that is only available in WPF called the CommandManager. This class monitors the UI and when something occurs, it queries the state of the CanExecute delegate for all the commands. However, this proved unreliable for the purpose of MVVM: Since very often the value of the CanExecute delegate changes according to non-UI events (for example something changing in the viewmodel or in the model), raising the CanExecuteChanged event manually is necessary. In Silverlight, the CommandManager does not exist, so we had to raise the event manually from the start. This proved more reliable, and I now changed the WPF implementation of the RaiseCanExecuteChanged method to be the exact same in WPF than in Silverlight. For instance, if a command must be enabled when a string property is set to a value other than null or empty string, you can do: public MainViewModel() { MyTestCommand = new RelayCommand( () => DoSomething(), () => !string.IsNullOrEmpty(MyProperty)); } public const string MyPropertyName = "MyProperty"; private string _myProperty = string.Empty; public string MyProperty { get { return _myProperty; } set { if (_myProperty == value) { return; } _myProperty = value; RaisePropertyChanged(MyPropertyName); MyTestCommand.RaiseCanExecuteChanged(); } } Logo update I made a minor change to the logo: Some people found the lack of the word “light” (as in MVVM Light Toolkit) confusing. I thought it was cool, because the feather suggests the idea of lightness, however I can see the point. So I added the word “light” to the logo. Things should be quite clear now. What’s next? This is only the first of a series of releases that will bring MVVM Light to V4. In the next weeks, I will continue to add some very requested features and correct some issues in the code. I will probably continue this fashion of releasing the changes to the public as source code through Codeplex. I would be very interested to hear what you think of that, and to get feedback about the changes. Cheers, Laurent   Laurent Bugnion (GalaSoft) Subscribe | Twitter | Facebook | Flickr | LinkedIn

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• jQuery Globalization Plugin from Microsoft

  - by ScottGu

  Last month I blogged about how Microsoft is starting to make code contributions to jQuery, and about some of the first code contributions we were working on: jQuery Templates and Data Linking support. Today, we released a prototype of a new jQuery Globalization Plugin that enables you to add globalization support to your JavaScript applications. This plugin includes globalization information for over 350 cultures ranging from Scottish Gaelic, Frisian, Hungarian, Japanese, to Canadian English.  We will be releasing this plugin to the community as open-source. You can download our prototype for the jQuery Globalization plugin from our Github repository: http://github.com/nje/jquery-glob You can also download a set of samples that demonstrate some simple use-cases with it here. Understanding Globalization The jQuery Globalization plugin enables you to easily parse and format numbers, currencies, and dates for different cultures in JavaScript. For example, you can use the Globalization plugin to display the proper currency symbol for a culture: You also can use the Globalization plugin to format dates so that the day and month appear in the right order and the day and month names are correctly translated: Notice above how the Arabic year is displayed as 1431. This is because the year has been converted to use the Arabic calendar. Some cultural differences, such as different currency or different month names, are obvious. Other cultural differences are surprising and subtle. For example, in some cultures, the grouping of numbers is done unevenly. In the "te-IN" culture (Telugu in India), groups have 3 digits and then 2 digits. The number 1000000 (one million) is written as "10,00,000". Some cultures do not group numbers at all. All of these subtle cultural differences are handled by the jQuery Globalization plugin automatically. Getting dates right can be especially tricky. Different cultures have different calendars such as the Gregorian and UmAlQura calendars. A single culture can even have multiple calendars. For example, the Japanese culture uses both the Gregorian calendar and a Japanese calendar that has eras named after Japanese emperors. The Globalization Plugin includes methods for converting dates between all of these different calendars. Using Language Tags The jQuery Globalization plugin uses the language tags defined in the RFC 4646 and RFC 5646 standards to identity cultures (see http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc5646). A language tag is composed out of one or more subtags separated by hyphens. For example: Language Tag Language Name (in English) en-AU English (Australia) en-BZ English (Belize) en-CA English (Canada) Id Indonesian zh-CHS Chinese (Simplified) Legacy Zu isiZulu Notice that a single language, such as English, can have several language tags. Speakers of English in Canada format numbers, currencies, and dates using different conventions than speakers of English in Australia or the United States. You can find the language tag for a particular culture by using the Language Subtag Lookup tool located here:  http://rishida.net/utils/subtags/ The jQuery Globalization plugin download includes a folder named globinfo that contains the information for each of the 350 cultures. Actually, this folder contains more than 700 files because the folder includes both minified and un-minified versions of each file. For example, the globinfo folder includes JavaScript files named jQuery.glob.en-AU.js for English Australia, jQuery.glob.id.js for Indonesia, and jQuery.glob.zh-CHS for Chinese (Simplified) Legacy. Example: Setting a Particular Culture Imagine that you have been asked to create a German website and want to format all of the dates, currencies, and numbers using German formatting conventions correctly in JavaScript on the client. The HTML for the page might look like this: Notice the span tags above. They mark the areas of the page that we want to format with the Globalization plugin. We want to format the product price, the date the product is available, and the units of the product in stock. To use the jQuery Globalization plugin, we’ll add three JavaScript files to the page: the jQuery library, the jQuery Globalization plugin, and the culture information for a particular language: In this case, I’ve statically added the jQuery.glob.de-DE.js JavaScript file that contains the culture information for German. The language tag “de-DE” is used for German as spoken in Germany. Now that I have all of the necessary scripts, I can use the Globalization plugin to format the product price, date available, and units in stock values using the following client-side JavaScript: The jQuery Globalization plugin extends the jQuery library with new methods - including new methods named preferCulture() and format(). The preferCulture() method enables you to set the default culture used by the jQuery Globalization plugin methods. Notice that the preferCulture() method accepts a language tag. The method will find the closest culture that matches the language tag. The $.format() method is used to actually format the currencies, dates, and numbers. The second parameter passed to the $.format() method is a format specifier. For example, passing “c” causes the value to be formatted as a currency. The ReadMe file at github details the meaning of all of the various format specifiers: http://github.com/nje/jquery-glob When we open the page in a browser, everything is formatted correctly according to German language conventions. A euro symbol is used for the currency symbol. The date is formatted using German day and month names. Finally, a period instead of a comma is used a number separator: You can see a running example of the above approach with the 3_GermanSite.htm file in this samples download. Example: Enabling a User to Dynamically Select a Culture In the previous example we explicitly said that we wanted to globalize in German (by referencing the jQuery.glob.de-DE.js file). Let’s now look at the first of a few examples that demonstrate how to dynamically set the globalization culture to use. Imagine that you want to display a dropdown list of all of the 350 cultures in a page. When someone selects a culture from the dropdown list, you want all of the dates in the page to be formatted using the selected culture. Here’s the HTML for the page: Notice that all of the dates are contained in a <span> tag with a data-date attribute (data-* attributes are a new feature of HTML 5 that conveniently also still work with older browsers). We’ll format the date represented by the data-date attribute when a user selects a culture from the dropdown list. In order to display dates for any possible culture, we’ll include the jQuery.glob.all.js file like this: The jQuery Globalization plugin includes a JavaScript file named jQuery.glob.all.js. This file contains globalization information for all of the more than 350 cultures supported by the Globalization plugin.  At 367KB minified, this file is not small. Because of the size of this file, unless you really need to use all of these cultures at the same time, we recommend that you add the individual JavaScript files for particular cultures that you intend to support instead of the combined jQuery.glob.all.js to a page. In the next sample I’ll show how to dynamically load just the language files you need. Next, we’ll populate the dropdown list with all of the available cultures. We can use the $.cultures property to get all of the loaded cultures: Finally, we’ll write jQuery code that grabs every span element with a data-date attribute and format the date: The jQuery Globalization plugin’s parseDate() method is used to convert a string representation of a date into a JavaScript date. The plugin’s format() method is used to format the date. The “D” format specifier causes the date to be formatted using the long date format. And now the content will be globalized correctly regardless of which of the 350 languages a user visiting the page selects.  You can see a running example of the above approach with the 4_SelectCulture.htm file in this samples download. Example: Loading Globalization Files Dynamically As mentioned in the previous section, you should avoid adding the jQuery.glob.all.js file to a page whenever possible because the file is so large. A better alternative is to load the globalization information that you need dynamically. For example, imagine that you have created a dropdown list that displays a list of languages: The following jQuery code executes whenever a user selects a new language from the dropdown list. The code checks whether the globalization file associated with the selected language has already been loaded. If the globalization file has not been loaded then the globalization file is loaded dynamically by taking advantage of the jQuery $.getScript() method. The globalizePage() method is called after the requested globalization file has been loaded, and contains the client-side code to perform the globalization. The advantage of this approach is that it enables you to avoid loading the entire jQuery.glob.all.js file. Instead you only need to load the files that you need and you don’t need to load the files more than once. The 5_Dynamic.htm file in this samples download demonstrates how to implement this approach. Example: Setting the User Preferred Language Automatically Many websites detect a user’s preferred language from their browser settings and automatically use it when globalizing content. A user can set a preferred language for their browser. Then, whenever the user requests a page, this language preference is included in the request in the Accept-Language header. When using Microsoft Internet Explorer, you can set your preferred language by following these steps: Select the menu option Tools, Internet Options. Select the General tab. Click the Languages button in the Appearance section. Click the Add button to add a new language to the list of languages. Move your preferred language to the top of the list. Notice that you can list multiple languages in the Language Preference dialog. All of these languages are sent in the order that you listed them in the Accept-Language header: Accept-Language: fr-FR,id-ID;q=0.7,en-US;q=0.3 Strangely, you cannot retrieve the value of the Accept-Language header from client JavaScript. Microsoft Internet Explorer and Mozilla Firefox support a bevy of language related properties exposed by the window.navigator object, such as windows.navigator.browserLanguage and window.navigator.language, but these properties represent either the language set for the operating system or the language edition of the browser. These properties don’t enable you to retrieve the language that the user set as his or her preferred language. The only reliable way to get a user’s preferred language (the value of the Accept-Language header) is to write server code. For example, the following ASP.NET page takes advantage of the server Request.UserLanguages property to assign the user’s preferred language to a client JavaScript variable named acceptLanguage (which then allows you to access the value using client-side JavaScript): In order for this code to work, the culture information associated with the value of acceptLanguage must be included in the page. For example, if someone’s preferred culture is fr-FR (French in France) then you need to include either the jQuery.glob.fr-FR.js or the jQuery.glob.all.js JavaScript file in the page or the culture information won’t be available.  The “6_AcceptLanguages.aspx” sample in this samples download demonstrates how to implement this approach. If the culture information for the user’s preferred language is not included in the page then the $.preferCulture() method will fall back to using the neutral culture (for example, using jQuery.glob.fr.js instead of jQuery.glob.fr-FR.js). If the neutral culture information is not available then the $.preferCulture() method falls back to the default culture (English). Example: Using the Globalization Plugin with the jQuery UI DatePicker One of the goals of the Globalization plugin is to make it easier to build jQuery widgets that can be used with different cultures. We wanted to make sure that the jQuery Globalization plugin could work with existing jQuery UI plugins such as the DatePicker plugin. To that end, we created a patched version of the DatePicker plugin that can take advantage of the Globalization plugin when rendering a calendar. For example, the following figure illustrates what happens when you add the jQuery Globalization and the patched jQuery UI DatePicker plugin to a page and select Indonesian as the preferred culture: Notice that the headers for the days of the week are displayed using Indonesian day name abbreviations. Furthermore, the month names are displayed in Indonesian. You can download the patched version of the jQuery UI DatePicker from our github website. Or you can use the version included in this samples download and used by the 7_DatePicker.htm sample file. Summary I’m excited about our continuing participation in the jQuery community. This Globalization plugin is the third jQuery plugin that we’ve released. We’ve really appreciated all of the great feedback and design suggestions on the jQuery templating and data-linking prototypes that we released earlier this year.  We also want to thank the jQuery and jQuery UI teams for working with us to create these plugins. Hope this helps, Scott P.S. In addition to blogging, I am also now using Twitter for quick updates and to share links. You can follow me at: twitter.com/scottgu

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• Windows Azure: General Availability of Web Sites + Mobile Services, New AutoScale + Alerts Support, No Credit Card Needed for MSDN

  - by ScottGu

  This morning we released a major set of updates to Windows Azure.  These updates included: Web Sites: General Availability Release of Windows Azure Web Sites with SLA Mobile Services: General Availability Release of Windows Azure Mobile Services with SLA Auto-Scale: New automatic scaling support for Web Sites, Cloud Services and Virtual Machines Alerts/Notifications: New email alerting support for all Compute Services (Web Sites, Mobile Services, Cloud Services, and Virtual Machines) MSDN: No more credit card requirement for sign-up All of these improvements are now available to use immediately (note: some are still in preview).  Below are more details about them. Web Sites: General Availability Release of Windows Azure Web Sites I’m incredibly excited to announce the General Availability release of Windows Azure Web Sites. The Windows Azure Web Sites service is perfect for hosting a web presence, building customer engagement solutions, and delivering business web apps.  Today’s General Availability release means we are taking off the “preview” tag from the Free and Standard (formerly called reserved) tiers of Windows Azure Web Sites.  This means we are providing: A 99.9% monthly SLA (Service Level Agreement) for the Standard tier Microsoft Support available on a 24x7 basis (with plans that range from developer plans to enterprise Premier support) The Free tier runs in a shared compute environment and supports up to 10 web sites. While the Free tier does not come with an SLA, it works great for rapid development and testing and enables you to quickly spike out ideas at no cost. The Standard tier, which was called “Reserved” during the preview, runs using dedicated per-customer VM instances for great performance, isolation and scalability, and enables you to host up to 500 different Web sites within them.  You can easily scale your Standard instances on-demand using the Windows Azure Management Portal.  You can adjust VM instance sizes from a Small instance size (1 core, 1.75GB of RAM), up to a Medium instance size (2 core, 3.5GB of RAM), or Large instance (4 cores and 7 GB RAM).  You can choose to run between 1 and 10 Standard instances, enabling you to easily scale up your web backend to 40 cores of CPU and 70GB of RAM: Today’s release also includes general availability support for custom domain SSL certificate bindings for web sites running using the Standard tier. Customers will be able to utilize certificates they purchase for their custom domains and use either SNI or IP based SSL encryption. SNI encryption is available for all modern browsers and does not require an IP address.  SSL certificates can be used for individual sites or wild-card mapped across multiple sites (we charge extra for the use of a SSL cert – but the fee is per-cert and not per site which means you pay once for it regardless of how many sites you use it with).  Today’s release also includes the following new features: Auto-Scale support Today’s Windows Azure release adds preview support for Auto-Scaling web sites.  This enables you to setup automatic scale rules based on the activity of your instances – allowing you to automatically scale down (and save money) when they are below a CPU threshold you define, and automatically scale up quickly when traffic increases.  See below for more details. 64-bit and 32-bit mode support You can now choose to run your standard tier instances in either 32-bit or 64-bit mode (previously they only ran in 32-bit mode).  This enables you to address even more memory within individual web applications. Memory dumps Memory dumps can be very useful for diagnosing issues and debugging apps. Using a REST API, you can now get a memory dump of your sites, which you can then use for investigating issues in Visual Studio Debugger, WinDbg, and other tools. Scaling Sites Independently Prior to today’s release, all sites scaled up/down together whenever you scaled any site in a sub-region. So you may have had to keep your proof-of-concept or testing sites in a separate sub-region if you wanted to keep them in the Free tier. This will no longer be necessary.  Windows Azure Web Sites can now mix different tier levels in the same geographic sub-region. This allows you, for example, to selectively move some of your sites in the West US sub-region up to Standard tier when they require the features, scalability, and SLA of the Standard tier. Full pricing details on Windows Azure Web Sites can be found here.  Note that the “Shared Tier” of Windows Azure Web Sites remains in preview mode (and continues to have discounted preview pricing).  Mobile Services: General Availability Release of Windows Azure Mobile Services I’m incredibly excited to announce the General Availability release of Windows Azure Mobile Services.  Mobile Services is perfect for building scalable cloud back-ends for Windows 8.x, Windows Phone, Apple iOS, Android, and HTML/JavaScript applications.  Customers We’ve seen tremendous adoption of Windows Azure Mobile Services since we first previewed it last September, and more than 20,000 customers are now running mobile back-ends in production using it.  These customers range from startups like Yatterbox, to university students using Mobile Services to complete apps like Sly Fox in their spare time, to media giants like Verdens Gang finding new ways to deliver content, and telcos like TalkTalk Business delivering the up-to-the-minute information their customers require.  In today’s Build keynote, we demonstrated how TalkTalk Business is using Windows Azure Mobile Services to deliver service, outage and billing information to its customers, wherever they might be. Partners When we unveiled the source control and Custom API features I blogged about two weeks ago, we enabled a range of new scenarios, one of which is a more flexible way to work with third party services.  The following blogs, samples and tutorials from our partners cover great ways you can extend Mobile Services to help you build rich modern apps: New Relic allows developers to monitor and manage the end-to-end performance of iOS and Android applications connected to Mobile Services. SendGrid eliminates the complexity of sending email from Mobile Services, saving time and money, while providing reliable delivery to the inbox. Twilio provides a telephony infrastructure web service in the cloud that you can use with Mobile Services to integrate phone calls, text messages and IP voice communications into your mobile apps. Xamarin provides a Mobile Services add on to make it easy building cross-platform connected mobile aps. Pusher allows quickly and securely add scalable real-time messaging functionality to Mobile Services-based web and mobile apps. Visual Studio 2013 and Windows 8.1 This week during //build/ keynote, we demonstrated how Visual Studio 2013, Mobile Services and Windows 8.1 make building connected apps easier than ever. Developers building Windows 8 applications in Visual Studio can now connect them to Windows Azure Mobile Services by simply right clicking then choosing Add Connected Service. You can either create a new Mobile Service or choose existing Mobile Service in the Add Connected Service dialog. Once completed, Visual Studio adds a reference to Mobile Services SDK to your project and generates a Mobile Services client initialization snippet automatically. Add Push Notifications Push Notifications and Live Tiles are a key to building engaging experiences. Visual Studio 2013 and Mobile Services make it super easy to add push notifications to your Windows 8.1 app, by clicking Add a Push Notification item: The Add Push Notification wizard will then guide you through the registration with the Windows Store as well as connecting your app to a new or existing mobile service. Upon completion of the wizard, Visual Studio will configure your mobile service with the WNS credentials, as well as add sample logic to your client project and your mobile service that demonstrates how to send push notifications to your app. Server Explorer Integration In Visual Studio 2013 you can also now view your Mobile Services in the the Server Explorer. You can add tables, edit, and save server side scripts without ever leaving Visual Studio, as shown on the image below: Pricing With today’s general availability release we are announcing that we will be offering Mobile Services in three tiers – Free, Standard, and Premium.  Each tier is metered using a simple pricing model based on the # of API calls (bandwidth is included at no extra charge), and the Standard and Premium tiers are backed by 99.9% monthly SLAs.  You can elastically scale up or down the number of instances you have of each tier to increase the # of API requests your service can support – allowing you to efficiently scale as your business grows. The following table summarizes the new pricing model (full pricing details here):   You can find the full details of the new pricing model here. Build Conference Talks The //BUILD/ conference will be packed with sessions covering every aspect of developing connected applications with Mobile Services. The best part is that, even if you can’t be with us in San Francisco, every session is being streamed live. Be sure not to miss these talks: Mobile Services – Soup to Nuts — Josh Twist Building Cross-Platform Apps with Windows Azure Mobile Services — Chris Risner Connected Windows Phone Apps made Easy with Mobile Services — Yavor Georgiev Build Connected Windows 8.1 Apps with Mobile Services — Nick Harris Who’s that user? Identity in Mobile Apps — Dinesh Kulkarni Building REST Services with JavaScript — Nathan Totten Going Live and Beyond with Windows Azure Mobile Services — Kirill Gavrylyuk , Paul Batum Protips for Windows Azure Mobile Services — Chris Risner AutoScale: Dynamically scale up/down your app based on real-world usage One of the key benefits of Windows Azure is that you can dynamically scale your application in response to changing demand. In the past, though, you have had to either manually change the scale of your application, or use additional tooling (such as WASABi or MetricsHub) to automatically scale your application. Today, we’re announcing that AutoScale will be built-into Windows Azure directly.  With today’s release it is now enabled for Cloud Services, Virtual Machines and Web Sites (Mobile Services support will come soon). Auto-scale enables you to configure Windows Azure to automatically scale your application dynamically on your behalf (without any manual intervention) so you can achieve the ideal performance and cost balance. Once configured it will regularly adjust the number of instances running in response to the load in your application. Currently, we support two different load metrics: CPU percentage Storage queue depth (Cloud Services and Virtual Machines only) We’ll enable automatic scaling on even more scale metrics in future updates. When to use Auto-Scale The following are good criteria for services/apps that will benefit from the use of auto-scale: The service/app can scale horizontally (e.g. it can be duplicated to multiple instances) The service/app load changes over time If your app meets these criteria, then you should look to leverage auto-scale. How to Enable Auto-Scale To enable auto-scale, simply navigate to the Scale tab in the Windows Azure Management Portal for the app/service you wish to enable.  Within the scale tab turn the Auto-Scale setting on to either CPU or Queue (for Cloud Services and VMs) to enable Auto-Scale.  Then change the instance count and target CPU settings to configure the Auto-Scale ranges you want to maintain. The image below demonstrates how to enable Auto-Scale on a Windows Azure Web-Site.  I’ve configured the web-site so that it will run using between 1 and 5 VM instances.  The exact # used will depend on the aggregate CPU of the VMs using the 40-70% range I’ve configured below.  If the aggregate CPU goes above 70%, then Windows Azure will automatically add new VMs to the pool (up to the maximum of 5 instances I’ve configured it to use).  If the aggregate CPU drops below 40% then Windows Azure will automatically start shutting down VMs to save me money: Once you’ve turned auto-scale on, you can return to the Scale tab at any point and select Off to manually set the number of instances. Using the Auto-Scale Preview With today’s update you can now, in just a few minutes, have Windows Azure automatically adjust the number of instances you have running  in your apps to keep your service performant at an even better cost. Auto-scale is being released today as a preview feature, and will be free until General Availability. During preview, each subscription is limited to 10 separate auto-scale rules across all of the resources they have (Web sites, Cloud services or Virtual Machines). If you hit the 10 limit, you can disable auto-scale for any resource to enable it for another. Alerts and Notifications Starting today we are now providing the ability to configure threshold based alerts on monitoring metrics. This feature is available for compute services (cloud services, VM, websites and mobiles services). Alerts provide you the ability to get proactively notified of active or impending issues within your application.  You can define alert rules for: Virtual machine monitoring metrics that are collected from the host operating system (CPU percentage, network in/out, disk read bytes/sec and disk write bytes/sec) and on monitoring metrics from monitoring web endpoint urls (response time and uptime) that you have configured. Cloud service monitoring metrics that are collected from the host operating system (same as VM), monitoring metrics from the guest VM (from performance counters within the VM) and on monitoring metrics from monitoring web endpoint urls (response time and uptime) that you have configured. For Web Sites and Mobile Services, alerting rules can be configured on monitoring metrics from monitoring endpoint urls (response time and uptime) that you have configured. Creating Alert Rules You can add an alert rule for a monitoring metric by navigating to the Setting -> Alerts tab in the Windows Azure Management Portal. Click on the Add Rule button to create an alert rule. Give the alert rule a name and optionally add a description. Then pick the service which you want to define the alert rule on: The next step in the alert creation wizard will then filter the monitoring metrics based on the service you selected:   Once created the rule will show up in your alerts list within the settings tab: The rule above is defined as “not activated” since it hasn’t tripped over the CPU threshold we set.  If the CPU on the above machine goes over the limit, though, I’ll get an email notifying me from an Windows Azure Alerts email address ([email protected]). And when I log into the portal and revisit the alerts tab I’ll see it highlighted in red.  Clicking it will then enable me to see what is causing it to fail, as well as view the history of when it has happened in the past. Alert Notifications With today’s initial preview you can now easily create alerting rules based on monitoring metrics and get notified on active or impending issues within your application that require attention. During preview, each subscription is limited to 10 alert rules across all of the services that support alert rules. No More Credit Card Requirement for MSDN Subscribers Earlier this month (during TechEd 2013), Windows Azure announced that MSDN users will get Windows Azure Credits every month that they can use for any Windows Azure services they want. You can read details about this in my previous Dev/Test blog post. Today we are making further updates to enable an easier Windows Azure signup for MSDN users. MSDN users will now not be required to provide payment information (e.g. no credit card) during sign-up, so long as they use the service within the included monetary credit for the billing period. For usage beyond the monetary credit, they can enable overages by providing the payment information and remove the spending limit. This enables a super easy, one page sign-up experience for MSDN users.  Simply sign-up for your Windows Azure trial using the same Microsoft ID that you use to manage your MSDN account, then complete the one page sign-up form below and you will be able to spend your free monthly MSDN credits (up to $150 each month) on any Windows Azure resource for dev/test:   This makes it trivially easy for every MDSN customer to start using Windows Azure today.  If you haven’t signed up yet, I definitely recommend checking it out. Summary Today’s release includes a ton of great features that enable you to build even better cloud solutions.  If you don’t already have a Windows Azure account, you can sign-up for a free trial and start using all of the above features today.  Then visit the Windows Azure Developer Center to learn more about how to build apps with it. Hope this helps, Scott P.S. In addition to blogging, I am also now using Twitter for quick updates and to share links. Follow me at: twitter.com/scottgu

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• Continuous Integration for SQL Server Part II – Integration Testing

  - by Ben Rees

  My previous post, on setting up Continuous Integration for SQL Server databases using GitHub, Bamboo and Red Gate’s tools, covered the first two parts of a simple Database Continuous Delivery process: Putting your database in to a source control system, and, Running a continuous integration process, each time changes are checked in. However there is, of course, a lot more to to Continuous Delivery than that. Specifically, in addition to the above: Putting some actual integration tests in to the CI process (otherwise, they don’t really do much, do they!?), Deploying the database changes with a managed, automated approach, Monitoring what you’ve just put live, to make sure you haven’t broken anything. This post will detail how to set up a very simple pipeline for implementing the first of these (continuous integration testing). NB: A lot of the setup in this post is built on top of the configuration from before, so it might be difficult to implement this post without running through part I first. There’ll then be a third post on automated database deployment followed by a final post dealing with the last item – monitoring changes on the live system. In the previous post, I used a mixture of Red Gate products and other 3rd party software – GitHub and Atlassian Bamboo specifically. This was partly because I believe most people work in an heterogeneous environment, using software from different vendors to suit their purposes and I wanted to show how this could work for this process. For example, you could easily substitute Atlassian’s BitBucket or Stash for GitHub, depending on your needs, or use an alternative CI server such as TeamCity, TFS or Jenkins. However, in this, post, I’ll be mostly using Red Gate products only (other than tSQLt). I would do this, firstly because I work for Red Gate. However, I also think that in the area of Database Delivery processes, nobody else has the offerings to implement this process fully – so I didn’t have any choice!   Background on Continuous Delivery For me, a great source of information on what makes a proper Continuous Delivery process is the Jez Humble and David Farley classic: Continuous Delivery – Reliable Software Releases through Build, Test, and Deployment Automation This book is not of course, primarily about databases, and the process I outline here and in the previous article is a gross simplification of what Jez and David describe (not least because it’s that much harder for databases!). However, a lot of the principles that they describe can be equally applied to database development and, I would argue, should be. As I say however, what I describe here is a very simple version of what would be required for a full production process. A couple of useful resources on handling some of these complexities can be found in the following two references: Refactoring Databases – Evolutionary Database Design, by Scott J Ambler and Pramod J. Sadalage Versioning Databases – Branching and Merging, by Scott Allen In particular, I don’t deal at all with the issues of multiple branches and merging of those branches, an issue made particularly acute by the use of GitHub. The other point worth making is that, in the words of Martin Fowler: Continuous Delivery is about keeping your application in a state where it is always able to deploy into production.   I.e. we are not talking about continuously delivery updates to the production database every time someone checks in an amendment to a stored procedure. That is possible (and what Martin calls Continuous Deployment). However, again, that’s more than I describe in this article. And I doubt I need to remind DBAs or Developers to Proceed with Caution!   Integration Testing Back to something practical. The next stage, building on our set up from the previous article, is to add in some integration tests to the process. As I say, the CI process, though interesting, isn’t enormously useful without some sort of test process running. For this we’ll use the tSQLt framework, an open source framework designed specifically for running SQL Server tests. tSQLt is part of Red Gate’s SQL Test found on http://www.red-gate.com/products/sql-development/sql-test/ or can be downloaded separately from www.tsqlt.org - though I’ll provide a step-by-step guide below for setting this up. Getting tSQLt set up via SQL Test Click on the link http://www.red-gate.com/products/sql-development/sql-test/ and click on the blue Download button to download the Red Gate SQL Test product, if not already installed. Follow the install process for SQL Test to install the SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS) plugin on to your machine, if not already installed. Open SSMS. You should now see SQL Test under the Tools menu:   Clicking this link will give you the basic SQL Test dialogue: As yet, though we’ve installed the SQL Test product we haven’t yet installed the tSQLt test framework on to any particular database. To do this, we need to add our RedGateApp database using this dialogue, by clicking on the + Add Database to SQL Test… link, selecting the RedGateApp database and clicking the Add Database link:   In the next screen, SQL Test describes what will be installed on the database for the tSQLt framework. Also in this dialogue, uncheck the “Add SQL Cop tests” option (shown below). SQL Cop is a great set of pre-defined tests that work within the tSQLt framework to check the general health of your SQL Server database. However, we won’t be using them in this particular simple example: Once you’ve clicked on the OK button, the changes described in the dialogue will be made to your database. Some of these are shown in the left-hand-side below: We’ve now installed the framework. However, we haven’t actually created any tests, so this will be the next step. But, before we proceed, we’ve made an update to our database so should, again check this in to source control, adding comments as required:   Also worth a quick check that your build still runs with the new additions!: (And a quick check of the RedGateAppCI database shows that the changes have been made).   Creating and Testing a Unit Test There are, of course, a lot of very interesting unit tests that you could and should set up for a database. The great thing about the tSQLt framework is that you can write these in SQL. The example I’m going to use here is pretty Mickey Mouse – our database table is going to include some email addresses as reference data and I want to check whether these are all in a correct email format. Nothing clever but it illustrates the process and hopefully shows the method by which more interesting tests could be set up. Adding Reference Data to our Database To start, I want to add some reference data to my database, and have this source controlled (as well as the schema). First of all I need to add some data in to my solitary table – this can be done a number of ways, but I’ll do this in SSMS for simplicity: I then add some reference data to my table: Currently this reference data just exists in the database. For proper integration testing, this needs to form part of the source-controlled version of the database – and so needs to be added to the Git repository. This can be done via SQL Source Control, though first a Primary Key needs to be added to the table. Right click the table, select Design, then right-click on the first “id” row. Then click on “Set Primary Key”: NB: once this change is made, click Save to save the change to the table. Then, to source control this reference data, right click on the table (dbo.Email) and selecting the following option:   In the next screen, link the data in the Email table, by selecting it from the list and clicking “save and close”: We should at this point re-commit the changes (both the addition of the Primary Key, and the data) to the Git repo. NB: From here on, I won’t show screenshots for the GitHub side of things – it’s the same each time: whenever a change is made in SQL Source Control and committed to your local folder, you then need to sync this in the GitHub Windows client (as this is where the build server, Bamboo is taking it from). An interesting point to note here, when these changes are committed in SQL Source Control (right-click database and select “Commit Changes to Source Control..”): The display gives a warning about possibly needing a migration script for the “Add Primary Key” step of the changes. This isn’t actually necessary in this case, but this mechanism would allow you to create override scripts to replace the default change scripts created by the SQL Compare engine (which runs underneath SQL Source Control). Ignoring this message (!), we add a comment and commit the changes to Git. I then sync these, run a build (or the build gets run automatically), and check that the data is being deployed over to the target RedGateAppCI database:   Creating and Running the Test As I mention, the test I’m going to use here is a very simple one - are the email addresses in my reference table valid? This isn’t of course, a full test of email validation (I expect the email addresses I’ve chosen here aren’t really the those of the Fab Four) – but just a very basic check of format used. I’ve taken the relevant SQL from this Stack Overflow article. In SSMS select “SQL Test” from the Tools menu, then click on + New Test: In the next screen, give your new test a name, and also enter a name in the Test Class box (test classes are schemas that help you keep things organised). Also check that the database in which the test is going to be created is correct – RedGateApp in this example: Click “Create Test”. After closing a couple of subsequent dialogues, you’ll see a dummy script for the test, that needs filling in:   We now need to define the SQL for our test. As mentioned before, tSQLt allows you to write your unit tests in T-SQL, and the code I’m going to use here is as below. This needs to be copied and pasted in to the query window, to replace the default given by tSQLt: –  Basic email check test ALTER PROCEDURE [MyChecks].[test Check Email Addresses] AS BEGIN SET NOCOUNT ON         Declare @Output VarChar(max)     Set @Output = ”       SELECT  @Output = @Output + Email +Char(13) + Char(10) FROM dbo.Email WHERE email NOT LIKE ‘%_@__%.__%’       If @Output > ”         Begin             Set @Output = Char(13) + Char(10)                           + @Output             EXEC tSQLt.Fail@Output         End   END;   Once this script is entered, hit execute to add the Stored Procedure to the database. Before committing the test to source control,  it’s worth just checking that it works! For a positive test, click on “SQL Test” from the Tools menu, then click Run Tests. You should see output like the following: - a green tick to indicate success! But of course, what we also need to do is test that this is actually doing something by showing a failed test. Edit one of the email addresses in your table to an incorrect format: Now, re-run the same SQL Test as before and you’ll see the following: Great – we now know that our test is really doing something! You’ll also see a useful error message at the bottom of SSMS: (leave the email address as invalid for now, for the next steps). The next stage is to check this new test in to source control again, by right-clicking on the database and checking in the changes with a commit message (and not forgetting to sync in the GitHub client):   Checking that the Tests are Running as Integration Tests After the changes above are made, and after a build has run on Bamboo (manual or automatic), looking at the Stored Procedures for the RedGateAppCI, the SPROC for the new test has been moved over to the database. However this is not exactly what we were after. We didn’t want to just copy objects from one database to another, but actually run the tests as part of the build/integration test process. I.e. we’re continuously checking any changes we make (in this case, to the reference data emails), to ensure we’re not breaking a test that we’ve set up. The behaviour we want to see is that, if we check in static data that is incorrect (as we did in step 9 above) and we have the tSQLt test set up, then our build in Bamboo should fail. However, re-running the build shows the following: - sadly, a successful build! To make sure the tSQLt tests are run as part of the integration test, we need to amend a switch in the Red Gate CI config file. First, navigate to file sqlCI.targets in your working folder: Edit this document, make the following change, save the document, then commit and sync this change in the GitHub client: <!-- tSQLt tests --> <!-- Optional --> <!-- To run tSQLt tests in source control for the database, enter true. --> <enableTsqlt>true</enableTsqlt> Now, if we re-run the build in Bamboo (NB: I’ve moved to a new server here, hence different address and build number): - superb, a broken build!! The error message isn’t great here, so to get more detailed info, click on the full build log link on this page (below the fold). The interesting part of the log shown is towards the bottom. Pulling out this part:   21-Jun-2013 11:35:19 Build FAILED. 21-Jun-2013 11:35:19 21-Jun-2013 11:35:19 "C:\Users\Administrator\bamboo-home\xml-data\build-dir\RGA-RGP-JOB1\sqlCI.proj" (default target) (1) -> 21-Jun-2013 11:35:19 (sqlCI target) -> 21-Jun-2013 11:35:19 EXEC : sqlCI error occurred: RedGate.Deploy.SqlServerDbPackage.Shared.Exceptions.InvalidSqlException: Test Case Summary: 1 test case(s) executed, 0 succeeded, 1 failed, 0 errored. [C:\Users\Administrator\bamboo-home\xml-data\build-dir\RGA-RGP-JOB1\sqlCI.proj] 21-Jun-2013 11:35:19 EXEC : sqlCI error occurred: [MyChecks].[test Check Email Addresses] failed: [C:\Users\Administrator\bamboo-home\xml-data\build-dir\RGA-RGP-JOB1\sqlCI.proj] 21-Jun-2013 11:35:19 EXEC : sqlCI error occurred: ringo.starr@beatles [C:\Users\Administrator\bamboo-home\xml-data\build-dir\RGA-RGP-JOB1\sqlCI.proj] 21-Jun-2013 11:35:19 EXEC : sqlCI error occurred: [C:\Users\Administrator\bamboo-home\xml-data\build-dir\RGA-RGP-JOB1\sqlCI.proj] 21-Jun-2013 11:35:19 EXEC : sqlCI error occurred: +----------------------+ [C:\Users\Administrator\bamboo-home\xml-data\build-dir\RGA-RGP-JOB1\sqlCI.proj] 21-Jun-2013 11:35:19 EXEC : sqlCI error occurred: |Test Execution Summary| [C:\Users\Administrator\bamboo-home\xml-data\build-dir\RGA-RGP-JOB1\sqlCI.proj]   As a final check, we should make sure that, if we now fix this error, the build succeeds. So in SSMS, I’m going to correct the invalid email address, then check this change in to SQL Source Control (with a comment), commit to GitHub, and re-run the build:   This should have fixed the build: It worked! Summary This has been a very quick run through the implementation of CI for databases, including tSQLt tests to test whether your database updates are working. The next post in this series will focus on automated deployment – we’ve tested our database changes, how can we now deploy these to target sites?  

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• eBooks on iPad vs. Kindle: More Debate than Smackdown

  - by andrewbrust

  When the iPad was presented at its San Francisco launch event on January 28th, Steve Jobs spent a significant amount of time explaining how well the device would serve as an eBook reader. He showed the iBooks reader application and iBookstore and laid down the gauntlet before Amazon and its beloved Kindle device. Almost immediately afterwards, criticism came rushing forth that the iPad could never beat the Kindle for book reading. The curious part of that criticism is that virtually no one offering it had actually used the iPad yet. A few weeks later, on April 3rd, the iPad was released for sale in the United States. I bought one on that day and in the few additional weeks that have elapsed, I’ve given quite a workout to most of its capabilities, including its eBook features. I’ve also spent some time with the Kindle, albeit a first-generation model, to see how it actually compares to the iPad. I had some expectations going in, but I came away with conclusions about each device that were more scenario-based than absolute. I present my findings to you here.   Vital Statistics Let’s start with an inventory of each device’s underlying technology. The iPad has a color, backlit LCD screen and an on-screen keyboard. It has a battery which, on a full charge, lasts anywhere from 6-10 hours. The Kindle offers a monochrome, reflective E Ink display, a physical keyboard and a battery that on my first gen loaner unit can go up to a week between charges (Amazon claims the battery on the Kindle 2 can last up to 2 weeks on a single charge). The Kindle connects to Amazon’s Kindle Store using a 3G modem (the technology and network vary depending on the model) that incurs no airtime service charges whatsoever. The iPad units that are on-sale today work over WiFi only. 3G-equipped models will be on sale shortly and will command a $130 premium over their WiFi-only counterparts. 3G service on the iPad, in the U.S. from AT&T, will be fee-based, with a 250MB plan at $14.99 per month and an unlimited plan at $29.99. No contract is required for 3G service. All these tech specs aside, I think a more useful observation is that the iPad is a multi-purpose Internet-connected entertainment device, while the Kindle is a dedicated reading device. The question is whether those differences in design and intended use create a clear-cut winner for reading electronic publications. Let’s take a look at each device, in isolation, now.   Kindle To me, what’s most innovative about the Kindle is its E Ink display. E Ink really looks like ink on a sheet of paper. It requires no backlight, it’s fully visible in direct sunlight and it causes almost none of the eyestrain that LCD-based computer display technology (like that used on the iPad) does. It’s really versatile in an all-around way. Forgive me if this sounds precious, but reading on it is really a joy. In fact, it’s a genuinely relaxing experience. Through the Kindle Store, Amazon allows users to download books (including audio books), magazines, newspapers and blog feeds. Books and magazines can be purchased either on a single-issue basis or as an annual subscription. Books, of course, are purchased singly. Oddly, blogs are not free, but instead carry a monthly subscription fee, typically $1.99. To me this is ludicrous, but I suppose the free 3G service is partially to blame. Books and magazine issues download quickly. Magazine and blog subscriptions cause new issues or posts to be pushed to your device on an automated basis. Available blogs include 9000-odd feeds that Amazon offers on the Kindle Store; unless I missed something, arbitrary RSS feeds are not supported (though there are third party workarounds to this limitation). The shopping experience is integrated well, has an huge selection, and offers certain graphical perks. For example, magazine and newspaper logos are displayed in menus, and book cover thumbnails appear as well. A simple search mechanism is provided and text entry through the physical keyboard is relatively painless. It’s very easy and straightforward to enter the store, find something you like and start reading it quickly. If you know what you’re looking for, it’s even faster. Given Kindle’s high portability, very reliable battery, instant-on capability and highly integrated content acquisition, it makes reading on whim, and in random spurts of downtime, very attractive. The Kindle’s home screen lists all of your publications, and easily lets you select one, then start reading it. Once opened, publications display in crisp, attractive text that is adjustable in size. “Turning” pages is achieved through buttons dedicated to the task. Notes can be recorded, bookmarks can be saved and pages can be saved as clippings. I am not an avid book reader, and yet I found the Kindle made it really fun, convenient and soothing to read. There’s something about the easy access to the material and the simplicity of the display that makes the Kindle seduce you into chilling out and reading page after page. On the other hand, the Kindle has an awkward navigation interface. While menus are displayed clearly on the screen, the method of selecting menu items is tricky: alongside the right-hand edge of the main display is a thin column that acts as a second display. It has a white background, and a scrollable silver cursor that is moved up or down through the use of the device’s scrollwheel. Picking a menu item on the main display involves scrolling the silver cursor to a position parallel to that menu item and pushing the scrollwheel in. This navigation technique creates a disconnect, literally. You don’t really click on a selection so much as you gesture toward it. I got used to this technique quickly, but I didn’t love it. It definitely created a kind of anxiety in me, making me feel the need to speed through menus and get to my destination document quickly. Once there, I could calm down and relax. Books are great on the Kindle. Magazines and newspapers much less so. I found the rendering of photographs, and even illustrations, to be unacceptably crude. For this reason, I expect that reading textbooks on the Kindle may leave students wanting. I found that the original flow and layout of any publication was sacrificed on the Kindle. In effect, browsing a magazine or newspaper was almost impossible. Reading the text of individual articles was enjoyable, but having to read this way made the whole experience much more “a la carte” than cohesive and thematic between articles. I imagine that for academic journals this is ideal, but for consumer publications it imposes a stripped-down, low-fidelity experience that evokes a sense of deprivation. In general, the Kindle is great for reading text. For just about anything else, especially activity that involves exploratory browsing, meandering and short-attention-span reading, it presents a real barrier to entry and adoption. Avid book readers will enjoy the Kindle (if they’re not already). It’s a great device for losing oneself in a book over long sittings. Multitaskers who are more interested in periodicals, be they online or off, will like it much less, as they will find compromise, and even sacrifice, to be palpable.   iPad The iPad is a very different device from the Kindle. While the Kindle is oriented to pages of text, the iPad orbits around applications and their interfaces. Be it the pinch and zoom experience in the browser, the rich media features that augment content on news and weather sites, or the ability to interact with social networking services like Twitter, the iPad is versatile. While it shares a slate-like form factor with the Kindle, it’s effectively an elegant personal computer. One of its many features is the iBook application and integration of the iBookstore. But it’s a multi-purpose device. That turns out to be good and bad, depending on what you’re reading. The iBookstore is great for browsing. It’s color, rich animation-laden user interface make it possible to shop for books, rather than merely search and acquire them. Unfortunately, its selection is rather sparse at the moment. If you’re looking for a New York Times bestseller, or other popular titles, you should be OK. If you want to read something more specialized, it’s much harder. Unlike the awkward navigation interface of the Kindle, the iPad offers a nearly flawless touch-screen interface that seduces the user into tinkering and kibitzing every bit as much as the Kindle lulls you into a deep, concentrated read. It’s a dynamic and interactive device, whereas the Kindle is static and passive. The iBook reader is slick and fun. Use the iPad in landscape mode and you can read the book in 2-up (left/right 2-page) display; use it in portrait mode and you can read one page at a time. Rather than clicking a hardware button to turn pages, you simply drag and wipe from right-to-left to flip the single or right-hand page. The page actually travels through an animated path as it would in a physical book. The intuitiveness of the interface is uncanny. The reader also accommodates saving of bookmarks, searching of the text, and the ability to highlight a word and look it up in a dictionary. Pages display brightly and clearly. They’re easy to read. But the backlight and the glare made me less comfortable than I was with the Kindle. The knowledge that completely different applications (including the Web and email and Twitter) were just a few taps away made me antsy and very tempted to task-switch. The knowledge that battery life is an issue created subtle discomfort. If the Kindle makes you feel like you’re in a library reading room, then the iPad makes you feel, at best, like you’re under fluorescent lights at a Barnes and Noble or Borders store. If you’re lucky, you’d be on a couch or at a reading table in the store, but you might also be standing up, in the aisles. Clearly, I didn’t find this conducive to focused and sustained reading. But that may have more to do with my own tendency to read periodicals far more than books, and my neurotic . And, truth be known, the book reading experience, when not explicitly compared to Kindle’s, was still pleasant. It is also important to point out that Kindle Store-sourced books can be read on the iPad through a Kindle reader application, from Amazon, specific to the device. This offered a less rich experience than the iBooks reader, but it was completely adequate. Despite the Kindle brand of the reader, however, it offered little in terms of simulating the reading experience on its namesake device. When it comes to periodicals, the iPad wins hands down. Magazines, even if merely scanned images of their print editions, read on the iPad in a way that felt similar to reading hard copy. The full color display, touch navigation and even the ability to render advertisements in their full glory makes the iPad a great way to read through any piece of work that is measured in pages, rather than chapters. There are many ways to get magazines and newspapers onto the iPad, including the Zinio reader, and publication-specific applications like the Wall Street Journal’s and Popular Science’s. The New York Times’ free Editors’ Choice application offers a Times Reader-like interface to a subset of the Gray Lady’s daily content. The completely Web-based but iPad-optimized Times Skimmer site (at www.nytimes.com/timesskimmer) works well too. Even conventional Web sites themselves can be read much like magazines, given the iPad’s ability to zoom in on the text and crop out advertisements on the margins. While the Kindle does have an experimental Web browser, it reminded me a lot of early mobile phone browsers, only in a larger size. For text-heavy sites with simple layout, it works fine. For just about anything else, it becomes more trouble than it’s worth. And given the way magazine articles make me think of things I want to look up online, I think that’s a real liability for the Kindle.   Summing Up What I came to realize is that the Kindle isn’t so much a computer or even an Internet device as it is a printer. While it doesn’t use physical paper, it still renders its content a page at a time, just like a laser printer does, and its output appears strikingly similar. You can read the rendered text, but you can’t interact with it in any way. That’s why the navigation requires a separate cursor display area. And because of the page-oriented rendering behavior, turning pages causes a flash on the display and requires a sometimes long pause before the next page is rendered. The good side of this is that once the page is generated, no battery power is required to display it. That makes for great battery life, optimal viewing under most lighting conditions (as long as there is some light) and low-eyestrain text-centric display of content. The Kindle is highly portable, has an excellent selection in its store and is refreshingly distraction-free. All of this is ideal for reading books. And iPad doesn’t offer any of it. What iPad does offer is versatility, variety, richness and luxury. It’s flush with accoutrements even if it’s low on focused, sustained text display. That makes it inferior to the Kindle for book reading. But that also makes it better than the Kindle for almost everything else. As such, and given that its book reading experience is still decent (even if not superior), I think the iPad will give Kindle a run for its money. True book lovers, and people on a budget, will want the Kindle. People with a robust amount of discretionary income may want both devices. Everyone else who is interested in a slate form factor e-reading device, especially if they also wish to have leisure-friendly Internet access, will likely choose the iPad exclusively. One thing is for sure: iPad has reduced Kindle’s market, and may have shifted its mass market potential to a mere niche play. If Amazon is smart, it will improve its iPad-based Kindle reader app significantly. It can then leverage the iPad channel as a significant market for the Kindle Store. After all, selling the eBooks themselves is what Amazon should care most about.

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• Sell good Dumps, track 1&2, CVV, Paypal, WU TRANSFER Service

  - by gOOD dUMPS cvv

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I sure u will be happy All I need is good & serious buyer to business for a long time * SELL GOOD CVV for shipping;booking airline ticket;shopping online;ordering Laptop,Iphone;...!IF NOT GOOD, WILL CHANGE IMMEDIATELY * Contact me to negotiate about the price if buying bulk. I really need more serious buyers to do long business. You will be given many endow when we have long time business,you do good for me, I do good for u too. Long & good business.This is all I need :) - US (vis,mas)= $3/CC; US (amex,dis)= $5/CC; US BIN; US fullz; USA Visa VBV info for sale. - UK (vis,mas)= $8/CC; UK (amex,dis)= $20/CC; UK BIN; UK DOB; UK with Postcode; UK fullz; UK pass VBV - EU (vis,mas)= $20/CC; EU Amex = $30/CC; EU DOB; EU fullz; EU pass VBV. 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Do WU Transfer and Bank Transfers] [Sell CVV; Dumps, track1&2; Bank logins; Paypal Accounts;Ebay Accounts Mailpass; SMTP;RDP;VPS;CCN;SSN; Sell Amazon gift card & itunes gift card; Game Cards, ATM Card; MSR, ATM SKIMMERS. Do WU Transfers and Bank Transfers] ------------------------------ CONTACT via Y!H: goodcvv_dumps or ICQ: 667686221 or Mail: [email protected] ------------------------------------ * WARNING!!! BEFORE MAKE BUSINESS or add my ID, let read carefull my rule because i really hate Spammers,Rippers and Scammers - Dont trust, dont talk more - Don't Spamm And Don't Scam! I very hate do spam or rip and I don't want who spam me. - All my CVV are tested before sell, that's sure - I accept LR; WU or MoneyGram. - I only work with reliable buyers. Need good & serious buyer to business for a long time - I work with only one slogan: prestige and quality to satisfy my clients !!! - I was so happy to see you actually make more big money from the business with me Once you trust me, work with me. And if not trust,dont contact me, dont waste time! --------------------------THANKS, LOOK FORWARD TO WORKING WITH ALL of YOU !!!---------------------------- * Sell CVV; Dumps, track1&2; Bank logins; Paypal Accounts,Ebay Accounts; Mailpass; SMTP;RDP;VPS;CCN;SSN; Sell Amazon gift card & itunes gift card; Game Cards, ATM Card; MSR, ATM SKIMMERS. Do WU Transfers and Bank Transfers. CVV for shipping;booking airline ticket;shopping online;ordering Laptop,Iphone;... [Sell CVV; Dumps, track1&2; Bank logins; Paypal Accounts,Ebay Accounts; Mailpass; SMTP;RDP;VPS;CCN;SSN; Sell Amazon gift card & itunes gift card; Game Cards, ATM Card; MSR, ATM SKIMMERS. Do WU Transfers and Bank Transfers] * Contact via Y!H: goodcvv_dumps or ICQ: 667686221. Mail: [email protected] ===================== WESTERN UNION TRANSFER SERVICE ======================= We are Very PROFESSIONAL in WESTION UNION. Our Special Job Is this We Have big Western Union Service for everywhere and every when for you. We transfer money to all country in world. We can transfer big amount. And you can receive this money from your country. Our service accept payment 15% of transfer amount for small transfer . And 10% of big transfer. For large transfer . We make is very safe. And this service is very fast. We start to run software to make transfer to your WU info very fast,without delay and immediately. We give you MTCN and sender info and all cashout info, 15 mins after your payment complete. 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Update Types of Dumps having now: Mix; Debit Classic; MC Standard;MC World; Gold; Platinum; Business/Corporate; Purchasing/Signature; Infinite - Contact me via Y!H: goodcvv_dumps (ICQ: 667686221) to know more info & price list of dumps, tracks ! ======================== Bank Logins Account (US UK CA AU EU) ======================== Sell Bank acc: Bank BOA, Bank HSBC USA, HSBC UK, Chase,Washovia, Halifax, Barclays, Abbey,... I make sure that my BANK LOGIN are security & easily to use. If u are interested in this, contact me to know more info about balance, price list,...! ================= Top-up Prepaid Cards, Debit Cards ========================= - If you hold any prepaid cards, debit cards, any country or any company. - I can top you funds into your prepaid cards, debit cards or any virtual cards. - top up your debit cards with hacked credit cards - top up your prepaid card with bank account login - top up you card with paypal account or any other - Have all tools to top your cards account - Top up does not take more then 10 minutes - Payoneer Cards top up available at cheap ================= Service: Provide Ebay - Apple - Amazon - Itunes GIFT CARD & Game Card with best price ===================== Contact me to negotiate about the price if buying bulk - PlayStation® Network Card - Xbox LIVE 12 Month Gold Membership = 30$ Xbox LIVE 4000 Microsoft Points = 30$ Zynga $50 Game Card (World Wide) = 30$ Ultimate game card 50$ = 30$ Ultimate game card 20$ = 10$ Key Diablo 3 = 25$ ITUNES GIFT CARD AMAZON GIFT CARD Ebay gift card Visa gift card ---------------- Our products are checked by a partner who works in a bank -------------------- Our products are better than 5-7 days after they are dead. They are raised mainly for money atm. Can be used in most countries. ---------------- Contact Via Y!H: goodcvv_dumps or ICQ: 667686221. Mail: [email protected] ------------------------ Need good & serious buyer to business for a long time [Sell CVV, Dumps,track1&2; Bank logins; Paypal Accounts;Ebay Accounts; Mailpass; SMTP;RDP;VPS;CCN;SSN; Sell Amazon gift card & itunes gift card; Game Card, ATM Card, MSR, ATM SKIMMERS. Do WU Transfer and Bank Transfers....Contact via Y!H: goodcvv_dumps or ICQ: 667686221. Mail: [email protected]] [Sell CVV, Dumps,track1&2; Bank logins; Paypal Accounts;Ebay Accounts; Mailpass; SMTP;RDP;VPS;CCN;SSN; Sell Amazon gift card & itunes gift card; Game Card, ATM Card, MSR, ATM SKIMMERS. Do WU Transfer and Bank Transfers....Contact via Y!H: goodcvv_dumps or ICQ: 667686221. Mail: [email protected]] [Sell CVV, Dumps,track1&2; Bank logins; Paypal Accounts;Ebay Accounts; Mailpass; SMTP;RDP;VPS;CCN;SSN; Sell Amazon gift card & itunes gift card; Game Card, ATM Card, MSR, ATM SKIMMERS. Do WU Transfer and Bank Transfers....Contact via Y!H: goodcvv_dumps or ICQ: 667686221. Mail: [email protected]] [Sell CVV, Dumps,track1&2; Bank logins; Paypal Accounts;Ebay Accounts; Mailpass; SMTP;RDP;VPS;CCN;SSN; Sell Amazon gift card & itunes gift card; Game Card, ATM Card, MSR, ATM SKIMMERS. Do WU Transfer and Bank Transfers....Contact via Y!H: goodcvv_dumps or ICQ: 667686221. Mail: [email protected]] [Sell CVV, Dumps,track1&2; Bank logins; Paypal Accounts;Ebay Accounts; Mailpass; SMTP;RDP;VPS;CCN;SSN; Sell Amazon gift card & itunes gift card; Game Card, ATM Card, MSR, ATM SKIMMERS. Do WU Transfer and Bank Transfers....Contact via Y!H: goodcvv_dumps or ICQ: 667686221. Mail: [email protected]]

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• From Bluehost to WP Engine, My WordPress Story

  - by thatjeffsmith

  This is probably the longest blog post I’ve written in a LONG time. And if you’re used to coming here for the Oracle stuff, this post is not about that. It’s about my blog, and the stuff under the hood that makes it run, AKA WordPress. If you want to skip to the juicy stuff, then use these shortcuts: My Site Slowed Down How I Moved to WP Engine How WP Engine ‘Hooked’ Me Why WP Engine? I started thatJeffSmith.com on May 28th, 2010. I had been already been blogging for several years, but a couple of really smart people I respected (Andy, Brent – thanks again!) suggested that I take ownership of my content and begin building my personal brand. I thought that was a good idea, and so I signed up for service with bluehost. Bluehost makes setting up a WordPress site very, very easy. And, they continued to be easy to work with for the past 2 years. I would even recommend them to anyone looking to host their own WordPress install/site. For $83.40, I purchased a year’s worth of service and my domain name registration – a very good value. And then last year I paid $107.40 for another year’s services. And when that year expired I paid another $190.80 for an additional two year’s service in advance. I had been up to that point, getting my money’s worth. And then, just a few weeks ago… My Site Slowed to a Crawl That spike was from an April Fool's Day Post, I think Why? Well, when I first started blogging, I had the same problem that most beginner bloggers have – not many readers. In my first year of blogging, I think the highest number of readers on a single day was about 125. I remember that day as I was very excited to break 100! Bluehost was very reliable, serving up my content with maybe a total of 3-4 outages in the past 2 years. Support was usually very prompt with answers and solutions, and I love their ‘Chat now’ technology – much nicer than message boards only or pay-to-talk phone support. In the past 6 months however, I noticed a couple of things: daily traffic was increasing – woohoo! my service was experiencing severe CPU throttling – doh! To be honest, I wasn’t aware the throttling was occuring, but I did know that the response time of my blog was starting to lag. Average load times were approaching 20-30 seconds. Not good when good sites are loading in 5 seconds or less. And just this past week, in getting ready to launch a new website for work that sucked in an RSS feed from my blog, the new page was left waiting for more than a minute. Not good! In fact my boss asked, why aren’t you blogging on Blogger? Ugh. I tried a few things to fix the problem: I paid for a premium WordPress theme – Themify’s Grido (thanks to @SQLRockstar for the heads-up) I installed a couple of WP caching plugins I read every WP optimization blog post I could get my greedy little eyes on However, at the same time I was also getting addicted to WordPress bloggers talking about all the cool things you could do with your blog. As a result I had at one point about 30 different plugins installed. WordPress runs on MySQL, and certain queries running via these plugins were starving for CPU. Plugins that would be called every page load meant that as more people clicked on my site, the more CPU I needed. I’m not stupid, so I eventually figured out that maybe less plugins was better, and was able to go down to just 20. But still, the site was running like a dog. CPU Throttling, makes MySQL wait to run a query Bluehost runs shared servers. Your site runs on the same box that several hundred (or thousand?) other services are running on. If you take more CPU than they think you should have, they will limit your service by making you stand in line for CPU, AKA ‘throttling.’ This is not bad. This business model allows them to serve many, many users for a very fair price. It works great until, well, until it doesn’t. I noticed in the last week that for every minute of service, I was being throttled between 60 and 300 seconds. If there were 5 MySQL processes running, then every single one of them were being held in check. The blog visitor notice this as their page requests would take a minute or more to be answered. Bluehost unfortunately doesn’t offer dedicated server hosting, so there was no real upgrade path for me follow and remain one of their customers. So what was I to do? Uninstall every plugin and hope the site sped up? Ask for people to take turns on my blog? I decided to spend my way out of the problem. I signed up for service with WP Engine and moved ThatJeffSmith.com The first 2 months are free, and after that it’s about $29/month to run my site on their system. My math tells me that’s a good bit more expensive than what Bluehost was charging me – to the tune of about 300% more a month. Oh, and I should just say that my blog is a personal blog even though I talk about work stuff here. I don’t get paid for blogging, I don’t sell ads, and I don’t expense the service fees – this is my personal passion. So is it worth it? In the first 4 days, it seems to be totally worth it. Load times have gone from 20-30 seconds to less than 5 seconds. A few folks have told me via Twitter that they notice faster page loads. I anticipate this will indirectly lead to more traffic as Google penalizes you in search results if your site is too slow, and of course some folks won’t even bother waiting more than 5-10 seconds. I noticed right away that writing posts, uploading pictures, and just using the WordPress dashboard in general was much more responsive. So writing is less of a chore now, which means I won’t have a good reason not to write How I Moved to WP Engine I signed up for the service and registered my domain. I then took a full export of my ‘old’ site by doing a FTP GET of all my files, then did a MySQL database backup, exported my WordPress Theme settings to a .zip file, and then finally used the WordPress ‘Export’ feature. I then used the WordPress ‘Import’ on the new site to load up my posts. Then I uploaded the theme .zip package from Themify. Then I FTP’d the ‘wp-content’ directory up to my new server using SFTP (WP Engine only supports secure FTP – good on them!) Using a temporary URL to see my new site, I was able to confirm that everything looked mostly OK – I’ll detail the challenges and issues of fixing the content next – but then it was time to ‘flip the switch.’ I updated the IP address that the DNS lookup tables use to route traffic to my new server. In a matter of minutes the DNS servers around the world were updated and it was time to see the new site! But It Was ‘Broken’ I had never moved a website before, and in my rush to update the DNS, I had changed the records without really finding out what I was supposed to do first. After re-reading the directions provided by WP Engine and following the guidance of their support engineer, I realized I had needed to set the CNAME (Alias) ‘www’ record to point to a different URL than the ‘www.thatjeffsmith.com’ entry I had set. Once corrected the site was up and running in less than a minute. Then It Was Only Mostly Broken Many of my plugins weren’t working. Apparently just ftp’ing the wp-content directory up wasn’t the proper way to re-install the plugin. I suspect file permissions or file ownership wasn’t proper. Some plug-ins were working, many had their settings wiped to the defaults, and a few just didn’t work again. I had to delete the directory of the plug-in manually via SFTP, and then use the WP Dashboard to install it from scratch. And here was my first ‘lesson’ – don’t switch the DNS records until you’ve completely tested your new site. I wasn’t able to navigate the old WP console to review my plug-in settings. Thankfully I was able to use the Wayback Machine to reverse engineer some things, and of course most plug-ins aren’t that complicated to setup to begin with. An example of one that I had to redo from scratch is the ‘Twitter @Anywhere Plus’ plugin that I use to create the form that allows folks to tweet a post they enjoyed at the end of each story. How WP Engine ‘Hooked’ Me I actually signed up with another provider first. They ranked highly in Google searches and a few Tweeps recommended them to me. But hours after signing up and I still didn’t have sever reyady, I was ready to give up on them. They offered no chat or phone support – only mail and message boards. And the message boards were rife with posts about how the service had gone downhill in the past 6 months. To their credit, they did make it easy to cancel, although I did have to do so via email as their website ‘cancel’ button was non-existent. Within minutes of activating my WP Engine account I had received my welcome message and directions on how to get started. I was able to see my staged website right away. They also did something very cool before I even got started – they looked at my existing site and told me by how much they could improve its performance. The proof is in the web pudding. I like this for a few reasons, but primarily I liked their business model. It told me they knew what they were doing, and that they were willing to put their money where their mouth was. This was further evident by their 60-day money back guarantee. And if I understand it correctly, they don’t even take your money until after that 60 day period is over. After a day, I was welcomed by the WP Engine social media team, and was given the opportunity to subscribe to their newsletter and follow their account on Twitter. I noticed their Twitter team is sure to post regular WordPress tips several times a day. It’s not just an account that’s setup for the sake of having a Twitter presence. These little things add up and give me confidence in my decision to choose them as my hosting partner. ‘Partner’ – that’s a lot nicer word than just ‘service provider,’ isn’t it? Oh, and they offered me a t-shirt. Don’t ever doubt the power of a ‘free’ t-shirt! How awesome is this e-mail, from a customer perspective? I wasn’t really expecting any of this. Exceeding expectations before I have even handed over a single dollar seems like a pretty good business plan. This is how you treat customers. Love them to death, and they reward you with loyalty. But Jeff, You Skipped a Piece Here, Why WP Engine? I found them on one of those ‘Top 10′ list posts, and pulled up their webpage. I noticed they offered a specialized service – they host WordPress installs, and that’s it. Their servers are tuned specifically for running WordPress. They had in bolded text, things like ‘INSANELY FAST. INFINITELY SCALABLE.’ and ‘LIGHTNING SPEED.’ And then they offered insurance against hackers and they took care of automatic backups and restores. The only drawbacks I have noticed so far relate to plugins I used that have been ‘blacklisted.’ In order to guarantee that ‘lightning’ speed, they have banned the use of the CPU-suckiest plugins. One of those is the ‘Related Posts’ plugin. So if you are a subscriber and are reading this in your email, you’ll notice there’s no links back to my blog to continue reading other related stories. Since that referral traffic is very small single-digit for my site, I decided that I’m OK with that. I’d rather have the warp-speed page loads. Again, I think that will lead to higher traffic down the road. In 50+ days I will need to decide if WP Engine is a permanent solution. I’ll be sure to update this post when that time comes and let y’all know how it turns out.

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• The Benefits of Smart Grid Business Software

  - by Sylvie MacKenzie, PMP

  Smart Grid Background What Are Smart Grids?Smart Grids use computer hardware and software, sensors, controls, and telecommunications equipment and services to: Link customers to information that helps them manage consumption and use electricity wisely. Enable customers to respond to utility notices in ways that help minimize the duration of overloads, bottlenecks, and outages. Provide utilities with information that helps them improve performance and control costs. What Is Driving Smart Grid Development? Environmental ImpactSmart Grid development is picking up speed because of the widespread interest in reducing the negative impact that energy use has on the environment. Smart Grids use technology to drive efficiencies in transmission, distribution, and consumption. As a result, utilities can serve customers’ power needs with fewer generating plants, fewer transmission and distribution assets,and lower overall generation. With the possible exception of wind farm sprawl, landscape preservation is one obvious benefit. And because most generation today results in greenhouse gas emissions, Smart Grids reduce air pollution and the potential for global climate change.Smart Grids also more easily accommodate the technical difficulties of integrating intermittent renewable resources like wind and solar into the grid, providing further greenhouse gas reductions. CostsThe ability to defer the cost of plant and grid expansion is a major benefit to both utilities and customers. Utilities do not need to use as many internal resources for traditional infrastructure project planning and management. Large T&D infrastructure expansion costs are not passed on to customers.Smart Grids will not eliminate capital expansion, of course. Transmission corridors to connect renewable generation with customers will require major near-term expenditures. Additionally, in the future, electricity to satisfy the needs of population growth and additional applications will exceed the capacity reductions available through the Smart Grid. At that point, expansion will resume—but with greater overall T&D efficiency based on demand response, load control, and many other Smart Grid technologies and business processes. Energy efficiency is a second area of Smart Grid cost saving of particular relevance to customers. The timely and detailed information Smart Grids provide encourages customers to limit waste, adopt energy-efficient building codes and standards, and invest in energy efficient appliances. Efficiency may or may not lower customer bills because customer efficiency savings may be offset by higher costs in generation fuels or carbon taxes. It is clear, however, that bills will be lower with efficiency than without it. Utility Operations Smart Grids can serve as the central focus of utility initiatives to improve business processes. Many utilities have long “wish lists” of projects and applications they would like to fund in order to improve customer service or ease staff’s burden of repetitious work, but they have difficulty cost-justifying the changes, especially in the short term. Adding Smart Grid benefits to the cost/benefit analysis frequently tips the scales in favor of the change and can also significantly reduce payback periods.Mobile workforce applications and asset management applications work together to deploy assets and then to maintain, repair, and replace them. Many additional benefits result—for instance, increased productivity and fuel savings from better routing. Similarly, customer portals that provide customers with near-real-time information can also encourage online payments, thus lowering billing costs. Utilities can and should include these cost and service improvements in the list of Smart Grid benefits. What Is Smart Grid Business Software? Smart Grid business software gathers data from a Smart Grid and uses it improve a utility’s business processes. Smart Grid business software also helps utilities provide relevant information to customers who can then use it to reduce their own consumption and improve their environmental profiles. Smart Grid Business Software Minimizes the Impact of Peak Demand Utilities must size their assets to accommodate their highest peak demand. The higher the peak rises above base demand: The more assets a utility must build that are used only for brief periods—an inefficient use of capital. The higher the utility’s risk profile rises given the uncertainties surrounding the time needed for permitting, building, and recouping costs. The higher the costs for utilities to purchase supply, because generators can charge more for contracts and spot supply during high-demand periods. Smart Grids enable a variety of programs that reduce peak demand, including: Time-of-use pricing and critical peak pricing—programs that charge customers more when they consume electricity during peak periods. Pilot projects indicate that these programs are successful in flattening peaks, thus ensuring better use of existing T&D and generation assets. Direct load control, which lets utilities reduce or eliminate electricity flow to customer equipment (such as air conditioners). Contracts govern the terms and conditions of these turn-offs. Indirect load control, which signals customers to reduce the use of on-premises equipment for contractually agreed-on time periods. Smart Grid business software enables utilities to impose penalties on customers who do not comply with their contracts. Smart Grids also help utilities manage peaks with existing assets by enabling: Real-time asset monitoring and control. In this application, advanced sensors safely enable dynamic capacity load limits, ensuring that all grid assets can be used to their maximum capacity during peak demand periods. Real-time asset monitoring and control applications also detect the location of excessive losses and pinpoint need for mitigation and asset replacements. As a result, utilities reduce outage risk and guard against excess capacity or “over-build”. Better peak demand analysis. As a result: Distribution planners can better size equipment (e.g. transformers) to avoid over-building. Operations engineers can identify and resolve bottlenecks and other inefficiencies that may cause or exacerbate peaks. As above, the result is a reduction in the tendency to over-build. Supply managers can more closely match procurement with delivery. As a result, they can fine-tune supply portfolios, reducing the tendency to over-contract for peak supply and reducing the need to resort to spot market purchases during high peaks. Smart Grids can help lower the cost of remaining peaks by: Standardizing interconnections for new distributed resources (such as electricity storage devices). Placing the interconnections where needed to support anticipated grid congestion. Smart Grid Business Software Lowers the Cost of Field Services By processing Smart Grid data through their business software, utilities can reduce such field costs as: Vegetation management. Smart Grids can pinpoint momentary interruptions and tree-caused outages. Spatial mash-up tools leverage GIS models of tree growth for targeted vegetation management. This reduces the cost of unnecessary tree trimming. Service vehicle fuel. Many utility service calls are “false alarms.” Checking meter status before dispatching crews prevents many unnecessary “truck rolls.” Similarly, crews use far less fuel when Smart Grid sensors can pinpoint a problem and mobile workforce applications can then route them directly to it. Smart Grid Business Software Ensures Regulatory Compliance Smart Grids can ensure compliance with private contracts and with regional, national, or international requirements by: Monitoring fulfillment of contract terms. Utilities can use one-hour interval meters to ensure that interruptible (“non-core”) customers actually reduce or eliminate deliveries as required. They can use the information to levy fines against contract violators. Monitoring regulations imposed on customers, such as maximum use during specific time periods. Using accurate time-stamped event history derived from intelligent devices distributed throughout the smart grid to monitor and report reliability statistics and risk compliance. Automating business processes and activities that ensure compliance with security and reliability measures (e.g. NERC-CIP 2-9). Grid Business Software Strengthens Utilities’ Connection to Customers While Reducing Customer Service Costs During outages, Smart Grid business software can: Identify outages more quickly. Software uses sensors to pinpoint outages and nested outage locations. They also permit utilities to ensure outage resolution at every meter location. Size outages more accurately, permitting utilities to dispatch crews that have the skills needed, in appropriate numbers. Provide updates on outage location and expected duration. This information helps call centers inform customers about the timing of service restoration. Smart Grids also facilitates display of outage maps for customer and public-service use. Smart Grids can significantly reduce the cost to: Connect and disconnect customers. Meters capable of remote disconnect can virtually eliminate the costs of field crews and vehicles previously required to change service from the old to the new residents of a metered property or disconnect customers for nonpayment. Resolve reports of voltage fluctuation. Smart Grids gather and report voltage and power quality data from meters and grid sensors, enabling utilities to pinpoint reported problems or resolve them before customers complain. Detect and resolve non-technical losses (e.g. theft). Smart Grids can identify illegal attempts to reconnect meters or to use electricity in supposedly vacant premises. They can also detect theft by comparing flows through delivery assets with billed consumption. Smart Grids also facilitate outreach to customers. By monitoring and analyzing consumption over time, utilities can: Identify customers with unusually high usage and contact them before they receive a bill. They can also suggest conservation techniques that might help to limit consumption. This can head off “high bill” complaints to the contact center. Note that such “high usage” or “additional charges apply because you are out of range” notices—frequently via text messaging—are already common among mobile phone providers. Help customers identify appropriate bill payment alternatives (budget billing, prepayment, etc.). Help customers find and reduce causes of over-consumption. There’s no waiting for bills in the mail before they even understand there is a problem. Utilities benefit not just through improved customer relations but also through limiting the size of bills from customers who might struggle to pay them. Where permitted, Smart Grids can open the doors to such new utility service offerings as: Monitoring properties. Landlords reduce costs of vacant properties when utilities notify them of unexpected energy or water consumption. Utilities can perform similar services for owners of vacation properties or the adult children of aging parents. Monitoring equipment. Power-use patterns can reveal a need for equipment maintenance. Smart Grids permit utilities to alert owners or managers to a need for maintenance or replacement. Facilitating home and small-business networks. Smart Grids can provide a gateway to equipment networks that automate control or let owners access equipment remotely. They also facilitate net metering, offering some utilities a path toward involvement in small-scale solar or wind generation. Prepayment plans that do not need special meters. Smart Grid Business Software Helps Customers Control Energy Costs There is no end to the ways Smart Grids help both small and large customers control energy costs. For instance: Multi-premises customers appreciate having all meters read on the same day so that they can more easily compare consumption at various sites. Customers in competitive regions can match their consumption profile (detailed via Smart Grid data) with specific offerings from competitive suppliers. Customers seeing inexplicable consumption patterns and power quality problems may investigate further. The result can be discovery of electrical problems that can be resolved through rewiring or maintenance—before more serious fires or accidents happen. Smart Grid Business Software Facilitates Use of Renewables Generation from wind and solar resources is a popular alternative to fossil fuel generation, which emits greenhouse gases. Wind and solar generation may also increase energy security in regions that currently import fossil fuel for use in generation. Utilities face many technical issues as they attempt to integrate intermittent resource generation into traditional grids, which traditionally handle only fully dispatchable generation. Smart Grid business software helps solves many of these issues by: Detecting sudden drops in production from renewables-generated electricity (wind and solar) and automatically triggering electricity storage and smart appliance response to compensate as needed. Supporting industry-standard distributed generation interconnection processes to reduce interconnection costs and avoid adding renewable supplies to locations already subject to grid congestion. Facilitating modeling and monitoring of locally generated supply from renewables and thus helping to maximize their use. Increasing the efficiency of “net metering” (through which utilities can use electricity generated by customers) by: Providing data for analysis. Integrating the production and consumption aspects of customer accounts. During non-peak periods, such techniques enable utilities to increase the percent of renewable generation in their supply mix. During peak periods, Smart Grid business software controls circuit reconfiguration to maximize available capacity. Conclusion Utility missions are changing. Yesterday, they focused on delivery of reasonably priced energy and water. Tomorrow, their missions will expand to encompass sustainable use and environmental improvement.Smart Grids are key to helping utilities achieve this expanded mission. But they come at a relatively high price. Utilities will need to invest heavily in new hardware, software, business process development, and staff training. Customer investments in home area networks and smart appliances will be large. Learning to change the energy and water consumption habits of a lifetime could ultimately prove even more formidable tasks.Smart Grid business software can ease the cost and difficulties inherent in a needed transition to a more flexible, reliable, responsive electricity grid. Justifying its implementation, however, requires a full understanding of the benefits it brings—benefits that can ultimately help customers, utilities, communities, and the world address global issues like energy security and climate change while minimizing costs and maximizing customer convenience. This white paper is available for download here. For further information about Oracle's Primavera Solutions for Utilities, please read our Utilities e-book.

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• CodePlex Daily Summary for Thursday, March 29, 2012

  CodePlex Daily Summary for Thursday, March 29, 2012Popular ReleasesWouter's SharePoint Demo Land: Custom Views and Forms: Samples showing how to provision custom lists. Custom view rendering with code, XSLT, XSLT + code. Custom forms with database lookups.YouTube API Class & Server Control for ASP.NET 4.0: Binary dll Files with Demo: . You can find binary dll files under :- Demo\bin\ folder Demo url :- http://demo.svinn.com/YouTube/Default.aspx 1 GB Hosting + Free Domain => http://ghosting.in/ .callisto: callisto 2.0.23: Patched Script static class and peak user count bug fix.Circuit Diagram: Circuit Diagram 2.0 Alpha 3: New in this release: Added components: Microcontroller Demultiplexer Flip & rotate components Open XML files from older versions of Circuit Diagram Text formatting for components New CDDX syntax Other fixesUmbraco CMS: Umbraco 5.1 CMS (Beta): Beta build for testing - please report issues at issues.umbraco.org (Latest uploaded: 5.1.0.123) What's new in 5.1? The full list of changes is on our http://progress.umbraco.org task tracking page. It shows items complete for 5.1, and 5.1 includes items for 5.0.1 and 5.0.2 listed there too. Here's two headline acts: Members5.1 adds support for backoffice editing of Members. We support the pairing up of our content type system in Hive with regular ASP.NET Membership providers (we ship a def...51Degrees.mobi - Mobile Device Detection and Redirection: 2.1.2.11: One Click Install from NuGet Changes to Version 2.1.2.11Code Changes 1. The project is now licenced under the Mozilla Public Licence 2. 2. User interface control and associated data access layer classes have been added to aid developers integrating 51Degrees.mobi into wider projects such as content management systems or web hosting management solutions. Use the following in a web form or user control to access these new UI components. <%@ Register Assembly="FiftyOne.Foundation" Namespace="...JSON Toolkit: JSON Toolkit 3.1: slight performance improvement (5% - 10%) new JsonException classPicturethrill: Version 2.3.28.0: Straightforward image selection. New clean UI look. Super stable. Simplified user experience.Indent Guides for Visual Studio: Indent Guides v12 (beta 2): Note This beta is likely to be less stable than the previous one. If you have severe troubles using this version, please report them with as much detail as possible (especially other extensions/addins that you may have) and downgrade to the last stable release. Version History Changed since v12 (beta 1): new options dialog with Quick Set selections for behavior restructured settings storage (should be more reliable) asynchronous background document analysis glow effect now appears in p...SQL Monitor - managing sql server performance: SQL Monitor 4.2 alpha 16: 1. finally fixed problem with logic fault checking for temporary table name... I really mean finally ...ScintillaNET: ScintillaNET 2.5: A slew of bug-fixes with a few new features sprinkled in. This release also upgrades the SciLexer and SciLexer64 DLLs to version 3.0.4. The official stuff: Issue # Title 32402 32402 27137 27137 31548 31548 30179 30179 24932 24932 29701 29701 31238 31238 26875 26875 30052 30052 Mugen MVVM Toolkit: Mugen MVVM Toolkit ver 1.1: Added Design mode support.Multiwfn: Multiwfn 2.3.2: Multiwfn 2.3.2Harness: Harness 2.0.2: change to .NET Framework Client Profile bug fix the download dialog auto answer. bug fix setFocus command. add "SendKeys" command. remove "closeAll" command. minor bugs fixed.BugNET Issue Tracker: BugNET 0.9.161: Below is a list of fixes in this release. Bug BGN-2092 - Link in Email "visit your profile" not functional BGN-2083 - Manager of bugnet can not edit project when it is not public BGN-2080 - clicking on a link in the project summary causes error (0.9.152.0) BGN-2070 - Missing Functionality On Feed.aspx BGN-2069 - Calendar View does not work BGN-2068 - Time tracking totals not ok BGN-2067 - Issues List Page Size Bug: Index was out of range. Must be non-negative and less than the si...YAF.NET (aka Yet Another Forum.NET): v1.9.6.1 RTW: v1.9.6.1 FINAL is .NET v4.0 ONLY v1.9.6.1 has: Performance Improvements .NET v4.0 improvements Improved FaceBook Integration KNOWN ISSUES WITH THIS RELEASE: ON INSTALL PLEASE DON'T CHECK "Upgrade BBCode Extensions...". More complete change list and discussion here: http://forum.yetanotherforum.net/yaf_postst14201_v1-9-6-1-RTW-Dated--3-26-2012.aspxmenu4web: menu4web 0.0.3: menu4web 0.0.3ArcGIS Editor for OpenStreetMap: ArcGIS Editor for OSM 2.0 Final: This release installs both the ArcGIS Editor for OSM Server Component and/or ArcGIS Editor for OSM Desktop components. The Desktop tools allow you to download data from the OpenStreetMap servers and store it locally in a geodatabase. You can then use the familiar editing environment of ArcGIS Desktop to create, modify, or delete data. Once you are done editing, you can post back the edit changes to OSM to make them available to all OSM users. The Server Component allows you to quickly create...Craig's Utility Library: Craig's Utility Library 3.1: This update adds about 60 new extension methods, a couple of new classes, and a number of fixes including: Additions Added DateSpan class Added GenericDelimited class Random additions Added static thread friendly version of Random.Next called ThreadSafeNext. AOP Manager additions Added Destroy function to AOPManager (clears out all data so system can be recreated. Really only useful for testing...) ORM additions Added PagedCommand and PageCount functions to ObjectBaseClass (same as M...DotSpatial: DotSpatial 1.1: This is a Minor Release. See the changes in the issue tracker. Minimal -- includes DotSpatial core and essential extensions Extended -- includes debugging symbols and additional extensions Just want to run the software? End user (non-programmer) version available branded as MapWindow Want to add your own feature? Develop a plugin, using the template and contribute to the extension feed (you can also write extensions that you distribute in other ways). Components are available as NuGet pa...New ProjectsAeroFichierAchats: Program that reworks excel files into PDFArepa: A lightweight non-invasive tool that helps you to implement Behavior Driven Development (BDD) on .NET projects. Arepa produces guidelines of using BDD on your current tests, and customisable and portable test reports integrating XML Documentation Comments. It's developed in C# using Scrum and BDD.Azure User Management Console - AUMC: Azure User Management Console - AUMC is a User Graphic Interface (GUI) that manages the users and logins of an Azure SQL database. The tool is simply converting your action into T-SQL commands and execute them on the Azure SQL Database. BaseProject: BaseProjectCraftBukkit Updater: I don't activly monitor the status of CraftBukkit's updates, but I want to stay on top of the updated versions. This will track the last version in cache then check for updates. Upon update there should be an option to download automaticly to location XYZ or to send an email/sms.Dan Dot Com: Dan's SandboxEjemplos Windows 8 Javascript: Este proyecto pretende recoger todos los ejemplos de aplicaciones metro para Windows 8 en JavaScript que vaya desarrollando para fines didácticos. Todas las colaboraciones son bienvenidas.EntityFramework Generic Patterns: EntityFramework Generic PatternsEpFamvir: EpFamvir is a Visual C++ software framework that supports data-intensive distributed applications under a GPL3.0 license. It enables applications to work with thousands of nodes and petabytes of data. Famvir was inspired by Apache Hadoop, Google's MapReduce, and Google FS.etdc/etp: ???????????????? ???????? ??????? etest.ru. IndieCiv: IndieCiv - An independent look at how a new game could be made using fan-made graphics from Civ3. You can visit the discussion at www.civfanatics.com http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=421582Libro SQL Server 2012: Databases and examples for my Italian book on "SQL Server 2012"Linq2Rest: Parses OData system query parameters to create a LINQ query that can be used to filter a model set. Also exposes a LINQ provider for web services supporting the OData query parameters. Use extension method Filter (in Linq2Rest namespace) on any IEnumerable source.LittleUmph: It's a little library to help you to alleviate some of the mundane stuff during your development. It has some nifty stuff like a neat database wrapper, conversion utilities, string functions and vast of other mini helpers to improve the efficiency and consistency of your code.LonghornRPG: LonghornRPGMemberManager: Keep track of membersMSU Student Teaching DataBase: A C# application to manage student placements for MSU.MvcContrib4: This is the MvcContrib project to support MVC 4MYFIRSTDEMOPROJECT: Introduction to CSharpOrchard Page Title Override: This Orchard CMS module allows a user to manage the Page Title. You can now have the Site Name show up last in the Page Title or hide the Site Name completely from the Page Title. The module also contains a Content Part allowing a Page Title to be separate from content title.phoenixtree: .net linux sql php python html javascript c exampleProject Explorer for Notepad++: This project mainly aims at providing a functional rich project explorer experience on notepad++. Features include Folder based file browsing, searching, filtering and more.Projeto Exemplo FPU: Projeto Exemplo FPUPureCalendar: simple web calendarrails study: rails studySafe IM: a safe IM software use AES,SHA,RSA.Contain a server and a clientScoreboard: Scoreboard is a simple sports and/or activities scoreboard which can be used for a variety of purposes It was developed for use with a 1024x768 projector and features home and away scores, countdown clock, even a buzzer. It's developed in VB.net.SharePoint System dates and editor fields updater: The SPChangeDate is a utility used to modify some of the system fields in a SharePoint 2010 document library using a datagridview (Excel Like). It allows the modification of the following SharePoint fields: 1. Created 2. Modified 3. Modified By 4. Created By Shi Ji Xiang CRM 2012: Shi Ji XiangSIGECAR: SIGECARStable Dependencies Principle Checker for nDepend: Small console app for parsing nDepend output files and find assemblies that breaks the Stable Dependencies PrincipleStudentsPointManager: StudentsPointManagertclh123test: 4testThai Sign Language Translator: Thai Sign Language Translator with Kinect Sensor.The House FM / My Praise FM Desktop App: An App to play Christian radio on the desktop of windows Vista and Windows 7 computersTradeSea: Uni ProjectVisual Dependency Tracer: This tool will help you understand how an excel formula is derived/calculated. It provides a visual representation (tree) of the formula, including the precendents and dependents.VK Video Player: Video player for russian social network vk.comXrmSvcToolkit: XrmSvcToolkit is a small JavaScript library that helps you access Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 web service interfaces (SOAP and REST).

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• Understanding the value of Customer Experience & Loyalty for the Telecommunications Industry

  - by raul.goycoolea

  Worried by economic woes and market forces, especially in mature markets, communications service providers (CSPs) increasingly focus on improving customer experience. In fact, it seems difficult to find a major message by a C-level executive in the developed world that does not include something on "meeting and exceeding customers' needs". Frequently in customer satisfaction studies by prominent firms, CSPs fall short of the leadership demonstrated by other industries that take customer-centric approaches to their bottom-line strategies. Consider the following:Despite the continued impact of global economic crisis, in July 2010, Apple Computer posted record revenue and net quarterly profit. Those who attribute the results primarily to the iPhone 4 launch should note that Apple also shipped around 30% more Macintosh computers than the same period the previous year. Even sales of the iPod line increased by 8% in a highly commoditized, shrinking media player market. Finally, Apple began selling iPads during the quarter, with total sales of more than 3 million units. What does Apple have that the others lack? Well, some great products (and services) to be sure, but it also excels at customer service and support, marketing, and distribution, and has one of the strongest brands globally. Its products are useful, simple to use, easy to acquire and augment, high quality, and considered very cool. They also evoke such an emotional response from many of Apple's customers, which they turn up their noses at competitive products.In other words, Apple appears to have mastered virtually every aspect of customer experience and the resultant loyalty of its customer base - even in difficult financial times. Through that unwavering customer focus, Apple continues to drive its revenues and profits to new heights. Other customer loyalty leaders like Wal-Mart, Google, Toyota and Honda are also doing well by focusing on customer experience as an essential driver of profitability. Service providers should note this performance and ask themselves how they might leverage the same principles to increase their own profitability. After all, that is what customer experience and loyalty are all about: profitability.To successfully manage all the critical touch points of customer experience, CSPs must shun the one-size-fits-all approach. They can no longer afford to view customer service fundamentally as an act of altruism - which mentality dates back to the industry's civil service days, when CSPs were typically government organizations that were critical to economic development and public safety.As regulators and public officials have pushed, and continue to push, service providers to new heights of reliability - using incentives and punishments - most CSPs already have some of the fundamental building blocks of customer service in place. Yet despite that history and experience, service providers still lag other industries in providing what is seen as good customer service.As we observed in the TMF's 2009 Insights Research report, Customer Experience Management: Driving Loyalty & Profitability there has been resurgence in interest by CSPs. More and more of them have stated ambitions to catch up other industries, and they are realizing that good customer service is a powerful strategy for increasing business performance and profitability, not an act of good will.CSPs are recognizing the connection between customer experience and profitability, as demonstrated in many studies. For example, according to research by Bain & Company, a 5 percent improvement in customer retention rates can yield as much as a 75 percent increase in profits for companies across a range of industries.After decades of customer experience strategy formulation, Bain partner and business author, Frederick Reichheld, considers "would you recommend us to a friend?" as the ultimate question for a customer. How many times have you or your friends recommended an iPod, iPhone or a Mac? What do your children recommend to their peers? Their peers to them?There are certain steps service providers have to take to create more personalized relationships with their customers, as well as reduce churn and increase profitability, all while becoming leaner and more agile. First, they have to define customer experience, we define it as the result of the sum of observations, perceptions, thoughts and feelings arising from interactions and relationships between customers and their service provider(s). Virtually every customer touch point - whether directly or indirectly linked to service providers and their partners - contributes to customer perception, satisfaction, loyalty, and ultimately profitability. Gaining leadership in customer experience and satisfaction will not be a simple task, as it is affected by virtually every customer-facing aspect of the service provider, and in turn impacts the service provider deeply - especially on the all-important bottom line. The scope of issues affecting customer experience is complex and dynamic.With new services, devices and applications extending the basis of customer experience to domains beyond the direct control of the service provider, it is likely to increase in complexity and dynamism.Customer loyalty = increased profitsAs stated earlier, customer experience programs are not fundamentally altruistic exercises, but a strategic means of improving competitiveness and profitability in the short and long term. Loyalty is essential to deriving long term profits from customers.Some of the earliest loyalty programs date back to the 1930s, when packaged goods companies offered embedded coupons for rewards to buyers, and eventually retail chains began offering reward programs to frequent shoppers. These programs continued for decades but were leapfrogged in the 1980s by more aggressive programs from the airlines.This movement was led by American Airlines, which launched the first full-scale loyalty marketing program of the modern era with the AAdvantage frequent flyer scheme. It was the first to reward frequent fliers with notional air miles that could be accumulated and later redeemed for free travel. Figure 1: Opportunities example of Customer loyalty driven profitOther airlines and travel providers were quick to grasp the incredible value of providing customers with an incentive to use their company exclusively. Within a few years, dozens of travel industry companies launched similar initiatives and now loyalty programs are achieving near-ubiquity in many service industries, especially those in which it is difficult to differentiate offerings by product attributes.The belief is that increased profitability will result from customer retention efforts because:•    The cost of acquisition occurs only at the beginning of a relationship: the longer the relationship, the lower the amortized cost;•    Account maintenance costs decline as a percentage of total costs, or as a percentage of revenue, over the lifetime of the relationship;•    Long term customers tend to be less inclined to switch and less price sensitive which can result in stable unit sales volume and increases in dollar-sales volume;•    Long term customers may initiate word-of-mouth promotions and referrals, which cost the company nothing and arguably are the most effective form of advertising;•    Long-term customers are more likely to buy ancillary products and higher margin supplemental products;•    Long term customers tend to be satisfied with their relationship with the company and are less likely to switch to competitors, making market entry or competitors gaining market share difficult;•    Regular customers tend to be less expensive to service, as they are familiar with the processes involved, require less 'education', and are consistent in their order placement;•    Increased customer retention and loyalty makes the employees' jobs easier and more satisfying. In turn, happy employees feed back into higher customer satisfaction in a virtuous circle. Figure 2: The virtuous circle of customer loyaltyFigure 2 represents a high-level example of a virtuous cycle driven by customer satisfaction and loyalty, depicting how superiority in product and service offerings, as well as strong customer support by competent employees, lead to higher sales and ultimately profitability. As stated above, this is not a new concept, but succeeding with it is difficult. It has eluded many a company driven to achieve profitability goals. Of course, for this circle to be virtuous, the customer relationship(s) must be profitable.Trying to maintain the loyalty of unprofitable customers is not a viable business strategy. It is, therefore, important that marketers can assess the profitability of each customer (or customer segment), and either improve or terminate relationships that are not profitable. This means each customer's 'relationship costs' must be understood and compared to their 'relationship revenue'. Customer lifetime value (CLV) is the most commonly used metric here, as it is generally accepted as a representation of exactly how much each customer is worth in monetary terms, and therefore a determinant of exactly how much a service provider should be willing to spend to acquire or retain that customer.CLV models make several simplifying assumptions and often involve the following inputs:•    Churn rate represents the percentage of customers who end their relationship with a company in a given period;•    Retention rate is calculated by subtracting the churn rate percentage from 100;•    Period/horizon equates to the units of time into which a customer relationship can be divided for analysis. A year is the most commonly used period for this purpose. Customer lifetime value is a multi-period calculation, often projecting three to seven years into the future. In practice, analysis beyond this point is viewed as too speculative to be reliable. The model horizon is the number of periods used in the calculation;•    Periodic revenue is the amount of revenue collected from a customer in a given period (though this is often extended across multiple periods into the future to understand lifetime value), such as usage revenue, revenues anticipated from cross and upselling, and often some weighting for referrals by a loyal customer to others; •    Retention cost describes the amount of money the service provider must spend, in a given period, to retain an existing customer. Again, this is often forecast across multiple periods. Retention costs include customer support, billing, promotional incentives and so on;•    Discount rate means the cost of capital used to discount future revenue from a customer. Discounting is an advanced method used in more sophisticated CLV calculations;•    Profit margin is the projected profit as a percentage of revenue for the period. This may be reflected as a percentage of gross or net profit. Again, this is generally projected across the model horizon to understand lifetime value.A strong focus on managing these inputs can help service providers realize stronger customer relationships and profits, but there are some obstacles to overcome in achieving accurate calculations of CLV, such as the complexity of allocating costs across the customer base. There are many costs that serve all customers which must be properly allocated across the base, and often a simple proportional allocation across the whole base or a segment may not accurately reflect the true cost of serving that customer;  This is made worse by the fragmentation of customer information, which is likely to be across a variety of product or operations groups, and may be difficult to aggregate due to different representations.In addition, there is the complexity of account relationships and structures to take into consideration. Complex account structures may not be understood or properly represented. For example, a profitable customer may have a separate account for a second home or another family member, which may appear to be unprofitable. If the service provider cannot relate the two accounts, CLV is not properly represented and any resultant cancellation of the apparently unprofitable account may result in the customer churning from the profitable one.In summary, if service providers are to realize strong customer relationships and their attendant profits, there must be a very strong focus on data management. This needs to be coupled with analytics that help business managers and those who work in customer-facing functions offer highly personalized solutions to customers, while maintaining profitability for the service provider. It's clear that acquiring new customers is expensive. Advertising costs, campaign management expenses, promotional service pricing and discounting, and equipment subsidies make a serious dent in a new customer's profitability. That is especially true given the rising subsidies for Smartphone users, which service providers hope will result in greater profits from profits from data services profitability in future.  The situation is made worse by falling prices and greater competition in mature markets.Customer acquisition through industry consolidation isn't cheap either. A North American service provider spent about $2,000 per subscriber in its acquisition of a smaller company earlier this year. While this has allowed it to leapfrog to become the largest mobile service provider in the country, it required a total investment of more than $28 billion (including assumption of the acquiree's debt).While many operating cost synergies clearly made this deal more attractive to the acquiring company, this is certainly an expensive way to acquire customers: the cost per subscriber in this case is not out of line with the prices others have paid for acquisitions.While growth by acquisition certainly increases overall revenues, it often creates tremendous challenges for profitability. Organic growth through increased customer loyalty and retention is a more effective driver of profit, as well as a stronger predictor of future profitability. Service providers, especially those in mature markets, are increasingly recognizing this and taking steps toward a creating a more personalized, flexible and satisfying experience for their customers.In summary, the clearest path to profitability for companies in virtually all industries is through customer retention and maximization of lifetime value. Service providers would do well to recognize this and focus attention on profitable customer relationships.

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• Quick Quips on QR Codes

  - by Tim Dexter

  Yes, I'm an alliterating all-star; I missed my calling as a newspaper headline writer. I have recently received questions from several folks on support for QR codes. You know them they are everywhere you look, even here! How does Publisher handle QR codes then? In theory, exactly the same way we handle any other 2D barcode font. We need the font file, a mapping entry and an encoding class. With those three pieces we can embed QR codes into any output. To test the theory, I went off to IDAutomation, I have worked with them and many customers over the years and their fonts and encoders have worked great and have been very reliable. They kindly provide demo fonts which has made my life so much easier to be able to write posts like this. Their QR font and encoder is a little tough to find. I started here and then hit the Demo Now button. On the next page I hit the right hand Demo Now button. In the resulting zip file you'll need two files: AdditionalFonts.zip >> Automation2DFonts >> TrueType >> IDAutomation2D.ttf Java Class Encoder >> IDAutomation_JavaFontEncoder_QRCode.jar - the QRBarcodeExample.java is useful to see how to call the encoder. The font file needs to be installed into the windows/fonts directory, just copy and paste it in using file explorer and windows will install it for you. Remember, we are using the demo font here and you'll see if you get your phones decoder to looks a the font above there is a fixed string 'DEMO' at the beginning. You want that removed? Go buy the font from the IDAutomation folks. The Encoder Next you need to create your encoding wrapper class. Publisher does ship a class but its compiled and I do not recommend trying to modify it, you can just build your own. I have loaded up my class here. You do not need to be a java guru, its pretty straightforward. I'd recommend a java IDE like JDeveloper from a convenience point of view. I have annotated my class and added a main method to it so you can test your encoders from JDeveloper without having to deploy them first. You can load up the project form the zip file straight into JDeveloper.Next, take a look at IDAutomation's example java class and you'll see: QRCodeEncoder qre=new QRCodeEncoder();  String DataToEncode = "IDAutmation Inc.";  boolean ApplyTilde = false;  int EncodingMode = 0;  int Version = 0;  int ErrorCorrectionLevel = 0;  System.out.println( qre.FontEncode(DataToEncode, ApplyTilde, EncodingMode, Version, ErrorCorrectionLevel) ); You'll need to check what settings you need to set for the ApplyTilde, EncodingMode, Version and ErrorCorrectionLevel. They are covered in the user guide from IDAutomation here. If you do not want to hard code the values in the encoder then you can quite easily externalize them and read the values from a text file. I have not covered that scenario here, I'm going with IDAutomation's defaults and my phone app is reading the fonts no problem. Now you know how to call the encoder, you need to incorporate it into your encoder wrapper class. From my sample class:       Class[] clazz = new Class[] { "".getClass() };        ENCODERS.put("code128a",mUtility.getClass().getMethod("code128a", clazz));       ENCODERS.put("code128b",mUtility.getClass().getMethod("code128b", clazz));       ENCODERS.put("code128c",mUtility.getClass().getMethod("code128c", clazz));       ENCODERS.put("qrcode",mUtility.getClass().getMethod("qrcode", clazz)); I just added a new entry to register the encoder method 'qrcode' (in red). Then I created a new method inside the class to call the IDAutomation encoder. /** Call to IDAutomations QR Code encoder. Passing the data to encode      Returning the encoded string to the template for formatting **/ public static final String qrcode (String DataToEncode) {   QRCodeEncoder qre=new QRCodeEncoder();    boolean ApplyTilde = false;    int EncodingMode = 0;    int Version = 0;    int ErrorCorrectionLevel = 0; return qre.FontEncode(DataToEncode, ApplyTilde, EncodingMode, Version, ErrorCorrectionLevel); } Almost the exact same code in their sample class. The DataToEncode string is passed in rather than hardcoded of course. With the class done you can now compile it, but you need to ensure that the IDAutomation_JavaFontEncoder_QRCode.jar is in the classpath. In JDeveloper, open the project properties >> Libraries and Classpaths and then add the jar to the list. You'll need the publisher jars too. You can find those in the jlib directory in your Template Builder for Word directory.Note! In my class, I have used package oracle.psbi.barcode; As my package spec, yours will be different but you need to note it for later. Once you have it compiling without errors you will need to generate a jar file to keep it in. In JDeveloper highlight your project node >> New >> Deployment Profile >> JAR file. Once you have created the descriptor, just take the defaults. It will tell you where the jar is located. Go get it and then its time to copy it and the IDAutomation jar into the Template Builder for Word directory structure. Deploying the jars On your windows machine locate the jlib directory under the Template Builder for Word install directory. On my machine its here, F:\Program Files\Oracle\BI Publisher\BI Publisher Desktop\Template Builder for Word\jlib. Copy both of the jar files into the directory. The next step is to get the jars into the classpath for the Word plugin so that Publisher can find your wrapper class and it can then find the IDAutomation encoder. The most consistent way I have found so far, is to open up the RTF2PDF.jar in the same directory and make some mods. First make a backup of the jar file then open it using winzip or 7zip or similar and get into the META-INF directory. In there is a file, MANIFEST.MF. This contains the classpath for the plugin, open it in an editor and add the jars to the end of the classpath list. In mine I have: Manifest-Version: 1.0 Class-Path: ./activation.jar ./mail.jar ./xdochartstyles.jar ./bicmn.jar ./jewt4.jar ./share.jar ./bipres.jar ./xdoparser.jar ./xdocore.jar ./xmlparserv2.jar ./xmlparserv2-904.jar  ./i18nAPI_v3.jar ./versioninfo.jar ./barcodejar.jar ./IDAutomation_JavaFontEncoder_QRCode.jar Main-Class: RTF2PDF I have put in carriage returns above to make the Class-Path: entry more readable, make sure yours is all on one line. Be sure to use the ./ as a prefix to the jar name. Ensure the file is saved inside the jar file 7zip and winzip both have popups asking if you want to update the file in the jar file.Now you have the jars on the classpath, the Publisher plugin will be able to find our classes at run time. Referencing the Font The next step is to reference the font location so that the rendering engine can find it and embed a subset into the PDF output. Remember the other output formats rely on the font being present on the machine that is opening the document. The PDF is the only truly portable format. Inside the config directory under the Template Builder for Word install directory, mine is here, F:\Program Files\Oracle\BI Publisher\BI Publisher Desktop\Template Builder for Word\config. You'll find the file, 'xdo example.cfg'. Rename it to xdo.cfg and open it in a text editor. In the fonts section, create a new entry:       <font family="IDAutomation2D" style="normal" weight="normal">              <truetype path="C:\windows\fonts\IDAutomation2D.ttf" />       </font> Note, 'IDAutomation2D' (in red) is the same name as you can see when you open MSWord and look for the QRCode font. This must match exactly. When Publisher looks at the fonts in the RTF template at runtime it will see 'IDAutomation2D' it will then look at its font mapping entries to find where that font file resides on the disk. If the names do not match or the font is not present then the font will not get used and it will fall back on Helvetica. Building the Template Now you have the data encoder and the font in place and mapped; you can use it in the template. The two commands you will need to have present are: <?register-barcode-vendor:'ENCODER WRAPPER CLASS'; 'ENCODER NAME'?> for my encoder I have: <?register-barcode-vendor:'oracle.psbi.barcode.BarcodeUtil'; 'MyBarcodeEncoder'?> Notice the two parameters for the command. The first provides the package 'path' and class name (remember I said you need to remember that above.)The second is the name of the encoder, in my case 'MyBarcodeEncoder'. Check my full encoder class in the zip linked below to see where I named it. You can change it to something else, no problem.This command needs to be near the top of the template. The second command is the encoding command: <?format-barcode:DATAT_TO_ENCODE;'ENCODER_METHOD_NAME';'ENCODER_NAME'?> for my command I have <?format-barcode:DATATEXT;'qrcode';'MyBarcodeEncoder'?>DATATEXT is the XML element that contains the text to be encoded. If you want to hard code a piece of text just surround it with single quotes. qrcode is the name of my encoder method that calls the IDAutomation encoder. Remember this.MyBarcodeEncoder is the name of my encoder. Repetition? Yes but its needed again. Both of these commands are put inside their own form fields. Do not apply the QRCode font to the second field just yet. Lets make sure the encoder is working. Run you template with some data and you should get something like this for your encoded data: AHEEEHAPPJOPMOFADIPFJKDCLPAHEEEHA BNFFFNBPJGMDIDJPFOJGIGBLMPBNFFFNB APIBOHFJCFBNKHGGBMPFJFJLJBKGOMNII OANKPJFFLEPLDNPCLMNGNIJIHFDNLJFEH FPLFLHFHFILKFBLOIGMDFCFLGJGOPJJME CPIACDFJPBGDODOJCHALJOBPECKMOEDDF MFFNFNEPKKKCHAIHCHPCFFLDAHFHAGLMK APBBBPAPLDKNKJKKGIPDLKGMGHDDEPHLN HHHHHHHPHPHHPHPPHPPPPHHPHHPHPHPHP Grooovy huh? If you do not get the encoded text then go back and check that your jars are in the right spot and that you have the MANIFEST.MF file updated correctly. Once you do get the encoded text, highlight the field and apply the IDAutomation2D font to it. Then re-run the report and you will hopefully see the QR code in your output. If not, go back and check the xdo.cfg entry and make sure its in the right place and the font location is correct. That's it, you now have QR codes in Publisher outputs. Everything I have written above, has been tested with the 5.6.3, 10.1.3.4.2 codelines. I'll be testing the 11g code in the next day or two and will update you with any changes. One thing I have not covered yet and will do in the next few days is how to deploy all of this to your server. Look out for a follow up post. One note on the apparent white lines in the font (see the image above). Once printed they disappear and even viewing the code on a screen with the white lines, my phone app is still able to read and interpret the contents no problem. I have zipped up my encoder wrapper class as a JDeveloper 11.1.1.6 project here. Just dig into the src directories to find the BarcodeUtil.java file if you just want the code. I have put comments into the file to hopefully help the novice java programmer out. Happy QR'ing!

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• Sell good CVV, Dumps track 1&2, Paypal, WU TRANSFER

  - by Good Dumps CVV for sale

  My products for sale: Sell CVV; Dumps, track1&2; Bank logins; Paypal Accounts;Ebay Accounts Mailpass; SMTP;RDP;VPS;CCN;SSN; Sell Amazon gift card & itunes gift card; Game Cards, ATM Card; MSR, ATM SKIMMERS. Do WU Transfers and Bank Transfers I am here to sell, supply good and quality CVV for shipping;booking airline ticket;shopping online;ordering Laptop,Iphone;... In last 5 years my Job Is This. PRESTIGE is my first motto. Not easy to build the good PRESTIGE. My motto is Always make customers satisfied & happy ! I have unlocked many softwares make good money, example: -Software to make the bug and crack MTCN of the Western Union. Version : 2.0.1.1 ( new update ) -Software to open balance in PayPal and Bank Login -Software hacking credit card, debit card Version 1.0 **I only sell it for my good customers, and my familiarity ***I update more than 200 CC + CVV everyday. 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Include: Italy CVV; Spain CVV; France CVV; Sweden CVV; Denmark CVV; Slovakia CVV; Portugal CVV; Norway CVV; Belgium CVV Greece CVV; Germany CVV; Ireland CVV; Newzealand CVV; Switzerland CVV; Finland CVV; Turkey CVV; Netherland CVV - CA (vis,mas)= $8/CC; CA BIN; CA GOLD; CA Amex; CA Fullz; CA pass VBV - AU (vis,mas)= $10/CC; AU BIN; AU Amex; AU DOB; AU fullz; AU pass VBV - Brazil random = $15/CC; Brazil BIN - Middle East: UAE = $15/CC; Qatar= $10/CC; Saudi Arabia;... - ASIA ( Malay; Indo; Japan;China; Hongkong; Singapore...) = $10/CC - South Africa = $10/CC - And All CC; CC pass VBV; CVV pass VBV; CCN SSN- INTER ( BIN,DOB,SSN,FULLZ) of another Countries. Good CC, CVV for shipping;booking airline ticket;shopping online;ordering Laptop,Iphone;... [Sell CVV; Dumps, track1&2; Bank logins; Paypal Accounts;Ebay Accounts Mailpass; SMTP;RDP;VPS;CCN;SSN; Sell Amazon gift card & itunes gift card; Game Cards, ATM Card; MSR, ATM SKIMMERS. Do WU Transfer and Bank Transfers] [Sell CVV; Dumps, track1&2; Bank logins; Paypal Accounts;Ebay Accounts Mailpass; SMTP;RDP;VPS;CCN;SSN; Sell Amazon gift card & itunes gift card; Game Cards, ATM Card; MSR, ATM SKIMMERS. Do WU Transfers and Bank Transfers] ------------------------------ CONTACT via Y!H: goodcvv_dumps or ICQ: 667686221 or Mail: [email protected] ------------------------------------ * WARNING!!! BEFORE MAKE BUSINESS or add my ID, let read carefull my rule because i really hate Spammers,Rippers and Scammers - Dont trust, dont talk more - Don't Spamm And Don't Scam! I very hate do spam or rip and I don't want who spam me. - All my CVV are tested before sell, that's sure - I accept LR; WU or MoneyGram. - I only work with reliable buyers. Need good & serious buyer to business for a long time - I work with only one slogan: prestige and quality to satisfy my clients !!! - I was so happy to see you actually make more big money from the business with me Once you trust me, work with me. And if not trust,dont contact me, dont waste time! --------------------------THANKS, LOOK FORWARD TO WORKING WITH ALL of YOU !!!---------------------------- * Sell CVV; Dumps, track1&2; Bank logins; Paypal Accounts,Ebay Accounts; Mailpass; SMTP;RDP;VPS;CCN;SSN; Sell Amazon gift card & itunes gift card; Game Cards, ATM Card; MSR, ATM SKIMMERS. Do WU Transfers and Bank Transfers. CVV for shipping;booking airline ticket;shopping online;ordering Laptop,Iphone;... [Sell CVV; Dumps, track1&2; Bank logins; Paypal Accounts,Ebay Accounts; Mailpass; SMTP;RDP;VPS;CCN;SSN; Sell Amazon gift card & itunes gift card; Game Cards, ATM Card; MSR, ATM SKIMMERS. Do WU Transfers and Bank Transfers] * Contact via Y!H: goodcvv_dumps or ICQ: 667686221. 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Update Types of Dumps having now: Mix; Debit Classic; MC Standard;MC World; Gold; Platinum; Business/Corporate; Purchasing/Signature; Infinite - Contact me via Y!H: goodcvv_dumps (ICQ: 667686221) to know more info & price list of dumps, tracks ! ======================== Bank Logins Account (US UK CA AU EU) ======================== Sell Bank acc: Bank BOA, Bank HSBC USA, HSBC UK, Chase,Washovia, Halifax, Barclays, Abbey,... I make sure that my BANK LOGIN are security & easily to use. If u are interested in this, contact me to know more info about balance, price list,...! ================= Top-up Prepaid Cards, Debit Cards ========================= - If you hold any prepaid cards, debit cards, any country or any company. - I can top you funds into your prepaid cards, debit cards or any virtual cards. - top up your debit cards with hacked credit cards - top up your prepaid card with bank account login - top up you card with paypal account or any other - Have all tools to top your cards account - Top up does not take more then 10 minutes - Payoneer Cards top up available at cheap ================= Service: Provide Ebay - Apple - Amazon - Itunes GIFT CARD & Game Card with best price ===================== Contact me to negotiate about the price if buying bulk - PlayStation® Network Card - Xbox LIVE 12 Month Gold Membership = 30$ Xbox LIVE 4000 Microsoft Points = 30$ Zynga $50 Game Card (World Wide) = 30$ Ultimate game card 50$ = 30$ Ultimate game card 20$ = 10$ Key Diablo 3 = 25$ ITUNES GIFT CARD AMAZON GIFT CARD Ebay gift card Visa gift card ---------------- Our products are checked by a partner who works in a bank -------------------- Our products are better than 5-7 days after they are dead. They are raised mainly for money atm. Can be used in most countries. ---------------- Contact Via Y!H: goodcvv_dumps or ICQ: 667686221. Mail: [email protected] ------------------------ Need good & serious buyer to business for a long time [Sell CVV, Dumps,track1&2; Bank logins; Paypal Accounts;Ebay Accounts; Mailpass; SMTP;RDP;VPS;CCN;SSN; Sell Amazon gift card & itunes gift card; Game Card, ATM Card, MSR, ATM SKIMMERS. Do WU Transfer and Bank Transfers....Contact via Y!H: goodcvv_dumps or ICQ: 667686221. Mail: [email protected]] [Sell CVV, Dumps,track1&2; Bank logins; Paypal Accounts;Ebay Accounts; Mailpass; SMTP;RDP;VPS;CCN;SSN; Sell Amazon gift card & itunes gift card; Game Card, ATM Card, MSR, ATM SKIMMERS. Do WU Transfer and Bank Transfers....Contact via Y!H: goodcvv_dumps or ICQ: 667686221. Mail: [email protected]] [Sell CVV, Dumps,track1&2; Bank logins; Paypal Accounts;Ebay Accounts; Mailpass; SMTP;RDP;VPS;CCN;SSN; Sell Amazon gift card & itunes gift card; Game Card, ATM Card, MSR, ATM SKIMMERS. Do WU Transfer and Bank Transfers....Contact via Y!H: goodcvv_dumps or ICQ: 667686221. Mail: [email protected]] [Sell CVV, Dumps,track1&2; Bank logins; Paypal Accounts;Ebay Accounts; Mailpass; SMTP;RDP;VPS;CCN;SSN; Sell Amazon gift card & itunes gift card; Game Card, ATM Card, MSR, ATM SKIMMERS. Do WU Transfer and Bank Transfers....Contact via Y!H: goodcvv_dumps or ICQ: 667686221. Mail: [email protected]] [Sell CVV, Dumps,track1&2; Bank logins; Paypal Accounts;Ebay Accounts; Mailpass; SMTP;RDP;VPS;CCN;SSN; Sell Amazon gift card & itunes gift card; Game Card, ATM Card, MSR, ATM SKIMMERS. Do WU Transfer and Bank Transfers....Contact via Y!H: goodcvv_dumps or ICQ: 667686221. Mail: [email protected]]

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• AIX Checklist for stable obiee deployment

  - by user554629

  Common AIX configuration issues     ( last updated 27 Aug 2012 ) OBIEE is a complicated system with many moving parts and connection points.The purpose of this article is to provide a checklist to discuss OBIEE deployment with your systems administrators. The information in this article is time sensitive, and updated as I discover new  issues or details. What makes OBIEE different? When Tech Support suggests AIX component upgrades to a stable, locked-down production AIX environment, it is common to get "push back".  "Why is this necessary?  We aren't we seeing issues with other software?"It's a fair question that I have often struggled to answer; here are the talking points: OBIEE is memory intensive.  It is the entire purpose of the software to trade memory for repetitive, more expensive database requests across a network. OBIEE is implemented in C++ and is very dependent on the C++ runtime to behave correctly. OBIEE is aggressively thread efficient;  if atomic operations on a particular architecture do not work correctly, the software crashes. OBIEE dynamically loads third-party database client libraries directly into the nqsserver process.  If the library is not thread-safe, or corrupts process memory the OBIEE crash happens in an unrelated part of the code.  These are extremely difficult bugs to find. OBIEE software uses 99% common source across multiple platforms:  Windows, Linux, AIX, Solaris and HPUX.  If a crash happens on only one platform, we begin to suspect other factors.  load intensity, system differences, configuration choices, hardware failures.  It is rare to have a single product require so many diverse technical skills.   My role in support is to understand system configurations, performance issues, and crashes.   An analyst trained in Business Analytics can't be expected to know AIX internals in the depth required to make configuration choices.  Here are some guidelines. AIX C++ Runtime must be at  version 11.1.0.4$ lslpp -L | grep xlC.aixobiee software will crash if xlC.aix.rte is downlevel;  this is not a "try it" suggestion.Nov 2011 11.1.0.4 version  is appropriate for all AIX versions ( 5, 6, 7 )Download from here:https://www-304.ibm.com/support/docview.wss?uid=swg24031426 No reboot is necessary to install, it can even be installed while applications are using the current version.Restart the apps, and they will pick up the latest version. AIX 5.3 Technology Level 12 is required when running on Power5,6,7 processorsAIX 6.1 was introduced with the newer Power chips, and we have seen no issues with 6.1 or 7.1 versions.Customers with an unstable deployment, dozens of unexplained crashes, became stable after the upgrade.If your AIX system is 5.3, the minimum TL level should be at or higher than this:$ oslevel -s  5300-12-03-1107IBM typically supports only the two latest versions of AIX ( 6.1 and 7.1, for example).  AIX 5.3 is still supported and popular running in an LPAR. obiee userid limits$ ulimit -Ha  ( hard limits )$ ulimit -a   ( default limits )core file size (blocks)     unlimiteddata seg size (kbytes)      unlimitedfile size (blocks)          unlimitedmax memory size (kbytes)    unlimitedopen files                  10240 cpu time (seconds)          unlimitedvirtual memory (kbytes)     unlimitedIt is best to establish the values in /etc/security/limitsroot user is needed to observe and modify this file.If you modify a limit, you will need to relog in to change it again.  For example,$ ulimit -c 0$ ulimit -c 2097151cannot modify limit: Operation not permitted$ ulimit -c unlimited$ ulimit -c0There are only two meaningful values for ulimit -c ; zero or unlimited.Anything else is likely to produce a truncated core file that cannot be analyzed. Deploy 32-bit or 64-bit ?Early versions of OBIEE offered 32-bit or 64-bit choice to AIX customers.The 32-bit choice was needed if a database vendor did not supply a 64-bit client library.That's no longer an issue and beginning with OBIEE 11, 32-bit code is no longer shipped.A common error that leads to "out of memory" conditions to to accept the 32-bit memory configuration choices on 64-bit deployments.  The significant configuration choices are: Maximum process data (heap) size is in an AIX environment variableLDR_CNTRL=IGNOREUNLOAD@LOADPUBLIC@PREREAD_SHLIB@MAXDATA=0x... Two thread stack sizes are made in obiee NQSConfig.INI[ SERVER ]SERVER_THREAD_STACK_SIZE = 0;DB_GATEWAY_THREAD_STACK_SIZE = 0; Sort memory in NQSConfig.INI[ GENERAL ]SORT_MEMORY_SIZE = 4 MB ;SORT_BUFFER_INCREMENT_SIZE = 256 KB ; Choosing a value for MAXDATA:0x080000000  2GB Default maximum 32-bit heap size ( 8 with 7 zeros )0x100000000  4GB 64-bit breaking even with 32-bit ( 1 with 8 zeros )0x200000000  8GB 64-bit double 32-bit max0x400000000 16GB 64-bit safetyUsing 2GB heap size for a 64-bit process will almost certainly lead to an out-of-memory situation.Registers are twice as big ... consume twice as much memory in the heap.Upgrading to a 4GB heap for a 64-bit process is just "breaking even" with 32-bit.A 32-bit process is constrained by the 32-bit virtual addressing limits.  Heap memory is used for dynamic requirements of obiee software, thread stacks for each of the configured threads, and sometimes for shared libraries. 64-bit processes are not constrained in this way;  extra heap space can be configured for safety against a query that might create a sudden requirement for excessive storage.  If the storage is not available, this query might crash the whole server and disrupt existing users.There is no performance penalty on AIX for configuring more memory than required;  extra memory can be configured for safety.  If there are no other considerations, start with 8GB.Choosing a value for Thread Stack size:zero is the value documented to select an appropriate default for thread stack size.  My preference is to change this to an absolute value, even if you intend to use the documented default;  it provides better documentation and removes the "surprise" factor.There are two thread types that can be configured. GATEWAY is used by a thread pool to call a database client library to establish a DB connection.The default size is 256KB;  many customers raise this to 512KB ( no performance penalty for over-configuring ). This value must be set to 1 MB if Teradata connections are used. SERVER threads are used to run queries.  OBIEE uses recursive algorithms during the analysis of query structures which can consume significant thread stack storage.  It's difficult to provide guidance on a value that depends on data and complexity.  The general notion is to provide more space than you think you need,  "double down" and increase the value if you run out, otherwise inspect the query to understand why it is too complex for the thread stack.  There are protections built into the software to abort a single user query that is too complex, but the algorithms don't cover all situations.256 KB  The default 32-bit stack size.  Many customers increased this to 512KB on 32-bit.  A 64-bit server is very likely to crash with this value;  the stack contains mostly register values, which are twice as big.512 KB  The documented 64-bit default.  Some early releases of obiee didn't set this correctly, resulting in 256KB stacks.1 MB  The recommended 64-bit setting.  If your system only ever uses 512KB of stack space, there is no performance penalty for using 1MB stack size.2 MB  Many large customers use this value for safety.  No performance penalty.nqscheduler does not use the NQSConfig.INI file to set thread stack size.If this process crashes because the thread stack is too small, use this to set 2MB:export OBI_BACKGROUND_STACK_SIZE=2048 Shared libraries are not (shared) When application libraries are loaded at run-time, AIX makes a decision on whether to load the libraries in a "public" memory segment.  If the filesystem library permissions do not have the "Read-Other" permission bit, AIX loads the library into private process memory with two significant side-effects:* The libraries reduce the heap storage available.      Might be significant in 32-bit processes;  irrelevant in 64-bit processes.* Library code is loaded into multiple real pages for execution;  one copy for each process.Multiple execution images is a significant issue for both 32- and 64-bit processes.The "real memory pages" saved by using public memory segments is a minor concern.  Today's machines typically have plenty of real memory.The real problem with private copies of libraries is that they consume processor cache blocks, which are limited.   The same library instructions executing in different real pages will cause memory delays as the i-cache ( instruction cache 128KB blocks) are refreshed from real memory.   Performance loss because instructions are delayed is something that is difficult to measure without access to low-level cache fault data.   The machine just appears to be running slowly for no observable reason.This is an easy problem to detect, and an easy problem to correct.Detection:  "genld -l" AIX command produces a list of the libraries used by each process and the AIX memory address where they are loaded.32-bit public segment is 13 ( "dxxxxxxx" ).   private segments are 2-a.64-bit public segment is 9 ( "9xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx") ; private segment is 8.genld -l | grep -v ' d| 9' | sort +2provides a list of privately loaded libraries. Repair: chmod o+r <libname>AIX shared libraries will have a suffix of ".so" or ".a".Another technique is to change all libraries in a selected directory to repair those that might not be currently loaded.   The usual directories that need repair are obiee code, httpd code and plugins, database client libraries and java.chmod o+r /shr/dir/*.a /shr/dir/*.so Configure your system for diagnosticsProduction systems shouldn't crash, and yet bad things happen to good software.If obiee software crashes and produces a core, you should configure your system for reliable transfer of the failing conditions to Oracle Tech Support.  Here's what we need to be able to diagnose a core file from your system.* fullcore enabled. chdev -lsys0 -a fullcore=true* core naming enabled. chcore -n on -d* ulimit must not truncate core. see item 3.* pstack.sh is used to capture core documentation.* obidoc is used to capture current AIX configuration.* snapcore  AIX utility captures core and libraries. Use the proper syntax. $ snapcore -r corename executable-fullpath   /tmp/snapcore will contain the .pax.Z output file.  It is compressed.* If cores are directed to a common directory, ensure obiee userid can write to the directory.  ( chcore -p /cores -d ; chmod 777 /cores )The filesystem must have sufficient space to hold a crashing obiee application.Use:  df -k  Check the "Free" column ( not "% Used" )  8388608 is 8GB. Disable Oracle Client Library signal handlingThe Oracle DB Client Library is frequently distributed with the sqlplus development kit.By default, the library enables a signal handler, which will document a call stack if the application crashes.   The signal handler is not needed, and definitely disruptive to obiee diagnostics.   It needs to be disabled.   sqlnet.ora is typically located at:   $ORACLE_HOME/network/admin/sqlnet.oraAdd this line at the top of the file:   DIAG_SIGHANDLER_ENABLED=FALSE Disable async query in the RPD connection pool.This might be an obiee 10.1.3.4 issue only ( still checking  )."async query" must be disabled in the connection pools.It was designed to enable query cancellation to a database, and turned out to have too many edge conditions in normal communication that produced random corruption of data and crashes.  Please ensure it is turned off in the RPD. Check AIX error report (errpt).Errors external to obiee applications can trigger crashes.  $ /bin/errpt -aHardware errors ( firmware, adapters, disks ) should be reported to IBM support.All application core files are recorded by AIX;  the most recent ones are listed first. Reserved for something important to say.

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• How to safely reboot via First Boot script

  - by unixman

  With the cost and performance benefits of the SPARC T4 and SPARC T5 systems undeniably validated, the banking sector is actively moving to Solaris 11.  I was recently asked to help a banking customer of ours look at migrating some of their Solaris 10 logic over to Solaris 11.  While we've introduced a number of holistic improvements in Solaris 11, in terms of how we ease long-term software lifecycle management, it is important to appreciate that customers may not be able to move all of their Solaris 10 scripts and procedures at once; there are years of scripts that reflect fine-tuned requirements of proprietary banking software that gets layered on top of the operating system. One of these requirements is to go through a cycle of reboots, after the system is installed, in order to ensure appropriate software dependencies and various configuration files are in-place. While Solaris 10 introduced a facility that aids here, namely SMF, many of our customers simply haven't yet taken the time to take advantage of this - proceeding with logic that, while functional, without further analysis has an appearance of not being optimal in terms of taking advantage of all the niceties bundled in Solaris 11 at no extra cost. When looking at Solaris 11, we recognize that one of the vehicles that bridges the gap between getting the operating system image payload delivered, and the customized banking software installed, is a notion of a First Boot script.  I had a working example of this at one of the Oracle OpenWorld sessions a few years ago - we've since improved our documentation and have introduced sections where this is described in better detail.   If you're looking at this for the first time and you've not worked with IPS and SMF previously, you might get the sense that the tasks are daunting.   There is a set of technologies involved that are jointly engineered in order to make the process reliable, predictable and extensible. As you go down the path of writing your first boot script, you'll be faced with a need to wrap it into a SMF service and then packaged into a IPS package. The IPS package would then need to be placed onto your IPS repository, in order to subsequently be made available to all of your AI (Automated Install) clients (i.e. the systems that you're installing Solaris and your software onto).     With this blog post, I wanted to create a single place that outlines the entire process (simplistically), and provide a hint of how a good old "at" command may make the requirement of forcing an initial reboot handy. The syntax and references to commands here is based on running this on a version of Solaris 11 that has been updated since its initial release in 2011 (i.e. I am writing this on Solaris 11.1) Assuming you've built an AI server (see this How To article for an example), you might be asking yourself: "Ok, I've got some logic that I need executed AFTER Solaris is deployed and I need my own little script that would make that happen. How do I go about hooking that script into the Solaris 11 AI framework?"  You might start here, in Chapter 13 of the "Installing Oracle Solaris 11.1 Systems" guide, which talks about "Running a Custom Script During First Boot".  And as you do, you'll be confronted with command that might be unfamiliar to you if you're new to Solaris 11, like our dear new friend: svcbundle svcbundle is an aide to creating manifests and profiles.  It is awesome, but don't let its awesomeness overwhelm you. (See this How To article by my colleague Glynn Foster for a nice working example).  In order to get your script's logic integrated into the Solaris 11 deployment process, you need to wrap your (shell) script into 2 manifests -  a SMF service manifest and a IPS package manifest.  ....and if you're new to XML, well then -- buckle up We have some examples of small first boot scripts shown here, as templates to build upon. Necessary structure of the script, particularly in leveraging SMF interfaces, is key. I won't go into that here as that is covered nicely in the doc link above.    Let's say your script ends up looking like this (btw: if things appear to be cut-off in your browser, just select them, copy and paste into your editor and it'll be grabbed - the source gets captured eventhough the browser may not render it "correctly" - ah, computers). #!/bin/sh # Load SMF shell support definitions . /lib/svc/share/smf_include.sh # If nothing to do, exit with temporary disable completed=`svcprop -p config/completed site/first-boot-script-svc:default` [ "${completed}" = "true" ] && \ smf_method_exit $SMF_EXIT_TEMP_DISABLE completed "Configuration completed" # Obtain the active BE name from beadm: The active BE on reboot has an R in # the third column of 'beadm list' output. Its name is in column one. bename=`beadm list -Hd|nawk -F ';' '$3 ~ /R/ {print $1}'` beadm create ${bename}.orig echo "Original boot environment saved as ${bename}.orig" # ---- Place your one-time configuration tasks here ---- # For example, if you have to pull some files from your own pre-existing system: /usr/bin/wget -P /var/tmp/ $PULL_DOWN_ADDITIONAL_SCRIPTS_FROM_A_CORPORATE_SYSTEM /usr/bin/chmod 755 /var/tmp/$SCRIPTS_THAT_GOT_PULLED_DOWN_IN_STEP_ABOVE # Clearly the above 2 lines represent some logic that you'd have to customize to fit your needs. # # Perhaps additional things you may want to do here might be of use, like # (gasp!) configuring ssh server for root login and X11 forwarding (for testing), and the like... # # Oh and by the way, after we're done executing all of our proprietary scripts we need to reboot # the system in accordance with our operational software requirements to ensure all layered bits # get initialized properly and pull-in their own modules and components in the right sequence, # subsequently. # We need to set a "time bomb" reboot, that would take place upon completion of this script. # We already know that *this* script depends on multi-user-server SMF milestone, so it should be # safe for us to schedule a reboot for 5 minutes from now. The "at" job get scheduled in the queue # while our little script continues thru the rest of the logic. /usr/bin/at now + 5 minutes <<REBOOT /usr/bin/sync /usr/sbin/reboot REBOOT # ---- End of your customizations ---- # Record that this script's work is done svccfg -s site/first-boot-script-svc:default setprop config/completed = true svcadm refresh site/first-boot-script-svc:default smf_method_exit $SMF_EXIT_TEMP_DISABLE method_completed "Configuration completed"  ...and you're happy with it and are ready to move on. Where do you go and what do you do? The next step is creating the IPS package for your script. Since running the logic of your script constitutes a service, you need to create a service manifest. This is described here, in the middle of Chapter 13 of "Creating an IPS package for the script and service".  Assuming the name of your shell script is first-boot-script.sh, you could end up doing the following: $ cd some_working_directory_for_this_project$ mkdir -p proto/lib/svc/manifest/site$ mkdir -p proto/opt/site $ cp first-boot-script.sh proto/opt/site  Then you would create the service manifest  file like so: $ svcbundle -s service-name=site/first-boot-script-svc \ -s start-method=/opt/site/first-boot-script.sh \ -s instance-property=config:completed:boolean:false -o \ first-boot-script-svc-manifest.xml   ...as described here, and place it into the directory hierarchy above. But before you place it into the directory, make sure to inspect the manifest and adjust the appropriate service dependencies.  That is to say, you want to properly specify what milestone should be reached before your service runs.  There's a <dependency> section that looks like this, before you modify it: <dependency restart_on="none" type="service" name="multi_user_dependency" grouping="require_all"> <service_fmri value="svc:/milestone/multi-user"/>  </dependency>  So if you'd like to have your service run AFTER the multi-user-server milestone has been reached (i.e. later, as multi-user-server has more dependencies then multi-user and our intent to reboot the system may have significant ramifications if done prematurely), you would modify that section to read:  <dependency restart_on="none" type="service" name="multi_user_server_dependency" grouping="require_all"> <service_fmri value="svc:/milestone/multi-user-server"/>  </dependency> Save the file and validate it: $ svccfg validate first-boot-script-svc-manifest.xml Assuming there are no errors returned, copy the file over into the directory hierarchy: $ cp first-boot-script-svc-manifest.xml proto/lib/svc/manifest/site Now that we've created the service manifest (.xml), create the package manifest (.p5m) file named: first-boot-script.p5m.  Populate it as follows: set name=pkg.fmri value=first-boot-script-AT-1-DOT-0,5.11-0 set name=pkg.summary value="AI first-boot script" set name=pkg.description value="Script that runs at first boot after AI installation" set name=info.classification value=\ "org.opensolaris.category.2008:System/Administration and Configuration" file lib/svc/manifest/site/first-boot-script-svc-manifest.xml \ path=lib/svc/manifest/site/first-boot-script-svc-manifest.xml owner=root \ group=sys mode=0444 dir path=opt/site owner=root group=sys mode=0755 file opt/site/first-boot-script.sh path=opt/site/first-boot-script.sh \ owner=root group=sys mode=0555 Now we are going to publish this package into a IPS repository. If you don't have one yet, don't worry. You have 2 choices: You can either  publish this package into your mirror of the Oracle Solaris IPS repo or create your own customized repo.  The best practice is to create your own customized repo, leaving your mirror of the Oracle Solaris IPS repo untouched.  From this point, you have 2 choices as well - you can either create a repo that will be accessible by your clients via HTTP or via NFS.  Since HTTP is how the default Solaris repo is accessed, we'll go with HTTP for your own IPS repo.   This nice and comprehensive How To by Albert White describes how to create multiple internal IPS repos for Solaris 11. We'll zero in on the basic elements for our needs here: We'll create the IPS repo directory structure hanging off a separate ZFS file system, and we'll tie it into an instance of pkg.depotd. We do this because we want our IPS repo to be accessible to our AI clients through HTTP, and the pkg.depotd SMF service bundled in Solaris 11 can help us do this. We proceed as follows: # zfs create rpool/export/MyIPSrepo # pkgrepo create /export/MyIPSrepo # svccfg -s pkg/server add MyIPSrepo # svccfg -s pkg/server:MyIPSrepo addpg pkg application # svccfg -s pkg/server:MyIPSrepo setprop pkg/port=10081 # svccfg -s pkg/server:MyIPSrepo setprop pkg/inst_root=/export/MyIPSrepo # svccfg -s pkg/server:MyIPSrepo addpg general framework # svccfg -s pkg/server:MyIPSrepo addpropvalue general/complete astring: MyIPSrepo # svccfg -s pkg/server:MyIPSrepo addpropvalue general/enabled boolean: true # svccfg -s pkg/server:MyIPSrepo setprop pkg/readonly=true # svccfg -s pkg/server:MyIPSrepo setprop pkg/proxy_base = astring: http://your_internal_websrvr/MyIPSrepo # svccfg -s pkg/server:MyIPSrepo setprop pkg/threads = 200 # svcadm refresh application/pkg/server:MyIPSrepo # svcadm enable application/pkg/server:MyIPSrepo Now that the IPS repo is created, we need to publish our package into it: # pkgsend publish -d ./proto -s /export/MyIPSrepo first-boot-script.p5m If you find yourself making changes to your script, remember to up-rev the version in the .p5m file (which is your IPS package manifest), and re-publish the IPS package. Next, you need to go to your AI install server (which might be the same machine) and modify the AI manifest to include a reference to your newly created package.  We do that by listing an additional publisher, which would look like this (replacing the IP address and port with your own, from the "svccfg" commands up above): <publisher name="firstboot"> <origin name="http://192.168.1.222:10081"/> </publisher>  Further down, in the  <software_data action="install">  section add: <name>pkg:/first-boot-script</name> Make sure to update your Automated Install service with the new AI manifest via installadm update-manifest command.  Don't forget to boot your client from the network to watch the entire process unfold and your script get tested.  Once the system makes the initial reboot, the first boot script will be executed and whatever logic you've specified in it should be executed, too, followed by a nice reboot. When the system comes up, your service should stay in a disabled state, as specified by the tailing lines of your SMF script - this is normal and should be left as is as it helps provide an auditing trail for you.   Because the reboot is quite a significant action for the system, you may want to add additional logic to the script that actually places and then checks for presence of certain lock files in order to avoid doing a reboot unnecessarily. You may also want to, alternatively, remove the SMF service entirely - if you're unsure of the potential for someone to try and accidentally enable that service -- eventhough its role in life is to only run once upon the system's first boot. That is how I spent a good chunk of my pre-Halloween time this week, hope yours was just as SPARCkly^H^H^H^H fun!    

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• CodePlex Daily Summary for Friday, May 09, 2014

  CodePlex Daily Summary for Friday, May 09, 2014Popular ReleasesQuickMon: Version 3.9: First official release of the PowerShell script Collector. Corrective script can now also be PowerShell scripts! There are a couple of internal bugfixes to the core components as well. e.g. Overriding remote host setting now applies to ALL child collectors Main UI app now indicates (in Window title) if there are changes that needs to be saved. Polling frequency can be adjusted by 'slide bar' Note: If you have issues with the new PowerShell script collector please see my post about issu...51Degrees.mobi - Mobile Device Detection and Redirection: 2.1.21.4: One Click Install from NuGet Changes to Version 2.1.21.4The ReadStrings method of the binary reader will now convert strings straight from ASCII as they’re now being written in the data file as ASCII only. The ReadCollection method of the binary reader will now return arrays of integers rather than generic lists to reduce memory consumption. This change has required some public methods to use IList rather the List types. 3rd party source code that accesses the library via these methods may...Media Companion: Media Companion MC3.597b: Thank you for being patient, againThere are a number of fixes in place with this release. and some new features added. Most are self explanatory, so check out the options in Preferences. Couple of new Features:* Movie - Allow save Title and Sort Title in Title Case format. * Movie - Allow save fanart.jpg if movie in folder. * TV - display episode source. Get episode source from episode filename. Fixed:* Movie - Added Fill Tags from plot keywords to Batch Rescraper. * Movie - Fixed TMDB s...SimCityPak: SimCityPak 0.3.0.0: Contains several bugfixes, newly identified properties and some UI improvements. Main new features UI overhaul for the main index list: Icons for each different index, including icons for different property files Tooltips for all relevant fields Removed clutter Identified hundreds of additional properties (thanks to MaxisGuillaume) - this should make modding gameplay easierSeal Report: Seal Report 1.4: New Features: Report Designer: New option to convert a Report Source into a Repository Source. Report Designer: New contextual helper menus to select, remove, copy, prompt elements in a model. Web Server: New option to expand sub-folders displayed in the tree view. Web Server: Web Folder Description File can be a .cshtml file to display a MVC View. Views: additional CSS parameters for some DIVs. NVD3 Chart: Some default configuration values have been changed. Issues Addressed:16 ...Magick.NET: Magick.NET 6.8.9.002: Magick.NET linked with ImageMagick 6.8.9.0.VidCoder: 1.5.22 Beta: Added ability to burn SRT subtitles. Updated to HandBrake SVN 6169. Added checks to prevent VidCoder from running with a database version newer than it expects. Tooltips in the Advanced Video panel now trigger on the field labels as well as the fields themselves. Fixed updating preset/profile/tune/level settings on changing video encoder. This should resolve some problems with QSV encoding. Fixed tunes and profiles getting set to blank when switching between x264 and x265. Fixed co...NuGet: NuGet 2.8.2: We will be releasing a 2.8.2 version of our own NuGet packages and the NuGet.exe command-line tool. The 2.8.2 release will not include updated VS or WebMatrix extensions. NuGet.Server.Extensions.dll needs to be used alongside NuGet-Signed.exe to provide the NuGet.exe mirror functionality.babelua: 1.5.3: V1.5.3 - 2014.5.6Stability improvement: support relative path when debugging lua files; improve variable view function in debugger; fix a bug that when a file is loaded at runtime , its breakpoints would not take effect; some other bug fix; New feature: improve tool windows color scheme to look better with different vs themes; comment/uncomment code block easily; some other improve;SmartStore.NET - Free ASP.NET MVC Ecommerce Shopping Cart Solution: SmartStore.NET 2.0.2: SmartStore.NET 2.0.2 is primarily a maintenance release for version 2.0.0, which has been released on April 04 2014. It contains several improvements & important fixes. BugfixesIMPORTANT FIX: Memory leak leads to OutOfMemoryException in application after a while Installation fix: some varchar(MAX) columns get created as varchar(4000). Added a migration to fix the column specs. Installation fix: Setup fails with exception Value cannot be null. Parameter name: stream Bugfix for stock iss...Channel9's Absolute Beginner Series: Windows Phone 8.1: Entire source code for Windows Phone 8.1 Absolute Beginner Series.BIDS Helper: BIDS Helper 1.6.6: This BIDS Helper beta release brings support for SQL Server 2014 and SSDTBI for Visual Studio 2013. (Note that SSDTBI for Visual Studio 2013 is currently unavailable to download from Microsoft. We are releasing BIDS Helper support to help those who downloaded it before it became unavailable, and we will recheck BIDS Helper 2014 is compatible after SSDTBI becomes available to download again.) BIDS Helper 2014 Beta Limitations: SQL Server 2014 support for Biml is still in progress, so this bet...Windows Phone IsoStoreSpy (a cool WP8.1 + WP8 Isolated Storage Explorer): IsoStoreSpy WP8.1 3.0.0.0 (Win8 only): 3.0.0.0 + WP8.1 & WP8 device allowed + Local, Roaming or Temp directory Selector for WindowsRuntime apps + Version number in the title :)CS-Script for Notepad++ (C# intellisense and code execution): Release v1.0.24.0: ShortcutMapping panel now allows direct modification of the shortcuts. Custom updater dropped support for MSI installation but it still allows downloading of MSI http://www.csscript.net/npp/codeplex/non_msi_update.pngProDinner - ASP.NET MVC Sample (EF5, N-Tier, jQuery): 8.2: upgrade to mvc 5 upgrade to ASP.net MVC Awesome 4.0, EF 6.1, latest jcrop, Windsor Castle etc. ability to show/hide the dog using tinymce for the feedback page mobile friendly uiASP.net MVC Awesome - jQuery Ajax Helpers: 4.0: version 4.0 ========================== - added InitPopup, InitPopupForm helpers, open initialized popups using awe.open(name, params) - added Tag or Tags for all helpers, usable in mod code - added popup aweclose, aweresize events - popups have api accessible via .data('api'), with methods open, close and destroy - all popups have .awe-popup class - popups can be grouped using .Group(string), only 1 popup in the same group can exist at the same time - added awebeginload event for...SEToolbox: SEToolbox 01.028.008 Release 2: Fixes for drag-drop copying. Added ship joiner, to rejoin a broken ship! Installation of this version will replace older version.ScreenToGif: Release 1.0: What's new: • Small UI tweaks everywhere. • You can add Text, Subtitles and Title Frames. • Processing the gif now takes less time. • Languages: Spanish, Italian and Tamil added. • Single .exe multi language. • Takes less time to apply blur and pixelated efect. • Restart button. • Language picker. (If the user wants to select a diferent language than the system's) • "Encoding Finished" page with a link to open the file. • GreenScreen unchanged pixels to save kilobytes. • "Check for Updates" t...Touchmote: Touchmote 1.0 beta 11: Changes Support for multiple monitor setup Additional settings for analog sticks More reliable pairing Bug fixes and improvementsPowerShell App Deployment Toolkit: PowerShell App Deployment Toolkit v3.1.2: Added Get-IniValue / Set-IniValue functions. Replaces Get-IniContent / Set-IniContent which were a bit unwieldy. The new functions are much easier to use. Added -Value parameter to Get-RegistryKey so that a specific registry value can be retrieved instead of the entire Key as an object Fixed Test-Battery to work with machines that can have multiple batteries Fixed issue where BlockExecution would fail if a Custom Temp Path was specified in the config file Updated examples with latest ...New ProjectsAgriComer: Este proyecto es creado con el objetivo inicial de ofrecer una herramienta integral para el comercio agrícola.AST - a tool for exploring windows kernel: A project for exploring windows kernel. It is consist of a Winform for presentation(by C#), and a windows driver(by C). VS2013 + WDK8.1 are required.CondimarSW: Sistema de ventasDeco Pattern: This project shows how the deco design pattern works.Geïntegreerd Project GH5: Geïntegreerd project .NET voor groep GH5Groep_EF4: PXL Groep EF4HttpRequestor: HttpRequestor is a nifty little tool for web developers, developed using Windows Forms, to make different types of HTTP requests to a web endpoint. IBehaviorPortable: This project has a single goal: to make it possible to write behaviors in a PCLKalkulator: Unit Test dan Coded UI TestLorenOS: LorenOS, an operating system based on MikeOSModernUI Extend: ModernUI ExtendPetite Scheme auto-execute pipeline: This program was originally created to avoid the steep learning curve of Emacs, and allow any editor to be used with ease for Chez Petite Scheme.projectgroep3.net: .net project for schoolReadable Athens (Hold-Cold Interactive Map): Demo application for Readable Athens art project Pins JPGs on map (using GPS EXIF info), shows at pin hover, louder noise closer to more text (*.jpg.txt OCRed)Training_Network_Messenger: Training network messengerTsLinq: This is a linq like implementation for typescript. Because typescript gets compiled into javascript, you can use this library for common javascript too.TSQL Smells SSDT: TSQL 'smells' finders TSQL Code can smell, it may work just fine but there can be hidden dangers held within. ??????-??????【??】????????: ?????????????????????????????,??????????,????,????,?????????、??????,??????。??????-??????【??】????????: ????????????????,?????????????? ??。????????、????、????、?????????? ???????。????-????【??】??????: ??????,??????:?????,?????,??????,??????????,????????。????????!?????-?????【??】???????: ?????????????????????????,????,????,??????????。???????????????,??,??,??????????,??????...?????-?????【??】?????????: ??????????????????????:????、????、??????????????,????????。????????!???????-???????【??】?????????: ???????????????????,???????????,??????????????,??????????，??????????????！???????-???????????: ????????????????,???????????????。???????????,??????:????、????、???????！?????-?????【??】???????: ??????????????????,?????????????,????,??????????,?????????????,?????,?????!??????-??????【??】??????????: ??????????????、????、????、??????、????、????????,????????、?????????,?????。??????-??????【??】??????????: ?????????????????,??????????????、???????、???????、???????、?????！??????-??????【??】??????????: ?????????????????,?????????????。?????????????????,???????,???????,?????,?????。????-????【??】??????: ???? ???? ???? ???? ???? ???? ???? ??????? ?????，????????????????.????-????【??】????????: ????????????????????????,???????????,????????,?????????????????????。??????-??????【??】????????: ????????????????,????,????,??????,????“????、????、????、????”????????,??????.??????-??????【??】??????????: ??????????????????????,????“???????,???????”?????,????????????！?????-?????【??】???????: ????????????,?????,???????????,???????,????,????,????,?????。?????-?????【??】?????????: ???????????????????,????????:??、??、???,?????????????????????!?????-?????【??】???????: ???????????????????,????????????????,????????????????,??????！??????-??????【??】????????: ????????????????????,??????????,????????、????,??????????,??????????。??????-??????【??】??????????: ????????????????、????,??100%????,??????,????????????,???????????!??????-??????【??】??????????: ????????????????6?,???????????????????????????,??????????????,?????????！????-????【??】????????: ??????????、???、??、??????????????????????????????,????????????????! ????-????【??】????????: ???????????????????????????、????、????、???????????,????,????!?????-?????【??】???????: ???????????,????,??????????? ???? ???? ?????????,???,??,?????!

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• CodePlex Daily Summary for Sunday, June 05, 2011

  CodePlex Daily Summary for Sunday, June 05, 2011Popular ReleasesSizeOnDisk: 1.0.8.1: Toolbar: Show total of selected folder and hard drive usage of the entire disk Fix: Command binding do not work Execution State Toolbar state by selection Progress task barEnhSim: EnhSim 2.4.6 BETA: 2.4.6 BETAThis release supports WoW patch 4.1 at level 85 To use this release, you must have the Microsoft Visual C++ 2010 Redistributable Package installed. This can be downloaded from http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/en/details.aspx?FamilyID=A7B7A05E-6DE6-4D3A-A423-37BF0912DB84 To use the GUI you must have the .NET 4.0 Framework installed. This can be downloaded from http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/en/details.aspx?FamilyID=9cfb2d51-5ff4-4491-b0e5-b386f32c0992 - Added in the proper...patterns & practices: Project Silk: Project Silk Community Drop 10 - June 3, 2011: Changes from previous drop: Many code changes: please see the readme.mht for details. New "Application Notifications" chapter. Updated "Server-Side Implementation" chapter. Guidance Chapters Ready for Review The Word documents for the chapters are included with the source code in addition to the CHM to help you provide feedback. The PDF is provided as a separate download for your convenience. Installation Overview To install and run the reference implementation, you must perform the fol...Claims Based Identity & Access Control Guide: Release Candidate: Highlights of this release This is the release candidate drop of the new "Claims Identity Guide" edition. In this release you will find: All code samples, including all ACS v2: ACS as a Federation Provider - Showing authentication with LiveID, Google, etc. ACS as a FP with Multiple Business Partners. ACS and REST endpoints. Using a WP7 client with REST endpoints. All ACS specific chapters. Two new chapters on SharePoint (SSO and Federation) All revised v1 chapters We are now ...Media Companion: MC 3.404b Weekly: Extract the entire archive to a folder which has user access rights, eg desktop, documents etc. Refer to the documentation on this site for the Installation & Setup Guide Important! *** Due to an issue where the date added & the full genre information was not being read into the Movie cache, it is highly recommended that you perform a Rebuild Movies when first running this latest version. This will read in the information from the nfo's & repopulate the cache used by MC during operation. Fi...Terraria Map Generator: TerrariaMapTool 1.0.0.4 Beta: 1) Fixed the generated map.html file so that the file:/// is included in the base path. 2) Added the ability to use parallelization during generation. This will cause the program to use as many threads as there are physical cores. 3) Fixed some background overdraw.DotRas: DotRas v1.2 (Version 1.2.4168): This release includes compiled (and signed) versions of the binaries, PDBs, CHM help documentation, along with both C# and VB.NET examples. Please don't forget to rate the release! If you find a bug, please open a work item and give as much description as possible. Stack traces, which operating system(s) you're targeting, and build type is also very helpful for bug hunting. If you find something you believe to be a bug but are not sure, create a new discussion on the discussions board. Thank...Caliburn Micro: WPF, Silverlight and WP7 made easy.: Caliburn.Micro v1.1 RTW: Download ContentsDebug and Release Assemblies Samples Changes.txt License.txt Release Highlights For WP7A new Tombstoning API based on ideas from Fluent NHibernate A new Launcher/Chooser API Strongly typed Navigation SimpleContainer included The full phone lifecycle is made easy to work with ie. we figure out whether your app is actually Resurrecting or just Continuing for you For WPFSupport for the Client Profile Better support for WinForms integration All PlatformsA power...VidCoder: 0.9.1: Added color coding to the Log window. Errors are highlighted in red, HandBrake logs are in black and VidCoder logs are in dark blue. Moved enqueue button to the right with the other control buttons. Added logic to report failures when errors are logged during the encode or when the encode finishes prematurely. Added Copy button to Log window. Adjusted audio track selection box to always show the full track name. Changed encode job progress bar to also be colored yellow when the enco...AutoLoL: AutoLoL v2.0.1: - Fixed a small bug in Auto Login - Fixed the updaterEPPlus-Create advanced Excel 2007 spreadsheets on the server: EPPlus 2.9.0.1: EPPlus-Create advanced Excel 2007 spreadsheets on the server This version has been updated to .Net Framework 3.5 New Features Data Validation. PivotTables (Basic functionalliy...) Support for worksheet data sources. Column, Row, Page and Data fields. Date and Numeric grouping Build in styles. ...and more And some minor new features... Ranges Text-Property|Get the formated value AutofitColumns-method to set the column width from the content of the range LoadFromCollection-metho...jQuery ASP.Net MVC Controls: Version 1.4.0.0: Version 1.4.0.0 contains the following additions: Upgraded to MVC 3.0 Upgraded to jQuery 1.6.1 (Though the project supports all jQuery version from 1.4.x onwards) Upgraded to jqGrid 3.8 Better Razor View-Engine support Better Pager support, includes support for custom pagers Added jqGrid toolbar buttons support Search module refactored, with full suport for multiple filters and ordering And Code cleanup, bug-fixes and better controller configuration support.Nearforums - ASP.NET MVC forum engine: Nearforums v6.0: Version 6.0 of Nearforums, the ASP.NET MVC Forum Engine, containing new features: Authentication using Membership Provider for SQL Server and MySql Spam prevention: Flood Control Moderation: Flag messages Content management: Pages: Create pages (about us/contact/texts) through web administration Allow nearforums to run as an IIS subapp Migrated Facebook Connect to OAuth 2.0 Visit the project Roadmap for more details.NetOffice - The easiest way to use Office in .NET: NetOffice Release 0.8b: Changes: - fix critical issue 15922(AccessViolationException) once and for all ...update is strongly recommended Known Issues: - some addin ribbon examples has a COM Register function with missing codebase entry(win32 registry) ...the problem is only affected to c# examples. fixed in latest source code. NetOffice\ReleaseTags\NetOffice Release 0.8.rar Includes: - Runtime Binaries and Source Code for .NET Framework:......v2.0, v3.0, v3.5, v4.0 - Tutorials in C# and VB.Net:...................Serviio for Windows Home Server: Beta Release 0.5.2.0: Ready for widespread beta. Synchronized build number to Serviio version to avoid confusion.AcDown????? - Anime&Comic Downloader: AcDown????? v3.0 Beta4: ??AcDown?????????????，??????????????，????、????。?????Acfun????? ????32??64? Windows XP/Vista/7 ????????????? ??：????????Windows XP???,?????????.NET Framework 2.0???(x86)?.NET Framework 2.0???(x64)，?????"?????????"??? ??v3.0 Beta4 2011-5-31?? ???Bilibili.us????? ???? ?? ???"????" ???Bilibili.us??? ??????? ?? ??????? ?? ???????? ?? ?? ???Bilibili.us?????(??????????????????) ??????(6.cn)?????(????) ?? ?????Acfun?????????? ?????????????? ???QQ???????? ????????????Discussion...CodeCopy Auto Code Converter: Code Copy v0.1: Full add-in, setup project source code and setup fileWordpress Theme 'Windows Metro': v1.00.0017: v1.00.0017 Dies ist eine Vorab-Version aus der Entwickler-Phase. This is a preview version from the development phase.TerrariViewer: TerrariViewer v2.4.1: Added Piggy Bank editor and fixed some minor bugs.Kooboo CMS: Kooboo CMS 3.02: Updated the Kooboo_CMS.zip at 2011-06-02 11:44 GMT 1.Fixed: Adding data rule issue on page. 2.Fixed: Caching issue for higher performance. Updated the Kooboo_CMS.zip at 2011-06-01 10:00 GMT 1. Fixed the published package throwed a compile error under WebSite mode. 2. Fixed the ContentHelper.NewMediaFolderObject return TextFolder issue. 3. Shorten the name of ContentHelper API. NewMediaFolderObject=>MediaFolder, NewTextFolderObject=> TextFolder, NewSchemaObject=>Schema. Also update the C...New ProjectsbuddyAgent: buddyAgent is a Classified PortalDataReaderMapping: use linq expression make mapping sqldatareader to DTO model easyForeign eXchange Center: Foreign eXchange CenterGoogleAuthCLONE: Use this like the Google Authenticator you may have on your Android device to interact with Google's Two Factor Authentication scheme. This allows you to log into Google without having to whip out your phone. Stores account information securely!Grammar and Spell Checking Plugin for Windows Live Writer: This project is a spelling and grammar checker plugin for Windows Live Writer. It uses the "After the Deadline" web service to provide advanced grammar checking abilities.GUNDEMAS: Gundemas.comInstantMods: LolLig4 => Análise e Desenvolvimento de Sistemas: Beta teste App_SERVERLight Time Sheet: Silverlight Time SheetMort8088s XmlHelper: XmlHelper makes it easier for developers to create and read data in XML documents by condensing common tasks into a simple static helper class. XmlHelper's developed in c#. Feel free to suggest new methods or better ways to achieve the existing methods.NeuroForecast: This project is designed to study neural network technologies on the example of predicting currency quotes.Orchard Forums: a forums moduleRules Engine: Rules Engine is a C# project that makes it easier for developers to define business rules on domain objects without coupling the domain object to the business rule. The rules engine supports cross-field validation and conditional validation. Rules are interface-based and are easily extensible. Rules can be added using a fluent interface.Super Byte: Super Byte makes it easier for everyone to use your computer .You'll no longer have to strugle. We are always looking for new devlopers. It's developed in C#. Need a fast and reliable "Operating System"? Well SuperByte can give that to you. We have spent many hours of work to bring this project to you. Enjoy! Taygeta - The video shadering library: This library allows rendering YUV and RGB pixel formats using Direct3D 9 runtime. You can also apply shaders and add text, bitmap and line overlays.Test Driver Program: Testing driver programTowerDefense: ????，??ogre??YAPE: Yet Another Pacman Emulator.

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• CodePlex Daily Summary for Saturday, May 10, 2014

  CodePlex Daily Summary for Saturday, May 10, 2014Popular ReleasesTerraMap (Terraria World Map Viewer): TerraMap 1.0.3.14652: Added support for the new Terraria v1.2.4 update. New items, walls, and tiles The setup file will make sure .NET 4 is installed, install TerraMap, create desktop and start menu shortcuts, add a .wld file association, and launch TerraMap. If you prefer the zip file, make sure you have .NET Framework v4.5 installed, then just download and extract the ZIP file, and run TerraMap.exe.R.NET: R.NET 1.5.12: R.NET 1.5.12 is a beta release towards R.NET 1.6. You are encouraged to use 1.5.12 now and give feedback. See the documentation for setup and usage instructions. Main changes for R.NET 1.5.12: The C stack limit was not disabled on Windows. For reasons possibly peculiar to R, this means that non-concurrent access to R from multiple threads was not stable. This is now fixed, with the fix validated with a unit test. Thanks to Odugen, skyguy94, and previously others (evolvedmicrobe, tomasp) fo...CTI Text Encryption: CTI Text Encryption 5.2: Change log: 5.2 - Remove Cut button. - Fixed Reset All button does not reset encrypted text column. - Switch button location between Copy and Paste. - Enable users to use local fonts to display characters of their language correctly. (A font settings file will be saved at the same folder of this program.) 5.1 - Improve encryption process. - Minor UI update. - Version 5.1 is not compatible with older version. 5.0 - Improve encryption algorithm. - Simply inner non-encryption related mec...SEToolbox: SEToolbox 01.029.006 Release 1: Fix to allow keyboard search on load dialog. (type the first few letters of your save) Fixed check for new release. Changed the way ship details are loaded to alleviate load time for worlds with very large ships (100,000+ blocks). Fixed Image importer, was incorrectly listing 'Asteroid' as import option. Minor changes to menus (text and appearance) for clarity and OS consistency. Added in reading of world palette for color dialog editor. WIP on subsystem editor. Can now multiselec...Media Companion: Media Companion MC3.597b: Thank you for being patient, againThere are a number of fixes in place with this release. and some new features added. Most are self explanatory, so check out the options in Preferences. Couple of new Features:* Movie - Allow save Title and Sort Title in Title Case format. * Movie - Allow save fanart.jpg if movie in folder. * TV - display episode source. Get episode source from episode filename. Fixed:* Movie - Added Fill Tags from plot keywords to Batch Rescraper. * Movie - Fixed TMDB s...SimCityPak: SimCityPak 0.3.0.0: Contains several bugfixes, newly identified properties and some UI improvements. Main new features UI overhaul for the main index list: Icons for each different index, including icons for different property files Tooltips for all relevant fields Removed clutter Identified hundreds of additional properties (thanks to MaxisGuillaume) - this should make modding gameplay easierSeal Report: Seal Report 1.4: New Features: Report Designer: New option to convert a Report Source into a Repository Source. Report Designer: New contextual helper menus to select, remove, copy, prompt elements in a model. Web Server: New option to expand sub-folders displayed in the tree view. Web Server: Web Folder Description File can be a .cshtml file to display a MVC View. Views: additional CSS parameters for some DIVs. NVD3 Chart: Some default configuration values have been changed. Issues Addressed:16 ...Magick.NET: Magick.NET 6.8.9.002: Magick.NET linked with ImageMagick 6.8.9.0.VidCoder: 1.5.22 Beta: Added ability to burn SRT subtitles. Updated to HandBrake SVN 6169. Added checks to prevent VidCoder from running with a database version newer than it expects. Tooltips in the Advanced Video panel now trigger on the field labels as well as the fields themselves. Fixed updating preset/profile/tune/level settings on changing video encoder. This should resolve some problems with QSV encoding. Fixed tunes and profiles getting set to blank when switching between x264 and x265. Fixed co...NuGet: NuGet 2.8.2: We will be releasing a 2.8.2 version of our own NuGet packages and the NuGet.exe command-line tool. The 2.8.2 release will not include updated VS or WebMatrix extensions. NuGet.Server.Extensions.dll needs to be used alongside NuGet-Signed.exe to provide the NuGet.exe mirror functionality.DNN CMS Platform: 07.03.00 BETA (Not For Production Use): DNN 7.3 release is focused on performance and we have made a variety of changes to improve the run-time characteristics of the platform. End users will notice faster page response time and administrators will appreciate a more responsive user experience, especially on larger scale web sites. This is a BETA release and is NOT recommended for production use. There is no upgrade path offered from this release to the final DNN 7.3 release. Known Issues - The Telerik RAD Controls for ASP.NET AJA...SmartStore.NET - Free ASP.NET MVC Ecommerce Shopping Cart Solution: SmartStore.NET 2.0.2: SmartStore.NET 2.0.2 is primarily a maintenance release for version 2.0.0, which has been released on April 04 2014. It contains several improvements & important fixes. BugfixesIMPORTANT FIX: Memory leak leads to OutOfMemoryException in application after a while Installation fix: some varchar(MAX) columns get created as varchar(4000). Added a migration to fix the column specs. Installation fix: Setup fails with exception Value cannot be null. Parameter name: stream Bugfix for stock iss...Channel9's Absolute Beginner Series: Windows Phone 8.1: Entire source code for Windows Phone 8.1 Absolute Beginner Series.BIDS Helper: BIDS Helper 1.6.6: This BIDS Helper beta release brings support for SQL Server 2014 and SSDTBI for Visual Studio 2013. (Note that SSDTBI for Visual Studio 2013 is currently unavailable to download from Microsoft. We are releasing BIDS Helper support to help those who downloaded it before it became unavailable, and we will recheck BIDS Helper 2014 is compatible after SSDTBI becomes available to download again.) BIDS Helper 2014 Beta Limitations: SQL Server 2014 support for Biml is still in progress, so this bet...Windows Phone IsoStoreSpy (a cool WP8.1 + WP8 Isolated Storage Explorer): IsoStoreSpy WP8.1 3.0.0.0 (Win8 only): 3.0.0.0 + WP8.1 & WP8 device allowed + Local, Roaming or Temp directory Selector for WindowsRuntime apps + Version number in the title :)CS-Script for Notepad++ (C# intellisense and code execution): Release v1.0.24.0: ShortcutMapping panel now allows direct modification of the shortcuts. Custom updater dropped support for MSI installation but it still allows downloading of MSI http://www.csscript.net/npp/codeplex/non_msi_update.pngProDinner - ASP.NET MVC Sample (EF5, N-Tier, jQuery): 8.2: upgrade to mvc 5 upgrade to ASP.net MVC Awesome 4.0, EF 6.1, latest jcrop, Windsor Castle etc. ability to show/hide the dog using tinymce for the feedback page mobile friendly uiASP.net MVC Awesome - jQuery Ajax Helpers: 4.0: version 4.0 ========================== - added InitPopup, InitPopupForm helpers, open initialized popups using awe.open(name, params) - added Tag or Tags for all helpers, usable in mod code - added popup aweclose, aweresize events - popups have api accessible via .data('api'), with methods open, close and destroy - all popups have .awe-popup class - popups can be grouped using .Group(string), only 1 popup in the same group can exist at the same time - added awebeginload event for...ScreenToGif: Release 1.0: What's new: • Small UI tweaks everywhere. • You can add Text, Subtitles and Title Frames. • Processing the gif now takes less time. • Languages: Spanish, Italian and Tamil added. • Single .exe multi language. • Takes less time to apply blur and pixelated efect. • Restart button. • Language picker. (If the user wants to select a diferent language than the system's) • "Encoding Finished" page with a link to open the file. • GreenScreen unchanged pixels to save kilobytes. • "Check for Updates" t...Touchmote: Touchmote 1.0 beta 11: Changes Support for multiple monitor setup Additional settings for analog sticks More reliable pairing Bug fixes and improvementsNew ProjectsADO: copy rightAntilop: Antilop is a professionnal C# business and data access framework.Bit Consulting Business Information Technology Blog: Espacio creado para todos los interesados en intercambiar información, opinar, preguntar todo lo relacionado con los productos ofrecidos por BIT CONSULTING.Black Desert C# emulator(Necroz Project): Development Black Desert emulatorDSLK: bai tap ctdl&gtFreelancerWebSecurity: FreelancerWebSecurityGlobal Machine Access: The project provides an intuitive interface computer control via the command line window. Features: - Login, logout, change password. - Execute commands inHeadTS: An alternative to the HeadJS script loader that provides a more focused, robust, promise-based script management system.How to develop an autodialer / predictive dialer in C#: This project demonstrates how to build a VoIP autodialer in C# in order to be able to make a huge amount of simultaneous calls automatically.html5demo: demo web app.NetPipe: A new piece of software in python that will allow programs to be executed on other computers / servers over a network.Observer Pattern: This project shows how the observer design pattern works.Our wedding: Ruben y Sarahi wedding 19-09-2014SpreadsheetComputations: Good stuffSpurnUI: jQuery based professional ASP.NET Controls for moblieStrategy Pattern: This project shows how the strategy design pattern works.TagIt-MP3: TagIt-MP3 is a free audio file data tagging ID3 format editor, support ID3 tag version, this audio tool can read and write metadata tags for MP3 audio files.TeamProjectDaNang: Ðà N?ng nhóm l?p trình :DThaumcraft4 Research: A small application to help players of Minecraft / Thaumcraft 4 complete their research projects.Visualize and Analyze Demand for Coding Skills, Using WPF: Use data visualization app to figure-out which job skills are most in demand. WPlayer: This project using ffmpeg library, based on Media Foundation. Yammer API SDK: A C# Yammer API SDK?????-?????【??】???????: ????????????????、?????????,??????、??????????????????,???????.??????????,????????。 ??????-??????【??】??????????: ??????????????????,???????、????、????、??????、???????,??????,???????????。?????-?????【??】???????: ??????????1992?,????????????????。??????????????????????。????????????,????，????????！ ?????-?????【??】?????????: ???????????????,???????、???????????,????????,????,?????????,??????,??????! ?????-?????【??】?????????: ???????,??????,?????????????????????,???????????????????????。?????-?????【??】???????: ???????????:?????,??????!???????????????,???????、?????、??????“??”????,????,????!?????-?????【??】???????: ???????????????????,???,??????????、???????????????????。??????,????、????，??????！ ?????-?????【??】???????: ???????????????,????,?????、???、?????,???????,?????,???????????100%。??????！ ?????-?????【??】????? ??: ?????????????????????????,???????????,??????,??????????????...????????。??????！??????-??????【??】??????????: ??????????????????,??:??????,????,????,????,?????,??????????????.??????-??????【??】??????????: ????????????????????,?????????????,???????????.????????????,????????????! ?????-?????【??】???????: ?????????????????????????,???????????,??????,??????????????...????????。??????！????-????【??】????????: ????????????????、?????、?????、????、?????,??????????。????????????????!?????-?????【??】?????????: ??????,??,????????。 ... ??????????????????、??????????????????...?????-?????【??】?????????: ?????????????:????,????,????,???????,????????,??????:????????,?????!??????-??????【??】????????: ?????????????????????、????、????、??????、???????,??????、??????。??????-??????【??】??????????: ????????,??????,?????????????????????,???????????????????????。 ?????-?????【??】???????: ??????????????????????????,??????,???????????,????????????????,????????.??????. ????-????【??】????????: ??????????????,???????、???????????,????????,????,?????????,??????,??????!?????-?????【??】?????: ?????????????????,???????、????、????、??????、???????,??????,???????????。?????-?????【??】???????: ????????????、????、????、??????、????、???????,?????,?????????!?????-?????【??】?????????: ???????????????????????、??????,????、?????、????， ?????????，?????????????！ ??????-??????【??】??????????: ?????????????????????、????、????、??????、???????,??????、??????。?????-??????【??】???????: ?????????,???????????,??????????,????:??,????,???????? ??????????,????????。??????！?????-?????【??】?????????: ???????????????????????、??????,????、?????、????， ?????????，?????????????！?????-?????【??】?????????: ??????????????、????、????、??????、????、???????,?????,?????????!??????-??????【??】??????????: ?????????????????"????,????"???,????????????????????????,??????????????。 ?????-?????【??】???????: ????????????????、?????????,??????、??????????????????,???????.??????????,????????。 ????-????【??】????????: ????????????????????????,???????????????,????????????????！ ?????-?????【??】?????????: ?????,?????????,?????????????。?????????????,?????????,???????。??????-??????【??】??????????: ????????????????,????:????,????,????,??????,?????,???????????????!?????-?????【??】???????: ???????????:?????,??????!???????????????,???????、?????、??????“??”????,????,????! ?????-?????【??】?????????: ?????????????????????????、??????????????,??????????????。?????-?????【??】?????????: ???????????????,????????????,?????????????????,??????,????????!?????-?????【??】?????????: ??????????????????????,????????????,?????、??、????,?????,??????！ ?????-?????【??】???????: ????????????????????????,????,????“???、???、???”?????,?????,?????????????????。??????！ ??????-??????【??】????????: ??????????????????????????、??????????????,??????????????。??????-??????【??】??????????: ?????????????????"????,????"???,????????????????????????,??????????????。????-????【??】????????: ????,?????????,?????????????。?????????????,?????????,???????。 ?????-?????【??】???????: ?????????????????、????、??????、????????,????????????,???????????！?????-?????【??】???????: ???????????????,????????????,?????????????????,??????,????????!?????-?????【??】?????????: ???????????????,????:????,????,????,??????,?????,???????????????! ??????-??????【??】????: ???????????????:?????? ???? ??????,???????,??????,???????。??????-??????【??】????????: ??????????????????、????、??????、????????,????????????,???????????！?????-?????【??】???????: ???????????????????,????????????,????????,???,???????????,????,????。?????,??????.????-????【??】??????: ?????????????????????????,???????????????????????,???????。?????-?????【??】???????: ???????????,????,??????????? ???? ???? ?????????,???,??,?????!

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• Error 0x800f0922 installing .NET 3.5 on Windows 8

  - by Benjamin Nolan

  I'm trying to install .NET 3.5 on my Windows 8 box and it keeps throwing Error 0x800f0922 at me. From what I've read on answers.microsoft.com and StackOverflow I gather the easiest way to fix this is to perform a system refresh, however this will remove all software I've installed from discs. I've just moved house, so I'd rather not do that as I don't know where all the installation media actually are for a lot of my software, so if possible I'd prefer to track down where the problem is actually occurring. (Also, I have a LOT of software installed. It'd take me a long time to reinstall it all, and I unfortunately haven't got that time.) The on-demand error screen sends me to KB2734782 (can't link it as I'm <10 rep), which doesn't help much. When I run this DISM line from the StackOverflow post: Dism.exe /online /enable-feature /featurename:NetFX3 /All /Source:C:\Windows\WinSxS /LimitAccess I get the following output on the terminal: Microsoft Windows [Version 6.2.9200] (c) 2012 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved. C:\Windows\system32>Dism.exe /online /enable-feature /featurename:NetFX3 /All /Source:C:\Windows\WinSxS /LimitAccess Deployment Image Servicing and Management tool Version: 6.2.9200.16384 Image Version: 6.2.9200.16384 Enabling feature(s) [==========================100.0%==========================] Error: 0x800f0922 DISM failed. No operation was performed. For more information, review the log file. The DISM log file can be found at C:\Windows\Logs\DISM\dism.log C:\Windows\system32> Incidentally, it jumps straight from 0 to 100% and then sits on that line for about 5 minutes before the error line occurs. dism.log contains the following lines around that time: (Link to full logs is at bottom of post) 2013-07-02 00:56:58, Info DISM DISM.EXE: Succesfully registered commands for the provider: Edition Manager. 2013-07-02 00:56:58, Info DISM DISM Provider Store: PID=5768 TID=5780 Getting Provider DISM Package Manager - CDISMProviderStore::GetProvider 2013-07-02 00:56:58, Info DISM DISM Provider Store: PID=5768 TID=5780 Provider has previously been initialized. Returning the existing instance. - CDISMProviderStore::Internal_GetProvider 2013-07-02 00:56:58, Info DISM DISM Package Manager: PID=5768 TID=5780 Processing the top level command token(enable-feature). - CPackageManagerCLIHandler::Private_ValidateCmdLine 2013-07-02 00:56:58, Info DISM DISM Package Manager: PID=5768 TID=5780 Attempting to route to appropriate command handler. - CPackageManagerCLIHandler::ExecuteCmdLine 2013-07-02 00:56:58, Info DISM DISM Package Manager: PID=5768 TID=5780 Routing the command... - CPackageManagerCLIHandler::ExecuteCmdLine 2013-07-02 00:56:58, Info DISM DISM Package Manager: PID=5768 TID=5780 Encountered the option "featurename" with value "NetFX3" - CPackageManagerCLIHandler::Private_GetPackagesFromCommandLine 2013-07-02 00:56:58, Info DISM DISM Package Manager: PID=5768 TID=5780 Encountered an unknown option "featurename" with value "NetFX3" - CPackageManagerCLIHandler::Private_GetPackagesFromCommandLine 2013-07-02 00:56:58, Info DISM DISM Package Manager: PID=5768 TID=5780 Encountered the option "source" with value "C:\Windows\WinSxS" - CPackageManagerCLIHandler::Private_GetPackagesFromCommandLine 2013-07-02 00:56:58, Info DISM DISM Package Manager: PID=5768 TID=5780 Encountered an unknown option "source" with value "C:\Windows\WinSxS" - CPackageManagerCLIHandler::Private_GetPackagesFromCommandLine 2013-07-02 00:56:59, Info DISM DISM Package Manager: PID=5768 TID=5780 Initiating Changes on Package with values: 5, 7 - CDISMPackage::Internal_ChangePackageState 2013-07-02 00:56:59, Info DISM DISM Package Manager: PID=5768 TID=5780 CBS session options=0x20100! - CDISMPackageManager::Internal_Finalize 2013-07-02 01:00:27, Info DISM DISM Package Manager: PID=5768 TID=2420 Error in operation: (null) (CBS HRESULT=0x800f0922) - CCbsConUIHandler::Error 2013-07-02 01:00:27, Error DISM DISM Package Manager: PID=5768 TID=5780 Failed finalizing changes. - CDISMPackageManager::Internal_Finalize(hr:0x800f0922) 2013-07-02 01:00:27, Error DISM DISM Package Manager: PID=5768 TID=5780 Failed processing package changes with session options - CDISMPackageManager::ProcessChangesWithOptions(hr:0x800f0922) 2013-07-02 01:00:27, Error DISM DISM Package Manager: PID=5768 TID=5780 Failed ProcessChanges. - CPackageManagerCLIHandler::Private_ProcessFeatureChange(hr:0x800f0922) 2013-07-02 01:00:27, Error DISM DISM Package Manager: PID=5768 TID=5780 Failed while processing command enable-feature. - CPackageManagerCLIHandler::ExecuteCmdLine(hr:0x800f0922) 2013-07-02 01:00:27, Info DISM DISM Package Manager: PID=5768 TID=5780 Further logs for online package and feature related operations can be found at %WINDIR%\logs\CBS\cbs.log - CPackageManagerCLIHandler::ExecuteCmdLine 2013-07-02 01:00:27, Error DISM DISM.EXE: DISM Package Manager processed the command line but failed. HRESULT=800F0922 cbs.log has the following chunks around then which could be relevant: 2013-07-02 00:55:06, Info CBS Exec: This is a PSF Package. Job has been saved and we are returning to client. 2013-07-02 00:55:06, Info CSI 0000042d@2013/7/1:23:55:06.203 CSI Transaction @0xe2f5e59500 destroyed 2013-07-02 00:55:06, Info CBS Exec: DPX job state saved for one or more packages, aborting the staging and install of execution. 2013-07-02 00:55:06, Info CSI 0000042e@2013/7/1:23:55:06.207 CSI Transaction @0xe2f5e58480 destroyed 2013-07-02 00:55:06, Info CBS Perf: Stage chain complete. 2013-07-02 00:55:06, Info CBS Failed to stage execution chain. [HRESULT = 0x800f0816 - CBS_E_DPX_JOB_STATE_SAVED] 2013-07-02 00:55:06, Info CBS Failed to process single phase execution. [HRESULT = 0x800f0816 - CBS_E_DPX_JOB_STATE_SAVED] 2013-07-02 00:55:06, Info CBS WER: Failure is not worth reporting [HRESULT = 0x800f0816 - CBS_E_DPX_JOB_STATE_SAVED] 2013-07-02 00:55:06, Info CBS Reboot mark cleared and further down: 2013-07-02 00:59:19, Info CSI 000004e6 Begin executing advanced installer phase 38 (0x00000026) index 253 (0x00000000000000fd) (sequence 289) Old component: [l:0]"" New component: [ml:306{153},l:304{152}]"NetFx35CDF-CDF_GenericCommands, Culture=neutral, Version=6.2.9200.16384, PublicKeyToken=31bf3856ad364e35, ProcessorArchitecture=x86, versionScope=NonSxS" Install mode: install Installer ID: {81a34a10-4256-436a-89d6-794b97ca407c} Installer name: [15]"Generic Command" 2013-07-02 00:59:19, Info CSI 000004e7 Performing 1 operations; 1 are not lock/unlock and follow: (0) LockComponentPath (10): flags: 0 comp: {l:16 b:19fc6600b776ce01c91f0000fc07a816} pathid: {l:16 b:19fc6600b776ce01ca1f0000fc07a816} path: [l:214{107}]"\SystemRoot\WinSxS\x86_netfx35cdf-cdf_genericcommands_31bf3856ad364e35_6.2.9200.16384_none_0cec490be12fb858" pid: 7fc starttime: 130171962799582915 (0x01ce76b5e2626ec3) 2013-07-02 00:59:19, Info CSI 000004e8 Performing 1 operations; 1 are not lock/unlock and follow: (0) LockComponentPath (10): flags: 0 comp: {l:16 b:27236700b776ce01cb1f0000fc07a816} pathid: {l:16 b:27236700b776ce01cc1f0000fc07a816} path: [l:210{105}]"\SystemRoot\WinSxS\x86_netfx35cdf-csd_cdf_installer_31bf3856ad364e35_6.2.9200.16384_none_55072425fd5c3716" pid: 7fc starttime: 130171962799582915 (0x01ce76b5e2626ec3) 2013-07-02 00:59:19, Info CSI 000004e9 Calling generic command executable (sequence 1): [122]"C:\Windows\WinSxS\x86_netfx35cdf-csd_cdf_installer_31bf3856ad364e35_6.2.9200.16384_none_55072425fd5c3716\WFServicesReg.exe" CmdLine: [139]""C:\Windows\WinSxS\x86_netfx35cdf-csd_cdf_installer_31bf3856ad364e35_6.2.9200.16384_none_55072425fd5c3716\WFServicesReg.exe" /c /b /v /m /i" 2013-07-02 00:59:20, Info CSI 000004ea Performing 1 operations; 1 are not lock/unlock and follow: (0) LockComponentPath (10): flags: 0 comp: {l:16 b:bd790401b776ce01cd1f0000fc07a816} pathid: {l:16 b:bd790401b776ce01ce1f0000fc07a816} path: [l:234{117}]"\SystemRoot\WinSxS\x86_microsoft.windows.s..ation.badcomponents_31bf3856ad364e35_6.2.9200.16384_none_353ccb4c94858655" pid: 7fc starttime: 130171962799582915 (0x01ce76b5e2626ec3) 2013-07-02 00:59:20, Info CSI 000004eb Creating NT transaction (seq 27), objectname [6]"(null)" 2013-07-02 00:59:20, Info CSI 000004ec Created NT transaction (seq 27) result 0x00000000, handle @0x24b8 2013-07-02 00:59:20, Info CSI 000004ed@2013/7/1:23:59:20.933 Beginning NT transaction commit... 2013-07-02 00:59:22, Info CSI 000004ee@2013/7/1:23:59:22.065 CSI perf trace: CSIPERF:TXCOMMIT;1387723 2013-07-02 00:59:22, Error CSI 000004ef (F) Done with generic command 1; CreateProcess returned 0, CPAW returned S_OK Process exit code 255 (0x000000ff) resulted in success? FALSE Process output: [l:28479 [4096]"DDSet_Entry: WFServicesReg.exe DDSet_Status: CFxInstaller::CopyConfigFilesToTemp is64bit=0 DDSet_Status: CFileHelper::CopyConfigFilesToTempLocation DDSet_Status: CFxInstaller::SetupBaseComponents isInstall=1 DDSet_Status: CFxInstaller::SetupBaseComponents Calling SetupExtensions. isInstall=1 (0x000000FF -- The extended attributes are inconsistent. ??) And a bit further down: 2013-07-02 00:59:22, Error [0x018007] CSI 000004f0 (F) Failed execution of queue item Installer: Generic Command ({81a34a10-4256-436a-89d6-794b97ca407c}) with HRESULT HRESULT_FROM_WIN32(14109). Failure will not be ignored: A rollback will be initiated after all the operations in the installer queue are completed; installer is reliable (2)[gle=0x80004005] [...snip...] 2013-07-02 00:59:22, Info CBS Not able to add pending.xml.bad to Windows Error Report. [HRESULT = 0x80070002 - ERROR_FILE_NOT_FOUND] 2013-07-02 00:59:28, Info CSI 000004f1@2013/7/1:23:59:28.467 CSI Advanced installer perf trace: CSIPERF:AIDONE;{81a34a10-4256-436a-89d6-794b97ca407c};NetFx35CDF-CDF_GenericCommands, Version = 6.2.9200.16384, pA = PROCESSOR_ARCHITECTURE_INTEL (0), Culture neutral, VersionScope = 1 nonSxS, PublicKeyToken = {l:8 b:31bf3856ad364e35}, Type neutral, TypeName neutral, PublicKey neutral;10609242us 2013-07-02 00:59:28, Info CSI 000004f2 End executing advanced installer (sequence 289) Completion status: HRESULT_FROM_WIN32(ERROR_ADVANCED_INSTALLER_FAILED) [...snip...] 2013-07-02 01:00:26, Info CBS Exec: Cancelled pending transactions after rollback. [HRESULT = 0x00000000 - S_OK] 2013-07-02 01:00:26, Error CBS Exec: An error occurred while committing the transaction, the transaction could not be rolled back. [HRESULT = 0x800f0922 - CBS_E_INSTALLERS_FAILED] The full DISM and CBS logs are at http://ben.mu/files/dotnet35_dism_cbs.zip as the CBS log is nearly 167MB uncompressed. o.o dism.log gives the timeframe of where its errors occur--00:56:20ish to 01:00:22. Does anyone have any ideas what's actually causing the installation to fail, and if so how I can fix it? Please don't just say "Refresh the OS". :)

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• My computer freezes irregularly

  - by Manhim

  My computer started to freeze at irregular times for 3 weeks now. Please note that this question change with each things that i try. (For additional details) What happens My computer freezes, the video stops. (No graphic glitches, it just stops) Sound keeps playing up to some time (Usually 10-30 seconds) then stops playing. Sometimes, randomly, the screen on my G-15 keyboard flickers and I see caracters not at the right places. Usually happens for about 1-2 seconds and a bit before my computer freezes. I have to keep the power button pressed for 4 seconds to shut my computer down. I still hear my hard drives and fans working. Sometimes it works with no problems for a full day, some other times it just keeps freezing each time I restart my computer and I have to leave it for the rest of the day. Sometimes my mouse freezes for a fraction of a second (Like 0.01 to 0.2 seconds) quite randomly, usually before it freezes. No errors spotted by the "Action center" unlike when I had problems with my last video card on this system (Driver errors). My G-15 LCD screen also freezes. Sometimes my G-15 LCD screen flickers and caracters gets caried around temporary under heavy load. Now, most of the times, the BIOS hard disks boot order gets reversed for some reason and I have to put it to the right one and save each times I boot. (Might be unrelated, not sure, but it first started yesterday) Sometimes the BIOS doesn't detect my 750GB hard drive plugged in SATA1. What I did so far I have had similar problems in the past and I had changed my hard drive (It was faulty), so I tested my software RAID-0 array and it was faulty so I changed it. (I reinstalled Windows 7 with this part). I also tested with unplugging my secondary hard drive. My CPU was running at about 100 degree Celsius, I removed the dust between the fans and the heatsink and it's now between 45-55. I ran a CPU stress-test and it didn't freeze during the tests (using Prime95 on all cores) Ran a memory test (using memtest86+) for a single pass and there were no errors. Ran a GPU stress test with ati-tools and furmark and it didn't freeze during the tests. (No artefacts either) I had troubles with my graphic card when I got it, but I think that it got fixed with a driver update. I checked the voltages in my BIOS setup and they all seemed ok (±0.2 I think). I have ran on the computer without problems with Fedora 15 on an external hard drive (Appart that it couldn't load Gnome 3 and was reverting to Gnome 2, didn't want to install drivers since I use it on multiple computers) I used it to backup my files from the raid array to my 1TB hard drive for the reinstallation of Windows. (So the crashes only happenned on Windows) [The external hard drive is plugged directly on a SATA port] I contacted EVGA (My graphic card vendor) and pointed them on this question, I'm looking for an answer. Ran sensors on Fedora 15 and got this output: http://pastebin.com/0BHJnAvu Ran 6 short different CPU stress test on Fedora 15 (Haven't found any complete stress testers for Linux) and it didn't crash. Changed the thermal paste to some Artic Silver 5 for my CPU and stress tested the CPU, temperature was at 50 idle, then 64 highest and slowly went down to 62 during the test. Ran some stress testing with a temporary graphic card and it went ok. Ran furmark stress test with my original graphic card and it freezed again. GPU had a temp of 74C, a CPU temp of 58C and a mobo temp of 40C or 45C (Dunno which one it is from SpeedFan). Ran a furmark stress test and a CPU stress test at the same time, results: http://pastebin.com/2t6PLpdJ I have been using my computer without stressing it for about 2 hours now and no crashes yet. I also have disabled the AMD Cool'n'quiet function on the BIOS for a more regular power to the CPU. When I ran Furmark without C'n'q my computer didn't freeze but I had a "Driver Kernel Error" that have recovered (And Furmark crashed) all that while running a CPU stress test. The computer eventually frozed without me being at it, but this time my screen just went on sleep and I couldn't wake it. Using the stability tester in nTune my computer freezed again (In the same manner as before). I notived that Speedfan gives me a -12V of -16.97V and a -5V of -8.78V. I wonder if these numbers are reliable and if they are good or bad. I have swapped my G-15 with another basic USB keyboard (HP) and I have ran furmark for about 10 minutes with a CPU stability test running each 60 seconds for 30 seconds and my computer haven't crashed yet. Ran some more extended tests without my G-15 and it freezed like it usually do. Removed the nForce Hard disk controler. Disabled command queuing in the NVIDIA nForce SATA Controller for both port 0 and port 1 (Errors from the logs) Used CPUID HwMonitor, here are the voltages: http://pastebin.com/dfM7p4jV Changed some configurations in the motherboard BIOS: Disabled PEG Link Mode, Changed AI Tuning to Standard, Disabled the 1394 Controller, Disabled HD Audio, Disabled JMicron RAID controller and Disabled SATA Raid. When it happens When I play video games (Mostly) When I play flash games (Second most) When I'm looking at my desktop background (It rarely happens when I have a window open, but it does, sometimes) When my Graphic card and my CPU are stressed. Sometimes when my Graphic card is stressed. Never happenned while stressing only the CPU. Sometimes when my CPU is stressed. Specs Windows Seven x64 Home Premium Motherboard: M2N-SLI Deluxe CPU: AMD Phenom 9950 x2 @ 2.6GHz Memory: Kingston 4x2GB Dual Channel (Pretty basic memory sticks) Hard drives: Was 2x250GB (Western digital caviar) in raid-0 + 1TB (WD caviar black), I replaced the raid array with a 750GB (WD caviar black) [Yes I removed the array from the raid configurations] 750W Power supply No overcloking. Ever. There have been some power-downs like 4-5 weeks ago, but the problem didn't start immediately after. (I wasn't home, so my computer got shut-down) Event logs (Warnings, errors and critical errors) for the last 24 hours: http://pastebin.com/Bvvk31T7 My current to-try list Reinstall the drivers and software 1 by 1 and do extensive stress testing between each. Update the BIOS firmware to the most recent stable one. Change my motherboard. Status updates Keeping only the last 3 (28/06 04pm) More stress testing and still pass the tests. (28/06 03pm) Been stress testing for 10 minute straight now and 5 minutes with both CPU and GPU being stressed at the same time. (28/06 03pm) Stress-testing right now, so far no problems. A little hope Tests with Furmark and Prime95. Testing Windows bare-bone: 30 Minutes stress, no freeze. Installing an Anti-virus and some software, restarting computer. Testing with Anti-virus and some software (No drivers installed): 30 Minutes stress, no freeze. Installing audio drivers, restarting computer. Testing with the audio drivers: 30 Minutes stress, no freeze. Installing the latest graphic drivers from EVGA's website (without 3d vision since I don't use it), restarting computer. Testing with the graphic drivers: 30 Minutes stress, no freeze. Configuring Windows to my liking and installing more softwares. In this situation, how can I successfully pin-point the current hardware problem? (If it's a hardware problem) Because I don't really have the budget to just forget and replace everything. I also don't really have hardware to test-replace current hardware.

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• Multiple routers, subnets, gateways etc

  - by allentown

  My current setup is: Cable modem dishes out 13 static IP's (/28), a GB switch is plugged into the cable modem, and has access to those 13 static IP's, I have about 6 "servers" in use right now. The cable modem is also a firewall, DHCP server, and 3 port 10/100 switch. I am using it as a firewall, but not currently as a DHCP server. I have plugged into the cable modem, two network cables, one which goes to the WAN port of a Linksys Dual Band Wireless 10/100/1000 router/switch. Into the linksys are a few workstations, a few printers, and some laptops connecting to wifi. I set the Linksys to use take static IP, and enabled DHCP for the workstations, printers, etc in 192.168.1.1/24. The network for the Linksys is mostly self contained, backups go to a SAN, on that network, it all happens through that switch, over GB. But I also get internet access from it as well via the cable modem using one static IP. This all works, however, I can not "see" the static IP machines when I am on the Linksys. I can get to them via ssh and other protocols, and if I want to from "outside", I open holes, like 80, 25, 587, 143, 22, etc. The second wire, from the cable modem/fireall/switch just uplinks to the managed GB switch. What are the pros and cons of this? I do not like giving up the static IP to the Linksys. I basically have a mixed network of public servers, and internal workstations. I want the public servers on public IP's because I do not want to mess with port forwarding and mappings. Is it correct also, that if someone breaches the Linksys wifi, they still would have a hard time getting to the static IP range, just by nature of the network topology? Today, just for a test, I toggled on the DHCP in the firewall/cable modem at 10.1.10.1/24 range, the Linksys is n the 192.168.1.100/24 range. At that point, all the static IP machines still had in and out access, but Linksys was unreachable. The cable modem only has 10/100 ports, so I will not plug anything but the network drop into it, which is 50Mb/10Mb. Which makes me think this could be less than ideal, as transfers from the workstation network to the server network will be bottlenecked at 100Mb when I have 1000Mb available. I may not need to solve that, if isolation is better though. I do not move a lot of data, if any, from Linsys network to server network, so for it to pretend to be remote is ok. Should I approach this any different? I could enable DHCP on the cable modem/firewall, it should still send out the statics to the GB switch, but will also be a DHCP in 10.1.10.1/24 range? I can then plug the Linksys into the GB switch, which is now picking up statics and the 10.1.10.1/24 ranges, tell the Linksys to use 10.1.10.5 or so. Now, do I disable DHCP on the Linksys, and the cable modem/firewall will pass through the statics and 10.0.10.1/24 ranges as well? Or, could I open a second DHCP pool on the Linksys? I guess doing so gives me network isolation again, but it is just the reverse of what I have now. But I get out of the bottleneck, not that the Linksys could ever really touch real GB speeds anyway, but the managed switch certainly can. This is all because 13 statics are not that many. Right now, 6 "servers", the Linksys, a managed switch, a few SSL certs, and I am running out. I do not want to waste a static IP on the managed GB switch, or the Linksys, unless it provides me some type of benefit. Final question, under my current setup, if I am on a workstation, sitting at 192.168.1.109, the Linksys, with GB, and I send a file over ssh to the static IP machine, is that literally leaving the internet, and coming back in, or does it stay local? To me it seems like: Workstation (192.168.1.109) -> Linksys DHCP -> Linksys Static IP -> Cable Modem -> Server ( and it hits the 10/100 ports on the cable modem, slowing me down. But does it round trip the network, leave and come back in, limiting me to the 50/10 internet speeds? *These are all made up numbers, I do not use default router IP's as I will one day add a VPN, and do not want collisions. I need some recommendations, do I want one big network, or two isolated ones. Printers these days need an IP, everything does, I can not get autoconf/bonjour to be reliable on most printers. but I am also not sure I want the "server" side of my operation to be polluted by the workstation side of my operation. Unless there is some magic subetting I have not learned yet, here is what I am thinking: Cable modem 10/100, has 13 static IP, publicly accessible -> Enable DHCP on the cable modem -> Cable modem plugs into managed switch -> Managed switch gets 10.1.10.1 ssh, telnet, https admin management address -> Managed switch sends static IP's to to servers -> Plug Linksys into managed switch, giving it 10.1.10.2 static internally in Linksys admin -> Linksys gets assigned 10.1.10.x as its DHCP sending range -> Local printers, workstations, iPhones etc, connect to this -> ( Do I enable DHCP or disable it on the Linksys, just define a non over lapping range, or create an entirely new DHCP at 10.1.50.0/24, I think I am back isolated again with that method too? ) Thank you for any suggestions. This is the first time I have had to deal with less than a /24, and most are larger than that, but it is just a drop to a cabinet. Otherwise, it's a router, a few repeaters, and soho stuff that is simple, with one IP. I know a few may suggest going all DHCP on the servers, and I may one day, just not now, there has been too much moving of gear for me to be interested in that, and I would want something in the Catalyst series to deal with that.

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• mdadm: Win7-install created a boot partition on one of my RAID6 drives. How to rebuild?

  - by EXIT_FAILURE

  My problem happened when I attempted to install Windows 7 on it's own SSD. The Linux OS I used which has knowledge of the software RAID system is on a SSD that I disconnected prior to the install. This was so that windows (or I) wouldn't inadvertently mess it up. However, and in retrospect, foolishly, I left the RAID disks connected, thinking that windows wouldn't be so ridiculous as to mess with a HDD that it sees as just unallocated space. Boy was I wrong! After copying over the installation files to the SSD (as expected and desired), it also created an ntfs partition on one of the RAID disks. Both unexpected and totally undesired! . I changed out the SSDs again, and booted up in linux. mdadm didn't seem to have any problem assembling the array as before, but if I tried to mount the array, I got the error message: mount: wrong fs type, bad option, bad superblock on /dev/md0, missing codepage or helper program, or other error In some cases useful info is found in syslog - try dmesg | tail or so dmesg: EXT4-fs (md0): ext4_check_descriptors: Block bitmap for group 0 not in group (block 1318081259)! EXT4-fs (md0): group descriptors corrupted! I then used qparted to delete the newly created ntfs partition on /dev/sdd so that it matched the other three /dev/sd{b,c,e}, and requested a resync of my array with echo repair > /sys/block/md0/md/sync_action This took around 4 hours, and upon completion, dmesg reports: md: md0: requested-resync done. A bit brief after a 4-hour task, though I'm unsure as to where other log files exist (I also seem to have messed up my sendmail configuration). In any case: No change reported according to mdadm, everything checks out. mdadm -D /dev/md0 still reports: Version : 1.2 Creation Time : Wed May 23 22:18:45 2012 Raid Level : raid6 Array Size : 3907026848 (3726.03 GiB 4000.80 GB) Used Dev Size : 1953513424 (1863.02 GiB 2000.40 GB) Raid Devices : 4 Total Devices : 4 Persistence : Superblock is persistent Update Time : Mon May 26 12:41:58 2014 State : clean Active Devices : 4 Working Devices : 4 Failed Devices : 0 Spare Devices : 0 Layout : left-symmetric Chunk Size : 4K Name : okamilinkun:0 UUID : 0c97ebf3:098864d8:126f44e3:e4337102 Events : 423 Number Major Minor RaidDevice State 0 8 16 0 active sync /dev/sdb 1 8 32 1 active sync /dev/sdc 2 8 48 2 active sync /dev/sdd 3 8 64 3 active sync /dev/sde Trying to mount it still reports: mount: wrong fs type, bad option, bad superblock on /dev/md0, missing codepage or helper program, or other error In some cases useful info is found in syslog - try dmesg | tail or so and dmesg: EXT4-fs (md0): ext4_check_descriptors: Block bitmap for group 0 not in group (block 1318081259)! EXT4-fs (md0): group descriptors corrupted! I'm a bit unsure where to proceed from here, and trying stuff "to see if it works" is a bit too risky for me. This is what I suggest I should attempt to do: Tell mdadm that /dev/sdd (the one that windows wrote into) isn't reliable anymore, pretend it is newly re-introduced to the array, and reconstruct its content based on the other three drives. I also could be totally wrong in my assumptions, that the creation of the ntfs partition on /dev/sdd and subsequent deletion has changed something that cannot be fixed this way. My question: Help, what should I do? If I should do what I suggested , how do I do that? From reading documentation, etc, I would think maybe: mdadm --manage /dev/md0 --set-faulty /dev/sdd mdadm --manage /dev/md0 --remove /dev/sdd mdadm --manage /dev/md0 --re-add /dev/sdd However, the documentation examples suggest /dev/sdd1, which seems strange to me, as there is no partition there as far as linux is concerned, just unallocated space. Maybe these commands won't work without. Maybe it makes sense to mirror the partition table of one of the other raid devices that weren't touched, before --re-add. Something like: sfdisk -d /dev/sdb | sfdisk /dev/sdd Bonus question: Why would the Windows 7 installation do something so st...potentially dangerous? Update I went ahead and marked /dev/sdd as faulty, and removed it (not physically) from the array: # mdadm --manage /dev/md0 --set-faulty /dev/sdd # mdadm --manage /dev/md0 --remove /dev/sdd However, attempting to --re-add was disallowed: # mdadm --manage /dev/md0 --re-add /dev/sdd mdadm: --re-add for /dev/sdd to /dev/md0 is not possible --add, was fine. # mdadm --manage /dev/md0 --add /dev/sdd mdadm -D /dev/md0 now reports the state as clean, degraded, recovering, and /dev/sdd as spare rebuilding. /proc/mdstat shows the recovery progress: md0 : active raid6 sdd[4] sdc[1] sde[3] sdb[0] 3907026848 blocks super 1.2 level 6, 4k chunk, algorithm 2 [4/3] [UU_U] [>....................] recovery = 2.1% (42887780/1953513424) finish=348.7min speed=91297K/sec nmon also shows expected output: ¦sdb 0% 87.3 0.0| > |¦ ¦sdc 71% 109.1 0.0|RRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR > |¦ ¦sdd 40% 0.0 87.3|WWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWW > |¦ ¦sde 0% 87.3 0.0|> || It looks good so far. Crossing my fingers for another five+ hours :) Update 2 The recovery of /dev/sdd finished, with dmesg output: [44972.599552] md: md0: recovery done. [44972.682811] RAID conf printout: [44972.682815] --- level:6 rd:4 wd:4 [44972.682817] disk 0, o:1, dev:sdb [44972.682819] disk 1, o:1, dev:sdc [44972.682820] disk 2, o:1, dev:sdd [44972.682821] disk 3, o:1, dev:sde Attempting mount /dev/md0 reports: mount: wrong fs type, bad option, bad superblock on /dev/md0, missing codepage or helper program, or other error In some cases useful info is found in syslog - try dmesg | tail or so And on dmesg: [44984.159908] EXT4-fs (md0): ext4_check_descriptors: Block bitmap for group 0 not in group (block 1318081259)! [44984.159912] EXT4-fs (md0): group descriptors corrupted! I'm not sure what do do now. Suggestions? Output of dumpe2fs /dev/md0: dumpe2fs 1.42.8 (20-Jun-2013) Filesystem volume name: Atlas Last mounted on: /mnt/atlas Filesystem UUID: e7bfb6a4-c907-4aa0-9b55-9528817bfd70 Filesystem magic number: 0xEF53 Filesystem revision #: 1 (dynamic) Filesystem features: has_journal ext_attr resize_inode dir_index filetype extent flex_bg sparse_super large_file huge_file uninit_bg dir_nlink extra_isize Filesystem flags: signed_directory_hash Default mount options: user_xattr acl Filesystem state: clean Errors behavior: Continue Filesystem OS type: Linux Inode count: 244195328 Block count: 976756712 Reserved block count: 48837835 Free blocks: 92000180 Free inodes: 243414877 First block: 0 Block size: 4096 Fragment size: 4096 Reserved GDT blocks: 791 Blocks per group: 32768 Fragments per group: 32768 Inodes per group: 8192 Inode blocks per group: 512 RAID stripe width: 2 Flex block group size: 16 Filesystem created: Thu May 24 07:22:41 2012 Last mount time: Sun May 25 23:44:38 2014 Last write time: Sun May 25 23:46:42 2014 Mount count: 341 Maximum mount count: -1 Last checked: Thu May 24 07:22:41 2012 Check interval: 0 (<none>) Lifetime writes: 4357 GB Reserved blocks uid: 0 (user root) Reserved blocks gid: 0 (group root) First inode: 11 Inode size: 256 Required extra isize: 28 Desired extra isize: 28 Journal inode: 8 Default directory hash: half_md4 Directory Hash Seed: e177a374-0b90-4eaa-b78f-d734aae13051 Journal backup: inode blocks dumpe2fs: Corrupt extent header while reading journal super block

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• How do I get preferences to work in Android?

  - by Dan T

  I've really been struggling through this. New to Java/Android. I'm writing my first app and this is the first thing that has taken me longer than a couple days of searching to figure out. Here's the setup: It's a BAC calculator / drink counter: A formula is used to calculate the BAC. Here's the forumla: Bac = ((StandardDrinks / 2) * (GenderConstant / Weight)) - (0.017 * Hours); So as you can see, being able to modify the gender and weight will produce more accurate and personalized results. So I have them as doubles: double GenderConstant = 7.5; //9 for female double Weight = 180; To change these variables I would like the person to be able to go into the settings and choose different values. I have these things set up, but not linked to the variables shown above because I cannot for the life of me figure out how. Here they are: I press the menu button and this pops up. Great. I'll click Settings. Now the preferences pops up. Here is my preferences.xml: <?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?> <PreferenceScreen xmlns:android="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res/android"> <PreferenceCategory android:title="Personal Settings"> <ListPreference android:title="Gender" android:summary="Verify or deny the presence of a Y chromosome." android:key="genderPref" android:defaultValue="male" android:entries="@array/genderArray" android:entryValues="@array/genderValues" /> <ListPreference android:title="Weight" android:summary="How much the planet pulls on you, in pounds." android:key="weightPref" android:defaultValue="180" android:entries="@array/weightArray" android:entryValues="@array/weightValues" /> </PreferenceCategory> <PreferenceCategory android:title="Drink Settings"> <ListPreference android:title="Beer Size" android:summary="The volume of your beer, in ounces." android:key="beerPref" android:defaultValue="12" android:entries="@array/beerArray" android:entryValues="@array/beerValues" /> <ListPreference android:title="Shot Size" android:summary="The volume of your shot, in ounces." android:key="shotPref" android:defaultValue="1.5" android:entries="@array/shotArray" android:entryValues="@array/shotValues" /> <ListPreference android:title="Wine Size" android:summary="The volume of your wine, in ounces." android:key="winePref" android:defaultValue="5" android:entries="@array/wineArray" android:entryValues="@array/wineValues" /> </PreferenceCategory> </PreferenceScreen> Onward to the weight ListPreference: And that shows up. The values are stored as string-arrays in res/values/arrays.xml. Here's a sample, of just the weight ones: <string-array name="weightArray"> <item>120 lbs</item> <item>150 lbs</item> <item>180 lbs</item> <item>210 lbs</item> <item>240 lbs</item> <item>270 lbs</item> </string-array> <string-array name="weightValues"> <item>120</item> <item>150</item> <item>180</item> <item>210</item> <item>240</item> <item>270</item> </string-array> This is basically as far as I've gotten. I can click a value, sure, but it doesn't change the formula because it's not linked with the doubles I created in DrinkingBuddy.java. All of the stuff displayed in the settings are just empty shells for now, including the spinner on the main layout (the default time is just set to 1 hour) I did create a Preferences.java and have tried implementing various combinations of code found in tutorials and resources around the web, but to no avail. Here it is anyway, filled with failed attempts to make beerPref (the settings option to change how many ounces in the beer) correlate with a variable in my main class: package com.dantoth.drinkingbuddy; import android.app.Activity; import android.content.SharedPreferences; import android.os.Bundle; import android.preference.Preference; import android.preference.PreferenceActivity; import android.preference.Preference.OnPreferenceClickListener; public class Preferences extends PreferenceActivity { public static final String PREF_BEER_SIZE = "PREF_BEER_SIZE"; @Override protected void onCreate(Bundle savedInstanceState) { super.onCreate(savedInstanceState); addPreferencesFromResource(R.xml.preferences); //Get the custom preference Preference beerPref = (Preference) findPreference("beerPref"); beerPref.setOnPreferenceClickListener(new OnPreferenceClickListener() { public boolean onPreferenceClick(Preference preference) { SharedPreferences customSharedPreference = getSharedPreferences("myCustomSharedPrefs", Activity.MODE_PRIVATE); SharedPreferences.Editor editor = customSharedPreference.edit(); editor.commit(); return true; }} );} } A full on tutorial and sample code would be AWESOME as I've yet to find any reliable guides out there.

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• Sending and receiving a TMemoryStream using IdTCPClient and IdTCPServer

  - by Martin Melka

  I found Remy Lebeau's chat demo of IdTCP components in XE2 and I wanted to play with it a little bit. (It can be found here) I would like to send a picture using these components and the best approach seems to be using TMemoryStream. If I send strings, the connection works fine, the strings are transmitted successfully, however when I change it to Stream instead, it doesn't work. Here is the code: Server procedure TMainForm.IdTCPServerExecute(AContext: TIdContext); var rcvdMsg: string; ms:TMemoryStream; begin // This commented code is working, it receives and sends strings. // rcvdMsg:=AContext.Connection.IOHandler.ReadLn; // LogMessage('<ServerExec> '+rcvdMsg); // // TResponseSync.SendResponse(AContext, rcvdMsg); try ms:=TMemoryStream.Create; AContext.Connection.IOHandler.ReadStream(ms); ms.SaveToFile('c:\networked.bmp'); except LogMessage('Failed to receive',clred); end; end; Client procedure TfrmMain.Button1Click(Sender: TObject); var ms: TMemoryStream; bmp: TBitmap; pic: TPicture; s: string; begin // Again, this code is working for sending strings. // s:=edMsg.Text; // Client.IOHandler.WriteLn(s); ms:=TMemoryStream.Create; pic:=TPicture.Create; pic.LoadFromFile('c:\Back.png'); bmp:=TBitmap.Create; bmp.Width:=pic.Width; bmp.Height:=pic.Height; bmp.Canvas.Draw(0,0,pic.Graphic); bmp.SaveToStream(ms); ms.Position:=0; Client.IOHandler.Write(ms); ms.Free; end; When I try to send the stream from the client, nothing observable happens (breakpoint in the OnExecute doesn't fire). However, when closing the programs(after sending the MemoryStream), two things happen: If the Client is closed first, only then does the except part get processed (the log displays the 'Failed to receive' error. However, even if I place a breakpoint on the first line of the try-except block, it somehow gets skipped and only the error is displayed). If the Server is closed first, the IDE doesn't change back from debug, Client doesn't change its state to disconnected (as it normally does when server disconnects) and after the Client is closed as well, an Access Violation error from the Server app appears. I guess this means that there is a thread of the Server still running and maintaining the connection. But no matter how much time i give it, it never completes the task of receiving the MemoryStream. Note: The server uses IdSchedulerOfThreadDefault and IdAntiFreeze, if that matters. As I can't find any reliable source of help for the revamped Indy 10 (it all appears to apply for the older Indy 10, or even Indy 9), I hope you can tell me what is wrong. Thanks - ANSWER - SERVER procedure TMainForm.IdTCPServerExecute(AContext: TIdContext); var size: integer; ms:TMemoryStream; begin try ms:=TMemoryStream.Create; size:=AContext.Connection.IOHandler.ReadLongInt; AContext.Connection.IOHandler.ReadStream(ms, size); ms.SaveToFile('c:\networked.bmp'); except LogMessage('Failed to receive',clred); end; end; CLIENT procedure TfrmMain.Button1Click(Sender: TObject); var ms: TMemoryStream; bmp: TBitmap; pic: TPicture; begin ms:=TMemoryStream.Create; pic:=TPicture.Create; pic.LoadFromFile('c:\Back.png'); bmp:=TBitmap.Create; bmp.Width:=pic.Width; bmp.Height:=pic.Height; bmp.Canvas.Draw(0,0,pic.Graphic); bmp.SaveToStream(ms); ms.Position:=0; Client.IOHandler.Write(ms, 0, True); ms.Free; end;

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