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• Is Visual Source Safe (The latest Version) really that bad? Why? What's the Best Alternative? Why? [closed]

  - by hanzolo

  Over the years I've constantly heard horror stories, had people say "Real Programmers Dont Use VSS", and so on. BUT, then in the workplace I've worked at two companies, one, a very well known public facing high traffic website, and another high end Financial Services "Web-Based" hosted solution catering to some very large, very well known companies, which is where I currently Reside and everything's working just fine (KNOCK KNOCK!!). I'm constantly interfacing with EXTREMELY Old technology with some of these financial institutions.. OLD LIKE YOU WOULDN'T BELIEVE.. which leads me to the conclusion that if it works "LEAVE IT", and that maybe there's some value in old technology? at least enough value to overrule a rewrite!? right?? Is there something fundamentally flawed with the underlying technology that VSS uses? I have a feeling that if i said "someone said VSS Sucks" they would beg to differ, most likely give me this look like i dont know -ish, and I'd never gain back their respect and my credibility (well, that'll be hard to blow.. lol), BUT, give me an argument that I can take to someone whose been coding for 30 years, that builds Platforms that leverage current technology (.NET 3.5 / SQL 2008 R2 ), write's their own ORM with scaffolding and is able to provide a quality platform that supports thousands of concurrent users on a multi-tenant hosted solution, and does not agree with any benefits from having Source Control Integrated, and yet uses the Infamous Visual Source Safe. I have extensive experience with TFS up to 2010, and honestly I think it's great when a team (beyond developers) can embrace it. I've worked side by side with someone whose a die hard SVN'r and from a purist standpoint, I see the beauty in it (I need a bit more, out of my SS, but it surely suffices). So, why are such smarties not running away from Visual Source Safe? surely if it was so bad, it would've have been realized by now, and I would not be sitting here with this simple old, Check In, Check Out, Version Resistant, Label Intensive system. But here I am... I would love to drop an argument that would be the end all argument, but if it's a matter of opinion and personal experience, there seems to be too much leeway for keeping VSS. UPDATE: I guess the best case is to have the VSS supporters check other people's experiences and draw from that until we (please no) experience the breaking factor ourselves. Until then, i wont be engaging in a discussion to migrate off of VSS.. UPDATE 11-2012: So i was able to convince everyone at my work place that since MS is sun downing Visual Source Safe it might be time to migrate over to TFS. I was able to convince them and have recently upgraded our team to Visual Studio 2012 and TFS 2012. The migration was fairly painless, had to run analyze.exe which found a bunch of errors (not sure they'll ever affect the project) and then manually run the VSSConverter.exe. Again, painless, except it took 16 hours to migrate 5 years worth of everything.. and now we're on TFS.. much more integrated.. much more cooler.. so all in all, VSS served it's purpose for years without hick-up. There were no horror stories and Visual Source Save as source control worked just fine. so to all the nay sayers (me included). there's nothing wrong with using VSS. i wouldnt start a new project with it, and i would definitely consider migrating to TFS. (it's really not super difficult and a new "wizard" type converter is due out any day now so migrating should be painless). But from my experience, it worked just fine and got the job done.

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• Editing files without race conditions?

  - by user2569445

  I have a CSV file that needs to be edited by multiple processes at the same time. My question is, how can I do this without introducing race conditions? It's easy to write to the end of the file without race conditions by open(2)ing it in "a" (O_APPEND) mode and simply write to it. Things get more difficult when removing lines from the file. The easiest solution is to read the file into memory, make changes to it, and overwrite it back to the file. If another process writes to it after it is in memory, however, that new data will be lost upon overwriting. To further complicate matters, my platform does not support POSIX record locks, checking for file existence is a race condition waiting to happen, rename(2) replaces the destination file if it exists instead of failing, and editing files in-place leaves empty bytes in it unless the remaining bytes are shifted towards the beginning of the file. My idea for removing a line is this (in pseudocode): filename = "/home/user/somefile"; file = open(filename, "r"); tmp = open(filename+".tmp", "ax") || die("could not create tmp file"); //"a" is O_APPEND, "x" is O_EXCL|O_CREAT while(write(tmp, read(file)); //copy the $file to $file+".new" close(file); //edit tmp file unlink(filename) || die("could not unlink file"); file = open(filename, "wx") || die("another process must have written to the file after we copied it."); //"w" is overwrite, "x" is force file creation while(write(file, read(tmp))); //copy ".tmp" back to the original file unlink(filename+".tmp") || die("could not unlink tmp file"); Or would I be better off with a simple lock file? Appender process: lock = open(filename+".lock", "wx") || die("could not lock file"); file = open(filename, "a"); write(file, "stuff"); close(file); close(lock); unlink(filename+".lock"); Editor process: lock = open(filename+".lock", "wx") || die("could not lock file"); file = open(filename, "rw"); while(contents += read(file)); //edit "contents" write(file, contents); close(file); close(lock); unlink(filename+".lock"); Both of these rely on an additional file that will be left over if a process terminates before unlinking it, causing other processes to refuse to write to the original file. In my opinion, these problems are brought on by the fact that the OS allows multiple writable file descriptors to be opened on the same file at the same time, instead of failing if a writable file descriptor is already open. It seems that O_CREAT|O_EXCL is the closest thing to a real solution for preventing filesystem race conditions, aside from POSIX record locks. Another possible solution is to separate the file into multiple files and directories, so that more granular control can be gained over components (lines, fields) of the file using O_CREAT|O_EXCL. For example, "file/$id/$field" would contain the value of column $field of the line $id. It wouldn't be a CSV file anymore, but it might just work. Yes, I know I should be using a database for this as databases are built to handle these types of problems, but the program is relatively simple and I was hoping to avoid the overhead. So, would any of these patterns work? Is there a better way? Any insight into these kinds of problems would be appreciated.

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• F# Objects &ndash; Integration with the other .Net Languages &ndash; Part 2

  - by MarkPearl

  So in part one of my posting I covered the real basics of object creation. Today I will hopefully dig a little deeper… My expert F# book brings up an interesting point – properties in F# are just syntactic sugar for method calls. This makes sense… for instance assume I had the following object with the property exposed called Firstname. type Person(Firstname : string, Lastname : string) = member v.Firstname = Firstname I could extend the Firstname property with the following code and everything would be hunky dory… type Person(Firstname : string, Lastname : string) = member v.Firstname = Console.WriteLine("Side Effect") Firstname   All that this would do is each time I use the property Firstname, I would see the side effect printed to the screen saying “Side Effect”. Member methods have a very similar look & feel to properties, in fact the only difference really is that you declare that parameters are being passed in. type Person(Firstname : string, Lastname : string) = member v.FullName(middleName) = Firstname + " " + middleName + " " + Lastname   In the code above, FullName requires the parameter middleName, and if viewed from another project in C# would show as a method and not a property. Precomputation Optimizations Okay, so something that is obvious once you think of it but that poses an interesting side effect of mutable value holders is pre-computation of results. All it is, is a slight difference in code but can result in quite a huge saving in performance. Basically pre-computation means you would not need to compute a value every time a method is called – but could perform the computation at the creation of the object (I hope I have got it right). In a way I battle to differentiate this from lazy evaluation but I will show an example to explain the principle. Let me try and show an example to illustrate the principle… assume the following F# module namespace myNamespace open System module myMod = let Add val1 val2 = Console.WriteLine("Compute") val1 + val2 type MathPrecompute(val1 : int, val2 : int) = let precomputedsum = Add val1 val2 member v.Sum = precomputedsum type MathNormalCompute(val1 : int, val2 : int) = member v.Sum = Add val1 val2 Now assume you have a C# console app that makes use of the objects with code similar to the following… using System; using myNamespace; namespace CSharpTest { class Program { static void Main(string[] args) { Console.WriteLine("Constructing Objects"); var myObj1 = new myMod.MathNormalCompute(10, 11); var myObj2 = new myMod.MathPrecompute(10, 11); Console.WriteLine(""); Console.WriteLine("Normal Compute Sum..."); Console.WriteLine(myObj1.Sum); Console.WriteLine(myObj1.Sum); Console.WriteLine(myObj1.Sum); Console.WriteLine(""); Console.WriteLine("Pre Compute Sum..."); Console.WriteLine(myObj2.Sum); Console.WriteLine(myObj2.Sum); Console.WriteLine(myObj2.Sum); Console.ReadKey(); } } } The output when running the console application would be as follows…. You will notice with the normal compute object that the system would call the Add function every time the method was called. With the Precompute object it only called the compute method when the object was created. Subtle, but something that could lead to major performance benefits. So… this post has gone off in a slight tangent but still related to F# objects.

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• Delegates: A Practical Understanding

  - by samerpaul

  It's been a while since I have written on this blog, and I'm planning on reviving it this summer, since I have more time to do so again.I've also recently started working on the iPhone platform, so I haven't been as busy in .NET as before.In either case, today's blog post applies to both C# and Objective-C, because it's more about a practical understanding of delegates than it is about code. When I was learning coding, I felt like delegates was one of the hardest things to conceptually understand, and a lot of books don't really do a good job (in my opinion) of explaining it. So here's my stab at it.A Real Life Example of DelegatesLet's say there are three of you. You, your friend, and your brother. You're each in a different room in your house so you can't hear each other, even if you shout. 1)You are playing a computer game2) Friend is building a puzzle3) Brother is nappingNow, you three are going to stay in your room but you want to be informed if anything interesting is happening to the one of you. Let's say you (playing the computer game) want to know when your brother wakes up.You could keep walking to the room, checking to see if he's napping, and then walking back to your room. But that would waste a lot of time / resources, and what if you miss when he's awake before he goes back to sleep? That would be bad.Instead, you hand him a 2-way radio that works between your room and his room. And you inform him that when he wakes up, he should press a button on the radio and say "I'm awake". You are going to be listening to that radio, waiting for him to say he's awake. This, in essence, is how a delegate works.You're creating an "object" (the radio) that allows you to listen in on an event you specify. You don't want him to send any other messages to you right now, except when he wakes up. And you want to know immediately when he does, so you can go over to his room and say hi. (the methods that are called when a delegate event fires). You're also currently specifying that only you are listening on his radio.Let's say you want your friend to come into the room at the same time as you, and do something else entirely, like fluff your brother's pillow. You will then give him an identical radio, that also hooks into your brother's radio, and inform him to wait and listen for the "i'm awake" signal.Then, when your brother wakes up, he says "I'm awake!" and both you and your friend walk into the room. You say hi, and your friend fluffs the pillow, then you both exit.Later, if you decide you don't care to say hi anymore, you turn off your radio. Now, you have no idea when your brother is awake or not, because you aren't listening anymore.So again, you are each classes in this example, and each of you have your own methods. You're playing a computer game (PlayComputerGame()), your friend is building a puzzle (BuildPuzzle()) and your brother is napping (Napping()). You create a delegate (ImAwake) that you set your brother to do, when he wakes up. You listen in on that delegate (giving yourself a radio and turning it on), and when you receive the message, you fire a new method called SayHi()). Your friend is also wired up to the same delegate (using an identical radio) and fires the method FluffPillow().Hopefully this makes sense, and helps shed some light on how delegates operate. Let me know! Feel free to drop me a line at Twitter (preferred method of contact) here: samerabousalbi

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• No access to Samba shares

  - by koanhead

  I have three shared folders in my local home directory- that is to say, on my Ubuntu desktop's /home/me/. All were set up using "Sharing Options" in Nautilus' right-click menu. The standard "Music" and "Videos" folders are configured identically: the "Guest Access" box is checked, but the "Allow others to create and delete" is not. The third folder, called "shared", is configured to not allow Guest access but to allow others to modify files. I have not altered /etc/samba/smb.conf by hand, I have only used Sharing Options to create and modify these so-called "shares". My roommates have two Windows 7 computers and one Ubuntu Netbook Remix netbook. I have the aforementioned desktop machine and laptop running 10.04. None of these machines can access any of the shares. Attempts to access the Guest shares result in the message \\machine\directory is not accessible. The network name could not be found. This is the error message generated by a VM running Windows 2000. The other Windows machines generate a similar error. The Ubuntu laptop gives the error Unable to mount location: Failed to mount Windows share. Hurrah, once again, for informative error messages. That really helps a lot. When attempting to browse the folder called "shared" from the laptop, I'm confronted with a password dialog. This behavior is the same will all machines I've tried in the situation. On entering my username and password for the account to which the shares belong, the password dialog briefly disappears and is replaced with an identical dialog. No error message, useful or not, appears. When attempting to browse this folder with the VM, the outcome is the same except that the password dialog helpfully states "incorrect username or password". My assumption is that the username and password in question is that of the user which owns the shares. I have tried all other username and password combinations available in this context and the outcome is the same. I would like to be able to share files. Sharing them with Windows machines is a nice feature, or would be if it was available. Really I consider sharing files between two machines with the same version of the same operating system kind of a minimum condition for network usability. Samba last functioned reliably for me more than ten years ago. I have attempted to use it on and off since then with only intermittent success. Oh, and "Personal File Sharing" from the Preferences menu does not result in an entry in Places → Network → my-server. In fact, the old entry "MY-SERVER" goes away and is replaced by "koanhead's public files on my-server", which when I attempt to open it from the laptop gives a "DBus.Error.NoReply: Message did not receive a reply." I know I come here and gripe about Ubuntu a lot, but on the other hand I spend literally hours every day trying to fix things in Ubuntu. It's a good system which aspires to greatness, which is why things like this either Need to work; or Be adequately documented. Ideally both would be the case. Anyway, rant over. Hopefully someone will have some insight on this issue. Thanks all who bother to read this wall o'text for your time.

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• C# Dev Challenge Part 1 of n &ndash; Beginner Edition

  - by mbcrump

  I developed this challenge to test one’s knowledge of C Sharp. I am planning on creating several challenges with different skill sets, so don’t get mad if this challenge doesn’t well challenge you... I noticed that most people like short quizzes so this one only contains 5 questions. All of the challenges are clear and concise of what I am asking you to do. No smoke and mirrors here, meaning that none of the code has syntax errors. The purpose of this exercise is to test several OOP concepts and see how much of the C# language you really know. Question #1 – Lets start off Easy… Will the following code snippet compile successfully? What does this question test? - Can this compile without a namespace? Do you have to have an entry point of “static void Main()”? class Test { static int Main() { System.Console.WriteLine("Developer Challenge"); return 0; } } Answer (select text in box below): Yes, it will compile successfully. Question #2 – What is the value of the Console.WriteLine statements? What does this question test? – Do I understand reference types/value types? If a variable is declared with the @ symbol and its not a reserved keyword does the application compile successfully? using System; internal struct MyStruct { public int Value; } internal class MyClass { public int Value; } class Test { static void Main() { MyStruct @struct1 = new MyStruct(); MyStruct @struct2 = @struct1; @struct2.Value = 100; MyClass @ref1 = new MyClass(); MyClass @ref2 = @ref1; @ref2.Value = 100; Console.WriteLine("Value Type: {0} {1}", @struct1.Value, @struct2.Value); Console.WriteLine("Reference Type: {0} {1}", @ref1.Value, @ref2.Value); } } Answer (select text in box below): Value Type: 0 100 Reference Type: 100 100 Question #3 – What is the value of the Console.WriteLine statements? What does this question test? – Can 2 objects reference the same point in memory? using System; class Test { static void Main() { string s1 = "Testing2"; string t1 = s1; Console.WriteLine(s1 == t1); Console.WriteLine((object)s1 == (object)t1); } } Answer (select text in box below): True True Question #4 – What is the value of the Console.WriteLine statements? What does this question test? – How does the “Stack” work – LIFO or FIFO?   using System; using System.Collections; class Test { static void Main() { Stack a = new Stack(5); a.Push("1"); a.Push("2"); a.Push("3"); a.Push("4"); a.Push("5"); foreach (var o in a) { Console.WriteLine(o); } } } Answer (select text in box below): 5 4 3 2 1 Question #5 – What is the value of the Console.WriteLine statements? What does this question test? – Array and General Looping Knowledge. using System; namespace ConsoleApplication5 { class Program { static void Main(string[] args) { int[] J_LIST = new int[5] { 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 }; int K = 10; int L = 5; foreach (var J in J_LIST) { K = K - J; L = K + 2 * J; Console.WriteLine("J = {0, 5} K = {1, 5} L = {2, 5}", J, K, L); } Console.ReadLine(); } } } Answer (select text in box below): J = 1 K = 9 L = 11 J = 2 K = 7 L = 11 J = 3 K = 4 L = 10 J = 4 K = 0 L = 8 J = 5 K = -5 L = 5 Stay Tuned for more challenges!

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• ADF page security - the untold password rule

  - by ankuchak

  I'm kinda new to Oracle ADF. So, in this blog post I'm going to share something with you that I faced (and recovered from) recently. Initially I thought if I should at all put a blog post on this, because it's totally simple. Still, simplicity is a relative term. So without wasting further time, let's kick off.    I was exploring the ADF security aspect to secure a page through html basic authentication. The idea is very simple and the credential store etc. come into picture. But I was not able to run a successful test of this phenomenally simple thing even after trying for over 30 minutes. This is what I did.   I created a simple jsf page and put a panel in it. And I put a simple el to show the current user name.  Next I created a user that I should test with. I named the password as myuser, just to keep it simple. Then I created an enterprise role and mapped the user that I just created. Then I created an application role and mapped the enterprise role to it. Then I mapped the resource, the simple jsf page in this case, to this application role. This way, only users with the given application role can only access this page (as if you didn't know this duh!).  Of course, I had to create the page definition for the page before I could map it to an application role. What else! done! Then I hit the run menu item and it all went well...   Until... I got this message. I put the correct credentials repeatedly 2-3 times. Still I got the same error. Why? I didn't get any error message during the deployment. nope.  Then, as I said before, I spent over 30 minutes trying different things out, things like mapping only the user(not the role) to the page, changing the context root etc. Nothing worked!  Then of course, I bothered to look at the logs and found this. See the first red line. That says it all. So the problem was with that password. The password must have at least one special character and one digit in it. I think I was misled by the missing password hint/rule and the fact that the deployment didn't fail even if the user was not created properly. Well, yes, I agree that I was fool enough not to look at the logs.  Later I changed the password to something like myuser123# . And it worked. I hope it helped.

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• How to introduce a computer illiterate 50-year old to programming [closed]

  - by sunday

  The other day my dad asked me a question that I would have never expected from him. "How can I learn C++?" My dad is turning 56 this year and computers are a distant concept for him. He doesn't know how to use a phone very well besides calling numbers (no speed dial or contacts); though he has started to learn computers a little better - to the point that he knows how to open the internet (in Windows) and browse around (and has successfully completed several job applications entirely on his own online, of which he was offered positions too). But still, these are too narrow-windowed experiences to mean much, really. While he may not have the background, my dad knows how to read. And I mean reading as a skill, not just an ability. He has little to no college education (financial problems, family, etc.) and was fortunate enough to finish high school, but still taught himself to become a master electrician and has been one for almost 30 years now. He did the same with guitar, learning to play at a very professional level and has been praised for his skill. In high school, he picked up a weight lifting book - and was the only person in his high school at the time to qualify officially as an "athlete" by national standards. In all cases, he just needed something to read. Something to teach him. He absorbs information like a sponge. I have no doubt in my dad's motivation or capability of doing this, so my general goal is simply: Get my dad into the world of computers, and get him on the road to programming. I strongly believe that once I get him through the fundamentals, his drive and reading skill will keep him going on this own. So I'm asking you all: where should I start with all this? And what are the best resources out there? Should I get him to start Linux instead of Windows? Is C++ a bad idea? Remember, he needs to (IMO) learn computers first, and then get that first grasp (the "Hello world" experience) of programming. For money's sake and at top preference, I'd like free online resources that he can read, but by all means any good suggestions in print or paid-for-online are welcome (that I could possibly look into later to purchase). And also, I intend to start him off with C++ (no Python, Java, etc.), because I know it the best and will be able to help him along the way with code. (I have minimal knowledge right now in other languages). Edit: I'm getting a lot of persistent suggestions to use Python. The only reason I wanted to do C++ is that I KNOW it and can be THERE when my dad needs help. My VERY FIRST exposure to programming ever was Java. I learned Java, and I got good at it. I open to other suggestions, but please provide an effective application of your suggestions. EDIT #2: I understand my approach/thinking/knowledge could be lacking here. I'm a sophomore level undergraduate CS major. If you don't agree with anything in my post, tell me why - give me ideas, information - that's why I'm asking in the first place. To narrow down my general goal to specific reachable goals.

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• No access to Samba shares

  - by koanhead

  I have three shared folders in my local home directory- that is to say, on my Ubuntu desktop's /home/me/. All were set up using "Sharing Options" in Nautilus' right-click menu. The standard "Music" and "Videos" folders are configured identically: the "Guest Access" box is checked, but the "Allow others to create and delete" is not. The third folder, called "shared", is configured to not allow Guest access but to allow others to modify files. I have not altered /etc/samba/smb.conf by hand, I have only used Sharing Options to create and modify these so-called "shares". My roommates have two Windows 7 computers and one Ubuntu Netbook Remix netbook. I have the aforementioned desktop machine and laptop running 10.04. None of these machines can access any of the shares. Attempts to access the Guest shares result in the message \\machine\directory is not accessible. The network name could not be found. This is the error message generated by a VM running Windows 2000. The other Windows machines generate a similar error. The Ubuntu laptop gives the error Unable to mount location: Failed to mount Windows share. Hurrah, once again, for informative error messages. That really helps a lot. When attempting to browse the folder called "shared" from the laptop, I'm confronted with a password dialog. This behavior is the same will all machines I've tried in the situation. On entering my username and password for the account to which the shares belong, the password dialog briefly disappears and is replaced with an identical dialog. No error message, useful or not, appears. When attempting to browse this folder with the VM, the outcome is the same except that the password dialog helpfully states "incorrect username or password". My assumption is that the username and password in question is that of the user which owns the shares. I have tried all other username and password combinations available in this context and the outcome is the same. I would like to be able to share files. Sharing them with Windows machines is a nice feature, or would be if it was available. Really I consider sharing files between two machines with the same version of the same operating system kind of a minimum condition for network usability. Samba last functioned reliably for me more than ten years ago. I have attempted to use it on and off since then with only intermittent success. Oh, and "Personal File Sharing" from the Preferences menu does not result in an entry in Places → Network → my-server. In fact, the old entry "MY-SERVER" goes away and is replaced by "koanhead's public files on my-server", which when I attempt to open it from the laptop gives a "DBus.Error.NoReply: Message did not receive a reply." I know I come here and gripe about Ubuntu a lot, but on the other hand I spend literally hours every day trying to fix things in Ubuntu. It's a good system which aspires to greatness, which is why things like this either Need to work; or Be adequately documented. Ideally both would be the case. Anyway, rant over. Hopefully someone will have some insight on this issue. Thanks all who bother to read this wall o'text for your time.

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• The long road to bug-free software

  - by Tony Davis

  The past decade has seen a burgeoning interest in functional programming languages such as Haskell or, in the Microsoft world, F#. Though still on the periphery of mainstream programming, functional programming concepts are gradually seeping into the imperative C# language (for example, Lambda expressions have their root in functional programming). One of the more interesting concepts from functional programming languages is the use of formal methods, the lofty ideal behind which is bug-free software. The idea is that we write a specification that describes exactly how our function (say) should behave. We then prove that our function conforms to it, and in doing so have proved beyond any doubt that it is free from bugs. All programmers already use one form of specification, specifically their programming language's type system. If a value has a specific type then, in a type-safe language, the compiler guarantees that value cannot be an instance of a different type. Many extensions to existing type systems, such as generics in Java and .NET, extend the range of programs that can be type-checked. Unfortunately, type systems can only prevent some bugs. To take a classic problem of retrieving an index value from an array, since the type system doesn't specify the length of the array, the compiler has no way of knowing that a request for the "value of index 4" from an array of only two elements is "unsafe". We restore safety via exception handling, but the ideal type system will prevent us from doing anything that is unsafe in the first place and this is where we start to borrow ideas from a language such as Haskell, with its concept of "dependent types". If the type of an array includes its length, we can ensure that any index accesses into the array are valid. The problem is that we now need to carry around the length of arrays and the values of indices throughout our code so that it can be type-checked. In general, writing the specification to prove a positive property, even for a problem very amenable to specification, such as a simple sorting algorithm, turns out to be very hard and the specification will be different for every program. Extend this to writing a specification for, say, Microsoft Word and we can see that the specification would end up being no simpler, and therefore no less buggy, than the implementation. Fortunately, it is easier to write a specification that proves that a program doesn't have certain, specific and undesirable properties, such as infinite loops or accesses to the wrong bit of memory. If we can write the specifications to prove that a program is immune to such problems, we could reuse them in many places. The problem is the lack of specification "provers" that can do this without a lot of manual intervention (i.e. hints from the programmer). All this might feel a very long way off, but computing power and our understanding of the theory of "provers" advances quickly, and Microsoft is doing some of it already. Via their Terminator research project they have started to prove that their device drivers will always terminate, and in so doing have suddenly eliminated a vast range of possible bugs. This is a huge step forward from saying, "we've tested it lots and it seems fine". What do you think? What might be good targets for specification and verification? SQL could be one: the cost of a bug in SQL Server is quite high given how many important systems rely on it, so there's a good incentive to eliminate bugs, even at high initial cost. [Many thanks to Mike Williamson for guidance and useful conversations during the writing of this piece] Cheers, Tony.

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• php script google maps points from mysql (google example)

  - by user1637477

  I have recently added style information to my maps script, and it stopped working. Have I done something wrong? Guess you can tell I'm very new to this. Any help appreciated. <!DOCTYPE html> <html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"><head> <meta http-equiv="content-type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8"><title>Google Maps AJAX + mySQL/PHP Example</title> <script src="http://maps.google.com/maps/api/js?sensor=false" type="text/javascript"></script> <script type="text/javascript"> //<![CDATA[ ( *******************I INSERTED HERE ) var styles = [ { stylers: [ { hue: "#00ffe6" }, { saturation: -20 } ] },{ featureType: "road", elementType: "geometry", stylers: [ { lightness: 100 }, { visibility: "simplified" } ] },{ featureType: "road", elementType: "labels", stylers: [ { visibility: "off" } ] } ];**( ******************************** THROUGH TO HERE ) map.setOptions({styles: styles}); var customIcons = { restaurant: { icon: 'http://labs.google.com/ridefinder/images/mm_20_blue.png', shadow: 'http://labs.google.com/ridefinder/images/mm_20_shadow.png' }, bar: { icon: 'http://labs.google.com/ridefinder/images/mm_20_red.png', shadow: 'http://labs.google.com/ridefinder/images/mm_20_shadow.png' } }; function load() { var map = new google.maps.Map(document.getElementById("map"), { center: new google.maps.LatLng(-37.7735, 175.1418), zoom: 10, mapTypeId: 'roadmap' }); var infoWindow = new google.maps.InfoWindow; // Change this depending on the name of your PHP fileBHBHBHBHBHBHBHBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBB downloadUrl("mywebsite-no i did this just a minute ago", function(data) { var xml = data.responseXML; var markers = xml.documentElement.getElementsByTagName("marker"); for (var i = 0; i < markers.length; i++) { var name = markers[i].getAttribute("name"); var address = markers[i].getAttribute("address"); var type = markers[i].getAttribute("type"); var point = new google.maps.LatLng( parseFloat(markers[i].getAttribute("lat")), parseFloat(markers[i].getAttribute("lng"))); var html = "<b>" + name + "</b> <br/>" + address; var icon = customIcons[type] || {}; var marker = new google.maps.Marker({ map: map, position: point, icon: icon.icon, shadow: icon.shadow }); bindInfoWindow(marker, map, infoWindow, html); } }); } function bindInfoWindow(marker, map, infoWindow, html) { google.maps.event.addListener(marker, 'click', function() { infoWindow.setContent(html); infoWindow.open(map, marker); }); } function downloadUrl(url, callback) { var request = window.ActiveXObject ? new ActiveXObject('Microsoft.XMLHTTP') : new XMLHttpRequest; request.onreadystatechange = function() { if (request.readyState == 4) { request.onreadystatechange = doNothing; callback(request, request.status); } }; request.open('GET', url, true); request.send(null); } function doNothing() {} //]]> </script><!--Adobe Edge Runtime--> <script type="text/javascript" charset="utf-8" src="map500x1000_edgePreload.js"></script> <style> .edgeLoad-EDGE-12956064 { visibility:hidden; } </style> <!--Adobe Edge Runtime End--> </head> <body onload="load()"> <div id="map" style="width: 1000px; height: 1000px;" class="edgeLoad-EDGE-12956064"></div> </body></html>

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• Javascript Inheritance Part 2

  - by PhubarBaz

  A while back I wrote about Javascript inheritance, trying to figure out the best and easiest way to do it (http://geekswithblogs.net/PhubarBaz/archive/2010/07/08/javascript-inheritance.aspx). That was 2 years ago and I've learned a lot since then. But only recently have I decided to just leave classical inheritance behind and embrace prototypal inheritance. For most of us, we were trained in classical inheritance, using class hierarchies in a typed language. Unfortunately Javascript doesn't follow that model. It is both classless and typeless, which is hard to fathom for someone who's been using classes the last 20 years. For the last two or three years since I've got into Javascript I've been trying to find the best way to force it into the class model without much success. It's clunky and verbose and hard to understand. I think my biggest problem was that it felt so wrong to add or change object members at run time. Every time I did it I felt like I needed a shower. That's the 20 years of classical inheritance in me. Finally I decided to embrace change and do something different. I decided to use the factory pattern to build objects instead of trying to use inheritance. Javascript was made for the factory pattern because of the way you can construct objects at runtime. In the factory pattern you have a factory function that you call and tell it to give you a certain type of object back. The factory function takes care of constructing the object to your specification. Here's an example. Say we want to have some shape objects and they have common attributes like id and area that we want to depend on in other parts of your application. So first thing to do is create a factory object and give it a factory method to create an abstract shape object. The factory method builds the object then returns it. var shapeFactory = { getShape: function(id){ var shape = { id: id, area: function() { throw "Not implemented"; } }; return shape; }}; Now we can add another factory method to get a rectangle. It calls the getShape() method first and then adds an implementation to it. getRectangle: function(id, width, height){ var rect = this.getShape(id); rect.width = width; rect.height = height; rect.area = function() { return this.width * this.height; }; return rect;} That's pretty simple right? No worrying about hooking up prototypes and calling base constructors or any of that crap I used to do. Now let's create a factory method to get a cuboid (rectangular cube). The cuboid object will extend the rectangle object. To get the area we will call into the base object's area method and then multiply that by the depth. getCuboid: function(id, width, height, depth){ var cuboid = this.getRectangle(id, width, height); cuboid.depth = depth; var baseArea = cuboid.area; cuboid.area = function() { var a = baseArea.call(this); return a * this.depth; } return cuboid;} See how we called the area method in the base object? First we save it off in a variable then we implement our own area method and use call() to call the base function. For me this is a lot cleaner and easier than trying to emulate class hierarchies in Javascript.

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• How do you go from a so so programmer to a great one? [closed]

  - by Cervo

  How do you go from being an okay programmer to being able to write maintainable clean code? For example David Hansson was writing Basecamp when in the process he created Rails as part of writing Basecamp in a clean/maintainable way. But how do you know when there is value in a side project like that? I have a bachelors in computer science, and I am about to get a masters and I will say that colleges teach you to write code to solve problems, not neatly or anything. Basically you think of a problem, come up with a solution, and write it down...not necessarily the most maintainable way in the world. Also my first job was in a startup, and now my third is in a small team in a large company where the attitude was/is get it done yesterday (also most of my jobs are mainly database development with SQL with a few ASP.NET web pages/.NET apps on the side). So of course cut/paste is more favored than making things more cleanly. And they would rather have something yesterday even if you have to rewrite it next month rather than to have something in a week that lasts for a year. Also spaghetti code turns up all over the place, and it takes very smart people to write/understand/maintain spaghetti code...However it would be better to do things so simple/clean that even a caveman/woman could do maintenance. Also I get very bored/unmotivated having to go modify the same things cut/pasted in a few locations. Is this the type of skill that you need to learn by working with a serious software organization that has an emphasis on maintenance and maybe even an architect who designs a system architecture and reviews code? Could you really learn it by volunteering on an open source project (it seems to me that a full time programmer job is way more practice than a few hours a week on an open source project)? Is there some course where you can learn this? I can attest that graduate school and undergraduate school do not really emphasize clean software at all. They just teach the structures/algorithms and then send you off into the world to solve problems. Overall I think the first thing is learning to write clean/maintainable code within the bounds of the project in order to become a good programmer. Then the next thing is learning when you need to do a side project (like a framework) to make things more maintainable/clean even while you still deliver things for the deadline in order to become a great programmer. For example, you are making an SQL report and someone gives you 100 calculations for individual columns. At what point does it make sense to construct a domain specific language to encode the rules in simply and then generate all the SQL as opposed to cut/pasting the query from the table a bunch of times and then adjusting each query to do the appropriate calculations. This is the type of thing I would say a great programmer would know. He/she would maybe even know ways to avoid the domain specific language and to still do all the calculations without creating an unmaintainable mess or a ton of repetitive code to cut/paste everywhere.

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• Create Custom Speech Bubbles in Silverlight.

  - by mbcrump

  I had a reader email me the following question: “How do you create Speech Bubbles in Silverlight/WPF without adding any extra .dlls? Right off the bat, I know at least two ways to create the speech bubbles that look just like the ones in comic books. Using the Callout Shapes included with Blend 4. Using the free 3rd party control named FreeBubbles (I used this before Blend 4). Unfortunately, we cannot use either of these as they will both add extra .dll’s to the project. So why wouldn’t you want to use one of those? I can think of a few reasons: You do not want to increase the size of your .XAP by including extra .dll’s. You do not have Expression Blend or the license to the use the .dll’s. You want a custom Speech Bubble that is not included in the four “Callout” Controls with Blend. Instead of using one of these methods, we will create a Speech Bubble in Blend 4 using Path element and a TextBlock. Before we get started, lets look at the Callout Shapes included with Blend 4. Using Blend 4 you can simply drag/drop these controls onto your Silverlight application and you are ready to go. We can create all of these Speech Bubbles and even some of the modern bubbles used in recent comic books. Lets get started. Start up Expression Blend 4 and select the Pen Tool. On the Art Board, start connecting the dots like I did below. You can add a color if you wish. …keep going …complete Let’s go ahead and add some text to the Speech Bubble. Drag a TextBlock from the Panel and put it directly inside the Speech Bubble. Go ahead and set the TextAlignment to Center for the TextBlock. and give it some text. At this point, you could go ahead and create a user control if you want to reuse the Speech Bubble you created. Select both the Path and the TextBlock by clicking then while holding down CTRL and then Right Click them. Select Make Into User Control. Give it a name and then Build your project. Lets create another one using the Ellipse for the older comic book style of Speech Bubbles. Drag an Ellipse to the Artboard and give it a color. Now, grab the Pen and drag a triangle like I did below. Simply drag it over a corner of the Ellipse. Select Combine then Unite and you will have a Path. At this point, you can go ahead and add a TextBlock like we did earlier. Lets go ahead and create a rounded rectangle one by adding a Rectangle to the Artboard. Go ahead and set the RadiuX and RadiusY to 25 to give it rounded edges. Let’s create another path and drag it right on top of our rounded rectangle like we did earlier. …looking good Select Combine then Unite and you will have a Path. At this point, you can go ahead and add a TextBlock like we did earlier. So let’s look at what we’ve created today using the path element and TextBlock. As you can tell, it required more work but meets the requirements. This was actually fun to do and I encourage anyone that visits my blog to send in request like this.  Subscribe to my feed

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• Hosted Monitoring

  - by Grant Fritchey

  The concept of using services to take the place of writing a lot of your own code goes way, way back in computing history. The fundamentals of the concept go back to the dawn of computing with places like IBM hosting time-shares for computing power that you could rent for short periods of time. But things really took off with the building of the Web. Now, all the growth with virtual machines, hosted machines, hosted services from vendors like Amazon and Microsoft, the need to keep all of your software locally on physical boxes is just going the way of the dodo. There will likely always be some pieces of software that you keep on machines on your property or on your person, but the concept of keeping fundamental services locally is going away. As someone put it to me once, if you were starting a business right now, would you bother setting up an Exchange server to manage your email or would you just go to one of the external mail services for everything? For most of us (who are not Exchange admins) the answer is pretty easy. With all this momentum to having external services manage more and more of the infrastructure that’s not business unique, why would you burn up a server and license instance setting up monitoring for your SQL Servers? Of course, some of you are dealing with hyper-sensitive data that might require, through law or treaty, that you lock it down and never expose it to the intertubes, but most of us are not. So, what if someone else took on the basic hassle of setting up monitoring on your systems? That’s what we’re working on here at Red Gate. Right now it’s a private test, but we’re growing it and developing it and it’ll be going to a public beta, probably (hopefully) this year. I’m running it on my machines right now. The concept is pretty simple. You put a relay on your server, poke a hole in your firewall for it, and we start monitoring your server using SQL Monitor. It’s actually shocking how easy it is to get going. You still have to adjust your alerting thresholds, but that’s a standard part of alerting. Your pain threshold and my pain threshold for any given alert may be different. But from there, we do all the heavy lifting, keeping your data online and available, providing you with access to the information about how your servers are behaving, everything. Maybe it’s just me, but I’m really excited by this. I think we’re getting to a place where we can really help the small and medium sized businesses get a monitoring solution in place, quickly and easily. All you crazy busy, and possibly accidental, DBAs and system admins finally can set up monitoring without taking all the time to configure systems, run installs, and all the rest. You just have to tweak your alerts and you’re ready to run. If you are interested in checking it out, you can apply for the closed beta through the Monitor web page.

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• The new direction of the gaming industry

  - by raccoon_tim

  Just recently I read a great blog post by David Darling, the founder of Codemasters: http://www.develop-online.net/blog/347/Jurassic-consoles-could-become-extinct. In the blog post he talks about how traditional retail games are experiencing a downfall thanks to the increasing popularity of digital distribution. I personally think of retail games as being relics of the past. It does not really make much sense to still keep distributing boxed games when the same game can be elegantly downloaded and updated over the air through a digital distribution channel. The world is not all rainbows, however. One big issue with mixing digital distribution with boxed retail games is that resellers will not condone you selling your game for 10€ digitally while their selling the same game for 70€. The only way to get around this issue is to move to full digital distribution. This has the added benefit of minimizing piracy as the game can be tightly bound to the service you downloaded the game from. Many players are, however, complaining about not being able to play the games offline. Having games tightly bound to the internet is a problem when games are bought from a retailer as we tend to expect that once we have the product we can use it anywhere because we physically own it. The truth is that we don’t actually own the product. Instead, the typical EULA actually states that we only have a license to use the product. We’re not, for instance, allowed to disassemble the product, which the owner is indeed permitted to do. Digital distribution allows us to provide games as services, instead of selling them as standalone products. This means that for a service to work you have to be connected to the internet but you still have the same rights to use the product. It’s really straightforward; if you downloaded a client from the internet you are expected to have an internet connection so you’re able to connect to the server. A game distributed digitally that is built using a client-server architecture has the added benefit of allowing you to play anywhere as long as you have the client installed and you are able to log in with your user information. Your save games can be backed up and your game can continue anywhere. Another development we’re seeing in the gaming industry is the increasing popularity of free-to-play games. These are games that let you play for free but allow you to boost your gaming experience with real world money. The nature of these games is that players are constantly rewarded with new content and the game can evolve according to their way of playing and their wishes can be incorporated into the product. Free-to-play games can quickly gain a large player basis and monetization is done by providing players valuable things to buy making their gaming experience more fun. I am personally very excited about free-to-play games as it’s possible to start building the game together with your players and there is no need to work on the game for 5 years from start to finish and only then see if it’s actually something the players like. This is a typical problem with big movie-like retail games and recent news about Radical Entertainment practically closing its doors paints a clear picture of what can happen when the risk does not pay off: http://news.teamxbox.com/xbox/25874/Prototype-Developer-Radical-Entertainment-Closes/.

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• Is changing my job now a wise decision? [closed]

  - by FlaminPhoenix

  First a little background about myself. I am a javascript programmer with 3.8 years of experience. I joined my current company a year and 3 months ago, and I was recruited as a javascript programmer. I was under the impression I was a programmer in a programming team but this was not the case. No one else except me and my manager knows anything about programming in my team. The other two teammates, copy paste stuff from websites into excel sheets. I was told I was being recruited for a new project, and it was true. The only problem was that the server side language they were using was PHP. They were using a popular library with PHP, and I had never worked with PHP before. Nevertheless, I learnt it well enough to get things working, and received high praise from my boss's boss on whichever project I worked on. Words like "wow" , "This looks great, the clients gonna be impressed with this." were sprinkled every now and then on reviewing my work. They even managed to sell my work to a couple of clients and as I understand, both of my projects are going to fetch them a pretty buck. The problem: I was asked to move into a project which my manager was handling. I asked them for training on the project which never came, and sure enough I couldnt complete my first task on the new project without shortcomings. I told my manager there were things I didnt know how to get done in the new project due to lack of training. His project had 0 documentation. I was told he would "take care" of everything relating to those shortcomings. In the meantime, I was asked to switch to another project. My manager made the necessary changes and later told me that the build had "broken" on the production server and that I needed to "test" my changes before saying things were done. I never deployed it on the production server. He did. I never saw / had the opportunity to see the final build before it went to production. He called me for a separate meeting and started pointing fingers at me, but I took full responsibility even if I didnt have to. He later on got on a call with his boss, in my presence, and gave him the impression that it was all my fault. I did not confront him about this so far. I have worked late / done overtime without them asking a lot, but last week, I just got home from work, and I got calls asking me to solve an issue which till then they had kept quiet about even though they were informed about it. I asked my manager why I hadnt been tasked with this when I was in office. He started telling me which statements to put where, as if to mock me, and that this "is hardly an overtime issue" and this pissed me off. Also, during the previous meeting, he was constantly talking highly about his work, at the same time trying to demean mine. In the meantime, I have attended an interview with another MNC, and the interviewers there were fully respectful of my decision to leave my current company. Its a software company, so I can expect my colleagues to know a lot more than me. Im told I can expect their offer anytime this week. My questions: Is my anger towards my manager justified? While leaving, do I tell him that its because of his actions that Im leaving? Do I erupt in anger and tell him that he shouldnt have put the blame on me since he was the one doing the deployment? This is going to be my second resignation to this company. The first time I wanted to resign, I was asked to stay back and my manager promised a lot of changes, a couple of which were made. How do I keep myself from getting into such situations with my employers in the future?

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• Apache2 configuration error: "<VirtualHost> was not closed" error

  - by Chris

  So I've already checked through my config file and I really can't see an instance where any tag hasn't been properly closed...but I keep getting this configuration error...Would you mind taking a look through the error and the config file below? Any assistance would be greatly appreciated. FYI, I've already googled the life out of the error and looked through the log extensively, I really can't find anything. Error: apache2: Syntax error on line 236 of /etc/apache2/apache2.conf: syntax error on line 1 of /etc/apache2/sites-enabled/000-default: /etc/apache2/sites-enabled/000-default:1: was not closed. Line 236 of apache2.conf: # Include the virtual host configurations: Include /etc/apache2/sites-enabled/ Contents of 000-default: <VirtualHost *:80> ServerAdmin webmaster@localhost DocumentRoot /var/www <Directory /> Options FollowSymLinks AllowOverride None </Directory> <Directory /var/www/> Options Indexes FollowSymLinks MultiViews AllowOverride None Order allow,deny allow from all </Directory> ScriptAlias /cgi-bin/ /usr/lib/cgi-bin/ <Directory "/usr/lib/cgi-bin"> AllowOverride None Options +ExecCGI -MultiViews +SymLinksIfOwnerMatch Order allow,deny Allow from all </Directory> ErrorLog /var/log/apache2/error.log # Possible values include: debug, info, notice, warn, error, crit, # alert, emerg. LogLevel warn CustomLog /var/log/apache2/access.log combined Alias /doc/ "/usr/share/doc/" <Directory "/usr/share/doc/"> Options Indexes MultiViews FollowSymLinks AllowOverride None Order deny,allow Deny from all Allow from 127.0.0.0/255.0.0.0 ::1/128 </Directory> </VirtualHost> <VirtualHost *:443> SetEnvIf Request_URI "^/u" dontlog ErrorLog /var/log/apache2/error.log Loglevel warn SSLEngine On SSLCertificateFile /etc/apache2/ssl/apache.pem ProxyRequests Off <Proxy *> AuthUserFile /srv/ajaxterm/.htpasswd AuthName EnterPassword AuthType Basic require valid-user Order Deny,allow Allow from all </Proxy> ProxyPass / http://localhost:8022/ ProxyPassReverse / http://localhost:8022/ </VirtualHost> UPDATE I had a load of other issues with my install so I wound up just wiping it and reinstalling. If I run into the same problem, I'll repost. Everyone, thanks for your help/suggestions.

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• "The system time has changed" events after waking from sleep

  - by Damir Arh

  Sometimes when my computer running Windows 7 wakes up from sleep, it has to adjust the time. When this happens the following system event is logged: <Event xmlns='http://schemas.microsoft.com/win/2004/08/events/event'> <System> <Provider Name='Microsoft-Windows-Kernel-General' Guid='{A68CA8B7-004F-D7B6-A698-07E2DE0F1F5D}'/> <EventID>1</EventID> <Version>0</Version> <Level>4</Level> <Task>0</Task> <Opcode>0</Opcode> <Keywords>0x8000000000000010</Keywords> <TimeCreated SystemTime='2010-03-06T19:09:57.500000000Z'/> <EventRecordID>10672</EventRecordID> <Correlation/> <Execution ProcessID='4' ThreadID='56'/> <Channel>System</Channel> <Computer>GAME</Computer> <Security/> </System> <EventData> <Data Name='NewTime'>2010-03-06T19:09:57.500000000Z</Data> <Data Name='OldTime'>2010-03-06T17:34:32.870117200Z</Data> </EventData> <RenderingInfo Culture='sl-SI'> <Message>The system time has changed to ?2010?-?03?-?06T19:09:57.500000000Z from ?2010?-?03?-?06T17:34:32.870117200Z.</Message> <Level>Information</Level> <Task></Task> <Opcode>Info</Opcode> <Channel>System</Channel> <Provider>Microsoft-Windows-Kernel-General</Provider> <Keywords> <Keyword>Time</Keyword> </Keywords> </RenderingInfo> </Event> When this happens (I noticed it twice until now) the old time always corresponds to the time when computer entered sleep. The problem is that if Windows Media Center is scheduled for recording during this time, it just skips it as if the computer was turned off. I never had this problem running Windows Vista on the same machine. Any ideas what could be causing this problem and how to solve it are welcome.

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• Windows Server 2003 Terminal Server does not give out all available licenses

  - by Erwin Blonk

  I installed the Terminal Server role in Windows Server 2003 Standard 64-bits. Still, only 2 connections are allowed. The License Manager says that there are 10 Device CALs available, which is correct, and that none are given out. For good measure I let the server reboot, to no effect. Before this, there was another server (same Windows, except that it is 32 bits) active as a licensing server. I removed the role first and then then added it to the new server. I then removed the Terminal Server Licensing Server component off the old one and added it to the new one. After that, I added to licenses. When that didn't give the required result, I rebooted to new server. Still, the new server, with licenses and all, acts as if it has the 2 license RDP. The server are all stand-alone, there is no active directory been set up. Both servers are in different workgroups. Update (4/12/10): The server has changed the entries in the Terminal Server Licensing a few times. After installing the licenses it added an entry of which the exact phrasing I forgot but it was about temporary Windows 2003 device licenses. Later it added Windows Server 2003 - TS Per Device CAL. The temporary held 2 licenses (standard RDP licenses, I think) and the other 10. At some point, seemingly unrelated from the testing we did, it used a licenses from the new pool. This morning, 2 licenses were used from the pool of 10 and only 1 from the temporary/RDP pool (I wish I had screenshots to show, it changed every few hours oir so it seems). Although I had already activated the server over the internet, and re-activated it, I decided to go through the whole procedure by phone. Long story short, here is what it says now: Existing Windows 2000 Server, type:built-in [no licenses used, I add for for sake of being complete] Windows Server 2003 - Terminal Server Per Device CAL Token, type:open [none of 10 used] Windows Server 2003 - TS Per Device CAL, type:open [3 of 10 used] As I tried to explain, this is the end result after a few changes, most of which I can't directly connect to any action from my part. Only going to the activation procedure by phone seemed to directly effect the TS, resulting in the above configuration. Still, it is impossible to connect with more than 3 people, which is 1 up from the 2 that could connect yesterday. TS does say 7 licenses are avaible. Yet it won't give them out.

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• Using Supermicro IPMI behind a Proxy?

  - by Stefan Lasiewski

  This is a SuperMicro server with a X8DT3 motherboard which contains an On-board IPMI BMC. In this case, the BMC is a Winbond WPCM450). I believe many Dell servers use this a similar BMC model. A common practice with IPMI is to isolated it to a private, non-routable network. In our case all IPMI cards are plugged into a private management LAN at 192.168.1.0/24 which has no route to the outside world. If I plug my laptop into the 192.168.1.0/24 network, I can verify that all IPMI features work as expected, including the remote console. I need to access all of the IPMI features from a different network, over some sort of encrypted connection. I tried SSH port forwarding. This works fine for a few servers, however, we have close to 100 of these servers and maintaining a SSH client configuration to forward 6 ports on 100 servers is impractical. So I thought I would try a SOCKS proxy. This works, but it seems that the Remote Console application does not obey my systemwide proxy settings. I setup a SOCKS proxy. Verbose logging allows me to see network activity, and if ports are being forwarded. ssh -v -D 3333 [email protected] I configure my system to use the SOCKS proxy. I confirm that Java is using the SOCKS proxy settings. The SOCKS proxy is working. I connect to the BMC at http://192.168.1.100/ using my webbrowser. I can log in, view the Server Health, power the machine on or off, etc. Since SSH verbose logging is enabled, I can see the progress. Here's where it get's tricky: I click on the "Launch Console" button which downloads a file called jviewer.jnlp. JNLP files are opened with Java Web Start. A Java window opens. The titlebar says says "Redirection Viewer" in the title bar. There are menus for "Video" "Keyboard" "Mouse", etc. This confirms that Java is able to download the application through the proxy, and start the application. 60 seconds later, the application times out and simply says "Error opening video socket". Here's a screenshot. If this worked, I would see a VNC-style window. My SSH logs show no connection attempts to ports 5900/5901. This suggests that the Java application started the VNC application, but that the VNC application ignores the systemwide proxy settings and is thus unable to connect to the remote host. Java seems to obey my systemwide proxy settings, but this VNC application seems to ignore it. Is there any way for me to force this VNC application to use my systemwide proxy settings?

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• Internet Explorer keeps asking for NTLM credentials in Intranet zone

  - by Tomalak

  Long text, sorry for that. I'm trying to be as specific as possible. I'm on Windows 7 and I experience a very frustrating Internet Explorer 8 behavior. I'm in a company LAN with some intranet servers and a proxy for connecting with the outside world. On sites that are clearly recognized as being "Local Intranet" (as indicated in the IE status bar) I keep getting "Windows Security" dialog boxes that ask me to log in. These pages are served off an IIS6 with "Integrated Windows Security" enabled, NTFS permits Everyone:Read on the files themselves. If I enter my Windows credentials, the page loads fine. However, the dialog boxes will be popping up the next time, regardless if I ticked "Remember my credentials" or not. (Credentials are stored in the "Credential Manager" but that does not make any difference as to how often these login boxes appear.) If I click "Cancel", one of two things can happen: Either the page loads with certain resources missing (images, styleheets, etc), or it does not load at all and I get HTTP 401.2 (Unauthorized: Logon Failed Due to Server Configuration). This depends on whether the logon box was triggered by the page itself, or a referenced resource. The behavior appears to be completely erratic, sometimes the pages load smoothly, sometimes one resource triggers a logon message, sometimes it does not. Even simply re-loading the page can result in changed behavior. I'm using WPAD as my proxy detection mechanism. All Intranet hosts do bypass the proxy in the PAC file. I've checked every IE setting I can think of, entered host patterns, individual host names, IP ranges in every thinkable configuration to the "Local Intranet" zone, ticked "Include all sites that bypass the proxy server", you name it. It boils down to "sometimes it just does not work", and slowly I'm losing my mind. ;-) I'm aware that this is related to IE not automatically passing my NTLM credentials to the webserver but asking me instead. Usually this should only happen for NTLM-secured sites that are not recognized as being in the "Intranet" zone. As explained, this is not the case here. Especially since half of a page can load perfectly and without interruption and some page's resources (coming from the same server!) trigger the login message. I've looked at http://support.microsoft.com/kb/303650, which gives the impression of describing the problem, but nothing there seems to work. And frankly, I'm not certain if "manually editing the registry" is the right solution for this kind of problem. I'm not the only person in the world with an IE/intranet/IIS configuration, after all. I'm at a loss, can somebody give me a hint?

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• Windows Server 2003 Terminal Server does not give out all available licenses (solved)

  - by Erwin Blonk

  I installed the Terminal Server role in Windows Server 2003 Standard 64-bits. Still, only 2 connections are allowed. The License Manager says that there are 10 Device CALs available, which is correct, and that none are given out. For good measure I let the server reboot, to no effect. Before this, there was another server (same Windows, except that it is 32 bits) active as a licensing server. I removed the role first and then then added it to the new server. I then removed the Terminal Server Licensing Server component off the old one and added it to the new one. After that, I added to licenses. When that didn't give the required result, I rebooted to new server. Still, the new server, with licenses and all, acts as if it has the 2 license RDP. The server are all stand-alone, there is no active directory been set up. Both servers are in different workgroups. Update (4/12/10): The server has changed the entries in the Terminal Server Licensing a few times. After installing the licenses it added an entry of which the exact phrasing I forgot but it was about temporary Windows 2003 device licenses. Later it added Windows Server 2003 - TS Per Device CAL. The temporary held 2 licenses (standard RDP licenses, I think) and the other 10. At some point, seemingly unrelated from the testing we did, it used a licenses from the new pool. This morning, 2 licenses were used from the pool of 10 and only 1 from the temporary/RDP pool (I wish I had screenshots to show, it changed every few hours oir so it seems). Although I had already activated the server over the internet, and re-activated it, I decided to go through the whole procedure by phone. Update 2 (4/12/10) The problem has been solved. It seems the activation over the web, while it said to have succeeded, did not work correctly. After activating by phone, it did work. What was different from the old setup and what put me on the wrong foot from that moment, was that I now need to create seperate user account because a session with one user account will be taken over by someone else when that account is used by that person. On the previous server, it was possible to open several sesions with the same account. We now use Per Device licenses, I'm not sure what was used before. Thanks all for the replies.

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• pxe boot fails with message: no DEFAULT or UI configuration directive found

  - by spockaroo

  I am trying to pxe-boot a machine (client), and in the process I am trying to setup a tftp server that this machine can boot off. On the server, which runs Ubuntu 10.10, I have setup dhcp, dns, nfs, and tftp-hpa servers. All the servers/deamons start fine. I tested the tftp server by using a tftp client and downloading a file that the server directory hosts. My /etc/xinet.d/tftp looks like this service tftp { disable = no socket_type = dgram wait = yes user = nobody server = /usr/sbin/in.tftpd server_args = -v -s /var/lib/tftpboot only_from = 10.1.0.0/24 interface = 10.1.0.1 } My /etc/default/tftpd-hpa looks like this RUN_DAEMON="yes" OPTIONS="-l -s /var/lib/tftpboot" TFTP_USERNAME="tftp" TFTP_DIRECTORY="/var/lib/tftpboot" TFTP_ADDRESS="0.0.0.0:69" TFTP_OPTIONS="--secure" My /var/lib/tftpboot/ directory looks like this initrd.img-2.6.35-25-generic-pae vmlinuz-2.6.35-25-generic-pae pxelinux.0 pxelinux.cfg -- default I did sudo chmod 644 /var/lib/tftpboot/pxelinux.cfg/default chmod 755 /var/lib/tftpboot/initrd.img-2.6.35-25-generic-pae chmod 755 /var/lib/tftpboot/vmlinuz-2.6.35-25-generic-pae /var/lib/tftpboot/pxelinux.cfg has the following contents SERIAL 0 19200 0 LABEL linux KERNEL vmlinuz-2.6.35-25-generic-pae APPEND root=/dev/nfs initrd=initrd.img-2.6.35-25-generic-pae nfsroot=10.1.0.1:/nfsroot ip=dhcp console=ttyS0,19200n8 rw I copied /var/lib/tftpboot/pxelinux.0 from /usr/lib/syslinux/ after installing the package syslinux-common. Also just for completeness, /etc/dhcp3/dhcpd.conf the following lines (relevant to this interface) subnet 10.1.0.0 netmask 255.255.255.0 { range 10.1.0.100 10.1.0.240; option routers 10.1.0.1; option broadcast-address 10.1.0.255; option domain-name-servers 10.1.0.1; filename "pxelinux.0"; } When I boot the client machine, and watch the output over the serial port, I notice that the client requests an ip address from the server and gets it. Then I see TFTP being displayed - indicating that it is trying to connect to the TFTP server. This succeeds, and I see TFTP.|, which return immediately displaying the following message PXELINUX 4.01 debian-20100714 Copyright (C) 1994-2010 H. Peter Anvin et al No DEFAULT or UI configuration directive found! boot: /var/log/syslog shows Feb 20 15:24:05 ch in.tftpd[2821]: tftp: client does not accept options What option is it talking about in the syslog? I assume it is referring to OPTIONS or TFTP_OPTIONS, but what am I doing wrong?

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• PostgreSQL service doesn't start on Windows 7

  - by Mehrdad

  (Not sure if this should be on Stack Overflow or Super User... please move if needed.) When I start the PostgreSQL service on Windows 7 x64, it immediately stops. When I check my log folder (C:\PostgreSQL\9.1\data\pg_log\), I see new but empty log files. The Event Viewer doesn't tell me anything other than the fact that the server did not respond. I've even tried turning off my firewall (I don't have any antivirus or anything else), but nothing helps. The setup works fine when I'm on Windows XP (32-bit) (same computer, different partition). I can't figure out what's wrong, even though I've tried tracing the system calls. Is PostgreSQL compatible with Windows 7 x64 at all? Any ideas what the issue might be? More info: This problem also happens at the end of installation -- the service starts, then stops immediately, before the installer can do anything. Installation log: Starting the database server... Executing cscript //NoLogo "C:\Program Files\PostgreSQL\9.1\installer\server\startserver.vbs" postgresql-x64-9.1 Script exit code: 0 Script output: Starting postgresql-x64-9.1 Service postgresql-x64-9.1 started successfully // <==== NOT REALLY!! It stops! startserver.vbs ran to completion Script stderr: Loading additional SQL modules... Executing cscript //NoLogo "C:\Program Files\PostgreSQL\9.1\installer\server\loadmodules.vbs" "postgres" "****" "C:\Program Files\PostgreSQL\9.1" "C:\Program Files\PostgreSQL\9.1\data" 5432 Script exit code: 2 Script output: Installing the adminpack module in the postgres database... Executing 'C:\Users\HOMEUS~1\AppData\Local\Temp\rad6C20D.bat'... psql: could not connect to server: Connection refused (0x0000274D/10061) Is the server running on host "localhost" (::1) and accepting TCP/IP connections on port 5432? could not connect to server: Connection refused (0x0000274D/10061) Is the server running on host "localhost" (127.0.0.1) and accepting TCP/IP connections on port 5432? Failed to install the 'adminpack' module in the 'postgres' database loadmodules.vbs ran to completion Script stderr: Program ended with an error exit code Error running cscript //NoLogo "C:\Program Files\PostgreSQL\9.1\installer\server\loadmodules.vbs" "postgres" "****" "C:\Program Files\PostgreSQL\9.1" "C:\Program Files\PostgreSQL\9.1\data" 5432 : Program ended with an error exit code

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