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  • Meet Peter, 80 years old today

    - by AdamRG
    You have to arrive at the office early in the morning to meet Peter. He arrives at 5am and by 8:30am he's gone. Peter has been a cleaner here for several years. He is 80 years old today. Peter was born only a couple of km from our office in Cambridge, England and was for many years an Engineer for Pye Electronics. I'm lucky enough to arrive in the office early enough to catch Peter, dressed smarter than most of us in shirt and tie, and he tells stories of how Cambridge was years ago. He says the site of our office is on land between what would have been a prisoner of war camp (camp 1025), and a few hundred metres North, a camp of American allies. In February 1944, Peter was 13 years old. One night, a Dornier Do 217 heavy bomber heading towards London was hit by anti-aircraft fire and the crew of four parachuted from the plane. The plane however, continued on autopilot for over 50km. Gradually dropping lower and lower, narrowly missing the spires of Cambridge, it eventually came to land, largely intact, in allotment gardens by Peter's house near Milton Road. He told me that he was quick to the scene, along with some other young lads, and grabbed parts of the plane as souvenirs. It's one of many tales that Peter recounts, but I happened to discover a chapter about this particular plane crash in a history book called the War Torn Skies of Great Britain by Julian Evan-Hart. It reads: 'It slid to a halt in the allotment gardens of Milton Road. The cockpit ended up crumpled against a wooden fence and several incendiary bombs that had broken loose from their containers in the ruptured bomb bay were strewn over the ground behind the Dornier.' I smiled when I read the following line: 'Many residents came to see the Dornier in the allotments. Several lads made off with souvenirs' It seems a young Peter has been captured in print! For his birthday, among other things, we gave him a copy of the book. Working for a software company and rushing headlong through the 21st century, it's easy to forget even our recent history, or what feet stood on the same ground before us. That aircraft crashed only 700 metres from where our office now stands. The disused and overgrown railway line that runs down the side of the office closed to passengers 30 years ago. The industrial estate the other side was the site of a farm, Trinity Hall Farm, as recently as 60 years ago. Roman rings and Palaeolithic handaxes have been unearthed nearby. I suppose Peter will be one of the last people I'll ever hear talking first-hand about Cambridge during the war. It's a privilege to know him. Happy birthday Peter.

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  • Silverlight Cream for May 20, 2010 -- #866

    - by Dave Campbell
    In this Issue: Mike Snow, Victor Gaudioso, Ola Karlsson, Josh Twist(-2-), Yavor Georgiev, Jeff Wilcox, and Jesse Liberty. Shoutouts: Frank LaVigne has an interesting observation on his site: The Big Take-Away from MIX10 Rishi has updated all his work including a release of nRoute to the latest bits: nRoute Samples Revisited Looks like I posted one of Erik Mork's links two days in a row :) ... that's because I meant to post this one: Silverlight Week – How to Choose a Mobile Platform Just in case you missed it (and for me to find it easy), Scott Guthrie has an excellent post up on Silverlight 4 Tools for VS 2010 and WCF RIA Services Released From SilverlightCream.com: Silverlight Tip of the Day #23 – Working with Strokes and Shapes Mike Snow's Silverlight Tip of the Day number 23 is up and about Strokes and Shapes -- as in dotted and dashed lines. New Silverlight Video Tutorial: How to Fire a Visual State based upon the value of a Boolean Variable Victor Gaudioso's latest video tutorial is up and is on selecting and firing a video state based on a boolean... project included. Simultaneously calling multiple methods on a WCF service from silverlight Ola Karlsson details a problem he had where he was calling multiple WCF services to pull all his data and had problems... turns out it was a blocking call and he found the solution in the forums and details it all out for us... actually, a search at SilverlightCream.com would have found one of the better posts listed once you knew the problem :) Securing Your Silverlight Applications Josh Twist has an article in MSDN on Silverlight Security. He talks about Windows, forms, and .NET authorization then WCF, WCF Data, cross domain and XAP files. He also has some good external links. Template/View selection with MEF in Silverlight Josh Twist points out that this next article is just a simple demonstration, but he's discussing, and provides code for, a MEF-driven ViewModel navigation scheme with animation on the navigation. Workaround for accessing some ASMX services from Silverlight 4 Are you having problems hitting you asmx web service with Silverlight 4? Yeah... others are too! Yavor Georgiev at the Silverlight Web Services Team blog has a post up about it... why it's a sometimes problem and a workaround for it. Using Silverlight 4 features to create a Zune-like context menu Jeff Wilcox used Silverlight 4 and the Toolkit to create some samples of menus, then demonstrates a duplication of the Zune menu. You Already Are A Windows Phone 7 Programmer Jesse Liberty is demonstrating the fact that Silverlight developers are WP7 developers by creating a Silverlight and a WP7 app side by side using the same code... this is a closer look at the Silverlight TV presentation he did. Stay in the 'Light! Twitter SilverlightNews | Twitter WynApse | WynApse.com | Tagged Posts | SilverlightCream Join me @ SilverlightCream | Phoenix Silverlight User Group Technorati Tags: Silverlight    Silverlight 3    Silverlight 4    Windows Phone MIX10

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  • Freshen the RTS genre

    - by William Michael Thorley
    This isn't really a question, but a request for feedback. RPS (Rock, Paper, Scissors) RTS (Real Time Strategy) Demo version is out: The game is simple. It is an RTS. Why has it been made? Many if not most RTS’s are about economy and large numbers of unit types. The genre hasn’t actually developed the gameplay drastically from the very first RTS’s produced, some lesson have been learned, but the games are really very similar to how they have always been. RPS brings new gameplay to the RTS genre. Through three means: • New combat mechanics: RPS has two unique modes (as well as the old favourite) of resolving weapon fire. These change how combat happens, and make application of the correct units vital to success. From this comes the requirement to run Intel on your enemies. • Fixed Resource Economy: Each player has a fixed amount of energy, This means that there is a definite end to the game. You can attrition your enemy and try to outlast them, or try to outspend your opponent and destroy them. There is a limit to how fast ships can be built, through the generation of construction blocks, but energy is the fast limit on economy. • Game Modes: Game modes add victory conditions and new game pieces. The game is overseen by a controller which literally runs the game. Games are no longer line them up, gun them down. This means that new tactics must be played making skirmish games fresh with novel tactics without adding huge amounts of new game units to learn. I’ve produced RPS from the ground. I will be running a kickstarter in the near future, but right now I want feedback and input from the game developing community. Regarding the concepts, where RPS is going, the game modes, the combat mechanics. How it plays. RPS will give fresh gameplay to the genre so it must be right. It works over the internet or a LAN and supports single player games. Get it. Play it. Tell me about your games. Thank you Demo: https://dl.dropbox.com/u/51850113/RPS%20Playtest.zip Tutorials: https://dl.dropbox.com/u/51850113/RPSGamePlay.zip

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  • Why lock statements don't scale

    - by Alex.Davies
    We are going to have to stop using lock statements one day. Just like we had to stop using goto statements. The problem is similar, they're pretty easy to follow in small programs, but code with locks isn't composable. That means that small pieces of program that work in isolation can't necessarily be put together and work together. Of course actors scale fine :) Why lock statements don't scale as software gets bigger Deadlocks. You have a program with lots of threads picking up lots of locks. You already know that if two of your threads both try to pick up a lock that the other already has, they will deadlock. Your program will come to a grinding halt, and there will be fire and brimstone. "Easy!" you say, "Just make sure all the threads pick up the locks in the same order." Yes, that works. But you've broken composability. Now, to add a new lock to your code, you have to consider all the other locks already in your code and check that they are taken in the right order. Algorithm buffs will have noticed this approach means it takes quadratic time to write a program. That's bad. Why lock statements don't scale as hardware gets bigger Memory bus contention There's another headache, one that most programmers don't usually need to think about, but is going to bite us in a big way in a few years. Locking needs exclusive use of the entire system's memory bus while taking out the lock. That's not too bad for a single or dual-core system, but already for quad-core systems it's a pretty large overhead. Have a look at this blog about the .NET 4 ThreadPool for some numbers and a weird analogy (see the author's comment). Not too bad yet, but I'm scared my 1000 core machine of the future is going to go slower than my machine today! I don't know the answer to this problem yet. Maybe some kind of per-core work queue system with hierarchical work stealing. Definitely hardware support. But what I do know is that using locks specifically prevents any solution to this. We should be abstracting our code away from the details of locks as soon as possible, so we can swap in whatever solution arrives when it does. NAct uses locks at the moment. But my advice is that you code using actors (which do scale well as software gets bigger). And when there's a better way of implementing actors that'll scale well as hardware gets bigger, only NAct needs to work out how to use it, and your program will go fast on it's own.

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  • Favorite moments of JavaOne

    - by Tori Wieldt
    There are so many events and sessions to attend at JavaOne, it's unfair to ask people to choose just one thing they liked, but here are some favorite moments: I loved meeting many open source contributors and friends I have not met in person before and seeing that projects like e.g. Hudson are alive and kicking and have a great future ahead of them. -Manfred Moser My "The Problem with Women" session. It had LOADS of interactivity from the audience, who really helped to make that session.  I came out if it with a real sense of optimism - we love our jobs, we love what we do, and we should be proud of telling everyone about it to attract different talent into the industry. (Read her blog JavaOne: The Problem With Women - A Technical Approach for details.) -Trish Gee My kudos to Oracle for making the presentation materials quickly available to the public. Some of them were already available during JavaOne. Lots of slide decks are already there, and in some cases you may even find the video recordings too. Go to http://www.oracle.com/javaone and select JavaOne Technical Sessions.  -Yakov Fain I loved that not only was James Gosling present at the Community Keynote (which felt more like the keynotes of old times [big space, big screens, fun and tech]) but he was also found wandering the halls of the Hilton the day prior. Bring back James! Add back the toys section in the Community Keynote. Let the t-shirt tossing begin anew. These are "small" things that really fire up the community. -Andres Almiray Seeing James Gosling at JavaOne was a real shot in the arm for Java.  He needs to be there every year. -Frank Greco +42 on having James and the T-shirt tossing. -Stephan Janssen The session "Integrate Java with Robots, Home Automation, Musical Instruments, and Kinect." Fabiane Nardon explained connecting Jenkins to jHome to a truck horn placed in their sysadmin's bedroom. She dubbed it "extreme feedback."  -Tori Wieldt The User Group Forum [on Sunday] was a success! Congratulations Bruno Souza and John Yeary and everybody that were involved. I believe it really helps to increase community participation! There were lots of interesting talks, and great discussion with JUG leaders and members. Thank you Oracle for supporting that! -Yara Senger What was your favorite moment? Please comment! 

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  • What Is Nuclear Meltdown?

    - by Gopinath
    Japan was first hit by a massive earth quake, then a ruthless tsunami washed away thousands of homes and now they fear the worst – meltdown of nuclear power stations in the quake hit year. Nuclear meltdowns are horrifying – remember the Chernobyl incident in Russia? The Chernobyl reactor meltdown released 400 times more radio active material than the atomic bombing of Hiroshima. The effects of nuclear meltdowns are beyond imagination of a common man, thousands of people loose their lives and many more lakhs of people suffer with radiation related diseases for many years. Nuclear Meltdowns are dangerous, but how do they happen? What causes a nuclear meltdown? In simple terms – Nuclear meltdown is an accident that happens due to severe overheating of a nuclear reactor and results in release of nuclear radiation into the environment.  How A Nuclear Meltdown Happens? According to Wikipedia A meltdown occurs when a severe failure of a nuclear power plant system prevents proper cooling of the reactor core, to the extent that the nuclear fuel assemblies overheat and melt. A meltdown is considered very serious because of the potential that radioactive materials could be released into the environment. The fuel assemblies in a reactor core can melt if heat is not removed. A nuclear reactor does not have to remain critical for a core damage incident to occur, because decay heat continues to heat the reactor fuel assemblies after the reactor has shut down, though this heat decreases with time. A core damage accident is caused by the loss of sufficient cooling for the nuclear fuel within the reactor core. The reason may be one of several factors, including a loss of pressure control accident, a loss of coolant accident (LOCA), an uncontrolled power excursion or, in some types, a fire within the reactor core. Failures in control systems may cause a series of events resulting in loss of cooling. Contemporary safety principles of defense in depth, ensure that multiple layers of safety systems are always present to make such accidents unlikely. Video – What Causes Nuclear Meltdown AlJazeera news has a good analysis on feared nuclear meltdown of Japan’s nuclear plants and also an animation on what causes Nuclear Meltdown. cc image credit: flickr/jtjdt This article titled,What Is Nuclear Meltdown?, was originally published at Tech Dreams. Grab our rss feed or fan us on Facebook to get updates from us.

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  • Error Using 32 vs. 64 bit SharePoint 2007 DLLs with PowerShell

    - by Brian Jackett
    Next time you fire up PowerShell to work with the SharePoint API make sure you launch the proper bit version of PowerShell.  Last week I had an interesting error that led to this blog post.  Travel back in time a little bit with me to see where this 32 vs. 64 bit debate started. History     Ever since the first pre-beta bits of Office 2010 landed in my lap I have been questioning whether it’s better to run 32 or 64 bit applications on a 64 bit host operating system.  In relation to Office 2010 I heard a number of arguments for 32 bit including this link from the Office 2010 Engineering team.  Given my typical usage scenarios 32 bit seemed the way to go since I wasn’t a “super RAM hungry” Excel user or the like. The Problem     Since I had chosen 32 bit Office 2010, I tried to stick with 32 bit version of other programs that I run assuming the same benefits and rules applied to other applications.  This is where I was wrong.  Last week I was attempting to use 32 bit PowerShell ISE (Integrated Scripting Environment) on a 64 bit WSS 3.0 server.  When trying to reference the 64 bit SharePoint DLLs I got the following errors about not being able to find the web application.     I have run into these errors when I have hosts file issues or improper permissions to the farm / site collection but these were not the case.  After taking a quick spin around the interwebs I ran across the below forum post comment and another MSDN forum reply that explained the error.  Turns out that sometimes it’s not possible to run 32 bit applications against a 64 bit OS / farm / assembly / etc. …the problem could also be because your SharePoint is 64-Bit but your app is running in 32-bit mode     I quickly exited 32 bit PowerShell ISE and ran the same code under 64 bit PowerShell ISE.  All errors were gone and the script ran successfully.   Conclusion     The rules of 32 vs. 64 bit interoperability do not always apply evenly across all applications and scenarios.  In my case I wasn’t able to run 32 bit PowerShell against 64 bit SharePoint DLLs.  I’m updating all of my links and shortcuts to use 64 bit PowerShell where appropriate.  I’m quite surprised it has taken me this long to run into this error, but sometimes blind luck is all that keeps you from running into errors.  Lesson learned and hopefully this can benefit you as well.  Happy SharePointing all!         -Frog Out   Links http://blogs.technet.com/b/office2010/archive/2010/02/23/understanding-64-bit-office.aspx http://social.msdn.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/sharepointdevelopment/thread/a732cb83-c2ef-4133-b04e-86477b72bbe3/ http://stackoverflow.com/questions/266255/filenotfoundexception-with-the-spsite-constructor-whats-the-problem

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  • Transparent Technology from Amazon

    - by David Dorf
    Amazon has been making some interesting moves again, this time in the augmented humanity area.  Augmented humanity is about helping humans overcome their shortcomings using technology.  Putting a powerful smartphone in your pocket helps you in many ways like navigating streets, communicating with far off friends, and accessing information.  But the interface for smartphones is somewhat limiting and unnatural, so companies have been looking for ways to make the technology more transparent and therefore easier to use. When Apple helped us drop the stylus, we took a giant leap forward in simplicity.  Using touchscreens with intuitive gestures was part of the iPhone's original appeal.  People don't want to know that technology is there -- they just want the benefits.  So what's the next leap beyond the touchscreen to make smartphones even easier to use? Two natural ways we interact with the world around us is by using sight and voice.  Google and Apple have been using both in their mobile platforms for limited uses cases.  Nobody actually wants to type a text message, so why not just speak it?  Any if you want more information about a book, why not just snap a picture of the cover?  That's much more accurate than trying to key the title and/or author. So what's Amazon been doing?  First, Amazon released a new iPhone app called Flow that allows iPhone users to see information about products in context.  Yes, its an augmented reality app that uses the phone's camera to view products, and overlays data about the products on the screen.  For the most part it requires the barcode to be visible to correctly identify the product, but I believe it can also recognize certain logos as well.  Download the app and try it out but don't expect perfection.  Its good enough to demonstrate the concept, but its far from accurate enough.  (MobileBeat did a pretty good review.)  Extrapolate to the future and we might just have a heads-up display in our eyeglasses. The second interesting area is voice response, for which Siri is getting lots of attention.  Amazon may have purchased a voice recognition company called Yap, although the deal is not confirmed.  But it would make perfect sense, especially with the Kindle Fire in Amazon's lineup. I believe over the next 3-5 years the way in which we interact with smartphones will mature, and they will become more transparent yet more important to our daily lives.  This will, of course, impact the way we shop, making information more readily accessible than it already is.  Amazon seems to be positioning itself to be at the forefront of this trend, so we should be watching them carefully.

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  • How to shoot a triangle out of an asteroid which floats all of the way up to the screen?

    - by Holland
    I currently have an asteroid texture loaded as my "test player" for the game I'm writing. What I'm trying to figure out how to do is get a triangle to shoot from the center of the asteroid, and keep going until it hits the top of the screen. What happens in my case (as you'll see from the code I've posted), is that the triangle will show, however it will either be a long line, or it will just be a single triangle which stays in the same location as the asteroid moving around (that disappears when I stop pressing the space bar), or it simply won't appear at all. I've tried many different methods, but I could use a formula here. All I'm trying to do is write a space invaders clone for my final in C#. I know how to code fairly well, my formulas just need work is all. So far, this is what I have: Main Logic Code protected override void Draw(GameTime gameTime) { GraphicsDevice.Clear(ClearOptions.Target, Color.Black, 1, 1); mAsteroid.Draw(mSpriteBatch); if (mIsFired) { mPositions.Add(mAsteroid.LastPosition); mRay.Fire(mPositions); mIsFired = false; mRay.Bullets.Clear(); mPositions.Clear(); } base.Draw(gameTime); } Draw Code public void Draw() { VertexPositionColor[] vertices = new VertexPositionColor[3]; int stopDrawing = mGraphicsDevice.Viewport.Width / mGraphicsDevice.Viewport.Height; for (int i = 0; i < mRayPos.Length(); ++i) { vertices[0].Position = new Vector3(mRayPos.X, mRayPos.Y + 5f, 10); vertices[0].Color = Color.Blue; vertices[1].Position = new Vector3(mRayPos.X - 5f, mRayPos.Y - 5f, 10); vertices[1].Color = Color.White; vertices[2].Position = new Vector3(mRayPos.X + 5f, mRayPos.Y - 5f, 10); vertices[2].Color = Color.Red; mShader.CurrentTechnique.Passes[0].Apply(); mGraphicsDevice.DrawUserPrimitives<VertexPositionColor>(PrimitiveType.TriangleStrip, vertices, 0, 1); mRayPos += new Vector2(0, 1f); mGraphicsDevice.ReferenceStencil = 1; } }

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  • OData Mix10 &ndash; Part Dos

    - by Jon Dalberg
    The other day I had a snazzy post on fetching all the video (WMV) files from Mix ‘10. A simple, console application that grabbed the urls from the OData feed and downloaded the videos. I wanted to change that app to fire the OData query asynchronously so here’s what resulted: 1: static void Main(string[] args) 2: { 3: var mix = new Mix.EventEntities(new Uri("http://api.visitmix.com/OData.svc")); 4:   5: var temp = mix.Files.Where(f => f.TypeName == "WMV"); 6: var query = temp as DataServiceQuery<Mix.File>; 7:   8: query.BeginExecute(OnFileQueryComplete, query); 9:   10: // waiting... 11: Console.ReadLine(); 12: } 13:   14: static void OnFileQueryComplete(IAsyncResult result) 15: { 16: var query = result.AsyncState as DataServiceQuery<Mix.File>; 17: var response = query.EndExecute(result); 18:   19: var web = new WebClient(); 20:   21: var myVideos = Path.Combine(Environment.GetFolderPath(Environment.SpecialFolder.MyVideos), "Mix10"); 22:   23: Directory.CreateDirectory(myVideos); 24:   25: foreach (Mix.File f in response) 26: { 27: var fileName = new Uri(f.Url).Segments.Last(); 28: Console.WriteLine(f.Url); 29: web.DownloadFile(f.Url, Path.Combine(myVideos, fileName)); 30: } 31: } There are two important things here that are not explained well in the MSDN docs: See lines 5 and 6? That’s where I query for the WMV files and it returns an IQueryable<T>. You *have* to cast that to a DataServiceQuery<T> and then call BeginExecute. The documented example does not filter so it didn’t show that step. Line 16 shows the correct way to get the previously executed DataServiceQuery<T> from the async result. If you looked at the MSDN example docs it shows (incorrectly) just casting the result, like this: // wrong var query = result as DataServiceQuery<Mix.File>; Other than those items it is relatively straight forward and we’re all async-ified. Enjoy!

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  • Invitation til Oracle Open Experience DK11

    - by user13847369
    Kære Partnere, Vi afholder sammen med Arrow et større kundearrangement den 7. December ved navnet "Oracle Open Experience DK11". I kan se agendaen for dagen her: V. Torben Markussen, Sales director/Middleware director Nordics, Oracle Fornem stemningen fra årets OpenWorld og få præsenteret de største og mest relevante nyheder. Hør hvordan I drager konkret fordel af Oracle-nyheder som Oracle Cloud, storageløsningen Pillar Axiom og de unikke nye muligheder med Fusion Applications. V. Hans Bøge, IT-arkitekt, Oracle Hans Bøge fortæller om hvordan I optimerer jeres licensløsning, og letter administrationen af jeres database. En server fødes med adskillige cores - alle med licensomkostninger. Hvorfor ikke nøjes med at aktivere det antal der matcher jeres behov? Hør hvordan I får en løsning, der kan opgraderes hen ad vejen som behovene opstår. V. Kim Estrup, Produktchef 11G , Oracle Brugerdefinerede implementeringer gør jeres systemer unikke, hvilket kun øger komplek og administration. Kim Estrup vil fortælle alt om, hvordan I letter forvaltningen af jeres traditionelle data-centre, samt etablerer lynhurtig adgang til skyen. Få indføring i en omfattende løsning, der skærer gennem kompleksitet, øger service-kvalitet og minimerer administrations- omkostninger. V. Steen Schmidt, IT-arkitekt, Oracle Hør hvordan de nyeste teknologier indenfor virtualisering og server-management, kan forsimple jeres IT-processer og reducere omkostninger markant. Få demonstreret en løsn der er fire gange mere skalerbar end den seneste VWware, og som kan understøtte op  til 128 virtuelle CPUer per virtuel maskine - endda til en brøkdel af omkostningen. Steen Schmidt fortæller alt om mulighederne i jeres storagesystem V. Erik Lund, Storage Presales-arkitekt, Oracle Lyder det for godt til at være sandt? Det kan faktisk lade sig gøre. Erik Lund fortæller alt om de nyeste storage-teknologier, der åbner op for skalerbarhed på både disc- og controllerniveau, og for database-komprimering med op til faktor 50. Det reducerer behovet for discs og formindsker jeres backup-vindue markant. Kombineret med markedets højeste udnyttelsesgrad og omkostningsfri QoS, giver det helt nye muligheder. Dagen starter kl 8.30 med morgenmad og slutter kl 14.00 Jeg håber I har lyst til at deltage samt at invitere jeres kunder.I skulle gerne have modtaget en invitation som I også kan bruge til at sende ud til jeres kunder.Er det ikke tilfældet så send mig endeligt en mail. Du kan også tilmelde dig via dette link: http://www.woho.dk/oracle og indtaste billetnummer: 1500Mvh Thomas Stenvald

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  • User connection management in Reporting Services configuration

    - by Testas
    IT professionals will use Reporting Services Configuration Manager to perform post installation tasks for SQL Server Reporting Services. Introduced in SQL Server 2005, Reporting Services Configuration Manager provides an intuitive interface to perform tasks including specifying the report server database, report manager url, and indeed one of the first post installation tasks that should be performed is backing up the encryption keys that are used to protect the sensitive information within the rdl files.  Many of the options that are selected within Reporting Services Configuration Manager are written to a number of configuration files including the rsreportserver.config file located in C:\Program Files\Microsoft SQL Server\Report Server InstanceName\Reporting Services\ReportServer folder.When opening this file you will notice that there are more configuration settings within the rsreportserver.config file than is available through the Reporting Services Configuration Manager Interface. As a result there are additional configuration options that can be defined within this file.  A customer was having a problem performing stress tests against a new Report Server that would be going live for an enterprise reporting system. One aspect of the stress test was to fire 50 connections from a single user account. When performing the stress test an error described that the maximum active request had been exceeded. Within the rsreportserver.config, there is a key that is added to the file:  <Add Key=”MaxActiveReqForOneUser” Value=”20”/>  Changing the value from 20 to 50 accommodated the needs of the stress test, however, a wider question should be asked pertaining to this setting when implementing Reporting Services to a production environment. Within an intranet environment, the default setting is appropriate when network bandwidth is high, users are known and demand for reports is particularly high from a group of users.  However, when deploying a Reporting Server solution to an extranet, or the internet, you may want to consider reducing this setting to reduce to scope of connections that can be acquired by a single user and placing unnecessary pressure on the report server. I do hope that Reporting Services Configuration Manager evolves to include an advanced page that includes an intuitive interface to change configuration settings such as the MaxActiveReqForOneUser, and also configure rendering and data extensions and define secure connection levels to the report server. All these options can be configured within the rsreportserver.config file, and these are setting that customers would like to see in Reporting Services Configuration Manager in the future.   If you think that the SQL community would benefit from this addition, you can vote on it at Microsoft Connect  https://connect.microsoft.com/SQLServer/feedback/details/565575/extending-reporting-services-configuration-manager-rscm    

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  • How to shoot yourself in the foot (DO NOT Read in the office)

    - by TATWORTH
    Originally posted on: http://geekswithblogs.net/TATWORTH/archive/2013/06/21/how-to-shoot-yourself-in-the-foot-do-not-read.aspxLet me make it absolutely clear - the following is:merely collated by your Geek from http://www.codeproject.com/Lounge.aspx?msg=3917012#xx3917012xxvery, very very funny so you read it in the presence of others at your own riskso here is the list - you have been warned!C You shoot yourself in the foot.   C++ You accidently create a dozen instances of yourself and shoot them all in the foot. Providing emergency medical assistance is impossible since you can't tell which are bitwise copies and which are just pointing at others and saying "That's me, over there."   FORTRAN You shoot yourself in each toe, iteratively, until you run out of toes, then you read in the next foot and repeat. If you run out of bullets, you continue anyway because you have no exception-handling facility.   Modula-2 After realizing that you can't actually accomplish anything in this language, you shoot yourself in the head.   COBOL USEing a COLT 45 HANDGUN, AIM gun at LEG.FOOT, THEN place ARM.HAND.FINGER on HANDGUN.TRIGGER and SQUEEZE. THEN return HANDGUN to HOLSTER. CHECK whether shoelace needs to be retied.   Lisp You shoot yourself in the appendage which holds the gun with which you shoot yourself in the appendage which holds the gun with which you shoot yourself in the appendage which holds...   BASIC Shoot yourself in the foot with a water pistol. On big systems, continue until entire lower body is waterlogged.   Forth Foot yourself in the shoot.   APL You shoot yourself in the foot; then spend all day figuring out how to do it in fewer characters.   Pascal The compiler won't let you shoot yourself in the foot.   Snobol If you succeed, shoot yourself in the left foot. If you fail, shoot yourself in the right foot.   HyperTalk Put the first bullet of the gun into foot left of leg of you. Answer the result.   Prolog You tell your program you want to be shot in the foot. The program figures out how to do it, but the syntax doesn't allow it to explain.   370 JCL You send your foot down to MIS with a 4000-page document explaining how you want it to be shot. Three years later, your foot comes back deep-fried.   FORTRAN-77 You shoot yourself in each toe, iteratively, until you run out of toes, then you read in the next foot and repeat. If you run out of bullets, you continue anyway because you still can't do exception-processing.   Modula-2 (alternative) You perform a shooting on what might be currently a foot with what might be currently a bullet shot by what might currently be a gun.   BASIC (compiled) You shoot yourself in the foot with a BB using a SCUD missile launcher.   Visual Basic You'll really only appear to have shot yourself in the foot, but you'll have so much fun doing it that you won't care.   Forth (alternative) BULLET DUP3 * GUN LOAD FOOT AIM TRIGGER PULL BANG! EMIT DEAD IF DROP ROT THEN (This takes about five bytes of memory, executes in two to ten clock cycles on any processor and can be used to replace any existing function of the language as well as in any future words). (Welcome to bottom up programming - where you, too, can perform compiler pre-processing instead of writing code)   APL (alternative) You hear a gunshot and there's a hole in your foot, but you don't remember enough linear algebra to understand what happened. or @#&^$%&%^ foot   Pascal (alternative) Same as Modula-2 except that the bullet is not the right type for the gun and your hand is blown off.   Snobol (alternative) You grab your foot with your hand, then rewrite your hand to be a bullet. The act of shooting the original foot then changes your hand/bullet into yet another foot (a left foot).   Prolog (alternative) You attempt to shoot yourself in the foot, but the bullet, failing to find its mark, backtracks to the gun, which then explodes in your face.   COMAL You attempt to shoot yourself in the foot with a water pistol, but the bore is clogged, and the pressure build-up blows apart both the pistol and your hand. or draw_pistol aim_at_foot(left) pull_trigger hop(swearing)   Scheme As Lisp, but none of the other appendages are aware of this happening.   Algol You shoot yourself in the foot with a musket. The musket is aesthetically fascinating and the wound baffles the adolescent medic in the emergency room.   Ada If you are dumb enough to actually use this language, the United States Department of Defense will kidnap you, stand you up in front of a firing squad and tell the soldiers, "Shoot at the feet." or The Department of Defense shoots you in the foot after offering you a blindfold and a last cigarette. or After correctly packaging your foot, you attempt to concurrently load the gun, pull the trigger, scream and shoot yourself in the foot. When you try, however, you discover that your foot is of the wrong type. or After correctly packing your foot, you attempt to concurrently load the gun, pull the trigger, scream, and confidently aim at your foot knowing it is safe. However the cordite in the round does an Unchecked Conversion, fires and shoots you in the foot anyway.   Eiffel   You create a GUN object, two FOOT objects and a BULLET object. The GUN passes both the FOOT objects a reference to the BULLET. The FOOT objects increment their hole counts and forget about the BULLET. A little demon then drives a garbage truck over your feet and grabs the bullet (both of it) on the way. Smalltalk You spend so much time playing with the graphics and windowing system that your boss shoots you in the foot, takes away your workstation and makes you develop in COBOL on a character terminal. or You send the message shoot to gun, with selectors bullet and myFoot. A window pops up saying Gunpowder doesNotUnderstand: spark. After several fruitless hours spent browsing the methods for Trigger, FiringPin and IdealGas, you take the easy way out and create ShotFoot, a subclass of Foot with an additional instance variable bulletHole. Object Oriented Pascal You perform a shooting on what might currently be a foot with what might currently be a bullet fired from what might currently be a gun.   PL/I You consume all available system resources, including all the offline bullets. The Data Processing & Payroll Department doubles its size, triples its budget, acquires four new mainframes and drops the original one on your foot. Postscript foot bullets 6 locate loadgun aim gun shoot showpage or It takes the bullet ten minutes to travel from the gun to your foot, by which time you're long since gone out to lunch. The text comes out great, though.   PERL You stab yourself in the foot repeatedly with an incredibly large and very heavy Swiss Army knife. or You pick up the gun and begin to load it. The gun and your foot begin to grow to huge proportions and the world around you slows down, until the gun fires. It makes a tiny hole, which you don't feel. Assembly Language You crash the OS and overwrite the root disk. The system administrator arrives and shoots you in the foot. After a moment of contemplation, the administrator shoots himself in the foot and then hops around the room rabidly shooting at everyone in sight. or You try to shoot yourself in the foot only to discover you must first reinvent the gun, the bullet, and your foot.or The bullet travels to your foot instantly, but it took you three weeks to load the round and aim the gun.   BCPL You shoot yourself somewhere in the leg -- you can't get any finer resolution than that. Concurrent Euclid You shoot yourself in somebody else's foot.   Motif You spend days writing a UIL description of your foot, the trajectory, the bullet and the intricate scrollwork on the ivory handles of the gun. When you finally get around to pulling the trigger, the gun jams.   Powerbuilder While attempting to load the gun you discover that the LoadGun system function is buggy; as a work around you tape the bullet to the outside of the gun and unsuccessfully attempt to fire it with a nail. In frustration you club your foot with the butt of the gun and explain to your client that this approximates the functionality of shooting yourself in the foot and that the next version of Powerbuilder will fix it.   Standard ML By the time you get your code to typecheck, you're using a shoot to foot yourself in the gun.   MUMPS You shoot 583149 AK-47 teflon-tipped, hollow-point, armour-piercing bullets into even-numbered toes on odd-numbered feet of everyone in the building -- with one line of code. Three weeks later you shoot yourself in the head rather than try to modify that line.   Java You locate the Gun class, but discover that the Bullet class is abstract, so you extend it and write the missing part of the implementation. Then you implement the ShootAble interface for your foot, and recompile the Foot class. The interface lets the bullet call the doDamage method on the Foot, so the Foot can damage itself in the most effective way. Now you run the program, and call the doShoot method on the instance of the Gun class. First the Gun creates an instance of Bullet, which calls the doFire method on the Gun. The Gun calls the hit(Bullet) method on the Foot, and the instance of Bullet is passed to the Foot. But this causes an IllegalHitByBullet exception to be thrown, and you die.   Unix You shoot yourself in the foot or % ls foot.c foot.h foot.o toe.c toe.o % rm * .o rm: .o: No such file or directory % ls %   370 JCL (alternative) You shoot yourself in the head just thinking about it.   DOS JCL You first find the building you're in in the phone book, then find your office number in the corporate phone book. Then you have to write this down, then describe, in cubits, your exact location, in relation to the door (right hand side thereof). Then you need to write down the location of the gun (loading it is a proprietary utility), then you load it, and the COBOL program, and run them, and, with luck, it may be run tonight.   VMS   $ MOUNT/DENSITY=.45/LABEL=BULLET/MESSAGE="BYE" BULLET::BULLET$GUN SYS$BULLET $ SET GUN/LOAD/SAFETY=OFF/SIGHT=NONE/HAND=LEFT/CHAMBER=1/ACTION=AUTOMATIC/ LOG/ALL/FULL SYS$GUN_3$DUA3:[000000]GUN.GNU $ SHOOT/LOG/AUTO SYS$GUN SYS$SYSTEM:[FOOT]FOOT.FOOT   %DCL-W-ACTIMAGE, error activating image GUN -CLI-E-IMGNAME, image file $3$DUA240:[GUN]GUN.EXE;1 -IMGACT-F-NOTNATIVE, image is not an OpenVMS Alpha AXP image or %SYS-F-FTSHT, foot shot (fifty lines of traceback omitted) sh,csh, etc You can't remember the syntax for anything, so you spend five hours reading manual pages, then your foot falls asleep. You shoot the computer and switch to C.   Apple System 7 Double click the gun icon and a window giving a selection for guns, target areas, plus balloon help with medical remedies, and assorted sound effects. Click "shoot" button and a small bomb appears with note "Error of Type 1 has occurred."   Windows 3.1 Double click the gun icon and wait. Eventually a window opens giving a selection for guns, target areas, plus balloon help with medical remedies, and assorted sound effects. Click "shoot" button and a small box appears with note "Unable to open Shoot.dll, check that path is correct."   Windows 95 Your gun is not compatible with this OS and you must buy an upgrade and install it before you can continue. Then you will be informed that you don't have enough memory.   CP/M I remember when shooting yourself in the foot with a BB gun was a big deal.   DOS You finally found the gun, but can't locate the file with the foot for the life of you.   MSDOS You shoot yourself in the foot, but can unshoot yourself with add-on software.   Access You try to point the gun at your foot, but it shoots holes in all your Borland distribution diskettes instead.   Paradox Not only can you shoot yourself in the foot, your users can too.   dBase You squeeze the trigger, but the bullet moves so slowly that by the time your foot feels the pain, you've forgotten why you shot yourself anyway. or You buy a gun. Bullets are only available from another company and are promised to work so you buy them. Then you find out that the next version of the gun is the one scheduled to actually shoot bullets.   DBase IV, V1.0 You pull the trigger, but it turns out that the gun was a poorly designed hand grenade and the whole building blows up.   SQL You cut your foot off, send it out to a service bureau and when it returns, it has a hole in it but will no longer fit the attachment at the end of your leg. or Insert into Foot Select Bullet >From Gun.Hand Where Chamber = 'LOADED' And Trigger = 'PULLED'   Clipper You grab a bullet, get ready to insert it in the gun so that you can shoot yourself in the foot and discover that the gun that the bullets fits has not yet been built, but should be arriving in the mail _REAL_SOON_NOW_. Oracle The menus for coding foot_shooting have not been implemented yet and you can't do foot shooting in SQL.   English You put your foot in your mouth, then bite it off. (For those who don't know, English is a McDonnell Douglas/PICK query language which allegedly requires 110% of system resources to run happily.) Revelation [an implementation of the PICK Operating System] You'll be able to shoot yourself in the foot just as soon as you figure out what all these bullets are for.   FlagShip Starting at the top of your head, you aim the gun at yourself repeatedly until, half an hour later, the gun is finally pointing at your foot and you pull the trigger. A new foot with a hole in it appears but you can't work out how to get rid of the old one and your gun doesn't work anymore.   FidoNet You put your foot in your mouth, then echo it internationally.   PicoSpan [a UNIX-based computer conferencing system] You can't shoot yourself in the foot because you're not a host. or (host variation) Whenever you shoot yourself in the foot, someone opens a topic in policy about it.   Internet You put your foot in your mouth, shoot it, then spam the bullet so that everybody gets shot in the foot.   troff rmtroff -ms -Hdrwp | lpr -Pwp2 & .*place bullet in footer .B .NR FT +3i .in 4 .bu Shoot! .br .sp .in -4 .br .bp NR HD -2i .*   Genetic Algorithms You create 10,000 strings describing the best way to shoot yourself in the foot. By the time the program produces the optimal solution, humans have evolved wings and the problem is moot.   CSP (Communicating Sequential Processes) You only fail to shoot everything that isn't your foot.   MS-SQL Server MS-SQL Server’s gun comes pre-loaded with an unlimited supply of Teflon coated bullets, and it only has two discernible features: the muzzle and the trigger. If that wasn't enough, MS-SQL Server also puts the gun in your hand, applies local anesthetic to the skin of your forefinger and stitches it to the gun's trigger. Meanwhile, another process has set up a spinal block to numb your lower body. It will then proceeded to surgically remove your foot, cryogenically freeze it for preservation, and attach it to the muzzle of the gun so that no matter where you aim, you will shoot your foot. In order to avoid shooting yourself in the foot, you need to unstitch your trigger finger, remove your foot from the muzzle of the gun, and have it surgically reattached. Then you probably want to get some crutches and go out to buy a book on SQL Server Performance Tuning.   Sybase Sybase's gun requires assembly, and you need to go out and purchase your own clip and bullets to load the gun. Assembly is complicated by the fact that Sybase has hidden the gun behind a big stack of reference manuals, but it hasn't told you where that stack is. While you were off finding the gun, assembling it, buying bullets, etc., Sybase was also busy surgically removing your foot and cryogenically freezing it for preservation. Instead of attaching it to the muzzle of the gun, though, it packed your foot on dry ice and sent it UPS-Ground to an unnamed hookah bar somewhere in the middle east. In order to shoot your foot, you must modify your gun with a GPS system for targeting and hire some guy named "Indy" to find the hookah bar and wire the coordinates back to you. By this time, you've probably become so daunted at the tasks stand between you and shooting your foot that you hire a guy who's read all the books on Sybase to help you shoot your foot. If you're lucky, he'll be smart enough both to find your foot and to stop you from shooting it.   Magic software You spend 1 week looking up the correct syntax for GUN. When you find it, you realise that GUN will not let you shoot in your own foot. It will allow you to shoot almost anything but your foot. You then decide to build your own gun. You can't use the standard barrel since this will only allow for standard bullets, which will not fire if the barrel is pointed at your foot. After four weeks, you have created your own custom gun. It blows up in your hand without warning, because you failed to initialise the safety catch and it doesn't know whether the initial state is "0", 0, NULL, "ZERO", 0.0, 0,0, "0.0", or "0,00". You fix the problem with your remaining hand by nesting 12 safety catches, and then decide to build the gun without safety catch. You then shoot the management and retire to a happy life where you code in languages that will allow you to shoot your foot in under 10 days.FirefoxLets you shoot yourself in as many feet as you'd like, while using multiple great addons! IEA moving target in terms of standard ammunition size and doesn't always work properly with non-Microsoft ammunition, so sometimes you shoot something other than your foot. However, it's the corporate world's standard foot-shooting apparatus. Hackers seem to enjoy rigging websites up to trigger cascading foot-shooting failures. Windows 98 About the same as Windows 95 in terms of overall bullet capacity and triggering mechanisms. Includes updated DirectShot API. A new version was released later on to support USB guns, Windows 98 SE.WPF:You get your baseball glove and a ball and you head out to your backyard, where you throw balls to your pitchback. Then your unkempt-haired-cargo-shorts-and-sandals-with-white-socks-wearing neighbor uses XAML to sculpt your arm into a gun, the ball into a bullet and the pitchback into your foot. By now, however, only the neighbor can get it to work and he's only around from 6:30 PM - 3:30 AM. LOGO: You very carefully lay out the trajectory of the bullet. Then you start the gun, which fires very slowly. You walk precisely to the point where the bullet will travel and wait, but just before it gets to you, your class time is up and one of the other kids has already used the system to hack into Sony's PS3 network. Flash: Someone has designed a beautiful-looking gun that anyone can shoot their feet with for free. It weighs six hundred pounds. All kinds of people are shooting themselves in the feet, and sending the link to everyone else so that they can too. That is, except for the criminals, who are all stealing iOS devices that the gun won't work with.APL: Its (mostly) all greek to me. Lisp: Place ((gun in ((hand sight (foot then shoot))))) (Lots of Insipid Stupid Parentheses)Apple OS/X and iOS Once a year, Steve Jobs returns from sick leave to tell millions of unwavering fans how they will be able to shoot themselves in the foot differently this year. They retweet and blog about it ad nauseam, and wait in line to be the first to experience "shoot different".Windows ME Usually fails, even at shooting you in the foot. Yo dawg, I heard you like shooting yourself in the foot. So I put a gun in your gun, so you can shoot yourself in the foot while you shoot yourself in the foot. (Okay, I'm not especially proud of this joke.) Windows 2000 Now you really do have to log in, before you are allowed to shoot yourself in the foot.Windows XPYou thought you learned your lesson: Don't use Windows ME. Then, along came this new creature, built on top of Windows NT! So you spend the next couple days installing antivirus software, patches and service packs, just so you can get that driver to install, and then proceed to shoot yourself in the foot. Windows Vista Newer! Glossier! Shootier! Windows 7 The bullets come out a lot smoother. Active Directory Each bullet now has an attached Bullet Identifier, and can be uniquely identified. Policies can be applied to dictate fragmentation, and the gun will occasionally have a confusing delay after the trigger has been pulled. PythonYou try to use import foot; foot.shoot() only to realize that's only available in 3.0, to which you can't yet upgrade from 2.7 because of all those extension libs lacking support. Solaris Shoots best when used on SPARC hardware, but still runs the trigger GUI under Java. After weeks of learning the appropriate STOP command to prevent the trigger from automatically being pressed on boot, you think you've got it under control. Then the one time you ever use dtrace, it hits a bug that fires the gun. MySQL The feature that allows you to shoot yourself in the foot has been in development for about 6 years, and they are adding it into the next version, which is coming out REAL SOON NOW, promise! But you can always check it out of source control and try it yourself (just not in any environment where data integrity is important because it will probably explode.) PostgreSQLAllows you to have a smug look on your face while you shoot yourself in the foot, because those MySQL guys STILL don't have that feature. NoSQL Barrel? Who needs a barrel? Just put the bullet on your foot, and strike it with a hammer. See? It's so much simpler and more efficient that way. You can even strike multiple bullets in one swing if you swing with a good enough arc, because hammers are easy to use. Getting them to synchronize is a little difficult, though.Eclipse There are about a dozen different packages for shooting yourself in the foot, with weird interdependencies on outdated components. Once you finally navigate the morass and get one installed, you then have something to look at while you shoot yourself in the foot with that package: You can watch the screen redraw.Outlook Makes it really easy to let everyone know you shot yourself in the foot!Shooting yourself in the foot using delegates.You really need to shoot yourself in the foot but you hate firearms (you don't want any dependency on the specifics of shooting) so you delegate it to somebody else. You don't care how it is done as long is shooting your foot. You can do it asynchronously in case you know you may faint so you are called back/slapped in the face by your shooter/friend (or background worker) when everything is done.C#You prepare the gun and the bullet, carefully modeling all of the physics of a bullet traveling through a foot. Just before you're about to pull the trigger, you stumble on System.Windows.BodyParts.Foot.ShootAt(System.Windows.Firearms.IGun gun) in the extended framework, realize you just wasted the entire afternoon, and shoot yourself in the head.PHP<?phprequire("foot_safety_check.php");?><!DOCTYPE HTML><html><head> <!--Lower!--><title>Shooting me in the foot</title></head> <body> <!--LOWER!!!--><leg> <!--OK, I made this one up...--><footer><?php echo (dungSift($_SERVER['HTTP_USER_AGENT'], "ie"))?("Your foot is safe, but you might want to wear a hard hat!"):("<div class=\"shot\">BANG!</div>"); ?></footer></leg> </body> </html>

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  • Do you care about your Oracle System Support experience?

    - by user12244613
    It has been a while since I blogged about Systems Support within Oracle. I want to take this opportunity to raise awareness of how Oracle is communicating out to its systems customers. Previously every item to be communicated was sent independently via an email message however, not all messages appear to be being getting the attention they require. In an effort to ensure Oracle is reaching all of our Sun and Oracle System customers, we have created the Oracle Systems Support Newsletter. This monthly newsletter will have a summary of customer support relevant information for you to use and will cover topics that impact your support experience. For example: 1. Did you know that sending explorer content to email addresses with @sun.com is going away soon? For more information, review the Document 1362484.1 2. Are you an Auto Service Request (ASR) user? If yes, here are the latest changes: · ASR Manager accepts My Oracle Support User Name (email address) and password. [Doc ID 1345484.1] · ASR IP Address for secure file transfer has changed [Doc ID 1338575.1] · ASR No Heartbeat Status - Find out how to resolve [Doc ID 1346328.1] 3. Did you notice we have changed the Service Request options for Hardware and introduced a new problem category called “Automated Diagnosis”? This service streamlines the data you send in and then automatically provides an update of known issues found in your My Oracle Support Service Request. This feature also fast tracks hardware failures by sending parts as soon as the data is analyzed. Have you used this new feature? If yes tell us about it – take the 5minute survey 4. Are you being proactive or are you still ‘fire fighting’ in the reactive mode? If you are being proactive for your Oracle System products you might have used Oracle Sun System Analysis. Did you finding this helpful? Can we improve it? You tell us, take the 5minute survey 5. Are you aware that if you attach files to your Service Request it enables the support engineer to start work straight away? For a summary of products and files review the Newsletter. 6. Are you struggling to find patches or firmware or product downloads? If yes, these types of issues are all addressed in the Newsletter. If this is the type of information you want to know about each month, then take time to read the Newsletter link and bookmark it in My Oracle Support so you can stay informed. Thanks for your time.

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  • What tools exist for assessing an organisation's development capability?

    - by Eric Smith
    I have a bit of a challenge at work at the moment. Presently (and in fact, for some time now), we have been experiencing the following problems with some in-house maintained applications: Defects (sometimes quite serious) being released into production; The Customer (that is, the relevant business unit) perpetually changing their minds (or appearing to do so) about what issue to work on next; A situation where everyone seems to be in a "fire-fighting" mode a lot of the time; Development staff responding to operational requests from business users; ("operational" here means something that needs to be done in order to continue with business, or perhaps just to make a business user's life a little less painful, as opposed to fixing a bug in the application, or enhancing the application); Now I'm sure this doesn't sound particularly new or surprising to most of the participants on this Q&A site and no prizes for identifying the "usual suspects" when it comes to root causes. My challenge is that I have to persuade the higher-ups to do uncomfortable things in order to address all of this. The folk I need to persuade come from a mixture of the following two cultures: Accounting; IT Infrastructure. I have therefore opted for a strategy that draws from things with-which folk from such a culture would be most comfortable (at least, in my estimation), namely: numbers and tangibles. Of course modern development practitioners know all too well that this sort of thing isn't easily solved using an analytical mindset (some would argue that that mindset is, in fact, entirely inappropriate). Never-the-less, this is the dichotomy with-which I am faced, so that's the stake that I've put in the ground. I would like to be able to do research and use the outputs to present findings in the form of metrics and measures. I am finding it quite difficult, though, to find an agreed-upon methodology and set of templates for assessing an organisations development capability--the only thing that seems applicable is the Software Engineering Institute's Capability Maturity Model. The latter, however, seems dated and even then rather vague. So, the question is: Do any tools or methodologies (free or commercial) exist that would assist me in completing this assessment?

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  • Using INotifyPropertyChanged in background threads

    - by digitaldias
    Following up on a previous blog post where I exemplify databinding to objects, a reader was having some trouble with getting the UI to update. Here’s the rough UI: The idea is, when pressing Start, a background worker process starts ticking at the specified interval, then proceeds to increment the databound Elapsed value. The problem is that event propagation is limeted to current thread, meaning, you fire an event in one thread, then other threads of the same application will not catch it. The Code behind So, somewhere in my ViewModel, I have a corresponding bethod Start that initiates a background worker, for example: public void Start( ) { BackgroundWorker backgroundWorker = new BackgroundWorker( ); backgroundWorker.DoWork += IncrementTimerValue; backgroundWorker.RunWorkerAsync( ); } protected void IncrementTimerValue( object sender, DoWorkEventArgs e ) { do { if( this.ElapsedMs == 100 ) this.ElapsedMs = 0; else this.ElapsedMs++; }while( true ); } Assuming that there is a property: public int ElapsedMs { get { return _elapsedMs; } set { if( _elapsedMs == value ) return; _elapsedMs = value; NotifyThatPropertyChanged( "ElapsedMs" ); } } The above code will not work. If you step into this code in debug, you will find that INotifyPropertyChanged is called, but it does so in a different thread, and thus the UI never catches it, and does not update. One solution Knowing that the background thread updates the ElapsedMs member gives me a chance to activate BackgroundWorker class’ progress reporting mechanism to simply alert the main thread that something has happened, and that it is probably a good idea to refresh the ElapsedMs binding. public void Start( ) { BackgroundWorker backgroundWorker = new BackgroundWorker( ); backgroundWorker.DoWork += IncrementTimerValue; // Listen for progress report events backgroundWorker.WorkerReportsProgress = true; // Tell the UI that ElapsedMs needs to update backgroundWorker.RunWorkerCompleted += ( sender, e ) => { NotifyThatPropertyChanged( "ElapsedMs" ) }; backgroundWorker.RunWorkerAsync( ); } protected void IncrementTimerValue( object sender, DoWorkEventArgs e ) { do { if( this.ElapsedMs == 100 ) this.ElapsedMs = 0; else this.ElapsedMs++; // report any progress ( sender as BackgroundWorker ).ReportProgress( 0 ); }while( true ); } What happens above now is that I’ve used the BackgroundWorker cross thread mechanism to alert me of when it is ok for the UI to update it’s ElapsedMs field. Because the property itself is being updated in a different thread, I’m removing the NotifyThatPropertyChanged call from it’s Set method, and moving that responsability to the anonymous method that I created in the Start method. This is one way of solving the issue of having a background thread update your UI. I would be happy to hear of other cross-threading mechanisms for working in a MCP/MVC/MVVM pattern.

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  • BizTalk Send Ports, Delivery Notification and ACK / NACK messages

    - by Robert Kokuti
    Recently I worked on an orchestration which sent messages out to a Send Port on a 'fire and forget' basis. The idea was that once the orchestration passed the message to the Messagebox, it was left to BizTalk to manage the sending process. Should the send operation fail, the Send Port got suspended, and the orchestration completed asynchronously, regardless of the Send Port success or failure. However, we still wanted to log the sending success, using the ACK / NACK messages. On normal ports, BizTalk generates ACK / NACK messages back to the Messagebox, if the logical port's Delivery Notification property is set to 'Transmitted'. Unfortunately, this setting also causes the orchestration to wait for the send port's result, and should the Send Port fail, the orchestration will also receive a 'DeliveryFailureException' exception. So we may end up with a suspended port and a suspended orchestration - not the outcome wanted here, there was no value in suspending the orchestration in our case. There are a couple of ways to fix this: 1. Catch the DeliveryFailureException  (full type name Microsoft.XLANGs.BaseTypes.DeliveryFailureException) and do nothing in the orchestration's exception block. Although this works, it still slows down the orchestration as the orchestration still has to wait for the outcome of the send port operation. 2. Use a Direct Port instead, and set the ACK request on the message Context, prior passing to the port: msgToSend(BTS.AckRequired) = true; This has to be done in an expression shape, as a Direct logical port does not have Delivery Notification property - make sure to add a reference to Microsoft.BizTalk.GlobalPropertySchemas. Setting this context value in the message will cause the messaging agent to create an appropriate ACK or NACK message after the port execution. The ACK / NACK messages can be caught and logged by dedicated Send Ports, filtering on BTS.AckType value (which is either ACK or NACK). ACK/NACK messages are treated in a special way by BizTalk, and a useful feature is that the original message's context values are copied to the ACK/NACK message context - these can be used for logging the right information. Other useful context properties of the ACK/NACK messages: -  BTS.AckSendPortName can be used to identify the original send port. - BTS.AckOwnerID, aka http://schemas.microsoft.com/BizTalk/2003/system-properties.AckOwnerID - holds the instance ID of the failed Send Port - can be used to resubmit / terminate the instance Someone may ask, can we just turn off the Delivery Notification on a 'normal' port, and set the AckRequired property on the message as for a Direct port. Unfortunately, this does not work - BizTalk seems to remove this property automatically, if the message goes through a port where Delivery Notification is set to None.

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  • Creating a Strong Bridge to the Post PC World

    - by Webgui
    Moving from location to location requires strong roads.  When crossing a barrier though, like a body of water or valley, we are required to build a strong bridge to get us from point A to point B in a way that is fast, safe, and easy.Yet we are not talking here about driving a car or riding a bus.  As we in the computing world are evidencing the move to the post-PC era, modernizing and migrating legacy applications to harness the power of HTML5 web, cloud and mobile is one of the most difficult challenges enterprises have faced.  Constant technological changes have weakened the business value of legacy systems, which have been developed over the years through huge investments.  There are several risks of course in this move.  Do you choose to simply rewrite code of legacy apps and transform them to HTML5 one by one?  This is quite expensive (according to research firm Gartner, the cost is $6 - $26 per line of code).  Of course, the pace of the rewriting process is very slow – around 170 lines per day for each developer – which slows down business productivity in a world in which no organization can afford to fall behind.  Other questions include whether the new cloud-based apps will have the same functionality as the trusted applications that worked for you for years.  How will the user experience be affected?  And of course, what about data security?  So we are faced with the challenge of building a sturdy bridge to stabilize our move in order to allow us to confidently and easily move our legacy applications into the post-PC era.   We at Gizmox are excited to release the first downloadable Community Technology Preview (CTP) of our Instant CloudMove Transposition Studio.Developers: To download the tool, and try it out for yourself, please visit http://www.visualwebgui.com/download.aspx.The CTP is the first and only tool-based solution allowing any Microsoft Visual Studio developer to extend VB6 and .NET enterprise client/server applications into HTML5 web, cloud and mobile applications, including the ability to upgrade their code and UI while doing so.   It is the only solution to fully replicate enterprise desktop applications behavior in the post-PC era.  With Instant CloudMove, the transposed application is available on any mobile or tablet device, browser and across any client operating system. Moreover, the extended application logic and data remains on the server behind the fire-wall and therefore the application’s front end is secured-by-design.   We would love for you to try out the tool for yourselves and let us know what you think.  How are you finding the move?

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  • Latency Matters

    - by Frederic P
    A lot of interest in low latencies has been expressed within the financial services segment, most especially in the stock trading applications where every millisecond directly influences the profitability of the trader. These days, much of the trading is executed by software applications which are trained to respond to each other almost instantaneously. In fact, you could say that we are in an arms race where traders are using any and all options to cut down on the delay in executing transactions, even by moving physically closer to the trading venue. The Solaris OS network stack has traditionally been engineered for high throughput, at the expense of higher latencies. Knowledge of tuning parameters to redress the imbalance is critical for applications that are latency sensitive. We are presenting in this blog how to configure further a default Oracle Solaris 10 installation to reduce network latency. There are many parameters in fact that can be altered, but the most effective ones are intr_blank_time and intr_blank_packets. These parameters affect on-board network throughput and latency on Solaris systems. If interrupt blanking is disabled, packets are processed by the driver as soon as they arrive, resulting in higher network throughput and lower latency, but with higher CPU utilization. With interrupt blanking disabled, processor utilization can be as high as 80–90% in some high-load web server environments. If interrupt blanking is enabled, packets are processed when the interrupt is issued. Enabling interrupt blanking can result in reduced processor utilization and network throughput, but higher network latency. Both parameters should be set at the same time. You can set these parameters by using the ndd command as follows: # ndd -set /dev/eri intr_blank_time 0 # ndd -set /dev/eri intr_blank_packets 0 You can add them to the /etc/system file as follows: set eri:intr_blank_time 0 set eri:intr_blank_packets 0 The value of the interrupt blanking parameter is a trade-off between network throughput and processor utilization. If higher processor utilization is acceptable for achieving higher network throughput, then disable interrupt blanking. If lower processor utilization is preferred and higher network latency is the penalty, then enable interrupt blanking. Our experience at ISV Engineering is that under controlled experiments the above settings result in reduction of network latency by at least 50%; on a two-socket 3GHz Sun Fire X4170 M2 running Solaris 10 Update 9, the above settings improved ping-pong latency from 60µs to 25-30µs with the on-board NIC.

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  • how this code works and how to modify this code to get my desrire work? [closed]

    - by imon_bayazid
    I dont understand how these code works here : m_MouseHookManager.MouseDoubleClick+=HookManager_MouseDoubleClick; m_MouseHookManager.MouseDoubleClick -= HookManager_MouseDoubleClick; m_KeyboardHookManager.KeyPress +=HookManager_KeyPress; m_KeyboardHookManager.KeyPress -=HookManager_KeyPress; My full Code is here : using System; using System.Windows.Forms; using MouseKeyboardActivityMonitor.WinApi; namespace MouseKeyboardActivityMonitor.Demo { public partial class TestFormHookListeners : Form { private readonly KeyboardHookListener m_KeyboardHookManager; private readonly MouseHookListener m_MouseHookManager; public TestFormHookListeners() { InitializeComponent(); m_KeyboardHookManager = new KeyboardHookListener(new GlobalHooker()); // Hooks are not active after instantiation. You need to use either Enabled property or call Start()()()() method m_KeyboardHookManager.Enabled = true;//True - The Hook is presently installed, activated, and will fire events. m_MouseHookManager = new MouseHookListener(new GlobalHooker()); m_MouseHookManager.Enabled = true; } #region Check boxes to set or remove particular event handlers. private void checkBoxMouseDoubleClick_CheckedChanged(object sender, EventArgs e) { if (checkBoxMouseDoubleClick.Checked) { m_MouseHookManager.MouseDoubleClick += HookManager_MouseDoubleClick; } else { m_MouseHookManager.MouseDoubleClick -= HookManager_MouseDoubleClick; } } private void checkBoxKeyPress_CheckedChanged(object sender, EventArgs e) { if (checkBoxKeyPress.Checked) { m_KeyboardHookManager.KeyPress +=HookManager_KeyPress; } else { m_KeyboardHookManager.KeyPress -=HookManager_KeyPress; } } #endregion #region Event handlers of particular events. They will be activated when an appropriate checkbox is checked. private void HookManager_KeyPress(object sender, KeyPressEventArgs e) { Log(string.Format("KeyPress \t\t {0}\n", e.KeyChar)); } private void HookManager_MouseDoubleClick(object sender, MouseEventArgs e) { Log(string.Format("MouseDoubleClick \t\t {0}\n", e.Button)); } private void Log(string text) { textBoxLog.AppendText(text); textBoxLog.ScrollToCaret(); } #endregion private void checkBoxEnabled_CheckedChanged(object sender, EventArgs e) { m_MouseHookManager.Enabled = checkBoxEnabled.Checked; m_KeyboardHookManager.Enabled = checkBoxEnabled.Checked; } private void radioHooksType_CheckedChanged(object sender, EventArgs e) { Hooker hook; if (radioApplication.Checked) { hook = new AppHooker();//Provides methods for subscription and unsubscription to application mouse and keyboard hooks. } else { hook = new GlobalHooker();//Provides methods for subscription and unsubscription to global mouse and keyboard hooks. } m_KeyboardHookManager.Replace(hook); m_MouseHookManager.Replace(hook);//hook->An AppHooker or GlobalHooker object. //Enables you to switch from application hooks to global hooks //and vice versa on the fly without unsubscribing from events. //Component remains enabled or disabled state after this call as it was before. //Declaration Syntax } private void HookManager_Supress(object sender, MouseEventExtArgs e) { if (e.Button != MouseButtons.Right) { return; } Log("Suppressed.\n"); e.Handled = true; } } } Can anybody help to understand that??? I want by this that whenever a F5 key-pressed my application will be active and then it checks if double-click happen it gives a message .... **How can i modify that.....??????**

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  • Quick run through of the WP7 Developer Tools January 2011

    - by mbcrump
    In case you haven’t heard the latest WP7 Developers Tool update was released yesterday and contains a few goodies. First you need to go and grab the bits here. You can install them in any order, but I installed the WindowsPhoneDeveloperResources_en-US_Patch1.msp first. Then the VS10-KB2486994-x86.exe. They install silently. In other words, you would need to check Programs and Features and look in Installed Updates to see if they installed successfully. Like the screenshot below: Once you get them installed you can try out a few new features. Like Copy and Paste. Just fire up your application and put a TextBox on it and Select the Text and you will have the option highlighted in red above the text. Once you select it you will have the option to paste it. (see red rectangle below). Another feature is the Windows Phone Capability Detection Tool – This tool detects the phone capabilities used by your application. This will prevent you from submitting an app to the marketplace that says it uses x feature but really does not. How do you use it? Well navigate out to either directory: %ProgramFiles%\Microsoft SDKs\Windows Phone\v7.0\Tools\CapDetect %ProgramFiles (x86)%\Microsoft SDKs\Windows Phone\v7.0\Tools\CapDetect and run the following command: CapabilityDetection.exe Rules.xml YOURWP7XAPFILEOUTPUTDIRECTORY So, in my example you will see my app only requires the ID_CAP_MICROPHONE. Let’s see what the WmAppManifest.xml says in our WP7 Project: Whoa! That’s a lot of extra stuff we don’t need. We can delete unused capabilities safely now. Some of the other fixes are: (Copied straight from Microsoft) Fixes a text selection bug in pivot and panorama controls. In applications that have pivot or panorama controls that contain text boxes, users can unintentionally change panes when trying to copy text. To prevent this problem, open your application, recompile it, and then resubmit it to the Windows Phone Marketplace. Windows Phone Connect Tool – Allows you to connect your phone to a PC when Zune® software is not running and debug applications that use media APIs. For more information, see How to: Use the Connect Tool. Updated Bing Maps Silverlight Control – Includes improvements to gesture performance when using Bing™ Maps Silverlight® Control. Windows Phone Developer Tools Fix allowing deployment of XAP files over 64 MB in size to physical phone devices for testing and debugging. That’s pretty much it. Thanks again for reading my blog!  Subscribe to my feed CodeProject

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  • How to implement an intelligent enemy in a shoot-em-up?

    - by bummzack
    Imagine a very simple shoot-em-up, something we all know: You're the player (green). Your movement is restricted to the X axis. Our enemy (or enemies) is at the top of the screen, his movement is also restricted to the X axis. The player fires bullets (yellow) at the enemy. I'd like to implement an A.I. for the enemy that should be really good at avoiding the players bullets. My first idea was to divide the screen into discrete sections and assign weights to them: There are two weights: The "bullet-weight" (grey) is the danger imposed by a bullet. The closer the bullet is to the enemy, the higher the "bullet-weight" (0..1, where 1 is highest danger). Lanes without a bullet have a weight of 0. The second weight is the "distance-weight" (lime-green). For every lane I add 0.2 movement cost (this value is kinda arbitrary now and could be tweaked). Then I simply add the weights (white) and go to the lane with the lowest weight (red). But this approach has an obvious flaw, because it can easily miss local minima as the optimal place to go would be simply between two incoming bullets (as denoted with the white arrow). So here's what I'm looking for: Should find a way through bullet-storm, even when there's no place that doesn't impose a threat of a bullet. Enemy can reliably dodge bullets by picking an optimal (or almost optimal) solution. Algorithm should be able to factor in bullet movement speed (as they might move with different velocities). Ways to tweak the algorithm so that different levels of difficulty can be applied (dumb to super-intelligent enemies). Algorithm should allow different goals, as the enemy doesn't only want to evade bullets, he should also be able to shoot the player. That means that positions where the enemy can fire at the player should be preferred when dodging bullets. So how would you tackle this? Contrary to other games of this genre, I'd like to have only a few, but very "skilled" enemies instead of masses of dumb enemies.

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  • So, I though I wanted to learn frontend/web development and break out of my comfort zone...

    - by ripper234
    I've been a backend developer for a long time, and I really swim in that field. C++/C#/Java, databases, NoSql, caching - I feel very much at ease around these platforms/concepts. In the past few years, I started to taste end-to-end web programming, and recently I decided to take a job offer in a front end team developing a large, complex product. I wanted to break out of my comfort zone and become more of an "all around developer". Problem is, I'm getting more and more convinced I don't like it. Things I like about backend programming, and missing in frontend stuff: More interesting problems - When I compare designing a server that handle massive data, to adding another form to a page or changing the validation logic, I find the former a lot more interesting. Refactoring refactoring refactoring - I am addicted to Visual Studio with Resharper, or IntelliJ. I feel very comfortable writing code as it goes without investing too much thought, because I know that with a few clicks I can refactor it into beautiful code. To my knowledge, this doesn't exist at all in javascript. Intellisense and navigation - I hate looking at a bunch of JS code without instantly being able to know what it does. In VS/IntelliJ I can summon the documentation, navigate to the code, climb up inheritance hiererchies ... life is sweet. Auto-completion - Just hit Ctrl-Space on an object to see what you can do with it. Easier to test - With almost any backend feature, I can use TDD to capture the requirements, see a bunch of failing tests, then implement, knowing that if the tests pass I did my job well. With frontend, while tests can help a bit, I find that most of the testing is still manual - fire up that browser and verify the site didn't break. I miss that feeling of "A green CI means everything is well with the world." Now, I've only seriously practiced frontend development for about two months now, so this might seem premature ... but I'm getting a nagging feeling that I should abandon this quest and return to my comfort zone, because, well, it's so comfy and fun. Another point worth mentioning in this context is that while I am learning some frontend tools, a lot of what I'm learning is our company's specific infrastructure, which I'm not sure will be very useful later on in my career. Any suggestions or tips? Do you think I should give frontend programming "a proper chance" of at least six to twelve months before calling it quits? Could all my pains be growing pains, and will they magically disappear as I get more experienced? Or is gaining this perspective is valuable enough, even if plan to do more "backend stuff" later on, that it's worth grinding my teeth and continuing with my learning?

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  • Switch from back-end to front-end programming: I'm out of my comfort zone, should I switch back?

    - by ripper234
    I've been a backend developer for a long time, and I really swim in that field. C++/C#/Java, databases, NoSql, caching - I feel very much at ease around these platforms/concepts. In the past few years, I started to taste end-to-end web programming, and recently I decided to take a job offer in a front end team developing a large, complex product. I wanted to break out of my comfort zone and become more of an "all around developer". Problem is, I'm getting more and more convinced I don't like it. Things I like about backend programming, and missing in frontend stuff: More interesting problems - When I compare designing a server that handle massive data, to adding another form to a page or changing the validation logic, I find the former a lot more interesting. Refactoring refactoring refactoring - I am addicted to Visual Studio with Resharper, or IntelliJ. I feel very comfortable writing code as it goes without investing too much thought, because I know that with a few clicks I can refactor it into beautiful code. To my knowledge, this doesn't exist at all in javascript. Intellisense and navigation - I hate looking at a bunch of JS code without instantly being able to know what it does. In VS/IntelliJ I can summon the documentation, navigate to the code, climb up inheritance hiererchies ... life is sweet. Auto-completion - Just hit Ctrl-Space on an object to see what you can do with it. Easier to test - With almost any backend feature, I can use TDD to capture the requirements, see a bunch of failing tests, then implement, knowing that if the tests pass I did my job well. With frontend, while tests can help a bit, I find that most of the testing is still manual - fire up that browser and verify the site didn't break. I miss that feeling of "A green CI means everything is well with the world." Now, I've only seriously practiced frontend development for about two months now, so this might seem premature ... but I'm getting a nagging feeling that I should abandon this quest and return to my comfort zone, because, well, it's so comfy and fun. Another point worth mentioning in this context is that while I am learning some frontend tools, a lot of what I'm learning is our company's specific infrastructure, which I'm not sure will be very useful later on in my career. Any suggestions or tips? Do you think I should give frontend programming "a proper chance" of at least six to twelve months before calling it quits? Could all my pains be growing pains, and will they magically disappear as I get more experienced? Or is gaining this perspective is valuable enough, even if plan to do more "backend stuff" later on, that it's worth grinding my teeth and continuing with my learning?

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  • Delay command execution over sockets

    - by David
    I've been trying to fix the game loop in a real time (tick delay) MUD. I realized using Thread.Sleep would seem clunky when the user spammed commands through their choice of client (Zmud, etc) e.g. east;south;southwest would wait three move ticks and then output everything from the past couple rooms. The game loop basically calls a Flush and Fill method for each socket during each tick (50ms) private void DoLoop() { Stopwatch stopWatch = new Stopwatch(); stopWatch.Start(); while (running) { // for each socket, flush and fill ConnectionMonitor.Update(); stopWatch.Stop(); WaitIfNeeded(stopWatch.ElapsedMilliseconds); stopWatch.Reset(); } } The Fill method fires the command events, but as mentioned before, they currently block using Thread.Sleep. I tried adding a "ready" flag to the state object that attempts to execute the command along with a queue of spammed commands, but it ends up executing one command and queuing up the rest i.e. each subsequent command executes something that got queued up that should've been executed before. I must be missing something about the timer. private readonly Queue<SpammedCommand> queuedCommands = new Queue<SpammedCommand>(); private bool ready = true; private void TryExecuteCommand(string input) { var commandContext = CommandContext.Create(input); var player = Server.Current.Database.Get<Player>(Session.Player.Key); var commandInfo = Server.Current.CommandLookup .FindCommand(commandContext.CommandName, player.IsAdmin); if (commandInfo != null) { if (!ready) { // queue command queuedCommands.Enqueue(new SpammedCommand() { Context = commandContext, Info = commandInfo }); return; } if (queuedCommands.Count > 0) { // queue the incoming command queuedCommands.Enqueue(new SpammedCommand() { Context = commandContext, Info = commandInfo, }); // dequeue and execute var command = queuedCommands.Dequeue(); command.Info.Command.Execute(Session, command.Context); setTimeout(command.Info.TickLength); return; } commandInfo.Command.Execute(Session, commandContext); setTimeout(commandInfo.TickLength); } else { Session.WriteLine("Command not recognized"); } } Finally, setTimeout was supposed to set the execution delay (TickLength) for that command, and makeReady just sets the ready flag on the state object to true. private void setTimeout(TickDelay tickDelay) { ready = false; var t = new System.Timers.Timer() { Interval = (long) tickDelay, AutoReset = false, }; t.Elapsed += makeReady; t.Start(); // fire this in tickDelay ms } // MAKE READYYYYY!!!! private void makeReady(object sender, System.Timers.ElapsedEventArgs e) { ready = true; } Am I missing something about the System.Timers.Timer created in setTimeout? How can I execute (and output) spammed commands per TickLength without using Thread.Sleep?

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