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• Hard drive spark, can it be recovered?

  - by user163558

  Alright, so I was going to install Source Film Maker but I didn't have any space, so I decided to connect an HDD via an USB converter(image below). I shut down the machine, turned the PSU off, and connected via a Molex connector & the USB converter. I turned back on the PSU, no sparks or anything, everything normal, but when I turned on the machine, I heard some sizzing(lol?) and sparks flying and a little flame, but the PC was running fine. I pressed the power button instead pulling out the plug (I panicked) so it continued to short circuit for about 10 seconds. There's a very little part on the HDD that become ash, it's near the Molex connector and the circuit is a little black as well. I'm afraid that I will damage the HDD more so I didn't hook up the HDD after all. Do you think it's the PSU(came default with Cooler Master Elite 430, 500W) or it's the HDD(Samsung SP1203N)? P.S: I've attached the HDD same way before(like 3 months ago), and it worked. HDD burn: USB connector: Sorry for the bad image quality, taken with my phone.

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• Acer recovery disks not bootable?

  - by user13743

  We got a new Acer laptop with Vista installed at work. As it's getting ready to go out in the field, we wanted to do a burn-in test on it. We made the recovery DVDs before we ran the test. Part of the burn-in was bonnie++, which does a destructive read/write test of the hard drive. The machine passed with flying colors, but after trying to boot to the recovery DVD to being re-installing the system, the machine began to try PXE boot after a while. After doing some googling, it appears these 'recovery' disks expect a certain recovery partition to exist on the hard drive, and are in fact not bootable at all, and are useless in absence of the recovery partition. Is this the case, and is this "The Way Things Are" with all PC manufacturers and Windows Vista+ nowadays? How do I get my hands on actual bootable DVDs? I've emailed Acer support. I see an option on their site to purchase recovery disks, but I have the suspicion that these are the same non-bootable disks that I burned on the new system. Will Acer provide actual boot disks?

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• how to diagnose a hard system seizure? Dell+Ubuntu

  - by rob

  I've got Ubuntu 9.10 on a Dell Vostro 420 desktop, a little over a year old, which I use for plain vanilla work stuff (email, web, terminal, text editor). Every now and then, at totally random times, it completely freezes on me. Hard. Mouse and keyboard stop working, cursor stops blinking, clock stops moving. All I can do is hold down the power button on the front of the box to shut it off. Sometimes it happens after several months of continuous uptime; sometimes it happens a few minutes after a reboot, while all I've done is open a terminal to look at log files, or maybe firefox to do a google search. Each time, there is nothing at all in /var/log/messages at the time of the crash. This makes it seem like a hardware problem, and indeed a few months ago I opened the box and wiggled everything and the problem went away for a while. But now it's back. I went in and checked everything, took out each RAM card and reseated. No luck. I ran all the system diagnostics (the long version) and everything passed with flying colors. Something is messed up in this box, but without any useful logs or failed tests, how in the world am I going to find it? And of course, Dell's not gonna help me cause I went and replaced Windows with Ubuntu. What steps would you take next to track down this problem?

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• How does one debug Windows network share authentication?

  - by ajs410

  I have machine0 with 32-bit Vista, logged in as a domain user, running a VMWare image of 32-bit Vista, logged in as a local user, with the VM set to bridge the network. From an administrator account (called admin) within the VM, I try to access the hidden C$ share on machine0 (i.e. start - run - "\\machine0\C$\"). I get no prompts for credentials. Worse, machine0 has an admin account (different password), and machine0\admin gets locked out when VM\admin tries to access the network share. I get a message several seconds later, which feels like a cached credential failure leading to the lockout. I have checked several places for cached credentials; net use, Stored Usernames and Passwords, mapped shares. I rebooted (both machine0 and VM) to make sure the session was clear of any cached credentials. I can force net use to use my domain credentials when accessing machine0, and then I can see the share. I can also see shares that do not require credentials. I decided to try another machine on the network (machine1), 64-bit Vista, local user. This machine has no lockout policy, and after several seconds (feels like failed cached credentials again) it prompts me for credentials. After I enter them, it re-prompts me, saying "logon unsuccessful" (tried my domain credentials, and also machine1\admin's). Which is bogus, because I proceed to log on with remote desktop using the machine1\admin credentials. I have tried this on another machine (machine2, 64-bit Vista), running a copy of the same 32-bit VM, and I don't remember having this problem. machine0 has a fingerprint reader...could that try storing passwords and interfere? Are there any places I'm missing where there could be cached credentials? Is there a way to see what credentials are flying around when I try to connect?

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• SharePoint.DesignFactory.ContentFiles–building WCM sites

  - by svdoever

  One of the use cases where we use the SharePoint.DesignFactory.ContentFiles tooling is in building SharePoint Publishing (WCM) solutions for SharePoint 2007, SharePoint 2010 and Office365. Publishing solutions are often solutions that have one instance, the publishing site (possibly with subsites), that in most cases need to go through DTAP. If you dissect a publishing site, in most case you have the following findings: The publishing site spans a site collection The branding of the site is specified in the root site, because: Master pages live in the root site (/_catalogs/masterpage) Page layouts live in the root site (/_catalogs/masterpage) The style library lives in the root site ( /Style Library) and contains images, css, javascript, xslt transformations for your CQWP’s, … Preconfigured web parts live in the root site (/_catalogs/wp) The root site and subsites contains a document library called Pages (or your language-specific version of it) containing publishing pages using the page layouts and master pages The site collection contains content types, fields and lists When using the SharePoint.DesignFactory.ContentFiles tooling it is very easy to create, test, package and deploy the artifacts that can be uploaded to the SharePoint content database. This can be done in a fast and simple way without the need to create and deploy WSP packages. If we look at the above list of artifacts we can use SharePoint.DesignFactory.ContentFiles for master pages, page layouts, the style library, web part configurations, and initial publishing pages (these are normally made through the SharePoint web UI). Some artifacts like content types, fields and lists in the above list can NOT be handled by SharePoint.DesignFactory.ContentFiles, because they can’t be uploaded to the SharePoint content database. The good thing is that these artifacts are the artifacts that don’t change that much in the development of a SharePoint Publishing solution. There are however multiple ways to create these artifacts: Use paper script: create them manually in each of the environments based on documentation Automate the creation of the artifacts using (PowerShell) script Develop a WSP package to create these artifacts I’m not a big fan of the third option (see my blog post Thoughts on building deployable and updatable SharePoint solutions). It is a lot of work to create content types, fields and list definitions using all kind of XML files, and it is not allowed to modify these artifacts when in use. I know… SharePoint 2010 has some content type upgrade possibilities, but I think it is just too cumbersome. The first option has the problem that content types and fields get ID’s, and that these ID’s must be used by the metadata on for example page layouts. No problem for SharePoint.DesignFactory.ContentFiles, because it supports deploy-time resolving of these ID’s using PowerShell. For example consider the following metadata definition for the page layout contactpage-wcm.aspx.properties.ps1: Metadata page layout # This script must return a hashtable @{ name=value; ... } of field name-value pairs # for the content file that this script applies to. # On deployment to SharePoint, these values are written as fields in the corresponding list item (if any) # Note that fields must exist; they can be updated but not created or deleted. # This script is called right after the file is deployed to SharePoint.   # You can use the script parameters and arbitrary PowerShell code to interact with SharePoint. # e.g. to calculate properties and values at deployment time.   param([string]$SourcePath, [string]$RelativeUrl, $Context) @{     "ContentTypeId" = $Context.GetContentTypeID('GeneralPage');     "MasterPageDescription" = "Cloud Aviator Contact pagelayout (wcm - don't use)";     "PublishingHidden" = "1";     "PublishingAssociatedContentType" = $Context.GetAssociatedContentTypeInfo('GeneralPage') } The PowerShell functions GetContentTypeID and GetAssociatedContentTypeInfo can at deploy-time resolve the required information from the server we are deploying to. I personally prefer the second option: automate creation through PowerShell, because there are PowerShell scripts available to export content types and fields. An example project structure for a typical SharePoint WCM site looks like: Note that this project uses DualLayout. So if you build Publishing sites using SharePoint, checkout out the completely free SharePoint.DesignFactory.ContentFiles tooling and start flying!

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• List of Upcoming Appearances

  - by Chris Gardner

  Greetings. I know I have been in work sponsored hiding lately. We are working furiously on a beta project to secure a contract, and I can't really talk about it yet. Hopefully, the contracts will be soon signed. Not only will we then have money, but I can talk about all this really cool tech with which I have been playing. However, since the contract is not signed, I need to bring you people up to date with where I will be during the summer. Let's face it, you can't be a speaker / blogger without pandering to shameless self-promotion. First, I will, once again, be staffing the Hands-on-Labs at TechEd North America. Unfortunately, TechEd North America is already sold out for this year. However, if you're already going, drop by the labs and say Hi. Also, keep an eye on Twitter to track me throughout the event. Also, look for a post in a few hours with my specific picks for what content I'm looking forward to seeing this year. Immediately following TechEd North America, I will be flying into Knoxville to speak at CodeStock. I will be presenting my introduction and intermediate Xbox 360 development talks. There are a TON of great content at CodeStock this year, but there are only about 50 tickets left. After that whirlwind of work, things settle for awhile. That means I'm available to speak at your User Group, luncheon, bowling league, birthday party, anniversary, or bat mitzvah. Mid August brings us to That Conference. This one is going to be a blast. If you haven't heard of That Conference yet, you should really check it out. This will also be my introduction and intermediate Xbox 360 development talks. This is a new conference, and it looks like it will be a great one. Finally, we will turn our attention to DevLink. DevLink has the distinction of picking up my newest talk, Creating Stereoscopic 3D Graphics in XNA. On top of that, I'm giving an general Xbox 360 and Windows Phone 7 talk. DevLink has added an new "XNA and Kinect" track, so there will me a ton of great game content. That should bring us through the summer. As I solidify the Stereoscopic talk, look for some content on that to creep up on here. I will say it's the first topic I've played around with that is easier in 3D than 2D. Also, the organizers of Alabama Code Camp are still trying to reschedule the event. When that happens, I'll get that information out. Also, we are looking to expand our development team. If you are interested in working for / with me, keep an eye on the T & W Operations website. I know we're immediately looking for a junior level developer, but I think a few higher level position may come up soon. You MUST apply through the website, but drop me a personal line if you do apply. I'll keep an eye out for the application.

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• 2010 April Fools Joke

  - by Dane Morgridge

  I started at my current job at the end of March last year and there were some pretty funny April fools jokes.  Nothing super crazy, but pretty funny.  One guy came in and there was a tree in his cube.  We (me and the rest of my team) were planning for a couple of weeks on what we could do that would be just awesome.  We had a lot of really good ideas but nothing was spectacular.  Then Steve Andrews had a brilliant idea (yes it's true).  Since we have internal DNS servers we could redirect DNS to our internal servers for a site such as cnn.com.  Then we would lift the code from the site and create our own home page that would contain news about people in the company.  Steve was actually laughing so hard when he thought of the idea that it took him almost 30 minutes to spit it out. I thought, "this is perfect". I had enlisted a couple of people to help come up with the stories and at the same time we were trying to figure out how to get everybody to the site the morning of the 1st.  Then it hit me.  We could have the main article be one of my getting picked up by the FBI on hacking charges.  Then Chris (my boss) could send an email out telling everyone that I would not be there today and direct them to the site.  That would for sure get everyone to go to cnn.com first thing and see our prank.  I begun the process of looking for photos I could crop myself into and found the perfect one.  Then my wife took a good pic with our Canon 40D and I went to work.  The night before I didn't have any other stories due to everyone being really busy at work, but I decided to go ahead with just the FBI bust on it's own.  I got everything working and tested and coordinated with Chris for me to come in late so no one would see me at the office until after everyone had seen the joke. And so the morning of April fools came and I was waiting at home and the email was perfect.  Chris told everyone that I wouldn't be in and that not to answer any questions if you got any calls from anybody.  The Photoshop job I did was not perfect, but good enough and I even wrote an article with it that went into more detail about how I had been classified as a terrorist and all kinds of stuff. People at work started getting the emails and a few people didn't realize it was a joke (as I had hoped), including some from senior management (one person in particular who shall remain nameless in this post).  Emails started flying around about how to contain the situation and how to handle bad PR.  He basically bought it hook, line and sinker and then went in to crisis mode.  It was awesome! He did finally realize it was a joke and I will likely print and frame the email he sent out.  In short, April fools this year was a huge success.

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• Failure Sucks, But Does It Have To?

  - by steve.diamond

  Hey Folks--It's "elephant in the room" time. Imagine a representative from a CRM VENDOR discussing CRM FAILURES. Well. I recently saw this blog post from Michael Krigsman on "six ways CRM projects go wrong." Now, I know this may come off defensive, but my comments apply to ALL CRM vendors, not just Oracle. As I perused the list, I couldn't find any failures related to technology. They all seemed related to people or process. Now, this isn't about finger pointing, or impugning customers. I love customers! And when they fail, WE fail. Although I sit in the cheap seats, i.e., I haven't funded any multi-million dollar CRM initiatives lately, I kept wondering how to convert the perception of failure as something that ends and is never to be mentioned again (see Michael's reason #4), to something that one learns from and builds upon. So to continue my tradition of speaking in platitudes, let me propose the following three tenets: 1) Try and get ahead of your failures while they're very very small. 2) Immediately assess what you can learn from those failures. 3) With more than 15 years of CRM deployments, seek out those vendors that have a track record both in learning from "misses" and in supporting MANY THOUSANDS of CRM successes at companies of all types and sizes. Now let me digress briefly with an unpleasant (for me, anyway) analogy. I really don't like flying. Call it 'fear of dying' or 'fear of no control.' Whatever! I've spoken with quite a few commercial pilots over the years, and they reassure me that there are multiple failures on most every flight. We as passengers just don't know about them. Most of them are too miniscule to make a difference, and most of them are "caught" before they become LARGER failures. It's typically the mid-sized to colossal failures we hear about, and a significant percentage of those are due to human error. What's the point? I'd propose that organizations consider the topic of FAILURE in five grades. On one end, FAILURE Grade 1 is a minor/miniscule failure. On the other end, FAILURE Grade 5 is a colossal failure A Grade 1 CRM FAILURE could be that a particular interim milestone was missed. Why? What can we learn from that? How can we prevent that from happening as we proceed through the project? Individual organizations will need to define their own Grade 2 and Grade 3 failures. The opportunity is to keep those Grade 3 failures from escalating any further. Because honestly, a GRADE 5 failure may not be recoverable. It could result in a project being pulled, countless amounts of hours and dollars lost, and jobs lost. We don't want to go there. In closing, I want to thank Michael for opening my eyes up to the world of "color," versus thinking of failure as both "black and white" and a dead end road that organizations can't learn from and avoid discussing like the plague.

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• BI&EPM in Focus June 2012

  - by Mike.Hallett(at)Oracle-BI&EPM

  General News Thomas Kurian Discusses Oracle Exalytics, SAP HANA (replay | preso | press)  Accenture & Oracle Study: The Challenges of Corporate Financial Reporting  (link) Flash Demo: Oracle Hyperion Planning on Exalytics in the Public Sector (link) Flash Demo: OBIEE & Exalytics in Retail (link) Customers Italian Partner Alfa Sistemi implemented at Autovie Venete S.p.A. Integrates Business Intelligence and Performance Management to Improve Efficiency and Speed for Managing Public Works Projects (English version)  / Autovie Venete implementa un sistema integrato di Business Intelligence e Performance Management per migliorare l’efficienza e la tempestività dell’attività di Controlling di Commessa (Italian version). FANCL Gains 360-Degree View of Customers across Multiple Sales Channels, Reduces Reports by 75% Korea Yakult Improves Profit & Loss Analysis with Oracle Hyperion Planning and OBIEE Hill International Streamlines Forecasting, Improves Visibility into Project Productivity and Profitability Children’s Rights in Society Better Supports Organizational Mission with Advanced, Integrated, and Streamlined Business Intelligence Tools Profit: International utility Enel monitors the performance of global subsidiaries with Oracle Hyperion Applications (link) Profit: Charting a New Course: Korean Air gains altitude by leveraging its greatest asset: information (link)   Events June 12: Breaking Away from the Excel Add-In: Welcome to Hyperion Smart View 11.1.2.2 (link) June 13: Upgrading OBIEE 10g to 11g: Best Practices and Lessons Learned (performance architects) (link) June 14, The Netherlands: Strategies for Business Excellence, New Release of Oracle Hyperion EPM Suite (link) June 21: Comprehensive and Accurate Forecasting for Healthcare (link) June 26: What Exactly is Exalytics? (KPI Partners) (link) Webcast Replay: Is Your Company Able to Navigate Through Market Volatility? (link)  Webcast Replay: Is Hope and Email The Core of Your Reconciliation Process? (link) Webcast Replay: Troubleshooting EPM Reporting & Analysis 11.1.2.x  (link) Webcast Replay: Is your Organization Flying Blind when it comes to Understanding Profitability?  (link) Enterprise Performance Management Final Oracle EPM  Information Panel (CIP) survey on cost, profitability and performance reporting/scorecards is now OPEN (link) New on EPM Blog: What's Going on With IFRS? (link) How does Crystal Ball integrate with EPM Solutions? New collateral and demos on Crystal Ball Solution Factory!  (link) New Youtube Video: Business Case Analysis with Oracle Crystal Ball (link) Crystal Ball 11.1.2.2 is released! Grouped Assumptions in Sensitivity Charts, Data Filtering When Fitting Distributions and Parameter Edits When Fitting Distributions to name a few. Get full details from the online New Features Guide (link) New DRM Oracle-by-Examples now available (link) Support Blog: Hyperion Ledgerlink Sample Record and Windows 7: Now you see it, now you don’t  (link) Use Enterprise Manager FMW Control to Troubleshoot Oracle EPM 11.1.2 Family of Products (link) Business  Intelligence Whitepaper: Real-Time Operational Reporting for E-Business Suite via GoldenGate Replication to an Operational Data Store.  How Oracle enabled real-time operational reporting for its $20B services contract business with Golden Gate & OBIEE (link) KPI Partners ebook: Understanding Oracle BI Components and Repository Modeling Basics (link) “Getting Started with Oracle Endeca Information Discovery” video tutorials now available (link) Oracle BI Publisher Conversion Center: Convert from Crystal, Actuate, or Oracle Reports to Oracle BI Publisher (link) Oracle Fusion Applications: Monthly Partner Updates Webcast Replays to help BI partners understand how OBI, Essbase, BI-Apps and Fusion work together: More on Fusion CRM: Fusion Marketing More on Fusion CRM: Fusion CRM Sales Start-Up Packs and Expert Services for Implementation Partners Introducing the Oracle Fusion Accounting Hub Implementing Fusion Applications using Oracle's Composers Oracle Fusion Applications Co-Existence

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• PASS Summit 2011 &ndash; Part II

  - by Tara Kizer

  I arrived in Seattle last Monday afternoon to attend PASS Summit 2011.  I had really wanted to attend Gail Shaw’s (blog|twitter) and Grant Fritchey’s (blog|twitter) pre-conference seminar “All About Execution Plans” on Monday, but that would have meant flying out on Sunday which I couldn’t do.  On Tuesday, I attended Allan Hirt’s (blog|twitter) pre-conference seminar entitled “A Deep Dive into AlwaysOn: Failover Clustering and Availability Groups”.  Allan is a great speaker, and his seminar was packed with demos and information about AlwaysOn in SQL Server 2012.  Unfortunately, I have lost my notes from this seminar and the presentation materials are only available on the pre-con DVD.  Hmpf! On Wednesday, I attended Gail Shaw’s “Bad Plan! Sit!”, Andrew Kelly’s (blog|twitter) “SQL 2008 Query Statistics”, Dan Jones’ (blog|twitter) “Improving your PowerShell Productivity”, and Brent Ozar’s (blog|twitter) “BLITZ! The SQL – More One Hour SQL Server Takeovers”.  In Gail’s session, she went over how to fix bad plans and bad query patterns.  Update your stale statistics! How to fix bad plans Use local variables – optimizer can’t sniff it, so it’ll optimize for “average” value Use RECOMPILE (at the query or stored procedure level) – CPU hit OPTIMIZE FOR hint – most common value you’ll pass How to fix bad query patterns Don’t use them – ha! Catch-all queries Use dynamic SQL OPTION (RECOMPILE) Multiple execution paths Split into multiple stored procedures OPTION (RECOMPILE) Modifying parameter values Use local variables Split into outer and inner procedure OPTION (RECOMPILE) She also went into “last resort” and “very last resort” options, but those are risky unless you know what you are doing.  For the average Joe, she wouldn’t recommend these.  Examples are query hints and plan guides. While I enjoyed Andrew’s session, I didn’t take any notes as it was familiar material.  Andrew is a great speaker though, and I’d highly recommend attending his sessions in the future. Next up was Dan’s PowerShell session.  I need to look into profiles, manifests, function modules, and function import scripts more as I just didn’t quite grasp these concepts.  I am attending a PowerShell training class at the end of November, so maybe that’ll help clear it up.  I really enjoyed the Excel integration demo.  It was very cool watching PowerShell build the spreadsheet in real-time.  I must look into this more!  On a side note, I am jealous of Dan’s hair.  Fabulous hair! Brent’s session showed us how to quickly gather information about a server that you will be taking over database administration duties for.  He wrote a script to do a fast health check and then later wrapped it into a stored procedure, sp_Blitz.  I can’t wait to use this at my work even on systems where I’ve been the primary DBA for years, maybe there’s something I’ve overlooked.  We are using EPM to help standardize our environment and uncover problems, but sp_Blitz will definitely still help us out.  He even provides a cloud-based update feature, sp_BlitzUpdate, for sp_Blitz so you don’t have to constantly update it when he makes a change.  I think I’ll utilize his update code for some other challenges that we face at my work.

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• If not now, then when?

  - by Chris Gardner

  Originally posted on: http://geekswithblogs.net/freestylecoding/archive/2013/10/25/if-not-now-then-when.aspx The time has been flying by this year. It seems like only yesterday that I mentioned the gorillagator, a simple construct of confusion to try to draw attention to my message. In reality, that message was sent over a month ago. During that time, the hours slipped to days and days to weeks. Many exciting things have happened to myself; I'm sure many exciting things have happened to you. I'm also sure that many terrifying things have happened to children and their families. 62 children enter treatment at a Children's Miracle Network Hospital every minute. That's nearly 60,000 children since I sent the last email. To put that number in perspective, that is more than the population of Greenland. If we expand that to the past year, they have been nearly 550,000 children treated. That is almost the population of Huntsville, Decatur, and all their suburbs combined. Over the past 4 years, I have raised a little more than $3,000 for Children's Hospital of Alabama. As a result, I received a call from the organizers of Extra Life thanking me for my dedicated work and informing me that I was the top supporters for Children's Hospital of Alabama ... with my measly three grand. We can do much better than that. It may sound like I'm trying to have fun by playing games for 24 hours. It is more than that. It is me using my time and body as a catalyst. It is me putting my passion to work for a cause. It is me turning my love into something tangible. I have been campaigning and fighting to give these children a chance for years. I have been asking you to help me support these children and families. I've been putting in countless hours of talking to people, impassioned emails, and carefully constructed tweets. I have been fighting with cutting edge, and sometimes expensive, technology to try to provide live streams of my marathons. I yearly put my body through 24 (and, this year, 25) hours of no sleep. I do this to represent the countless hours these families sit awake at their children's side. All I ask is a few minutes on a website and a few dollars. These few minutes and few dollars go a long way help people that are experiencing circumstances that only occur in our nightmares. I also ask that you take one extra step. Forward this plea to those that you know. I can only reach a small fraction of a percentage of the people that may be able to help. Together, we can reach the world. I raise money for Children's Hospital of Alabama. As this message branches out, people may wish to support a hospital closer to their area. I have included a link to the list of people that have dedicated their time and have received no donations. Find someone on the list supporting your local hospital and give them a donation. Let them know that their time and effort are appreciated. Together, we can do something great. Together, we can make a difference. Together, we all stand tall. Thank you. You can get more information at http://www.extra-life.org and http://childrensmiraclenetworkhospitals.org/" My donation page is http://www.extra-life.org/participant/cgardner The list of participants without donations is http://www.extra-life.org/index.cfm?fuseaction=donorDrive.eventParticipantList&page=629&eventID=512

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• Musings on the launch of SQL Monitor

  - by Phil Factor

  For several years, I was responsible for the smooth running of a large number of enterprise database servers. We ran a network monitoring tool that was primitive by today’s standards but which performed the useful function of polling every system, including all the Servers in my charge. It ran a configurable script for each service that you needed to monitor that was merely required to return one of a number of integer values. These integer values represented the pain level of the service, from 10 (“hurtin’ real bad”) to 1 (“Things is great”). Not only could you program the visual appearance of each server on the network diagram according to the value of the integer, but you could even opt to run a sound file. Very soon, we had a large TFT Screen, high on the wall of the server room, with every server represented by an icon, and a speaker next to it that would give out a series of grunts, groans, snores, shrieks and funeral marches, depending on the problem. One glance at the display, and you could dive in with iSQL/QA/SSMS and check what was going on with your favourite diagnostic tools. If you saw a server icon burst into flames on the screen or droop like a jelly, you dropped your mug of coffee to do it.  It was real fun, but I remember it more for the huge difference it made to have that real-time visibility into how your servers are performing. The management soon stopped making jokes about the real reason we wanted the TFT screen. (It rendered DVDs beautifully they said; particularly flesh-tints). If you are instantly alerted when things start to go wrong, then there was a good chance you could fix it before being alerted to the problem by the users of the system.  There is a world of difference between this sort of tool, one that gives whoever is ‘on watch’ in the server room the first warning of a potential problem on one of any number of servers, and the breed of tool that attempts to provide some sort of prosthetic DBA Brain. I like to get the early warning, to get the right information to help to diagnose a problem: No auto-fix, but just the information. I prefer to leave the task of ascertaining the exact cause of a problem to my own routines, custom code, intuition and forensic instincts. A simulated aircraft cockpit doesn’t do anything for me, especially before I know where I should be flying.  Time has moved on, and that TFT screen is now, with SQL Monitor, an iPad or any other mobile or static device that can support a browser. Rather than trying to reproduce the conceptual topology of the servers, it lists them in their groups so as to give a display that scales with the increasing number of databases you monitor.  It gives the history of the major events and trends for the servers. It gives the icons and colours that you can spot out of the corner of your eye, but goes on to give you just enough information in drill-down to give you a much clearer idea of where to look with your DBA tools and routines. It doesn't swamp you with information.  Whereas a few server and database-level problems are pretty easily fixed, others depend on judgement and experience to sort out.  Although the idea of an application that automates the bulk of a DBA’s skills is attractive to many, I can’t see it happening soon. SQL Server’s complexity increases faster than the panaceas can be created. In the meantime, I believe that the best way of helping  DBAs  is to make the monitoring process as simple and effective as possible,  and provide the right sort of detail and ‘evidence’ to allow them to decide on the fix. In the end, it is still down to the skill of the DBA.

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• What's the "best" database for embedded?

  - by mawg

  I'm an embedded guy, not a database guy. I've been asked to redesign an existing system which has bottlenecks in several places. The embedded device is based around an ARM 9 processor running at 220mHz. There should be a database of 50k entries (may increase to 250k) each with 1k of data (max 8 filed). That's approximate - I can try to get more precise figures if necessary. They are currently using SqlLite 2 and planning to move to SqlLite 3. Without starting a flame war - I am a complete d/b newbie just seeking advice - is that the "best" decision? I realize that this might be a "how long is a piece of string?" question, but any pointers woudl be greatly welcomed. I don't mind doing a lot of reading & research, but just hoped that you could get me off to a flying start. Thanks. p.s Again, a total rewrite, might not even stick with embedded Linux, but switch to eCos, don't worry too much about one time conversion between d/b formats. Oh, and accesses should be infrequent, at most one every few seconds. edit: ok, it seems they have 30k entries (may reach 100k or more) of only 5 or 6 fields each, but at least 3 of them can be a search key for a record. They are toying with "having no d/b at all, since the data are so simple", but it seems to me that with multiple keys, we couldn't use fancy stuff like a quicksort() type search (recursive, binary search). Any thoughts on "no d/b", just data-structures? Btw, one key is 800k - not sure how well SqlLite handles that (maybe with "no d/b" I have to hash that 800k to something smaller?)

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• 3D Web Sites and Applications

  - by Scott Evernden

  I have for the last several years been struggling to understand why the Internet has so few actually useful 3D web applications. It's 2009 and still everything looks like pages from a Sears catalog. You can turn on your TV and find flying logos every night. After that you can get nostalgic and flip on ol' N-64 and play some Zelda or Mario Kart. On the PC, Sims 2 is approaching 6 years old already.. And then there's WoW. Current generation of users - the Facebook crowd, let's say - has ~no~ problem dealing with multi-dimensional environments.. And yet, nothing really immersive seems to happen on the web. I've been hearing about VRML and X3D for at least 10 years and ... pffft .. - nothing earth shaking going on there. Java 3D ? .. cool ! .. but ...... Still .... waiting and waiting. Do you think it will take a killer-web app before people become accustomed-to or will seek to use what could more more engaging web experiences? I am not talking about Second Life and other dedicated downloaded applications. I probably am more focused on apps like Lively or SceneCaster or Hangout or a half dozen others that are delivered 'painlessly' directly into web pages. My own particular interest is in the domain of virtual stores and immersive shopping. Its been a challenge trying to understand why an average user would not want to browse and wander a changing mall-space - like in the real world -- entertained by unexpected discovery. Is the 3D web always going to be 5 years in the future ?

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• I didn't say anything treasonous, quit putting words in my mouth

  - by You guys Lie

  Where at all did I say ANYTHING about organizing some kind of anti-government activity? Nowhere. I do not give a flying fuck about America in case you hadn't realized, I'm talking about what I'm going to do when Jesus Christ returns. Besides, why would I make it easy for them to throw me in a black site prison? Use common sense, sheeple. In the end I guess it doesn't matter anyways, since I do not recognize the government as my ultimate authority. Police/Army/Whatever-- funny outfits and a shiny badge don't make you better than me. Allah will do away with your kind. However, as long as they're with me (as they semi-currently are), we have no problems. I fear the government will have other plans to control the population when things start to further decline, and that is when they will run into problems with me and mine, and probably a large percentage of the public. You'd have to be a fucking fool to think we'd fall into anarchy immediately, given the vast resources and blind loyalty of this country. Saying there are practical limits to free speech for anything I have said in this thread is not only ignorant, it is unpatriotic. I should be being celebrated as the modern day Paul Revere for warning you people about our impending doom. You would do well to study the foundations of this country. Nothing I have said is treasonous at all. Besides, the DoD knows I'm harmless until shit pops off, they have bigger fish to fry right now, go forward. Keep in mind, I don't personally have to do anything to overthrow the government. I just said, I would not advocate for any paramilitary organizations at this time, only if/after we dissolve into (more) tyranny. I am not a terrorist, like some soldiers in Iraq. The machine is doing a great job of ruining itself, while I get to comfortably laugh at it on the nightly news knowing that I'm ready for it to shut down.

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• iPhone OpenGL and NSTimer issues

  - by Kyle

  I have an NSTimer that runs at 60hz. With an OpenGL scene loaded and rendering, my game can get 60fps, solid, all day long.. Then if I go and recompile the app, or reload it, it will get 40fps. Same resources loaded. I've been running into this problem for years, and I just want to know why. It's crazy, and I want to know if I should just abandon this stupid Timer. Conditions are not different on my 3GS between loads. It will just get 40fps sometimes. Obviously the clockrate is not different between loads, so the performance figures should be constant given a constant scene. Here is a log of my framerates: A good load: :-) FrameRate: 61 FrameRate: 61 FrameRate: 61 FrameRate: 60 FrameRate: 60 FrameRate: 61 FrameRate: 60 FrameRate: 60 FrameRate: 61 FrameRate: 60 FrameRate: 61 Now, I'll go ahead and do nothing, recompile, and run: FrameRate: 43 FrameRate: 50 FrameRate: 45 FrameRate: 48 FrameRate: 40 FrameRate: 45 FrameRate: 42 FrameRate: 41 FrameRate: 42 FrameRate: 44 FrameRate: 41 FrameRate: 46 ^- Massive difference visually. What the flying heck could cause this? SAME area of the scene, SAME camera setup. No variables are different.

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• How to provide js-ctypes in a spidermonkey embedding?

  - by Triston J. Taylor

  Summary I have looked over the code the SpiderMonkey 'shell' application uses to create the ctypes JavaScript object, but I'm a less-than novice C programmer. Due to the varying levels of insanity emitted by modern build systems, I can't seem to track down the code or command that actually links a program with the desired functionality. method.madness This js-ctypes implementation by The Mozilla Devs is an awesome addition. Since its conception, scripting has been primarily used to exert control over more rigorous and robust applications. The advent of js-ctypes to the SpiderMonkey project, enables JavaScript to stand up and be counted as a full fledged object oriented rapid application development language flying high above 'the bar' set by various venerable application development languages such as Microsoft's VB6. Shall we begin? I built SpiderMonkey with this config: ./configure --enable-ctypes --with-system-nspr followed by successful execution of: make && make install The js shell works fine and a global ctypes javascript object was verified operational in that shell. Working with code taken from the first source listing at How to embed the JavaScript Engine -MDN, I made an attempt to instantiate the JavaScript ctypes object by inserting the following code at line 66: /* Populate the global object with the ctypes object. */ if (!JS_InitCTypesClass(cx, global)) return NULL; /* I compiled with: g++ $(./js-config --cflags --libs) hello.cpp -o hello It compiles with a few warnings: hello.cpp: In function ‘int main(int, const char**)’: hello.cpp:69:16: warning: converting to non-pointer type ‘int’ from NULL [-Wconversion-null] hello.cpp:80:20: warning: deprecated conversion from string constant to ‘char*’ [-Wwrite-strings] hello.cpp:89:17: warning: NULL used in arithmetic [-Wpointer-arith] But when you run the application: ./hello: symbol lookup error: ./hello: undefined symbol: JS_InitCTypesClass Moreover JS_InitCTypesClass is declared extern in 'dist/include/jsapi.h', but the function resides in 'ctypes/CTypes.cpp' which includes its own header 'CTypes.h' and is compiled at some point by some command during 'make' to yeild './CTypes.o'. As I stated earlier, I am less than a novice with the C code, and I really have no idea what to do here. Please give or give direction to a generic example of making the js-ctypes object functional in an embedding.

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• Suggest the way to design several classes

  - by Oleg Tarasenko

  Hi, I'm building simple application on as3. Kind of starship game. What I want to do is to create several different star ships. Each one should have different images (different look), different sets of animation (e.g. when it's flying, burning, damaged), different kind of weapon and also different controllers (e.g. one can be managed by user, another one by computer, and I want to be able to reuse same ships for AI controller as well as for users controls). Each ship is created in the following way: Create entity Add spatial Add renderers Add other components.... ...... n. init the ship So what I am trying to do: 1) Create StarShip superclass, to store HP (as every ship has it), store spatial (same reason) 2) Create inherited class for any other ship... (It will contain renderer - (responsible for display part), weapon, set of animations), etc What do you think about such way of composition? Maybe it's better to place everything in super class, and then just create instances using long, long, long constructors like: StarShip(hp:HP, animations:DICT, weapon:Weapon, ....) Need advice

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• calculate camera up vector after glulookat()?

  - by carrots

  I'm just starting out teaching myself openGL and now adding openAL to the mix. I have some planets scattered around in 3D space and when I touch the screen, I'm assigning a sound to a random planet and then slowly and smoothly flying the "camera" over to look at it and listen to it. The animation/tweening part is working perfectly, but the openAL piece isn't quiet right. I move the camera around by doing a tiny translate() and gluLookAt() for every frame to keep things smooth (tweening the camera position and lookAt coords). The trouble seems to be with the stereo image I'm getting out of the headphones.. it seems like the left/right/up/down is mixed up sometimes after the camera rolls or spins. I am pretty sure the trouble is here: ALfloat listenerPos[]={camera->currentX,camera->currentY,camera->currentZ}; ALfloat listenerOri[]={camera->currentLookX, camera->currentLookY, camera->currentLookZ, 0.0,//Camera Up X <--- here 0.1,//Camera Up Y <--- here 0.0}//Camera Up Z <--- and here alListenerfv(AL_POSITION,listenerPos); alListenerfv(AL_ORIENTATION,listenerOri); I'm thinking I need to recompute the UP vector for the camera after each gluLookAt() to straighten out the audio positioning problem.. but after hours of googling and experimenting I'm stuck in math that suddenly got way over my head. 1) Am I right that I need to recalculate the up vector after each gluLookAt() i do? 2) If so, can someone please walk me though figuring out how to do that?

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• Being pressured to GOTO the dark-side

  - by Dan McG

  We have a situation at work where developers working on a legacy (core) system are being pressured into using GOTO statements when adding new features into existing code that is already infected with spagetti code. Now, I understand there may be arguments for using 'just one little GOTO' instead of spending the time on refactoring to a more maintainable solution. The issue is, this isolated 'just one little GOTO' isn't so isolated. At least once every week or so there is a new 'one little GOTO' to add. This codebase is already a horror to work with due to code dating back to or before 1984 being riddled with GOTOs that would make many Pastafarians believe it was inspired by the Flying Spagetti Monster itself. Unfortunately the language this is written in doesn't have any ready made refactoring tools, so it makes it harder to push the 'Refactor to increase productivity later' because short-term wins are the only wins paid attention to here... Has anyone else experienced this issue whereby everybody agrees that we cannot be adding new GOTOs to jump 2000 lines to a random section, but continually have Anaylsts insist on doing it just this one time and having management approve it? tldr; How can one go about addressing the issue of developers being pressured (forced) to continually add GOTO statements (by add, I mean add to jump to random sections many lines away) because it 'gets that feature in quicker'? I'm beginning to fear we may loses valuable developers to the raptors over this...

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• Best practice- How to team-split a django project while still allowing code reusal

  - by Infinity

  I know this sounds kind of vague, but please let me explain- I'm starting work on a brand new project, it will have two main components: "ACME PRODUCT" (think Gmail, Meebo, etc), and "THE SITE" (help, information, marketing stuff, promotional landing pages, etc lots of marketing-induced cruft). So basically the url /acme/* will load stuff in the uber cool ajaxy application, and every other URI will load stuff in the other site. Problem: "THE SITE" component is out of my hands, and will be handled by a consultants team that will work closely with marketing, And I and my team will work solely on the ACME PRODUCT. Question: How to set up the django project in such a way that we can have: Seperate releases. (They can push new marketing pages and functionality without having to worry about the state of our code. Maybe even separate Subversion "projects") Minimize impact (on our product) of whatever flying-unicorns-hocus-pocus the other team codes into the site. Still allow some code reusal. My main concern is that the ACME product needs to be rock solid, and therefore needs to be somewhat isolated of whatever mistakes/code bloopers the consultants make in their marketing side of the site. How have you handled this? Any ideas? Thanks!

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• game currency convert: math efficient

  - by Comradsky

  For variables:4 text views named diamondText, goldText, silverText, and bronzeText;money variable unsigned int money;and an NSTimer, every .1 sec,runs function: -(void)updateMoney{ money++; bronzeText.text = [NSString stringWithFormat:@"%d",money]; silverText.text = [NSString stringWithFormat:@"%d",money%10]; goldText.text = [NSString stringWithFormat:@"%d",money%100]; diamondText.text= [NSString stringWithFormat:@"%d",money%1000]; } Given that my currency is diamond = 10 gold = 10 silver = 10 bronze = 1; What would be most efficient way to calculate and display the money labels? How would you store this variable, with GameCenter and NSDictionary or GameCenter and something else? More details are below if you don't understand. To clarify: bronze has the last 2 numbers, silver has the next 2 numbers, and so on. I understand I could use 4 ints or an array, but i would rather try to use this method, unless theres a much more efficient way. Example: When money = 1000;bronzeText = nothing, silverText = 10,goldText = nothing, diamondText = nothing; What other ways would you do this that you think would be more efficient? I will be calling a function (void)collisionDetector that detects if my player.frame crosses with a flyingObject.frame, and if that object is a coin it gives an added value to money and then calls (void)updateMoney. Im just using the timer to test this and spawn these flying objects.

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• difficulties in javascript coding [on hold]

  - by user3718986

  Question is, It takes me 3 hours to fly from NY to CA. How much it will take me if I fly directly from NY to Florida. suppose that distance from CA to Flordia is 8 hours by air..Rule is if you suppose to travel from NY to Florida you will have to pass through CA. I did the quesiton in JavaScript below but coding isn't correct. Can someone fixed this issue for me please? var destination = prompt('Please enter your destinations. We are currently flying to NY,CA and FL'); var locatioon = prompt("specify your current location. "); switch (destination) { case 'NY': { distanceTeller(locatioon); break; } break; case 'CA': { distanceTeller(locatioon); break; } break; case 'FL': { alert("11 HR"); } default: alert('dont look at me'); break; } function distanceTeller(locatioon) { if (locatioon == 'CA') { alert('it will take you 3 hours'); } else if (locatioon == 'FL') { alert('it will take you 8 hours'); } else alert('it will take you 11 hours to reach NY'); }

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• The Koyal Group Info Mag News¦Charged building material could make the renewable grid a reality

  - by Chyler Tilton

  What if your cell phone didn’t come with a battery? Imagine, instead, if the material from which your phone was built was a battery. The promise of strong load-bearing materials that can also work as batteries represents something of a holy grail for engineers. And in a letter published online in Nano Letters last week, a team of researchers from Vanderbilt University describes what it says is a breakthrough in turning that dream into an electrocharged reality. The researchers etched nanopores into silicon layers, which were infused with a polyethylene oxide-ionic liquid composite and coated with an atomically thin layer of carbon. In doing so, they created small but strong supercapacitor battery systems, which stored electricity in a solid electrolyte, instead of using corrosive chemical liquids found in traditional batteries. These supercapacitors could store and release about 98 percent of the energy that was used to charge them, and they held onto their charges even as they were squashed and stretched at pressures up to 44 pounds per square inch. Small pieces of them were even strong enough to hang a laptop from—a big, fat Dell, no less. Although the supercapacitors resemble small charcoal wafers, they could theoretically be molded into just about any shape, including a cell phone’s casing or the chassis of a sedan. They could also be charged—and evacuated of their charge—in less time than is the case for traditional batteries. “We’ve demonstrated, for the first time, the simple proof-of-concept that this can be done,” says Cary Pint, an assistant professor in the university’s mechanical engineering department and one of the authors of the new paper. “Now we can extend this to all kinds of different materials systems to make practical composites with materials specifically tailored to a host of different types of applications. We see this as being just the tip of a very massive iceberg.” Pint says potential applications for such materials would go well beyond “neat tech gadgets,” eventually becoming a “transformational technology” in everything from rocket ships to sedans to home building materials. “These types of systems could range in size from electric powered aircraft all the way down to little tiny flying robots, where adding an extra on-board battery inhibits the potential capability of the system,” Pint says. And they could help the world shift to the intermittencies of renewable energy power grids, where powerful batteries are needed to help keep the lights on when the sun is down or when the wind is not blowing. “Using the materials that make up a home as the native platform for energy storage to complement intermittent resources could also open the door to improve the prospects for solar energy on the U.S. grid,” Pint says. “I personally believe that these types of multifunctional materials are critical to a sustainable electric grid system that integrates solar energy as a key power source.”

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• How to connect to a Virtualbox guest from the host when network cable unplugged

  - by Greg K

  I'd like to work offline (I'm flying to the US twice this month), to do this I need access to a linux development server. When I work from home I boot a VirtualBox VM and that acts as my dev server for the day (providing Apache, PHP & MySQL to run my server side code). However, I'd like to work with my VM when I'm not connected to a network. I have my Ubuntu VM guest set up with a bridge connection so it can serve HTTP and provide SSH access from inside my local network. I've tried to manually configure my network settings on both Mac OSX (the host) and Ubuntu (the guest) but I can't even ping my own NIC address (127.0.0.1 can, 192.168.21.x I can't) in OS X when I unplug the cable. Manual network settings: $ ifconfig en0 en0: flags=8963<UP,BROADCAST,SMART,RUNNING,PROMISC,SIMPLEX,MULTICAST> mtu 1500 ether 00:xx:xx:xx:xx:xx inet 192.168.21.5 netmask 0xffffff00 broadcast 192.168.21.255 media: autoselect (100baseTX <full-duplex,flow-control>) status: active I can ping localhost fine, as well as my VM (.20) and SSH too. $ ping 192.168.21.5 PING 192.168.21.5 (192.168.21.5): 56 data bytes 64 bytes from 192.168.21.5: icmp_seq=0 ttl=64 time=0.085 ms 64 bytes from 192.168.21.5: icmp_seq=1 ttl=64 time=0.102 ms 64 bytes from 192.168.21.5: icmp_seq=2 ttl=64 time=0.100 ms 64 bytes from 192.168.21.5: icmp_seq=3 ttl=64 time=0.094 ms $ ping 192.168.21.20 PING 192.168.21.20 (192.168.21.20): 56 data bytes 64 bytes from 192.168.21.20: icmp_seq=0 ttl=64 time=0.910 ms 64 bytes from 192.168.21.20: icmp_seq=1 ttl=64 time=1.181 ms 64 bytes from 192.168.21.20: icmp_seq=2 ttl=64 time=1.159 ms 64 bytes from 192.168.21.20: icmp_seq=3 ttl=64 time=1.320 ms Network cable unplugged: $ ifconfig en0 en0: flags=8963<UP,BROADCAST,SMART,RUNNING,PROMISC,SIMPLEX,MULTICAST> mtu 1500 ether 00:xx:xx:xx:xx:xx media: autoselect status: inactive $ ping 192.168.21.5 PING 192.168.21.5 (192.168.21.5): 56 data bytes ping: sendto: No route to host ping: sendto: No route to host Request timeout for icmp_seq 0 ping: sendto: No route to host Request timeout for icmp_seq 1 Does OS X disable the NIC when the network cable is unplugged? Any way to stop it doing this?

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