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• So&hellip; What is a SharePoint Developer?

  - by Mark Rackley

  A few days ago Stacy Draper and I were chatting about what it means to be a SharePoint Developer. That actually turns about to be a conversation with lots of shades of grey. Stacy thought it would make a good blog post… well, I can’t promise this to be a GOOD blog post… So, anyway, I decided to let off a little bomb this morning by posting the following tweet on Twitter: @mrackley: Can someone be considered a SharePoint Developer if all they know how to do is work in SPD? Now, I knew this is a debate that has been going on since the first SharePoint Designer User put SharePoint Developer on their resume. There are probably several blogs out there on the subject, but with the wildfire that is jQuery and a few other new features out there I believe it is an important subject to tackle again. I got a lot of great feedback as well on Twitter. The entire twitter conversation is at the end of this blog posting. Thanks everyone for their opinions. Who cares? Why does it matter? Can’t we all just get along? Yes it matters… everything must be labeled and put in it’s proper place. Pigeon holing is the only way to go!  Just kidding.. I’m not near that anal, but yes! It is important to be able to properly identify the skill set of those people on your team and correctly identify the role you are wanting to hire. Saying you are a “SharePoint Developer” is just too vague and just barely begins to answer the question. Also, knowing who’s on your team and what they can do will ensure you give your clients the best people for the job. A Developer writes code right? So, a Developer uses Visual Studio! Whoa, hold on there Sparky. Even if I concede that to be a developer you have to write code then you still can’t say a SharePoint Developer has to use Visual Studio.  So, you can spell C#, how well can you write XSLT? How’s your jQuery? Sorry bud, that’s code whether you like it or not. There are many ways to write code in SharePoint that have nothing to do with cracking open Visual Studio. So, what are the different ways to develop in SharePoint then? How many different ways can you “develop” in SharePoint?? A lot… Out of the box features In SharePoint you can create a site, create a custom list on that site, do basic calculations in a calculated column, set up alerts, and add all sorts of web parts to a page. Let’s face it.. that IS development! javaScript/jQuery Perhaps you’ve heard by now about this thing called jQuery? It’s all over the place and the answer to a lot of people’s prayers. However be careful, with great power comes great responsibility. Remember, javaScript is executed on the client side and if you abuse it your performance could be affected. Also, Marc Anderson (@sympmarc) wrote a pretty awesome javaScript library called SPServices.  This allows you to access SharePoint’s Web Services using jQuery. How freakin cool is that? With these tools at your disposal the number of things you CAN’T do without Visual Studio grows smaller and smaller. This is definitely development no matter what anyone else says and there is no Visual Studio involved. SharePoint Designer Ahhh.. The cause of and the answer to all of your SharePoint development problems. With SharePoint Designer you can use DataView Web Parts, develop (there’s that word again) your branding, and even connect to external datasources.  There’s a lot you can do in SharePoint Designer. It’s got it’s shortcomings, but it is an invaluable tool in the SharePoint developers toolbox. InfoPath So, can InfoPath development really be considered SharePoint development? I would say yes. You can connect to SharePoint lists, populate fields in a SharePoint list, and even write code in InfoPath. Sounds like SharePoint development to me. Visual Studio – Web Services/WCF So, get this. You can write code for SharePoint and not have a clue what the 12 hive is, what “site actions” means, or know how to do ANYTHING in SharePoint? Poppycock! You say? SharePoint Web Services I say… With SharePoint Web Services you can totally interact with SharePoint without knowing anything about SharePoint. I don’t recommend it of course, but it’s possible. What can you write using SharePoint Web Services? How about a little application called SharePoint Designer? Visual Studio – Object Model And here we are finally:  the SharePoint Object Model.  When you hear “SharePoint Developer” most people think of someone opening Visual Studio and creating a custom web part, workflow, event receiver, etc.. etc.. but I hope that by now I have made the point that this is NOT the only form of SharePoint Development! Again… Who cares? Just crack open Visual Studio for everything! Problem solved! Let’s ponder for a moment, shall we? The business comes to you with a requirement that involves some pretty fancy business calculations, and a complicated view that they do NOT want to look like SharePoint. “No Problem” you proclaim you mighty SharePoint Developer. You go back to your cube, chuckle at the latest Dilbert comic, and crack open Visual Studio. Then you build your custom web part… fight with all the deployment, migration, and UAT that you must go through and proclaim victory two weeks later!!!! Well done my good sir/ma’am! Oh wait… it turns out Sally who is not a “developer” did the exact same thing with a Dataview web part and some jQuery and it’s been in production for two weeks? #CockinessFail I know there are many ASP.NET developers out there that can create a custom control and wrap it to be a SharePoint Web Part.  That does NOT mean they are SharePoint Developers though as far as I’m concerned and I personally would much rather have someone on my team that can manipulate the heck (yes, I said ‘heck’) out of SharePoint using Dataview Web Parts, jQuery, and a roll of duct tape. Just because you know how to write code in Visual Studio does not mean you are a SharePoint Developer. What’s the conclusion here? How do we define ‘it’ and what ‘it’ is called? Fortunately, this is MY blog. I don’t have to give answers, I can stir the pot, laugh and leave you to ponder what it means! There is obviously no right or wrong answer here (unless you disagree with me,then you are flat out wrong). Anyway, there are many opinions.  Here’s mine.  If you put SharePoint Developer on your resume make sure to clearly specify HOW you develop in SharePoint and what tools you use. If we must label these gurus of jQuery and SPD, how about “SharePoint Client Developer” or “SharePoint Front End Developer”? Just throwing out an idea. Whatever we call them, to say they are not developers is short-sighted, arrogant, and unfair. Of course, then we need to figure out what to call all those other SharePoint development types.  Twitter Conversation @next_connect: RT @mrackley: Can someone be considered a SharePoint Developer if all they know how to do is work in SPD? | I say no.... @mikegil:  @mrackley re: yr Developer question: SPD expert <> SP Developer. Can be "sous-developer," though. #SharePoint #SPD @WonderLaura:  Rt @mrackley Can someone be considered a SharePoint Dev if all they know how to do is work in SPD? -- My opinion is that devs write code. @exnav29:  Rt @mrackley Can someone be considered a SharePoint Dev if all they know how to do is work in SPD? => I think devs would use VS as well @ssKevin:  @WonderLaura @mrackley does that mean strictly vb and c# when it comes to #SharePoint ? @jimmywim:  @exnav29 @mrackley nah, I'd say they were a power user. Devs know their way around the 12 hive ;) @sympmarc:  RT @mrackley: Can someone be considered a SharePoint Developer if all they know how to do is work in SPD? -> Fighting words. @sympmarc:  @next_connect @mrackley Besides, we prefer to be called "hacks". ;+) @next_connect:  @sympmarc The important thing is that you don't have to develop code to solve problems and create solutions. @mrackley @mrackley:  @sympmarc @next_connect not tryin to pick fight.. just try and find consensus on definition @usher:  @mrackley I'd still argue that you have a DevLite title that's out there for the collaboration engineers (@sympmarc @next_connect) @next_connect: @usher I agree. I've called it Light Dev/ Configuration before. @sympmarc @mrackley @usher:  @next_connect I like DevLite, low calorie but still same great taste :) @mrackley @sympmarc @mrackley:  @next_connect @usher @sympmarc I don't think there's any "lite" to someone who can bend jQuery and XSLT to their will. @usher:  @mrackley okay, so would you refer to someone that writes user controls and assemblies something different (@next_connect @sympmarc) @usher:  @mrackley when looking for a developer that can write .net code, it's a bit different than an XSLT/jQuery designer. @sympmarc @next_connect @jimmywim:  @mrackley @sympmarc @next_connect I reckon a "dev" does managed code and works in the 12 hive @sympmarc:  @jimmywim @mrackley @next_connect We had a similar debate a few days ago @toddbleeker et al @sympmarc:  @sympmarc @jimmywim @mrackley @next_connect @toddbleeker @stevenmfowler More abt my Middle Tier term, but still connected. Meet bus need. @toddbleeker:  @sympmarc @jimmywim @mrackley @next_connect I used "No Assembly Required" in the past. I also suggested "Supplimenting the SharePoint DOM" @toddbleeker:  @sympmarc @jimmywim @mrackley @next_connect Others suggested Information Worker Solutions/Enhancements @toddbleeker:  @sympmarc @jimmywim @mrackley @next_connect @stevenmfowler I also like "SharePoint Scripting Solutions". All the technologies are script. @jimmywim:  @toddbleeker @sympmarc @mrackley @next_connect I like the IW solutions one... @toddbleeker:  @sympmarc @jimmywim @mrackley @next_connect @stevenmfowler This is like the debate that never ends: it is definitely not called Middle Tier. @jimmywim:  @toddbleeker @sympmarc @mrackley @next_connect @stevenmfowler "Scripting" these days makes me think PowerShell... @sympmarc:  @toddbleeker @jimmywim @mrackley @next_connect @stevenmfowler If it forces a debate on h2 best solve bus probs, I'll keep sayin Middle Tier. @usher:  @sympmarc so we know what we're looking for, we just can't define a name? @toddbleeker @jimmywim @mrackley @next_connect @stevemfowler @sympmarc:  @usher @sympmarc @toddbleeker @jimmywim @mrackley @next_connect @stevemfowler The naming seems to matter more than the substance. :-( @jimmywim:  @sympmarc @usher @toddbleeker @mrackley @next_connect @stevemfowler work brkdn defines tasks, defines tools needed, can then b grp'd by user @WonderLaura:  @mrackley @toddbleeker @jimmywim @sympmarc @usher @next_connect Funny you're asking. @johnrossjr and I spent hours this week on the subject. @stevenmfowler:  RT @toddbleeker: @sympmarc @jimmywim @mrackley @next_connect @stevenmfowler it is definitely not called Middle Tier. < I'm with Todd

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• Visual Studio 2010 Productivity Tips and Tricks-Part 2: Key Shortcuts

  - by ToStringTheory

  Ask anyone that knows me, and they will confirm that I hate the mouse.  This isn’t because I deny affection to objects that don’t look like their mammalian-named self, but rather for a much more simple and not-insane reason: I have terrible eyesight.  Introduction Thanks to a degenerative eye disease known as Choroideremia, I have learned to rely more on the keyboard which I can feel digital/static positions of keys relative to my fingers, than the much more analog/random position of the mouse.  Now, I would like to share some of the keyboard shortcuts with you now, as I believe that they not only increase my productivity, but yours as well once you know them (if you don’t already of course)...  I share one of my biggest tips for productivity in the conclusion at the end. Visual Studio Key Shortcuts Global Editor Shortcuts These are shortcuts that are available from almost any application running in Windows, however are many times forgotten. Shortcut Action Visual Studio 2010 Functionality Ctrl + X Cut This shortcut works without a selection. If nothing is selected, the entire line that the caret is on is cut from the editor. Ctrl + C Copy This shortcut works without a selection. If nothing is selected, the entire line that the caret is on is copied from the editor. Ctrl + V Paste If you copied an entire line by the method above, the data is pasted in the line above the current caret line. Ctrl + Shift + V Next Clipboard Element Cut/Copy multiple things, and then hit this combo repeatedly to switch to the next clipboard item when pasting. Ctrl + Backspace Delete Previous Will delete the previous word from the editor directly before the caret. If anything is selected, will just delete that. Ctrl + Del Delete Next Word Will delete the next word/space from the editor directly after the caret. If anything is selected, will just delete that. Shift + Del Delete Focused Line Will delete the line from the editor that the caret is on. If something is selected, will just delete that. Ctrl + ? or Ctrl + ? Left/Right by Word This will move the caret left or right by word or special character boundary. Holding Shift will also select the word. Ctrl + F Quick Find Either the Quick Find panel, or the search bar if you have the Productivity Power Tools installed. Ctrl + Shift + F Find in Solution Opens up the 'Find in Files' window, allowing you to search your solution, as well as using regex for pattern matching. F2 Rename File... While not debugging, selecting a file in the solution explorer\navigator and pressing F2 allows you to rename the selected file. Global Application Shortcuts These are shortcuts that are available from almost any application running in Windows, however are many times forgotten... Again... Shortcut Action Visual Studio 2010 Functionality Ctrl + N New File dialog Opens up the 'New File' dialog to add a new file to the current directory in the Solution\Project. Ctrl + O Open File dialog Opens up the 'Open File' dialog to open a file in the editor, not necessarily in the solution. Ctrl + S Save File dialog Saves the currently focused editor tab back to your HDD/SSD. Ctrl + Shift + S Save All... Quickly save all open/edited documents back to your disk. Ctrl + Tab Switch Panel\Tab Tapping this combo switches between tabs quickly. Holding down Ctrl when hitting tab will bring up a chooser window. Building Shortcuts These are shortcuts that are focused on building and running a solution. These are not usable when the IDE is in Debug mode, as the shortcut changes by context. Shortcut Action Visual Studio 2010 Functionality Ctrl + Shift + B Build Solution Starts a build process on the solution according to the current build configuration manager settings. Ctrl + Break Cancel a Building Solution Will cancel a build operation currently in progress. Good for long running builds when you think of one last change. F5 Start Debugging Will build the solution if needed and launch debugging according to the current configuration manager settings. Ctrl + F5 Start Without Debugger Will build the solution if needed and launch the startup project without attaching a debugger. Debugging Shortcuts These are shortcuts that are used when debugging a solution. Shortcut Action Visual Studio 2010 Functionality F5 Continue Execution Continues execution of code until the next breakpoint. Ctrl + Alt + Break Pause Execution Pauses the program execution. Shift + F5 Stop Debugging Stops the current debugging session. NOTE: Web apps will still continue processing after stopping the debugger. Keep this in mind if working on code such as credit card processing. Ctrl + Shift + F5 Restart Debugging Stops the current debugging session and restarts the debugging session from the beginning. F9 Place Breakpoint Toggles/Places a breakpoint in the editor on the current line. Set a breakpoint in condensed code by highlighting the statement first. F10 Step Over Statement When debugging, executes all code in methods/properties on the current line until the next line. F11 Step Into Statement When debugging, steps into a method call so you can walk through the code executed there (if available). Ctrl + Alt + I Immediate Window Open the Immediate Window to execute commands when execution is paused. Navigation Shortcuts These are shortcuts that are used for navigating in the IDE or editor panel. Shortcut Action Visual Studio 2010 Functionality F4 Properties Panel Opens the properties panel for the selected item in the editor/designer/solution navigator (context driven). F12 Go to Definition Press F12 with the caret on a member to navigate to its declaration. With the Productivity tools, Ctrl + Click works too. Ctrl + K Ctrl + T View Call Hierarchy View the call hierarchy of the member the caret is on. Great for going through n-tier solutions and interface implementations! Ctrl + Alt + B Breakpoint Window View the breakpoint window to manage breakpoints and their advanced options. Allows easy toggling of breakpoints. Ctrl + Alt + L Solution Navigator Open the solution explorer panel. Ctrl + Alt + O Output Window View the output window to see build\general output from Visual Studio. Ctrl + Alt + Enter Live Web Preview Only available with the Web Essential plugin. Launches the auto-updating Preview panel. Testing Shortcuts These are shortcuts that are used for running tests in the IDE. Please note, Visual Studio 2010 is all about context. If your caret is within a test method when you use one of these combinations, the combination will apply to that test. If your caret is within a test class, it will apply to that class. If the caret is outside of a test class, it will apply to all tests. Shortcut Action Visual Studio 2010 Functionality Ctrl + R T Run Test(s) Run all tests in the current context without a debugger attached. Breakpoints will not be stopped on. Ctrl + R Ctrl + T Run Test(s) (Debug) Run all tests in the current context with a debugger attached. This allows you to use breakpoints. Substitute A for T from the preceding combos to run/debug ALL tests in the current context. Substitute Y for T from the preceding combos to run/debug ALL impacted/covering tests for a method in the current context. Advanced Editor Shortcuts These are shortcuts that are used for more advanced editing in the editor window. Shortcut Action Visual Studio 2010 Functionality Shift + Alt + ? Shift + Alt + ? Multiline caret up/down Use this combo to edit multiple lines at once. Not too many uses for it, but once in a blue moon one comes along. Ctrl + Alt + Enter Insert Line Above Inserts a blank line above the line the caret is currently on. No need to be at end or start of line, so no cutting off words/code. Ctrl + K Ctrl + C Comment Selection Comments the current selection out of compilation. Ctrl + K Ctrl + U Uncomment Selection Uncomments the current selection into compilation. Ctrl + K Ctrl + D Format Document Automatically formats the document into a structured layout. Lines up nodes or code into columns intelligently. Alt + ? Alt + ? Code line up/down *Use this combo to move a line of code up or down quickly. Great for small rearrangements of code. *Requires the Productivity Power pack from Microsoft. Conclusion This list is by no means meant to be exhaustive, but these are the shortcuts I use regularly every hour/minute of the day. There are still 100s more in Visual Studio that you can discover through the configuration window, or by tooltips. Something that I started doing months ago seems to have interest in my office.. In my last post, I talked about how I hated a cluttered UI. One of the ways that I aimed to resolve that was by systematically cleaning up the toolbars week by week. First day, I removed ALL icons that I already knew shortcuts to, or would never use them (Undo in a toolbar?!). Then, every week from that point on, I make it a point to remove an icon/two from the toolbar and make an effort to remember its key combination. I gain extra space in the toolbar area, AND become more productive at the same time! I hope that you found this article interesting or at least somewhat informative.. Maybe a shortcut or two you didn't know. I know some of them seem trivial, but I often see people going to the edit menu for Copy/Paste... Thought a refresher might be helpful!

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• Diagnosing ADF Mobile iOS deployment problems

  - by Chris Muir

  From time to time I encounter customers who have taken possession of a brand new Apple Mac, have that excited "I've just spent more on a computer then I ever wanted to but it's okay" crazy gleam in their eye, but on pre-loading all the necessary software for Oracle's ADF Mobile to start their mobile campaign, following Oracle's setup instructions and deploying their first app to Apple's XCode iPhone Simulator they hit this error message in the JDeveloper Log-Deployment window: [01:36:46 PM] Deployment cancelled. [01:36:46 PM] ----  Deployment incomplete  ----. [01:36:46 PM] Failed to build the iOS application bundle. [01:36:46 PM] Deployment failed due to one or more errors returned by '/Applications/Xcode.app/Contents/Developer/usr/bin/xcodebuild'.  The following is a summary of the returned error(s): Command-line execution failed (Return code: 69) "Oh, return code 69, I know that well" I hear you say.  Admittedly the error code is less than useful besides drawing some titters from the peanut gallery. Before explaining what's gone wrong, I think it's useful to teach customers how to diagnose these issues themselves.  When ADF Mobile commences a deployment, be it to Apple's iOS or Google's Android platforms, JDeveloper and ADF Mobile do a good job in the Log window of showing you what the deployment process entails.  In the case of deploying to iOS the log window will literally include the XCode commands executed to complete the deployment cycle. As example here's the log output that was produced before the error message was raised.... take the opportunity to read this line by line and note the command line calls highlighted in blue: (Note some of the following lines have been split over multiple lines to suit reading on this blog, each original line is preceded by a timestamp. Ensure to check the exact commands from JDev) [01:36:33 PM] Target platform is (iOS). [01:36:33 PM] Beginning deployment of ADF Mobile application 'LayoutDemo' to iOS using profile 'IOS_MOBILE_NATIVE_archive1'. [01:36:34 PM] Command-line executed: [/Applications/Xcode.app/Contents/Developer/usr/bin/xcodebuild, -version] [01:36:34 PM] Command-line execution succeeded. [01:36:34 PM] Running dependency analysis... [01:36:34 PM] Building... [01:36:34 PM] Deploying 3 profiles... [01:36:35 PM] Wrote Archive Module to /Users/chris/fmw/jdeveloper/jdev/extensions/ oracle.adf.mobile/Samples/PublicSamples/LayoutDemo/ApplicationController/ deploy/ApplicationController.jar [01:36:35 PM] WARNING: No Resource Catalog enabled ADF components found to package [01:36:36 PM] Wrote Archive Module to /Users/chris/fmw/jdeveloper/jdev/extensions/ oracle.adf.mobile/Samples/PublicSamples/LayoutDemo/ViewController/ deploy/ViewController.jar [01:36:36 PM] Verifying existence of the .adf source directory of the ADF Mobile application... [01:36:36 PM] Verifying Application Controller project exists... [01:36:36 PM] Verifying application dependencies... [01:36:36 PM] The application may not function correctly because the following dependent libraries are missing: /Users/chris/jdev/jdeveloper/jdeveloper/jdev/extensions/oracle.adf.mobile/ lib/adfmf.springboard.jar [01:36:36 PM] Verifying project dependencies... [01:36:36 PM] Validating application XML files... [01:36:36 PM] Validating XML files in project ApplicationController... [01:36:36 PM] Validating XML files in project ViewController... [01:36:40 PM] Copying common javascript files... [01:36:41 PM] Copying FARs to the ADF Mobile Framework application... [01:36:41 PM] Extracting Feature Archive file, "ApplicationController.jar" to deployment folder, "ApplicationController". [01:36:42 PM] Extracting Feature Archive file, "ViewController.jar" to deployment folder, "ViewController". [01:36:42 PM] Deploying skinning files... [01:36:43 PM] Copying the CVM SDK files built for the x86 processor... [01:36:43 PM] Copying the CVM JDK files built for the x86 processor... [01:36:43 PM] Command-line executed: [cp, -R, -p, /Users/chris/fmw/jdeveloper/jdev/extensions/oracle.adf.mobile/iOS/jvmti/x86/, /Users/chris/fmw/jdeveloper/jdev/extensions/oracle.adf.mobile/ Samples/PublicSamples/ LayoutDemo/deploy/IOS_MOBILE_NATIVE_archive1/temporary_xcode_project/lib] [01:36:43 PM] Command-line execution succeeded. [01:36:43 PM] Command-line executed: [cp, -R, -p, /Users/chris/fmw/jdeveloper/jdev/extensions/oracle.adf.mobile/iOS/jvmti/jar/, /Users/chris/fmw/jdeveloper/jdev/extensions/oracle.adf.mobile/Samples/ PublicSamples/LayoutDemo/deploy/IOS_MOBILE_NATIVE_archive1/ temporary_xcode_project/lib] [01:36:43 PM] Command-line execution succeeded. [01:36:43 PM] Copying security related files to the ADF Mobile Framework application... [01:36:44 PM] Command-line executed from path: /Users/chris/fmw/jdeveloper/jdev/extensions/oracle.adf.mobile/Samples/ PublicSamples/LayoutDemo/deploy/IOS_MOBILE_NATIVE_archive1/temporary_xcode_project/ [01:36:44 PM] Command-line executed: /Applications/Xcode.app/Contents/Developer/usr/bin/xcodebuild clean install -configuration Debug -sdk /Applications/Xcode.app/Contents/Developer/Platforms/iPhoneSimulator.platform/ Developer/SDKs/iPhoneSimulator6.1.sdk DSTROOT=/Users/chris/fmw/jdeveloper/jdev/extensions/oracle.adf.mobile/Samples/ PublicSamples/LayoutDemo/deploy/IOS_MOBILE_NATIVE_archive1/Destination_Root/ IPHONEOS_DEPLOYMENT_TARGET=5.0 TARGETED_DEVICE_FAMILY=1,2 PRODUCT_NAME=LayoutDemo ADD_SETTINGS_BUNDLE=NO As you can see when we move from JDeveloper undertaking its work, it then passes the code off in the last few lines for Apple's XCode to assemble and deploy the required .ipa file.  From the original error message which followed this complaining about xcodebuild failing with return code 69, we can quickly see the exact command line used to call xcodebuild. As this is the exact command line call with all its options, you're free to open a Terminal window in Mac OSX and execute the same command by simply copying and pasting the command line. And via this you'll then find out what return code actually 69 means.  Unfortunately it's not that exciting. For Macs that have just been installed and configured with XCode, XCode (and for that matter iTunes) which is required by ADF Mobile to deploy must have been run at least once before hand on your brand new Mac (to be clear that's once ever, not once every restart). On doing so you will be presented with a license agreement from Apple that you must accept. Only once you've done this will the command line calls work.  They're currently failing as you haven't accepted the legal terms and conditions. (arguably you an also accept the terms and conditions from the command line too, but ADF Mobile cannot do this on your behalf, so it's just easier to open the tools and confirm the legal requirements that way). Putting aside the error code and its meaning, watching the log window, watching what commands are executed, learning what they do, this will assist you to diagnose issues yourself and solve these sort of issues more relatively quickly.  From my perspective as an Oracle Product Manager, it allows me to say "this is the stuff you don't need to worry about when you use ADF Mobile when it's configured correctly" .... as you can see my salesman qualities shine through. For anyone who is happily using ADF Mobile on a Mac and wondering why you didn't hit these issues, it's quite likely that you already accepted the license conditions before deploying via ADF Mobile.  For instance, though I'm not a fan of iTunes itself, iTunes was one of the first things I loaded on my Mac to access my Justin Bieber albums. Image courtesy of winnond / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

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• Installing SharePoint 2010 and PowerPivot for SharePoint on Windows 7

  - by smisner

  Many people like me want (or need) to do their business intelligence development work on a laptop. As someone who frequently speaks at various events or teaches classes on all subjects related to the Microsoft business intelligence stack, I need a way to run multiple server products on my laptop with reasonable performance. Once upon a time, that requirement meant only that I had to load the current version of SQL Server and the client tools of choice. In today's post, I'll review my latest experience with trying to make the newly released Microsoft BI products work with a Windows 7 operating system. The entrance of Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 into the BI stack complicated matters and I started using Virtual Server to establish a "suitable" environment. As part of the team that delivered a lot of education as part of the Yukon pre-launch activities (that would be SQL Server 2005 for the uninitiated), I was working with four - yes, four - virtual servers. That was a pretty brutal workload for a 2GB laptop, which worked if I was very, very careful. It could also be a finicky and unreliable configuration as I learned to my dismay at one TechEd session several years ago when I had to reboot a very carefully cached set of servers just minutes before my session started. Although it worked, it came back to life very, very slowly much to the displeasure of the audience. They couldn't possibly have been less pleased than me. At that moment, I resolved to get the beefiest environment I could afford and consolidate to a single virtual server. Enter the 4GB 64-bit laptop to preserve my sanity and my livelihood. Likewise, for SQL Server 2008, I managed to keep everything within a single virtual server and I could function reasonably well with this approach. Now we have SQL Server 2008 R2 plus Office SharePoint Server 2010. That means a 64-bit operating system. Period. That means no more Virtual Server. That means I must use Hyper-V or another alternative. I've heard alternatives exist, but my few dabbles in this area did not yield positive results. It might have been just me having issues rather than any failure of those technologies to adequately support the requirements. My first run at working with the new BI stack configuration was to set up a 64-bit 4GB laptop with a dual-boot to run Windows Server 2008 R2 with Hyper-V. However, I was generally not happy with running Windows Server 2008 R2 on my laptop. For one, I couldn't put it into sleep mode, which is helpful if I want to prepare for a presentation beforehand and then walk to the podium without the need to hold my laptop in its open state along the way (my strategy at the TechEd session long, long ago). Secondly, it was finicky with projectors. I had issues from time to time and while I always eventually got it to work, I didn't appreciate those nerve-wracking moments wondering whether this would be the time that it wouldn't work. Somewhere along the way, I learned that it was possible to load SharePoint 2010 in a Windows 7 which piqued my interest. I had just acquired a new laptop running Windows 7 64-bit, and thought surely running the BI stack natively on my laptop must be better than running Hyper-V. (I have not tried booting to Hyper-V VHD yet, but that's on my list of things to try so the jury of one is still out on this approach.) Recently, I had to build up a server with the RTM versions of SQL Server 2008 R2 and Sharepoint Server 2010 and decided to follow suit on my Windows 7 Ultimate 64-bit laptop. The process is slightly different, but I'm happy to report that it IS possible, although I had some fits and starts along the way. DISCLAIMER: These products are NOT intended to be run in production mode on the Windows 7 operating system. The configuration described in this post is strictly for development or learning purposes and not supported by Microsoft. If you have trouble, you will NOT get help from them. I might be able to help, but I provide no guarantees of my ability or availablity to help. I won't provide the step-by-step instructions in this post as there are other resources that provide these details, but I will provide an overview of my approach, point you to the relevant resources, describe some of the problems I encountered, and explain how I addressed those problems to achieve my desired goal. Because my goal was not simply to set up SharePoint Server 2010 on my laptop, but specifically PowerPivot for SharePoint, I started out by referring to the installation instructions at the PowerPiovt-Info site, but mainly to confirm that I was performing steps in the proper sequence. I didn't perform the steps in Part 1 because those steps are applicable only to a server operating system which I am not running on my laptop. Then, the instructions in Part 2, won't work exactly as written for the same reason. Instead, I followed the instructions on MSDN, Setting Up the Development Environment for SharePoint 2010 on Windows Vista, Windows 7, and Windows Server 2008. In general, I found the following differences in installation steps from the steps at PowerPivot-Info: You must copy the SharePoint installation media to the local drive so that you can edit the config.xml to allow installation on a Windows client. You also have to manually install the prerequisites. The instructions provides links to each item that you must manually install and provides a command-line instruction to execute which enables required Windows features. I will digress for a moment to save you some grief in the sequence of steps to perform. I discovered later that a missing step in the MSDN instructions is to install the November CTP Reporting Services add-in for SharePoint. When I went to test my SharePoint site (I believe I tested after I had a successful PowerPivot installation), I ran into the following error: Could not load file or assembly 'RSSharePointSoapProxy, Version=10.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=89845dcd8080cc91' or one of its dependencies. The system cannot find the file specified. I was rather surprised that Reporting Services was required. Then I found an article by Alan le Marquand, Working Together: SQL Server 2008 R2 Reporting Services Integration in SharePoint 2010,that instructed readers to install the November add-in. My first reaction was, "Really?!?" But I confirmed it in another TechNet article on hardware and software requirements for SharePoint Server 2010. It doesn't refer explicitly to the November CTP but following the link took me there. (Interestingly, I retested today and there's no longer any reference to the November CTP. Here's the link to download the latest and greatest Reporting Services Add-in for SharePoint Technologies 2010.) You don't need to download the add-in anymore if you're doing a regular server-based installation of SharePoint because it installs as part of the prerequisites automatically. When it was time to start the installation of SharePoint, I deviated from the MSDN instructions and from the PowerPivot-Info instructions: On the Choose the installation you want page of the installation wizard, I chose Server Farm. On the Server Type page, I chose Complete. At the end of the installation, I did not run the configuration wizard. Returning to the PowerPivot-Info instructions, I tried to follow the instructions in Part 3 which describe installing SQL Server 2008 R2 with the PowerPivot option. These instructions tell you to choose the New Server option on the Setup Role page where you add PowerPivot for SharePoint. However, I ran into problems with this approach and got installation errors at the end. It wasn't until much later as I was investigating an error that I encountered Dave Wickert's post that installing PowerPivot for SharePoint on Windows 7 is unsupported. Uh oh. But he did want to hear about it if anyone succeeded, so I decided to take the plunge. Perseverance paid off, and I can happily inform Dave that it does work so far. I haven't tested absolutely everything with PowerPivot for SharePoint but have successfully deployed a workbook and viewed the PowerPivot Management Dashboard. I have not yet tested the data refresh feature, but I have installed. Continue reading to see how I accomplished my objective. I unintalled SQL Server 2008 R2 and started again. I had different problems which I don't recollect now. However, I uninstalled again and approached installation from a different angle and my next attempt succeeded. The downside of this approach is that you must do all of the things yourself that are done automatically when you install PowerPivot as a new server. Here are the steps that I followed: Install SQL Server 2008 R2 to get a database engine instance installed. Run the SharePoint configuration wizard to set up the SharePoint databases. In Central Administration, create a Web application using classic mode authentication as per a TechNet article on PowerPivot Authentication and Authorization. Then I followed the steps I found at How to: Install PowerPivot for SharePoint on an Existing SharePoint Server. Especially important to note - you must launch setup by using Run as administrator. I did not have to manually deploy the PowerPivot solution as the instructions specify, but it's good to know about this step because it tells you where to look in Central Administration to confirm a successful deployment. I did spot some incorrect steps in the instructions (at the time of this writing) in How To: Configure Stored Credentials for PowerPivot Data Refresh. Specifically, in the section entitled Step 1: Create a target application and set the credentials, both steps 10 and 12 are incorrect. They tell you to provide an actual Windows user name and password on the page where you are simply defining the prompts for your application in the Secure Store Service. To add the Windows user name and password that you want to associate with the application - after you have successfully created the target application - you select the target application and then click Set credentials in the ribbon. Lastly, I followed the instructions at How to: Install Office Data Connectivity Components on a PowerPivot server. However, I have yet to test this in my current environment. I did have several stops and starts throughout this process and edited those out to spare you from reading non-essential information. I believe the explanation I have provided here accurately reflect the steps I followed to produce a working configuration. If you follow these steps and get a different result, please let me know so that together we can work through the issue and correct these instructions. I'm sure there are many other folks in the Microsoft BI community that will appreciate the ability to set up the BI stack in a Windows 7 environment for development or learning purposes. Share this post: email it! | bookmark it! | digg it! | reddit! | kick it! | live it!

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• CodePlex Daily Summary for Wednesday, September 26, 2012

  CodePlex Daily Summary for Wednesday, September 26, 2012Popular ReleasesThe Eggbert Chronicles: Eggbert Chronicles v1: Version 1 of Eggbert Chronicles. Includes: Basic Menu System Fully-Functional Options Menu (need to auto-adjust adv. settings when preset is changed) Basic First Level (It's pre-alpha, level design isn't a must, gameplay mechanics first) 2D Movement System in a 3D World (2.5D Basically) Planned: An actual playermodel Actual custom texturing Platformer Objects: Spikes Sawblades Basic Enemies (Most likely x-axis movement) Tar pits Acid pits More puzzles Custom sound effect...D3 Loot Tracker: 1.3.1 (patch): - Magic find value will now display properly and includes follower value. - ILevel of legendary items will now display properly.WinRtBehaviors: V1.0.2: Includes simple Blend SupportMVC Bootstrap: MVC Boostrap 0.5.1: A small demo site, based on the default ASP.NET MVC 3 project template, showing off some of the features of MVC Bootstrap. This release uses Entity Framework 5 for data access and Ninject 3 for dependency injection. If you download and use this project, please give some feedback, good or bad!Windows Powershell/Quest AD account audit and reporting: Powershell AD Reporting Framework: Alpha 0.0.1 ReleasePicturethrill: Version 2.9.25.0: Allowing to run Picturethrill Update task while computer is not connected to internet on computer wake up.VCC: Latest build, v2.3.00925.0: Automatic drop of latest buildSimple PM - Project Management Simplified !: Simple Pm v1 - Aplha (Re-released): INSTALLATION GUIDE 1. Run the web setup, which will install the web app to IIS. 2. Make sure you select your application pool to "ASP.NET v4.0" during the installation. 3. Create a database named "SimplePm" 4. Run the attached database script on this database. 5. Change the database username and password in connection strings defined as SimplePmEntities and ApplicationServices from the Web.config file 6. Thats its ! Simple Pm are ready to go ! For any installation assistance feel free to c...menu4web: menu4web 1.0 - free javascript menu for web sites: menu4web 1.0 has been tested with all major browsers: Firefox, Chrome, IE, Opera and Safari. Minified m4w.js library is less than 9K. Includes 21 menu examples of different styles. Can be freely distributed under The MIT License (MIT).Rawr: Rawr 5.0.0: This is the Downloadable WPF version of Rawr!For web-based version see http://elitistjerks.com/rawr.php You can find the version notes at: http://rawr.codeplex.com/wikipage?title=VersionNotes Rawr Addon (NOT UPDATED YET FOR MOP)We now have a Rawr Official Addon for in-game exporting and importing of character data hosted on Curse. The Addon does not perform calculations like Rawr, it simply shows your exported Rawr data in wow tooltips and lets you export your character to Rawr (including ba...Coevery - Free CRM: Coevery 1.0.0.26: The zh-CN issue has been solved. We also add a project management module.EntitiesToDTOs - Entity Framework DTO Generator: EntitiesToDTOs.v3.0.Beta.2: Support for new Entity Framework EDMX (format used by VS2012) ! Support for Enum Types! DTOs and Assemblers can be generated inside project folders! Optional automatic check for updates! Support for Visual Studio 2012 !!! Choose types you want to generate! Warning system in types to generate! Added ToEntityList() and ToDTOList() to Assemblers! Indicate class identifier for DTOs and Assemblers! Cleaner Assemblers code. Ad module to support the AddIn! Lots of fixes and imp...VidCoder: 1.4.1 Beta: Updated to HandBrake 4971. This should fix some issues with stuck PGS subtitles. Fixed build break which prevented pre-compiled XML serializers from showing up. Fixed problem where a preset would get errantly marked as modified when re-opening the encode settings window or importing a new preset.SharePoint WarmUp: Nauplius.SP.Initalization: Initial release.JSLint for Visual Studio 2010: 1.4.0: VS2012 support is alphaBlackJumboDog: Ver5.7.2: 2012.09.23 Ver5.7.2 (1)InetTest?? (2)HTTP?????????????????100???????????Player Framework by Microsoft: Player Framework for Windows 8 (Preview 6): IMPORTANT: List of breaking changes from preview 5 Added separate samples download with .vsix dependencies instead of source dependencies Support for FreeWheel SmartXML ad responses Support for Smooth Streaming SDK DownloaderPlugins Support for VMAP and TTML polling for live scenarios Support for custom smooth streaming byte stream and scheme handlers Support for new play time and position tracking plugin Added IsLiveChanged event Added AdaptivePlugin.MaxBitrate property Add...WPF Application Framework (WAF): WPF Application Framework (WAF) 2.5.0.8: Version: 2.5.0.8 (Milestone 8): This release contains the source code of the WPF Application Framework (WAF) and the sample applications. Requirements .NET Framework 4.0 (The package contains a solution file for Visual Studio 2010) The unit test projects require Visual Studio 2010 Professional Changelog Legend: [B] Breaking change; [O] Marked member as obsolete WAF: Mark the class DataModel as serializable. InfoMan: Minor improvements. InfoMan: Add unit tests for all modules. Othe...LogicCircuit: LogicCircuit 2.12.9.20: Logic Circuit - is educational software for designing and simulating logic circuits. Intuitive graphical user interface, allows you to create unrestricted circuit hierarchy with multi bit buses, debug circuits behavior with oscilloscope, and navigate running circuits hierarchy. Changes of this versionToolbars on text note dialog are more flexible now. You can select font face, size, color, and background of text you are typing. RAM now can be initialized to one of the following: random va...SiteMap Editor for Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011: SiteMap Editor (1.1.2020.421): New features: Disable a specific part of SiteMap to keep the data without displaying them in the CRM application. It simply comments XML part of the sitemap (thanks to rboyers for this feature request) Right click an item and click on "Disable" to disable it Items disabled are greyed and a suffix "- disabled" is added Right click an item and click on "Enable" to enable it Refresh list of web resources in the web resources pickerNew Projectsaftermath: Provides sse/avx implementation for matrix storage, access and basic operations, probability distributions and fast ziggurat random number generators.Agility: Agility is a management tool for the agile enterprise. It supports encourages ussage of agile methodology from portfolio and management to development.ASP.NET WebForm MVVM: MVVM for ASP.NET WebFormsAzugBeDemo: some text hereBookmark Browser: Web application that allows access to your Firefox Sync bookmarks on platforms that are not supported by Firefox (e.g. iOS).Cachalote-Todo-WPF-Skins: These are skin projects for Cachalote Todo WPF project.CodePlexDeployment01: Project set up to demonstrate codeplex deploymentColorChooser X2: comming soon...De Todo Un Poco: de todo un pcoDeals Patrol: Deals patrolEasy IP Changer: Wechseln von IP Adressen pro AdapterEasyStock: EasyStock is a small and easy to use Windows 8 app that gives you an overview of your favorite stocks with historical data for the last days, months and years. Find++: Find++ finds specific string in multiple files in a folderGoShunn: A DotNetNuke ModuleJquery DataTables Plugin c#, .NET, MS SQL Server and Webservices Example: A working example of JQuery DataTables in C#, ASP.NET, SQL Server side processing with ajax and webservices.Keywords Translator (MUI helper): MUI helper for translate words in others languages.Mupen: A Nentendo 64 Emulator. This emulator is based on the Mupen64plus code, and made to be used for learning purposes.NFC Card Demo: ??nfc?，???demo,???roboguice ioc??NJection.LambdaConverter: NJection.LambdaConverter is an assembly for converting delegates resolved from methods/constructors to expression trees. Copyright 2009-2012 Sagi FogelQuickPasteIt: QuickPasteIt is a pastebin tool for Windows and Visual Studio (2010 & 2012) which makes sharing code files and snippets as easy as one click.SharePoint Move Discussion Threads: SharePoint Move Discussion Threads solution is a tool that allows to move a thread across discussion boards within a site-collection.SQL LocalDB Wrapper: SQL LocalDB Wrapper is a .NET 3.5 assembly providing interop with the SQL LocalDB native API from managed code using .NET APIs.Study Time: Windows 8 metro style app. Create Quizzes and study card. Use the study cards either in the Windows 8 app or WP7 Companion App. Use Skydrive for storage.TenterTaobaoke: toatoaoke projaecttestddgit09252012: stestddhg0925201201: sTrigger: A DotNetNuke C# ModuleUML Creator: This is a programmering project made by 4 students from the Technical University of Denmark, and is a part of the course Windows Programming C# and .NET.W8 Ateneo Libri: No summaryWDSS-II MergedDataViewer: Quickly view merged variables map produced from w2merger Webshop for Orchard: This is Ecommerce Module to Orchard based on SkyWalker's excellent serial blogsWindows Powershell/Quest AD account audit and reporting: Powershell framework utilizing Quest Active Directory commandlet for the generation of user account, group membership and access audit reports.WinRT.Toolkit: I'm trying to Build a Charting Control Set for Windows 8 Modern UI I already Built a Pie Chart which is available now on http://blogs.msdn.com/b/mertoappsXades Library: Xades Library, currently with Xades-T capabilities and compatible with eHealth and MyCareNet.

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• What's up with LDoms: Part 2 - Creating a first, simple guest

  - by Stefan Hinker

  Welcome back! In the first part, we discussed the basic concepts of LDoms and how to configure a simple control domain.  We saw how resources were put aside for guest systems and what infrastructure we need for them.  With that, we are now ready to create a first, very simple guest domain.  In this first example, we'll keep things very simple.  Later on, we'll have a detailed look at things like sizing, IO redundancy, other types of IO as well as security. For now,let's start with this very simple guest.  It'll have one core's worth of CPU, one crypto unit, 8GB of RAM, a single boot disk and one network port.  CPU and RAM are easy.  The network port we'll create by attaching a virtual network port to the vswitch we created in the primary domain.  This is very much like plugging a cable into a computer system on one end and a network switch on the other.  For the boot disk, we'll need two things: A physical piece of storage to hold the data - this is called the backend device in LDoms speak.  And then a mapping between that storage and the guest domain, giving it access to that virtual disk.  For this example, we'll use a ZFS volume for the backend.  We'll discuss what other options there are for this and how to chose the right one in a later article.  Here we go: root@sun # ldm create mars root@sun # ldm set-vcpu 8 mars root@sun # ldm set-mau 1 mars root@sun # ldm set-memory 8g mars root@sun # zfs create rpool/guests root@sun # zfs create -V 32g rpool/guests/mars.bootdisk root@sun # ldm add-vdsdev /dev/zvol/dsk/rpool/guests/mars.bootdisk \ mars.root@primary-vds root@sun # ldm add-vdisk root mars.root@primary-vds mars root@sun # ldm add-vnet net0 switch-primary mars That's all, mars is now ready to power on.  There are just three commands between us and the OK prompt of mars:  We have to "bind" the domain, start it and connect to its console.  Binding is the process where the hypervisor actually puts all the pieces that we've configured together.  If we made a mistake, binding is where we'll be told (starting in version 2.1, a lot of sanity checking has been put into the config commands themselves, but binding will catch everything else).  Once bound, we can start (and of course later stop) the domain, which will trigger the boot process of OBP.  By default, the domain will then try to boot right away.  If we don't want that, we can set "auto-boot?" to false.  Finally, we'll use telnet to connect to the console of our newly created guest.  The output of "ldm list" shows us what port has been assigned to mars.  By default, the console service only listens on the loopback interface, so using telnet is not a large security concern here. root@sun # ldm set-variable auto-boot\?=false mars root@sun # ldm bind mars root@sun # ldm start mars root@sun # ldm list NAME STATE FLAGS CONS VCPU MEMORY UTIL UPTIME primary active -n-cv- UART 8 7680M 0.5% 1d 4h 30m mars active -t---- 5000 8 8G 12% 1s root@sun # telnet localhost 5000 Trying 127.0.0.1... Connected to localhost. Escape character is '^]'. ~Connecting to console "mars" in group "mars" .... Press ~? for control options .. {0} ok banner SPARC T3-4, No Keyboard Copyright (c) 1998, 2011, Oracle and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved. OpenBoot 4.33.1, 8192 MB memory available, Serial # 87203131. Ethernet address 0:21:28:24:1b:50, Host ID: 85241b50. {0} ok We're done, mars is ready to install Solaris, preferably using AI, of course ;-)  But before we do that, let's have a little look at the OBP environment to see how our virtual devices show up here: {0} ok printenv auto-boot? auto-boot? = false {0} ok printenv boot-device boot-device = disk net {0} ok devalias root /virtual-devices@100/channel-devices@200/disk@0 net0 /virtual-devices@100/channel-devices@200/network@0 net /virtual-devices@100/channel-devices@200/network@0 disk /virtual-devices@100/channel-devices@200/disk@0 virtual-console /virtual-devices/console@1 name aliases We can see that setting the OBP variable "auto-boot?" to false with the ldm command worked.  Of course, we'd normally set this to "true" to allow Solaris to boot right away once the LDom guest is started.  The setting for "boot-device" is the default "disk net", which means OBP would try to boot off the devices pointed to by the aliases "disk" and "net" in that order, which usually means "disk" once Solaris is installed on the disk image.  The actual devices these aliases point to are shown with the command "devalias".  Here, we have one line for both "disk" and "net".  The device paths speak for themselves.  Note that each of these devices has a second alias: "net0" for the network device and "root" for the disk device.  These are the very same names we've given these devices in the control domain with the commands "ldm add-vnet" and "ldm add-vdisk".  Remember this, as it is very useful once you have several dozen disk devices... To wrap this up, in this part we've created a simple guest domain, complete with CPU, memory, boot disk and network connectivity.  This should be enough to get you going.  I will cover all the more advanced features and a little more theoretical background in several follow-on articles.  For some background reading, I'd recommend the following links: LDoms 2.2 Admin Guide: Setting up Guest Domains Virtual Console Server: vntsd manpage - This includes the control sequences and commands available to control the console session. OpenBoot 4.x command reference - All the things you can do at the ok prompt

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• Trace flags - TF 1117

  - by Damian

  I had a session about trace flags this year on the SQL Day 2014 conference that was held in Wroclaw at the end of April. The session topic is important to most of DBA's and the reason I did it was that I sometimes forget about various trace flags :). So I decided to prepare a presentation but I think it is a good idea to write posts about trace flags, too. Let's start then - today I will describe the TF 1117. I assume that we all know how to setup a TF using starting parameters or registry or in the session or on the query level. I will always write if a trace flag is local or global to make sure we know how to use it. Why do we need this trace flag? Let’s create a test database first. This is quite ordinary database as it has two data files (4 MB each) and a log file that has 1MB. The data files are able to expand by 1 MB and the log file grows by 10%: USE [master] GO CREATE DATABASE [TF1117]  ON  PRIMARY ( NAME = N'TF1117',      FILENAME = N'C:\Program Files\Microsoft SQL Server\MSSQL12.SQL2014\MSSQL\DATA\TF1117.mdf' ,      SIZE = 4096KB ,      MAXSIZE = UNLIMITED,      FILEGROWTH = 1024KB ), ( NAME = N'TF1117_1',      FILENAME = N'C:\Program Files\Microsoft SQL Server\MSSQL12.SQL2014\MSSQL\DATA\TF1117_1.ndf' ,      SIZE = 4096KB ,      MAXSIZE = UNLIMITED,      FILEGROWTH = 1024KB )  LOG ON ( NAME = N'TF1117_log',      FILENAME = N'C:\Program Files\Microsoft SQL Server\MSSQL12.SQL2014\MSSQL\DATA\TF1117_log.ldf' ,      SIZE = 1024KB ,      MAXSIZE = 2048GB ,      FILEGROWTH = 10% ) GO Without the TF 1117 turned on the data files don’t grow all up at once. When a first file is full the SQL Server expands it but the other file is not expanded until is full. Why is that so important? The SQL Server proportional fill algorithm will direct new extent allocations to the file with the most available space so new extents will be written to the file that was just expanded. When the TF 1117 is enabled it will cause all files to auto grow by their specified increment. That means all files will have the same percent of free space so we still have the benefit of evenly distributed IO. The TF 1117 is global flag so it affects all databases on the instance. Of course if a filegroup contains only one file the TF does not have any effect on it. Now let’s do a simple test. First let’s create a table in which every row will fit to a single page: The table definition is pretty simple as it has two integer columns and one character column of fixed size 8000 bytes: create table TF1117Tab (      col1 int,      col2 int,      col3 char (8000) ) go Now I load some data to the table to make sure that one of the data file must grow: declare @i int select @i = 1 while (@i < 800) begin       insert into TF1117Tab  values (@i, @i+1000, 'hello')        select @i= @i + 1 end I can check the actual file size in the sys.database_files DMV: SELECT name, (size*8)/1024 'Size in MB' FROM sys.database_files  GO   As you can see only the first data file was  expanded and the other has still the initial size:   name                  Size in MB --------------------- ----------- TF1117                5 TF1117_log            1 TF1117_1              4 There is also other methods of looking at the events of file autogrows. One possibility is to create an Extended Events session and the other is to look into the default trace file:     DECLARE @path NVARCHAR(260); SELECT    @path = REVERSE(SUBSTRING(REVERSE([path]),          CHARINDEX('\', REVERSE([path])), 260)) + N'log.trc' FROM    sys.traces WHERE   is_default = 1; SELECT    DatabaseName,                 [FileName],                 SPID,                 Duration,                 StartTime,                 EndTime,                 FileType =                         CASE EventClass                                     WHEN 92 THEN 'Data'                                    WHEN 93 THEN 'Log'             END FROM sys.fn_trace_gettable(@path, DEFAULT) WHERE   EventClass IN (92,93) AND StartTime >'2014-07-12' AND DatabaseName = N'TF1117' ORDER BY   StartTime DESC;   After running the query I can see the file was expanded and how long did the process take which might be useful from the performance perspective.    Now it’s time to turn on the flag 1117. DBCC TRACEON(1117)   I dropped the database and recreated it once again. Then I ran the queries and observed the results. After loading the records I see that both files were evenly expanded: name                  Size in MB --------------------- ----------- TF1117                5 TF1117_log            1 TF1117_1              5 I found also information in the default trace. The query returned three rows. The last one is connected to my first experiment when the TF was turned off.  The two rows shows that first file was expanded by 1MB and right after that operation the second file was expanded, too. This is what is this TF all about J  

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• 6 Ways to Free Up Hard Drive Space Used by Windows System Files

  - by Chris Hoffman

  We’ve previously covered the standard ways to free up space on Windows. But if you have a small solid-state drive and really want more hard space, there are geekier ways to reclaim hard drive space. Not all of these tips are recommended — in fact, if you have more than enough hard drive space, following these tips may actually be a bad idea. There’s a tradeoff to changing all of these settings. Erase Windows Update Uninstall Files Windows allows you to uninstall patches you install from Windows Update. This is helpful if an update ever causes a problem — but how often do you need to uninstall an update, anyway? And will you really ever need to uninstall updates you’ve installed several years ago? These uninstall files are probably just wasting space on your hard drive. A recent update released for Windows 7 allows you to erase Windows Update files from the Windows Disk Cleanup tool. Open Disk Cleanup, click Clean up system files, check the Windows Update Cleanup option, and click OK. If you don’t see this option, run Windows Update and install the available updates. Remove the Recovery Partition Windows computers generally come with recovery partitions that allow you to reset your computer back to its factory default state without juggling discs. The recovery partition allows you to reinstall Windows or use the Refresh and Reset your PC features. These partitions take up a lot of space as they need to contain a complete system image. On Microsoft’s Surface Pro, the recovery partition takes up about 8-10 GB. On other computers, it may be even larger as it needs to contain all the bloatware the manufacturer included. Windows 8 makes it easy to copy the recovery partition to removable media and remove it from your hard drive. If you do this, you’ll need to insert the removable media whenever you want to refresh or reset your PC. On older Windows 7 computers, you could delete the recovery partition using a partition manager — but ensure you have recovery media ready if you ever need to install Windows. If you prefer to install Windows from scratch instead of using your manufacturer’s recovery partition, you can just insert a standard Window disc if you ever want to reinstall Windows. Disable the Hibernation File Windows creates a hidden hibernation file at C:\hiberfil.sys. Whenever you hibernate the computer, Windows saves the contents of your RAM to the hibernation file and shuts down the computer. When it boots up again, it reads the contents of the file into memory and restores your computer to the state it was in. As this file needs to contain much of the contents of your RAM, it’s 75% of the size of your installed RAM. If you have 12 GB of memory, that means this file takes about 9 GB of space. On a laptop, you probably don’t want to disable hibernation. However, if you have a desktop with a small solid-state drive, you may want to disable hibernation to recover the space. When you disable hibernation, Windows will delete the hibernation file. You can’t move this file off the system drive, as it needs to be on C:\ so Windows can read it at boot. Note that this file and the paging file are marked as “protected operating system files” and aren’t visible by default. Shrink the Paging File The Windows paging file, also known as the page file, is a file Windows uses if your computer’s available RAM ever fills up. Windows will then “page out” data to disk, ensuring there’s always available memory for applications — even if there isn’t enough physical RAM. The paging file is located at C:\pagefile.sys by default. You can shrink it or disable it if you’re really crunched for space, but we don’t recommend disabling it as that can cause problems if your computer ever needs some paging space. On our computer with 12 GB of RAM, the paging file takes up 12 GB of hard drive space by default. If you have a lot of RAM, you can certainly decrease the size — we’d probably be fine with 2 GB or even less. However, this depends on the programs you use and how much memory they require. The paging file can also be moved to another drive — for example, you could move it from a small SSD to a slower, larger hard drive. It will be slower if Windows ever needs to use the paging file, but it won’t use important SSD space. Configure System Restore Windows seems to use about 10 GB of hard drive space for “System Protection” by default. This space is used for System Restore snapshots, allowing you to restore previous versions of system files if you ever run into a system problem. If you need to free up space, you could reduce the amount of space allocated to system restore or even disable it entirely. Of course, if you disable it entirely, you’ll be unable to use system restore if you ever need it. You’d have to reinstall Windows, perform a Refresh or Reset, or fix any problems manually. Tweak Your Windows Installer Disc Want to really start stripping down Windows, ripping out components that are installed by default? You can do this with a tool designed for modifying Windows installer discs, such as WinReducer for Windows 8 or RT Se7en Lite for Windows 7. These tools allow you to create a customized installation disc, slipstreaming in updates and configuring default options. You can also use them to remove components from the Windows disc, shrinking the size of the resulting Windows installation. This isn’t recommended as you could cause problems with your Windows installation by removing important features. But it’s certainly an option if you want to make Windows as tiny as possible. Most Windows users can benefit from removing Windows Update uninstallation files, so it’s good to see that Microsoft finally gave Windows 7 users the ability to quickly and easily erase these files. However, if you have more than enough hard drive space, you should probably leave well enough alone and let Windows manage the rest of these settings on its own. Image Credit: Yutaka Tsutano on Flickr     

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• 8 Reasons Why Even Microsoft Agrees the Windows Desktop is a Nightmare

  - by Chris Hoffman

  Let’s be honest: The Windows desktop is a mess. Sure, it’s extremely powerful and has a huge software library, but it’s not a good experience for average people. It’s not even a good experience for geeks, although we tolerate it. Even Microsoft agrees about this. Microsoft’s Surface tablets with Windows RT don’t support any third-party desktop apps. They consider this a feature — users can’t install malware and other desktop junk, so the system will always be speedy and secure. Malware is Still Common Malware may not affect geeks, but it certainly continues to affect average people. Securing Windows, keeping it secure, and avoiding unsafe programs is a complex process. There are over 50 different file extensions that can contain harmful code to keep track of. It’s easy to have theoretical discussions about how malware could infect Mac computers, Android devices, and other systems. But Mac malware is extremely rare, and has  generally been caused by problem with the terrible Java plug-in. Macs are configured to only run executables from identified developers by default, whereas Windows will run everything. Android malware is talked about a lot, but Android malware is rare in the real world and is generally confined to users who disable security protections and install pirated apps. Google has also taken action, rolling out built-in antivirus-like app checking to all Android devices, even old ones running Android 2.3, via Play Services. Whatever the reason, Windows malware is still common while malware for other systems isn’t. We all know it — anyone who does tech support for average users has dealt with infected Windows computers. Even users who can avoid malware are stuck dealing with complex and nagging antivirus programs, especially since it’s now so difficult to trust Microsoft’s antivirus products. Manufacturer-Installed Bloatware is Terrible Sit down with a new Mac, Chromebook, iPad, Android tablet, Linux laptop, or even a Surface running Windows RT and you can enjoy using your new device. The system is a clean slate for you to start exploring and installing your new software. Sit down with a new Windows PC and the system is a mess. Rather than be delighted, you’re stuck reinstalling Windows and then installing the necessary drivers or you’re forced to start uninstalling useless bloatware programs one-by-one, trying to figure out which ones are actually useful. After uninstalling the useless programs, you may end up with a system tray full of icons for ten different hardware utilities anyway. The first experience of using a new Windows PC is frustration, not delight. Yes, bloatware is still a problem on Windows 8 PCs. Manufacturers can customize the Refresh image, preventing bloatware rom easily being removed. Finding a Desktop Program is Dangerous Want to install a Windows desktop program? Well, you’ll have to head to your web browser and start searching. It’s up to you, the user, to know which programs are safe and which are dangerous. Even if you find a website for a reputable program, the advertisements on that page will often try to trick you into downloading fake installers full of adware. While it’s great to have the ability to leave the app store and get software that the platform’s owner hasn’t approved — as on Android — this is no excuse for not providing a good, secure software installation experience for typical users installing typical programs. Even Reputable Desktop Programs Try to Install Junk Even if you do find an entirely reputable program, you’ll have to keep your eyes open while installing it. It will likely try to install adware, add browse toolbars, change your default search engine, or change your web browser’s home page. Even Microsoft’s own programs do this — when you install Skype for Windows desktop, it will attempt to modify your browser settings t ouse Bing, even if you’re specially chosen another search engine and home page. With Microsoft setting such an example, it’s no surprise so many other software developers have followed suit. Geeks know how to avoid this stuff, but there’s a reason program installers continue to do this. It works and tricks many users, who end up with junk installed and settings changed. The Update Process is Confusing On iOS, Android, and Windows RT, software updates come from a single place — the app store. On Linux, software updates come from the package manager. On Mac OS X, typical users’ software updates likely come from the Mac App Store. On the Windows desktop, software updates come from… well, every program has to create its own update mechanism. Users have to keep track of all these updaters and make sure their software is up-to-date. Most programs now have their act together and automatically update by default, but users who have old versions of Flash and Adobe Reader installed are vulnerable until they realize their software isn’t automatically updating. Even if every program updates properly, the sheer mess of updaters is clunky, slow, and confusing in comparison to a centralized update process. Browser Plugins Open Security Holes It’s no surprise that other modern platforms like iOS, Android, Chrome OS, Windows RT, and Windows Phone don’t allow traditional browser plugins, or only allow Flash and build it into the system. Browser plugins provide a wealth of different ways for malicious web pages to exploit the browser and open the system to attack. Browser plugins are one of the most popular attack vectors because of how many users have out-of-date plugins and how many plugins, especially Java, seem to be designed without taking security seriously. Oracle’s Java plugin even tries to install the terrible Ask toolbar when installing security updates. That’s right — the security update process is also used to cram additional adware into users’ machines so unscrupulous companies like Oracle can make a quick buck. It’s no wonder that most Windows PCs have an out-of-date, vulnerable version of Java installed. Battery Life is Terrible Windows PCs have bad battery life compared to Macs, IOS devices, and Android tablets, all of which Windows now competes with. Even Microsoft’s own Surface Pro 2 has bad battery life. Apple’s 11-inch MacBook Air, which has very similar hardware to the Surface Pro 2, offers double its battery life when web browsing. Microsoft has been fond of blaming third-party hardware manufacturers for their poorly optimized drivers in the past, but there’s no longer any room to hide. The problem is clearly Windows. Why is this? No one really knows for sure. Perhaps Microsoft has kept on piling Windows component on top of Windows component and many older Windows components were never properly optimized. Windows Users Become Stuck on Old Windows Versions Apple’s new OS X 10.9 Mavericks upgrade is completely free to all Mac users and supports Macs going back to 2007. Apple has also announced their intention that all new releases of Mac OS X will be free. In 2007, Microsoft had just shipped Windows Vista. Macs from the Windows Vista era are being upgraded to the latest version of the Mac operating system for free, while Windows PCs from the same era are probably still using Windows Vista. There’s no easy upgrade path for these people. They’re stuck using Windows Vista and maybe even the outdated Internet Explorer 9 if they haven’t installed a third-party web browser. Microsoft’s upgrade path is for these people to pay $120 for a full copy of Windows 8.1 and go through a complicated process that’s actaully a clean install. Even users of Windows 8 devices will probably have to pay money to upgrade to Windows 9, while updates for other operating systems are completely free. If you’re a PC geek, a PC gamer, or someone who just requires specialized software that only runs on Windows, you probably use the Windows desktop and don’t want to switch. That’s fine, but it doesn’t mean the Windows desktop is actually a good experience. Much of the burden falls on average users, who have to struggle with malware, bloatware, adware bundled in installers, complex software installation processes, and out-of-date software. In return, all they get is the ability to use a web browser and some basic Office apps that they could use on almost any other platform without all the hassle. Microsoft would agree with this, touting Windows RT and their new “Windows 8-style” app platform as the solution. Why else would Microsoft, a “devices and services” company, position the Surface — a device without traditional Windows desktop programs — as their mass-market device recommended for average people? This isn’t necessarily an endorsement of Windows RT. If you’re tech support for your family members and it comes time for them to upgrade, you may want to get them off the Windows desktop and tell them to get a Mac or something else that’s simple. Better yet, if they get a Mac, you can tell them to visit the Apple Store for help instead of calling you. That’s another thing Windows PCs don’t offer — good manufacturer support. Image Credit: Blanca Stella Mejia on Flickr, Collin Andserson on Flickr, Luca Conti on Flickr     

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• CodePlex Daily Summary for Monday, November 22, 2010

  CodePlex Daily Summary for Monday, November 22, 2010Popular ReleasesSQL Monitor: SQLMon 1.1: changes: 1.added sql job monitoring; 2.added settings save/loadASP.NET MVC Project Awesome (jQuery Ajax helpers): 1.3.1 and demos: A rich set of helpers (controls) that you can use to build highly responsive and interactive Ajax-enabled Web applications. These helpers include Autocomplete, AjaxDropdown, Lookup, Confirm Dialog, Popup Form and Pager tested on mozilla, safari, chrome, opera, ie 9b/8/7/6DotSpatial: DotSpatial 11-21-2010: This release introduces the following Fixed bugs related to dispose, which caused issues when reordering layers in the legend Fixed bugs related to assigning categories where NULL values are in the fields New fast-acting resize using a bitmap "prediction" of what the final resize content will look like. ImageData.ReadBlock, ImageData.WriteBlock These allow direct file access for reading or writing a rectangular window. Bitmaps are used for holding the values. Removed the need to stor...Minemapper - dynamic mapping for Windows: Minemapper v0.1.0: Pan by: dragging the mouse using the buttons Zoom by: scrolling the mouse wheel using the buttons using the slider Night support Biome support Skylight support Direction support: East West Height slicingMDownloader: MDownloader-0.15.24.6966: Fixed Updater; Fixed minor bugs;WPF Application Framework (WAF): WPF Application Framework (WAF) 2.0.0.1: Version: 2.0.0.1 (Milestone 1): This release contains the source code of the WPF Application Framework (WAF) and the sample applications. Requirements .NET Framework 4.0 (The package contains a solution file for Visual Studio 2010) The unit test projects require Visual Studio 2010 Professional Remark The sample applications are using Microsoft’s IoC container MEF. However, the WPF Application Framework (WAF) doesn’t force you to use the same IoC container in your application. You can use ...Smith Html Editor: Smith Html Editor V0.75: The first public release.MiniTwitter: 1.59: MiniTwitter 1.59 ???? ?? User Streams ????????????????? ?? ?????????????? ???????? ?????????????.NET Extensions - Extension Methods Library for C# and VB.NET: Release 2011.01: Added new extensions for - object.CountLoopsToNull Added new extensions for DateTime: - DateTime.IsWeekend - DateTime.AddWeeks Added new extensions for string: - string.Repeat - string.IsNumeric - string.ExtractDigits - string.ConcatWith - string.ToGuid - string.ToGuidSave Added new extensions for Exception: - Exception.GetOriginalException Added new extensions for Stream: - Stream.Write (overload) And other new methods ... Release as of dotnetpro 01/2011Code Sample from Microsoft: Visual Studio 2010 Code Samples 2010-11-19: Code samples for Visual Studio 2010Prism Training Kit: Prism Training Kit 4.0: Release NotesThis is an updated version of the Prism training Kit that targets Prism 4.0 and added labs for some of the new features of Prism 4.0. This release consists of a Training Kit with Labs on the following topics Modularity Dependency Injection Bootstrapper UI Composition Communication MEF Navigation Note: Take into account that this is a Beta version. If you find any bugs please report them in the Issue Tracker PrerequisitesVisual Studio 2010 Microsoft Word 2...Free language translator and file converter: Free Language Translator 2.2: Starting with version 2.0, the translator encountered a major redesign that uses MEF based plugins and .net 4.0. I've also fixed some bugs and added support for translating subtitles that can show up in video media players. Version 2.1 shows the context menu 'Translate' in Windows Explorer on right click. Version 2.2 has links to start the media file with its associated subtitle. Download the zip file and expand it in a temporary location on your local disk. At a minimum , you should uninstal...Free Silverlight & WPF Chart Control - Visifire: Visifire SL and WPF Charts v3.6.4 Released: Hi, Today we are releasing Visifire 3.6.4 with few bug fixes: * Multi-line Labels were getting clipped while exploding last DataPoint in Funnel and Pyramid chart. * ClosestPlotDistance property in Axis was not behaving as expected. * In DateTime Axis, Chart threw exception on mouse click over PlotArea if there were no DataPoints present in Chart. * ToolTip was not disappearing while changing the DataSource property of the DataSeries at real-time. * Chart threw exception ...Microsoft SQL Server Product Samples: Database: AdventureWorks 2008R2 SR1: Sample Databases for Microsoft SQL Server 2008R2 (SR1)This release is dedicated to the sample databases that ship for Microsoft SQL Server 2008R2. See Database Prerequisites for SQL Server 2008R2 for feature configurations required for installing the sample databases. See Installing SQL Server 2008R2 Databases for step by step installation instructions. The SR1 release contains minor bug fixes to the installer used to create the sample databases. There are no changes to the databases them...VidCoder: 0.7.2: Fixed duplicated subtitles when running multiple encodes off of the same title.Craig's Utility Library: Craig's Utility Library Code 2.0: This update contains a number of changes, added functionality, and bug fixes: Added transaction support to SQLHelper. Added linked/embedded resource ability to EmailSender. Updated List to take into account new functions. Added better support for MAC address in WMI classes. Fixed Parsing in Reflection class when dealing with sub classes. Fixed bug in SQLHelper when replacing the Command that is a select after doing a select. Fixed issue in SQL Server helper with regard to generati...MFCMAPI: November 2010 Release: Build: 6.0.0.1023 Full release notes at SGriffin's blog. If you just want to run the tool, get the executable. If you want to debug it, get the symbol file and the source. The 64 bit build will only work on a machine with Outlook 2010 64 bit installed. All other machines should use the 32 bit build, regardless of the operating system. Facebook BadgeDotNetNuke® Community Edition: 05.06.00: Major HighlightsAdded automatic portal alias creation for single portal installs Updated the file manager upload page to allow user to upload multiple files without returning to the file manager page. Fixed issue with Event Log Email Notifications. Fixed issue where Telerik HTML Editor was unable to upload files to secure or database folder. Fixed issue where registration page is not set correctly during an upgrade. Fixed issue where Sendmail stripped HTML and Links from emails...mVu Mobile Viewer: mVu Mobile Viewer 0.7.10.0: Tube8 fix.EPPlus-Create advanced Excel 2007 spreadsheets on the server: EPPlus 2.8.0.1: EPPlus-Create advanced Excel 2007 spreadsheets on the serverNew Features Improved chart support Different chart-types series on the same chart Support for secondary axis and a lot of new properties Better styling Encryption and Workbook protection Table support Import csv files Array formulas ...and a lot of bugfixesNew Projects.NET 4 Workflow Activities for Citrix: .NET 4 based workflow activities targeting the Citrix infrastructure.Age calculator: It calculates the age of a person in days on specification of date of birth.Another Azure Demo Project: An Azure demo project - based on the one we (Johan Danforth and Dag König) showed on the Swedish Azure Summit.ASP.NET Layered Web Application: N-Layered Web Applications with ASP.NET based on the article by Imar Spaanjaars.Binzlog: Donet ????。Build Solution: Buid Visual Studio applications with .Net code.CondominioOnline: Projeto para o desenvolvimento colaborativo dos diagramas de desenvolvimento.Create Dynamic UI with WPF: Create Dynamic UI with WPFDNN Fanbox: dot net nuke plugin facebook fanboxDNN Tweet: DNN Tweet is a twitter plugin for DotnetNuke DotNetNuke Notes: dnnNotes allows you to create simple notes that are stored on your DotNetNuke site.Easy Login PHP Script: Give your site a professional looking Members Area with this completely FREE and easy-to-use PHP script! Developed in PHP and uses MySQL as a database backend. Go on, click here, you know you want to! :DFind Nigerian Traditional Fashion Styles: NaijaTradStyles is a social network for Nigerians all over the world to promote the Nigerian economy, designs and cultures, fashion designers and individuals. This site allows users to share fashion ideas, activities, events, and interests within their individual networks. The GreenArrow: Just a simple mark-locate-click automation tool by comparing graphic pieces. GreenArrow makes it easier for automation script writer to handle UI elements which cannot be located by normal methods, like keyword or classid. Libero API for Fusion Charts in ASP.Net: Libero.FusionChartsAPI is made for Asp.Net (Webforms and MVC) developers to make easier to implement Fusion Charts in their projects. It is developed in framework .Net 4 (but supports framework 3.5) to target ASP.Net projects. Minemapper - dynamic mapping for Windows: Minemapper is an interactive, dynamic mapper for Minecraft. It uses mcmap to generate small map image tiles, then lets you pan and zoom around, quickly generating new tiles as needed.MoodleAzure: Enable Moodle 1.9.9 to run on Windows Azure and SQL AzureOpalis Active Directory Extension: A Opalis Integration Pack Project for Active Directory Integration. Done with C# Directory Services.Quick Finger SDK: Quick Finger SDK helps you to build a wide range of applications to use fingerprint recognition. Quick Finger SDK makes it easier for developers to integrate fingerprint recognition into their software. It's developed in Visual C++. Regex Batch Replacer (Multi-File): Regex Batch Replacer uses regular expression to find and replace text in multiple files.RiverRaid X: A clone of the classic Atari 2600 arcade game, River Raid. Uses XNA 4.0 and Neat game engine (http://neat.codeplex.com)SharePoint Commander: SharePoint 2010 administrative tool for developers and administrators.StreamerMatch: A tool for streamers, focused at Starcraft II at the moment.Tab Web Part: This solution is used to present the WebParts in a tab like user interface. It is tested on a SharePoint 2010 sandboxed solution. With this solution, all the WebParts added in a particular zone will appear in a tab kind of interface in the design mode. The javascript transformsTomato: XNA-based rendering middleware.UnicornObjects: todoVina: VinaWPF Photo/Image Manager: A WPF playground for many projects, including an image viewer, filters, image modification, photo organization, etc.WXQCW: wxqcw news platformYobbo Guitar: Yobbo guitar is a web application developed in ASP.NET that allows users to share guitar songs and chord progressions.

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• CodePlex Daily Summary for Tuesday, May 11, 2010

  CodePlex Daily Summary for Tuesday, May 11, 2010New ProjectsASP.NET MVC Extensions: ASP.NET MVC Extensions is developed on top of ASP.NET MVC extensibility point, which allows your IoC Container to rule everywhere.Best practices in .NET: NMA is a collection of knowledges that I learned from my co-worker and Internet. It's built on Domain Driven Design theories. I used Struture Map,...BioRider: Project participant of the 1st National Award for InteroperabilityBSoft: that's the project for bsoftClosedXML - The easy way to OpenXML: ClosedXML makes it easier for developers to create OpenXML files for Excel 2007. It provides a nice object oriented way to manipulate the files (si...Dragon Master: A tool for all D&D masters that need to create Dragon NPCsFacturator - Create invoices easy and fast: Windows forms application for creating invoices based on a Word template. Including a simple workflow for send, payed and finished invoices and a q...FreeEPG: An Australian EPG using the Freeview online guide. All Freeview regions are supported and data can be exported in either XMLTV or Microsoft Media ...GreedyRSS: Convert everything to RSS FeedHByte: In honor of the heisenberg uncertainty principle. This is an implementation of a type who has byte semantics, but who's value and location can not...JSON RPC 2.0 - Javascript/.NET Implementation: JSON RPC 2.0 - Javascript/.NET Implementation - NOT READY YETMjollnir - Supplemental Library for BCL: Mjollnir is Supplements Library for BCL. Mjollnir is Compatible with .NET Framework 4 (or maybe later).Money Spinner: MoneySpinnerMSPY 2010 Open Extended Dictionary Building Tool: A tool to create Open Extend Dictionary for Microsoft Pinyin IME 2010, it is develped in C#Sharepoint Data Store: This is a small library that lets SharePoint developers store and manage custom application information in SharePoint.SharePointSlim: We are going to use it in conjunction with the PowerSlim projectSSTA: A Tool to Compare SQL Database Schema Versionstbeasy: tbeasyNew Releases8085 Microprocessor simulator: 8085 Instruction Set Simulator with source code: 8085 Instruction set simulator with windows installer plus complete source code and examplesAutoArchive: Site Template...: Slightly off topic, but take a looK!BioRider: Uptiva Dreams IT Entry: ==================================== National Interoperability Award ==================================== TEAM: Uptiva Dreams IT PROJECT: BioRide...C# Developer Utility Library: ScrimpNet.Core Library May 2010: Initial upload of project library. Contains only source files. Recommend adding extracted files to your project as a project reference.Coot: Beta 1: To install the screen saver: Extract the contents of the zip file (all three files) to C:\Windows\System32 Go to screen saver properties, select ...Deploy Workflow Manager: Deploy Workflow Manager v1: Recommend you test on your development environment first before implementing into production. Criteria to run the workflow is assumed to be inclu...Expression Encoder 3 Visual Basic Samples: Encoder 3 VB Samples: Zip file contains the Encoder 3 samples written in Visual Basic.FreeEPG: Debug Release: Initial Release. Run the application from the command line for options. If you choose to run the client as a Windows Service, then you will need t...FSharpChess: Alpha Release 0.197: This is just the latest version of the binaries. Note that there are two excecutables: FSharpChess includes a UI partially written in C# FSharpCh...GreedyRSS: GreedyRSS V2: V2与V1相比： 改进了插件架构 用数据库取代XML配置文件 用Web Services暴露了部分功能Headspring Labs: ASP.NET MVC 2 tips and tricks (code): Contains example app that demonstrates techniques in the Tips & Tricks powerpointHeadspring Labs: ASP.NET MVC tips and tricks PPT: Powerpoint file for the ASP.NET MVC tips and tricks talk.HouseFly controls: HouseFly controls beta 1.0.0.0: HouseFly controls release 1.0.0.0 betaiTuner - The iTunes Companion: iTuner 1.2.3782: This production release of iTuner 1.2 allows you to synchronize one or more iTunes playlists to a USB MP3 player. It also provides the ability to ...JSON RPC 2.0 - Javascript/.NET Implementation: v0.7: Protocol implemented. Most of the extra features implemented.MapWindow6: MapWindow 6.0 msi May 10, 2010: This version fixes a reproject bug where false_easting from .prj files was not being correctly converted into meters when the projection was in feet.Mouse Zoom - Visual Studio Extension: MouseZoom 1.7: Version 1.7 fixes a bug that can cause the keys to stick when leaving focus (e.g. opening a VS dialog box).Mouse Zoom - Visual Studio Extension: MouseZoom 1.8: Override mouse wheel scroll functionality to always scroll 25% no matter what zoom level you are on (by default, scrolling with the mouse wheel bec...MSPY 2010 Open Extended Dictionary Building Tool: 20100511build: First release. 1. Installation After you download it to your local disk, create a new folder and unzip it to the new folder, that's it. 2. run ...MSPY 2010 Open Extended Dictionary Building Tool: 20100511build2: First release. 1. Installation After you download it to your local disk, create a new folder and unzip it to the new folder, that's it. 2. run ...Multiwfn: multiwfn1.3.2: multiwfn1.3.2NASA Space Shuttle TV Schedule Transfer to Outlook Calendar: NASA Space Shuttle TV Schedule Release v1.4.132.1: Warning!There is a problem with the latest version of the program and rev 0 of STS-132 mission schedule. I am looking into the problem when the yea...NASA Space Shuttle TV Schedule Transfer to Outlook Calendar: NASA Space Shuttle TV Schedule Release v1.4.132.2: This release fixes a problem with rev 0 of the STS-132 mission schedule in recognizing the year of launch. NASA changed the year of launch to a fo...Object/Relational Mapper & Code Generator in Net 2.0 for Relational & XML Schema: 2.8: Switched compliation options to always run in 32-bit mode, to ensure it can connect to MSAccess & MSExcel on 64-bit machines. Updated parameterised...Open NFSe: OpenNFSe-Salvador v1.0.0: Atualização do OpenNFSe-Salvador para o novo schema utilizado pela prefeitura de Salvador.OpenSLIM: OpenSLIM-v373b0-20100509-0: Here is the list of new additions and improvements that this new major release incorporates: Systems Decommissioning Management. Improvements on...Pcap.Net: Pcap.Net 0.6.0 (44468): Pcap.Net - May 2010 Release Pcap.Net is a .NET wrapper for WinPcap written in C++/CLI and C#. It Features almost all WinPcap features and includes ...PowerShell Community Extensions: 2.0 Production: PowerShell Community Extensions 2.0 Release NotesMay 10, 2010 The primary purpose of the Pscx 2.0 release is to convert from the previous approach...Scrum Sprint Monitor: v1.0.0.47921 (.NET 4-TFS 2010): What is new in this release? Minor version over 1.0.0.47911 introducing CEIP (Customer Experience Improvement Program). This is taking advantage of...Sharepoint Data Store: 1.0: First ReleaseSPVisualDev - SharePoint Developer Tool: Version 2.2.0: Visual Studio 2010 is now supported. Note that this is only intended to be used for MOSS 2007 / WSS 3.0 development and not for SP 2010. Package SP...SQL Server PowerShell Extensions: 2.2.1 Production: Release 2.2 re-implements SQLPSX as PowersShell version 2.0 modules. SQLPSX consists of 9 modules with 133 advanced functions, 2 cmdlets and 7 scri...VCC: Latest build, v2.1.30510.0: Automatic drop of latest buildVCC: Latest build, v2.1.30510.1: Automatic drop of latest buildVCC: Latest build, v2.1.30510.2: Automatic drop of latest buildVolumeMaster: Volume Master 2.0 Beta: First release of VolumeMaster. So if you're running Windows Vista / 7 you can have a handy Volume OSD and control your volume with the following sh...WabbitStudio Z80 Software Tools: SPASM2 32-Bit: A test release for SPASM2.Web Camera Shooter: 1.0.0.1: Video capturing: Touchless SDK -> AForge.Video. Main window shown in taskbar and not top most. Native images generated for all assemblies. Sm...Most Popular ProjectsWBFS ManagerRawrAJAX Control ToolkitMicrosoft SQL Server Product Samples: DatabaseSilverlight ToolkitWindows Presentation Foundation (WPF)patterns & practices – Enterprise LibraryMicrosoft SQL Server Community & SamplesASP.NETPHPExcelMost Active Projectspatterns & practices – Enterprise LibraryMirror Testing SystemThe Information Literacy Education Learning Environment (ILE)RawrCaliburn: An Application Framework for WPF and SilverlightwhiteBlogEngine.NETTweetSharpjQuery Library for SharePoint Web ServicesIonics Isapi Rewrite Filter

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• Beginner Geek: How to Use Bookmarklets on Any Device

  - by Chris Hoffman

  Web browser bookmarklets allow you to perform actions on the current page with just a click or tap. They’re a lightweight alternative to browser extensions. They even work on mobile browsers that don’t support traditional extensions. To use bookmarklets, all you need is a web browser that supports bookmarks — that’s it! Bookmarklets Explained Web pages you view in your browser use JavaScript code. That’s why web pages aren’t just static documents anymore — they’re dynamic. A bookmarklet is a normal bookmark with a piece of JavaScript code instead of a web address. When you click or tap the bookmarklet, it will execute the JavaScript code on the current page instead of loading a different page, as most bookmarks do. Bookmarklets can be used to do something to a web page with a single click. For example, you’ll find bookmarklets associated with web services like Twitter, Facebook, Google+, LinkedIn, Pocket, and LastPass. When you click the bookmarklet, it will run code that lets you easily share the current page with that service. Bookmarklets don’t just have to be  associated with web services. A bookmarklet you click could modify the appearance of the page, stripping away most of the junk and giving you a clean “reading mode.” It could alter fonts, remove images, or insert other content. It can access anything the web page could access. For example, you could use a bookmarklet to reveal a password that just appears as ******* on the page. Unlike browser extensions, bookmarklets don’t run in the background and bog down your browser. They don’t do anything at all until you click them. Because they just use the standard bookmark system, they can also be used in mobile browsers where you couldn’t run extensions. For example, you could install the Pocket bookmarklet in Safari on an iPad and get an “Add to Pocket” option in Safari. Safari doesn’t offer browsing extensions and Apple’s iOS doesn’t offer a “Share” feature like Android and Windows 8 do, so this is the only way to get this direct integration. You could even use the LastPass bookmarklets in Safari on an iPad to integrate LastPass with the Safari web browser. Where to Find Bookmarklets If you’re looking for a bookmarklet for a particular service, you’ll generally find the bookmarklet on that service’s site. Websites like Twitter, Facebook, and Pocket host pages where they provide bookmarklets along with browser extensions. Bookmarklets aren’t like programs. They’re really just a piece of text that you can put in a bookmarklet, so you don’t have to download them a specific site. You can get them from practically anywhere — installing them just involves copying a bit of text off of a web page. For example, you can just search the web for “reveal password bookmarklet” if you wanted a bookmarklet that will reveal passwords. We’ve covered many of the must-have bookmarklets — and our readers have chimed in too — so take a look at our lists for more examples. How to Install a Bookmarklet Bookmarklets are simple to install. When you hover over a bookmarklet on a web page, you’ll see its address begins with “javascript:”. If you have your web browser’s bookmark or favorites toolbar visible, the easiest way to install a bookmarklet is with drag-and-drop. Press Ctrl+Shift+B to show your bookmarks toolbar if you’re using Chrome or Internet Explorer. In Firefox, right-click the toolbar and click Bookmarks Toolbar. Just drag and drop this link to your bookmark toolbar. The bookmarklet is now installed. You can also install bookmarklets manually. Select the bookmarklet’s code and copy it to your clipboard. If the bookmarklet is a link, right-click or long-press the link and copy its address to your clipboard. Open your browser’s bookmarks manager, add a bookmark, and paste the JavaScript code directly into the address box. Give your bookmarklet a name and save it. How to Use a Bookmarklet Bookmarklets are easiest to use if you have your browser’s bookmarks toolbar enabled. Just click the bookmarklet and your browser will run it on the current page. If you don’t have a bookmarks toolbar — such as on Safari on an iPad or another mobile browser — just open your browser’s bookmarks pane and tap or click the bookmark. In mobile Chrome, you’ll need to launch the bookmarklet from the location bar. Open the web page you want to run the bookmarklet on, tap your location bar, and start searching for the name of the bookmarklet. Tap the bookmarklet’s name to run it on the current page. Note that the bookmarklet only appears here because we have it saved as a bookmark in Chrome. You’ll need to add the bookmarklet to your browser’s bookmarks before you can use it in this way. The location bar approach may also be necessary in other browsers. The trick is loading the bookmark so that it will be associated with your current tab. You can’t just open your bookmarks in a separate browser tab and run the bookmarklet from there — it will run on that other browser tab. Bookmarklets are powerful and flexible. While they’re not as flashy as browser extensions, they’re much more lightweight and allow you to get extension-like features in more limited mobile browsers.

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• Physical Directories vs. MVC View Paths

  - by Rick Strahl

  This post falls into the bucket of operator error on my part, but I want to share this anyway because it describes an issue that has bitten me a few times now and writing it down might keep it a little stronger in my mind. I've been working on an MVC project the last few days, and at the end of a long day I accidentally moved one of my View folders from the MVC Root Folder to the project root. It must have been at the very end of the day before shutting down because tests and manual site navigation worked fine just before I quit for the night. I checked in changes and called it a night. Next day I came back, started running the app and had a lot of breaks with certain views. Oddly custom routes to these controllers/views worked, but stock /{controller}/{action} routes would not. After a bit of spelunking I realized that "Hey one of my View Folders is missing", which made some sense given the error messages I got. I looked in the recycle bin - nothing there, so rather than try to figure out what the hell happened, just restored from my last SVN checkin. At this point the folders are back… but… view access  still ends up breaking for this set of views. Specifically I'm getting the Yellow Screen of Death with: CS0103: The name 'model' does not exist in the current context Here's the full error: Server Error in '/ClassifiedsWeb' Application. Compilation ErrorDescription: An error occurred during the compilation of a resource required to service this request. Please review the following specific error details and modify your source code appropriately.Compiler Error Message: CS0103: The name 'model' does not exist in the current contextSource Error: Line 1: @model ClassifiedsWeb.EntryViewModel Line 2: @{ Line 3: ViewBag.Title = Model.Entry.Title + " - " + ClassifiedsBusiness.App.Configuration.ApplicationName; Source File: c:\Projects2010\Clients\GorgeNet\Classifieds\ClassifiedsWeb\Classifieds\Show.cshtml    Line: 1 Compiler Warning Messages: Show Detailed Compiler Output: Show Complete Compilation Source: Version Information: Microsoft .NET Framework Version:4.0.30319; ASP.NET Version:4.0.30319.272 Here's what's really odd about this error: The views now do exist in the /Views/Classifieds folder of the project, but it appears like MVC is trying to execute the views directly. This is getting pretty weird, man! So I hook up some break points in my controllers to see if my controller actions are getting fired - and sure enough it turns out they are not - but only for those views that were previously 'lost' and then restored from SVN. WTF? At this point I'm thinking that I must have messed up one of the config files, but after some more spelunking and realizing that all the other Controller views work, I give up that idea. Config's gotta be OK if other controllers and views are working. Root Folders and MVC Views don't mix As I mentioned the problem was the fact that I inadvertantly managed to drag my View folder to the root folder of the project. Here's what this looks like in my FUBAR'd project structure after I copied back /Views/Classifieds folder from SVN: There's the actual root folder in the /Views folder and the accidental copy that sits of the root. I of course did not notice the /Classifieds folder at the root because it was excluded and didn't show up in the project. Now, before you call me a complete idiot remember that this happened by accident - an accidental drag probably just before shutting down for the night. :-) So why does this break? MVC should be happy with views in the /Views/Classifieds folder right? While MVC might be happy, IIS is not. The fact that there is a physical folder on disk takes precedence over MVC's routing. In other words if a URL exists that matches a route the pysical path is accessed first. What happens here is that essentially IIS is trying to execute the .cshtml pages directly without ever routing to the Controller methods. In the error page I showed above my clue should have been that the view was served as: c:\Projects2010\Clients\GorgeNet\Classifieds\ClassifiedsWeb\Classifieds\Show.cshtml rather than c:\Projects2010\Clients\GorgeNet\Classifieds\ClassifiedsWeb\Views\Classifieds\Show.cshtml But of course I didn't notice that right away, just skimming to the end and looking at the file name. The reason that /classifieds/list actually fires that file is that the ASP.NET Web Pages engine looks for physical files on disk that match a path. IOW, when calling Web Pages you drop the .cshtml off the Razor page and IIS will serve that just fine. So: /classifieds/list looks and tries to find /classifieds/list.cshtml and executes that script. And that is exactly what's happening. Web Pages is trying to execute the .cshtml file and it fails because Web Pages knows nothing about the @model tag which is an MVC specific template extension. This is why my breakpoints in the controller methods didn't fire and it also explains why the error mentions that the @model key word is invalid (@model is an MVC provided template enhancement to the Razor Engine). The solution of course is super simple: Delete the accidentally created root folder and the problem is solved. Routing and Physical Paths I've run into problems with this before actually. In the past I've had a number of applications that had a physical /Admin folder which also would conflict with an MVC Admin controller. More than once I ended up wondering why the index route (/Admin/) was not working properly. If a physical /Admin folder exists /Admin will not route to the Index action (or whatever default action you have set up, but instead try to list the directory or show the default document in the folder. The only way to force the index page through MVC is to explicitly use /Admin/Index. Makes perfect sense once you realize the physical folder is there, but that's easy to forget in an MVC application. As you might imagine after a few times of running into this I gave up on the Admin folder and moved everything into MVC views to handle those operations. Still it's one of those things that can easily bite you, because the behavior and error messages seem to point at completely different  problems. Moral of the story is: If you see routing problems where routes are not reaching obvious controller methods, always check to make sure there's isn't a physical path being mapped by IIS instead. That way you won't feel stupid like I did after trying a million things for about an hour before discovering my sloppy mousing behavior :-)© Rick Strahl, West Wind Technologies, 2005-2012Posted in MVC   IIS7   Tweet !function(d,s,id){var js,fjs=d.getElementsByTagName(s)[0];if(!d.getElementById(id)){js=d.createElement(s);js.id=id;js.src="//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js";fjs.parentNode.insertBefore(js,fjs);}}(document,"script","twitter-wjs"); (function() { var po = document.createElement('script'); po.type = 'text/javascript'; po.async = true; po.src = 'https://apis.google.com/js/plusone.js'; var s = document.getElementsByTagName('script')[0]; s.parentNode.insertBefore(po, s); })();

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• How to tell if SPARC T4 crypto is being used?

  - by danx

  A question that often comes up when running applications on SPARC T4 systems is "How can I tell if hardware crypto accleration is being used?" To review, the SPARC T4 processor includes a crypto unit that supports several crypto instructions. For hardware crypto these include 11 AES instructions, 4 xmul* instructions (for AES GCM carryless multiply), mont for Montgomery multiply (optimizes RSA and DSA), and 5 des_* instructions (for DES3). For hardware hash algorithm optimization, the T4 has the md5, sha1, sha256, and sha512 instructions (the last two are used for SHA-224 an SHA-384). First off, it's easy to tell if the processor T4 crypto instructions—use the isainfo -v command and look for "sparcv9" and "aes" (and other hash and crypto algorithms) in the output: $ isainfo -v 64-bit sparcv9 applications crc32c cbcond pause mont mpmul sha512 sha256 sha1 md5 camellia kasumi des aes ima hpc vis3 fmaf asi_blk_init vis2 vis popc These instructions are not-privileged, so are available for direct use in user-level applications and libraries (such as OpenSSL). Here is the "openssl speed -evp" command shown with the built-in t4 engine and with the pkcs11 engine. Both run the T4 AES instructions, but the t4 engine is faster than the pkcs11 engine because it has less overhead (especially for smaller packet sizes): t-4 $ /usr/bin/openssl version OpenSSL 1.0.0j 10 May 2012 t-4 $ /usr/bin/openssl engine (t4) SPARC T4 engine support (dynamic) Dynamic engine loading support (pkcs11) PKCS #11 engine support t-4 $ /usr/bin/openssl speed -evp aes-128-cbc # t4 engine used by default . . . The 'numbers' are in 1000s of bytes per second processed. type 16 bytes 64 bytes 256 bytes 1024 bytes 8192 bytes aes-128-cbc 487777.10k 816822.21k 986012.59k 1017029.97k 1053543.08k t-4 $ /usr/bin/openssl speed -engine pkcs11 -evp aes-128-cbc engine "pkcs11" set. . . . The 'numbers' are in 1000s of bytes per second processed. type 16 bytes 64 bytes 256 bytes 1024 bytes 8192 bytes aes-128-cbc 31703.58k 116636.39k 350672.81k 696170.50k 993599.49k Note: The "-evp" flag indicates use the OpenSSL "EnVeloPe" API, which gives more accurate results. That's because it tells OpenSSL to use the same API that external programs use when calling OpenSSL libcrypto functions, evp(3openssl). DTrace Shows if T4 Crypto Functions Are Used OK, good enough, the isainfo(1) command shows the instructions are present, but how does one know if they are being used? Chi-Chang Lin, who works on Oracle Solaris performance, wrote a Dtrace script to show if T4 instructions are being executed. To show the T4 instructions are being used, run the following Dtrace script. Look for functions named "t4" and "yf" in the output. The OpenSSL T4 engine uses functions named "t4" and the PKCS#11 engine uses functions named "yf". To demonstrate, I'll first run "openssl speed" with the built-in t4 engine then with the pkcs11 engine. The performance numbers are not valid due to dtrace probes slowing things down. t-4 # dtrace -Z -n ' pid$target::*yf*:entry,pid$target::*t4_*:entry{ @[probemod, probefunc] = count();}' \ -c "/usr/bin/openssl speed -evp aes-128-cbc" dtrace: description 'pid$target::*yf*:entry' matched 101 probes . . . dtrace: pid 2029 has exited libcrypto.so.1.0.0 ENGINE_load_t4 1 libcrypto.so.1.0.0 t4_DH 1 libcrypto.so.1.0.0 t4_DSA 1 libcrypto.so.1.0.0 t4_RSA 1 libcrypto.so.1.0.0 t4_destroy 1 libcrypto.so.1.0.0 t4_free_aes_ctr_NIDs 1 libcrypto.so.1.0.0 t4_init 1 libcrypto.so.1.0.0 t4_add_NID 3 libcrypto.so.1.0.0 t4_aes_expand128 5 libcrypto.so.1.0.0 t4_cipher_init_aes 5 libcrypto.so.1.0.0 t4_get_all_ciphers 6 libcrypto.so.1.0.0 t4_get_all_digests 59 libcrypto.so.1.0.0 t4_digest_final_sha1 65 libcrypto.so.1.0.0 t4_digest_init_sha1 65 libcrypto.so.1.0.0 t4_sha1_multiblock 126 libcrypto.so.1.0.0 t4_digest_update_sha1 261 libcrypto.so.1.0.0 t4_aes128_cbc_encrypt 1432979 libcrypto.so.1.0.0 t4_aes128_load_keys_for_encrypt 1432979 libcrypto.so.1.0.0 t4_cipher_do_aes_128_cbc 1432979 t-4 # dtrace -Z -n 'pid$target::*yf*:entry{ @[probemod, probefunc] = count();}   pid$target::*yf*:entry,pid$target::*t4_*:entry{ @[probemod, probefunc] = count();}' \ -c "/usr/bin/openssl speed -engine pkcs11 -evp aes-128-cbc" dtrace: description 'pid$target::*yf*:entry' matched 101 probes engine "pkcs11" set. . . . dtrace: pid 2033 has exited libcrypto.so.1.0.0 ENGINE_load_t4 1 libcrypto.so.1.0.0 t4_DH 1 libcrypto.so.1.0.0 t4_DSA 1 libcrypto.so.1.0.0 t4_RSA 1 libcrypto.so.1.0.0 t4_destroy 1 libcrypto.so.1.0.0 t4_free_aes_ctr_NIDs 1 libcrypto.so.1.0.0 t4_get_all_ciphers 1 libcrypto.so.1.0.0 t4_get_all_digests 1 libsoftcrypto.so.1 rijndael_key_setup_enc_yf 1 libsoftcrypto.so.1 yf_aes_expand128 1 libcrypto.so.1.0.0 t4_add_NID 3 libsoftcrypto.so.1 yf_aes128_cbc_encrypt 1542330 libsoftcrypto.so.1 yf_aes128_load_keys_for_encrypt 1542330 So, as shown above the OpenSSL built-in t4 engine executes t4_* functions (which are hand-coded assembly executing the T4 AES instructions) and the OpenSSL pkcs11 engine executes *yf* functions. Programmatic Use of OpenSSL T4 engine The OpenSSL t4 engine is used automatically with the /usr/bin/openssl command line. Chi-Chang Lin also points out that if you're calling the OpenSSL API (libcrypto.so) from a program, you must call ENGINE_load_built_engines(), otherwise the built-in t4 engine will not be loaded. You do not call ENGINE_set_default(). That's because "openssl speed -evp" test calls ENGINE_load_built_engines() even though the "-engine" option wasn't specified. OpenSSL T4 engine Availability The OpenSSL t4 engine is available with Solaris 11 and 11.1. For Solaris 10 08/11 (U10), you need to use the OpenSSL pkcs311 engine. The OpenSSL t4 engine is distributed only with the version of OpenSSL distributed with Solaris (and not third-party or self-compiled versions of OpenSSL). The OpenSSL engine implements the AES cipher for Solaris 11, released 11/2011. For Solaris 11.1, released 11/2012, the OpenSSL engine adds optimization for the MD5, SHA-1, and SHA-2 hash algorithms, and DES-3. Although the T4 processor has Camillia and Kasumi block cipher instructions, these are not implemented in the OpenSSL T4 engine. The following charts may help view availability of optimizations. The first chart shows what's available with Solaris CLIs and APIs, the second chart shows what's available in Solaris OpenSSL. Native Solaris Optimization for SPARC T4 This table is shows Solaris native CLI and API support. As such, they are all available with the OpenSSL pkcs11 engine. CLIs: "openssl -engine pkcs11", encrypt(1), decrypt(1), mac(1), digest(1), MD5sum(1), SHA1sum(1), SHA224sum(1), SHA256sum(1), SHA384sum(1), SHA512sum(1) APIs: PKCS#11 library libpkcs11(3LIB) (incluDES Openssl pkcs11 engine), libMD(3LIB), and Solaris kernel modules AlgorithmSolaris 1008/11 (U10)Solaris 11Solaris 11.1 AES-ECB, AES-CBC, AES-CTR, AES-CBC AES-CFB128 XXX DES3-ECB, DES3-CBC, DES2-ECB, DES2-CBC, DES-ECB, DES-CBC XXX bignum Montgomery multiply (RSA, DSA) XXX MD5, SHA-1, SHA-256, SHA-384, SHA-512 XXX SHA-224 X ARCFOUR (RC4) X Solaris OpenSSL T4 Engine Optimization This table is for the Solaris OpenSSL built-in t4 engine. Algorithms listed above are also available through the OpenSSL pkcs11 engine. CLI: openssl(1openssl) APIs: openssl(5), engine(3openssl), evp(3openssl), libcrypto crypto(3openssl) AlgorithmSolaris 11Solaris 11SRU2Solaris 11.1 AES-ECB, AES-CBC, AES-CTR, AES-CBC AES-CFB128 XXX DES3-ECB, DES3-CBC, DES-ECB, DES-CBC X bignum Montgomery multiply (RSA, DSA) X MD5, SHA-1, SHA-256, SHA-384, SHA-512 XX SHA-224 X Source Code Availability Solaris Most of the T4 assembly code that called the new T4 crypto instructions was written by Ferenc Rákóczi of the Solaris Security group, with assistance from others. You can download the Solaris source for this and other parts of Solaris as a few zip files at the Oracle Download website. The relevant source files are generally under directories usr/src/common/crypto/{aes,arcfour,des,md5,modes,sha1,sha2}}/sun4v/. and usr/src/common/bignum/sun4v/. Solaris 11 binary is available from the Oracle Solaris 11 download website. OpenSSL t4 engine The source for the OpenSSL t4 engine, which is based on the Solaris source above, is viewable through the OpenGrok source code browser in directory src/components/openssl/openssl-1.0.0/engines/t4 . You can download the source from the same website or through Mercurial source code management, hg(1). Conclusion Oracle Solaris with SPARC T4 provides a rich set of accelerated cryptographic and hash algorithms. Using the latest update, Solaris 11.1, provides the best set of optimized algorithms, but alternatives are often available, sometimes slightly slower, for releases back to Solaris 10 08/11 (U10). Reference See also these earlier blogs. SPARC T4 OpenSSL Engine by myself, Dan Anderson (2011), discusses the Openssl T4 engine and reviews the SPARC T4 processor for the Solaris 11 release. Exciting Crypto Advances with the T4 processor and Oracle Solaris 11 by Valerie Fenwick (2011) discusses crypto algorithms that were optimized for the T4 processor with the Solaris 11 FCS (11/11) and Solaris 10 08/11 (U10) release. T4 Crypto Cheat Sheet by Stefan Hinker (2012) discusses how to make T4 crypto optimization available to various consumers (such as SSH, Java, OpenSSL, Apache, etc.) High Performance Security For Oracle Database and Fusion Middleware Applications using SPARC T4 (PDF, 2012) discusses SPARC T4 and its usage to optimize application security. Configuring Oracle iPlanet WebServer / Oracle Traffic Director to use crypto accelerators on T4-1 servers by Meena Vyas (2012)

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• Thread placement policies on NUMA systems - update

  - by Dave

  In a prior blog entry I noted that Solaris used a "maximum dispersal" placement policy to assign nascent threads to their initial processors. The general idea is that threads should be placed as far away from each other as possible in the resource topology in order to reduce resource contention between concurrently running threads. This policy assumes that resource contention -- pipelines, memory channel contention, destructive interference in the shared caches, etc -- will likely outweigh (a) any potential communication benefits we might achieve by packing our threads more densely onto a subset of the NUMA nodes, and (b) benefits of NUMA affinity between memory allocated by one thread and accessed by other threads. We want our threads spread widely over the system and not packed together. Conceptually, when placing a new thread, the kernel picks the least loaded node NUMA node (the node with lowest aggregate load average), and then the least loaded core on that node, etc. Furthermore, the kernel places threads onto resources -- sockets, cores, pipelines, etc -- without regard to the thread's process membership. That is, initial placement is process-agnostic. Keep reading, though. This description is incorrect. On Solaris 10 on a SPARC T5440 with 4 x T2+ NUMA nodes, if the system is otherwise unloaded and we launch a process that creates 20 compute-bound concurrent threads, then typically we'll see a perfect balance with 5 threads on each node. We see similar behavior on an 8-node x86 x4800 system, where each node has 8 cores and each core is 2-way hyperthreaded. So far so good; this behavior seems in agreement with the policy I described in the 1st paragraph. I recently tried the same experiment on a 4-node T4-4 running Solaris 11. Both the T5440 and T4-4 are 4-node systems that expose 256 logical thread contexts. To my surprise, all 20 threads were placed onto just one NUMA node while the other 3 nodes remained completely idle. I checked the usual suspects such as processor sets inadvertently left around by colleagues, processors left offline, and power management policies, but the system was configured normally. I then launched multiple concurrent instances of the process, and, interestingly, all the threads from the 1st process landed on one node, all the threads from the 2nd process landed on another node, and so on. This happened even if I interleaved thread creating between the processes, so I was relatively sure the effect didn't related to thread creation time, but rather that placement was a function of process membership. I this point I consulted the Solaris sources and talked with folks in the Solaris group. The new Solaris 11 behavior is intentional. The kernel is no longer using a simple maximum dispersal policy, and thread placement is process membership-aware. Now, even if other nodes are completely unloaded, the kernel will still try to pack new threads onto the home lgroup (socket) of the primordial thread until the load average of that node reaches 50%, after which it will pick the next least loaded node as the process's new favorite node for placement. On the T4-4 we have 64 logical thread contexts (strands) per socket (lgroup), so if we launch 48 concurrent threads we will find 32 placed on one node and 16 on some other node. If we launch 64 threads we'll find 32 and 32. That means we can end up with our threads clustered on a small subset of the nodes in a way that's quite different that what we've seen on Solaris 10. So we have a policy that allows process-aware packing but reverts to spreading threads onto other nodes if a node becomes too saturated. It turns out this policy was enabled in Solaris 10, but certain bugs suppressed the mixed packing/spreading behavior. There are configuration variables in /etc/system that allow us to dial the affinity between nascent threads and their primordial thread up and down: see lgrp_expand_proc_thresh, specifically. In the OpenSolaris source code the key routine is mpo_update_tunables(). This method reads the /etc/system variables and sets up some global variables that will subsequently be used by the dispatcher, which calls lgrp_choose() in lgrp.c to place nascent threads. Lgrp_expand_proc_thresh controls how loaded an lgroup must be before we'll consider homing a process's threads to another lgroup. Tune this value lower to have it spread your process's threads out more. To recap, the 'new' policy is as follows. Threads from the same process are packed onto a subset of the strands of a socket (50% for T-series). Once that socket reaches the 50% threshold the kernel then picks another preferred socket for that process. Threads from unrelated processes are spread across sockets. More precisely, different processes may have different preferred sockets (lgroups). Beware that I've simplified and elided details for the purposes of explication. The truth is in the code. Remarks: It's worth noting that initial thread placement is just that. If there's a gross imbalance between the load on different nodes then the kernel will migrate threads to achieve a better and more even distribution over the set of available nodes. Once a thread runs and gains some affinity for a node, however, it becomes "stickier" under the assumption that the thread has residual cache residency on that node, and that memory allocated by that thread resides on that node given the default "first-touch" page-level NUMA allocation policy. Exactly how the various policies interact and which have precedence under what circumstances could the topic of a future blog entry. The scheduler is work-conserving. The x4800 mentioned above is an interesting system. Each of the 8 sockets houses an Intel 7500-series processor. Each processor has 3 coherent QPI links and the system is arranged as a glueless 8-socket twisted ladder "mobius" topology. Nodes are either 1 or 2 hops distant over the QPI links. As an aside the mapping of logical CPUIDs to physical resources is rather interesting on Solaris/x4800. On SPARC/Solaris the CPUID layout is strictly geographic, with the highest order bits identifying the socket, the next lower bits identifying the core within that socket, following by the pipeline (if present) and finally the logical thread context ("strand") on the core. But on Solaris on the x4800 the CPUID layout is as follows. [6:6] identifies the hyperthread on a core; bits [5:3] identify the socket, or package in Intel terminology; bits [2:0] identify the core within a socket. Such low-level details should be of interest only if you're binding threads -- a bad idea, the kernel typically handles placement best -- or if you're writing NUMA-aware code that's aware of the ambient placement and makes decisions accordingly. Solaris introduced the so-called critical-threads mechanism, which is expressed by putting a thread into the FX scheduling class at priority 60. The critical-threads mechanism applies to placement on cores, not on sockets, however. That is, it's an intra-socket policy, not an inter-socket policy. Solaris 11 introduces the Power Aware Dispatcher (PAD) which packs threads instead of spreading them out in an attempt to be able to keep sockets or cores at lower power levels. Maximum dispersal may be good for performance but is anathema to power management. PAD is off by default, but power management polices constitute yet another confounding factor with respect to scheduling and dispatching. If your threads communicate heavily -- one thread reads cache lines last written by some other thread -- then the new dense packing policy may improve performance by reducing traffic on the coherent interconnect. On the other hand if your threads in your process communicate rarely, then it's possible the new packing policy might result on contention on shared computing resources. Unfortunately there's no simple litmus test that says whether packing or spreading is optimal in a given situation. The answer varies by system load, application, number of threads, and platform hardware characteristics. Currently we don't have the necessary tools and sensoria to decide at runtime, so we're reduced to an empirical approach where we run trials and try to decide on a placement policy. The situation is quite frustrating. Relatedly, it's often hard to determine just the right level of concurrency to optimize throughput. (Understanding constructive vs destructive interference in the shared caches would be a good start. We could augment the lines with a small tag field indicating which strand last installed or accessed a line. Given that, we could augment the CPU with performance counters for misses where a thread evicts a line it installed vs misses where a thread displaces a line installed by some other thread.)

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• C#: Does an IDisposable in a Halted Iterator Dispose?

  - by James Michael Hare

  If that sounds confusing, let me give you an example. Let's say you expose a method to read a database of products, and instead of returning a List<Product> you return an IEnumerable<Product> in iterator form (yield return). This accomplishes several good things: The IDataReader is not passed out of the Data Access Layer which prevents abstraction leak and resource leak potentials. You don't need to construct a full List<Product> in memory (which could be very big) if you just want to forward iterate once. If you only want to consume up to a certain point in the list, you won't incur the database cost of looking up the other items. This could give us an example like: 1: // a sample data access object class to do standard CRUD operations. 2: public class ProductDao 3: { 4: private DbProviderFactory _factory = SqlClientFactory.Instance 5:  6: // a method that would retrieve all available products 7: public IEnumerable<Product> GetAvailableProducts() 8: { 9: // must create the connection 10: using (var con = _factory.CreateConnection()) 11: { 12: con.ConnectionString = _productsConnectionString; 13: con.Open(); 14:  15: // create the command 16: using (var cmd = _factory.CreateCommand()) 17: { 18: cmd.Connection = con; 19: cmd.CommandText = _getAllProductsStoredProc; 20: cmd.CommandType = CommandType.StoredProcedure; 21:  22: // get a reader and pass back all results 23: using (var reader = cmd.ExecuteReader()) 24: { 25: while(reader.Read()) 26: { 27: yield return new Product 28: { 29: Name = reader["product_name"].ToString(), 30: ... 31: }; 32: } 33: } 34: } 35: } 36: } 37: } The database details themselves are irrelevant. I will say, though, that I'm a big fan of using the System.Data.Common classes instead of your provider specific counterparts directly (SqlCommand, OracleCommand, etc). This lets you mock your data sources easily in unit testing and also allows you to swap out your provider in one line of code. In fact, one of the shared components I'm most proud of implementing was our group's DatabaseUtility library that simplifies all the database access above into one line of code in a thread-safe and provider-neutral way. I went with my own flavor instead of the EL due to the fact I didn't want to force internal company consumers to use the EL if they didn't want to, and it made it easy to allow them to mock their database for unit testing by providing a MockCommand, MockConnection, etc that followed the System.Data.Common model. One of these days I'll blog on that if anyone's interested. Regardless, you often have situations like the above where you are consuming and iterating through a resource that must be closed once you are finished iterating. For the reasons stated above, I didn't want to return IDataReader (that would force them to remember to Dispose it), and I didn't want to return List<Product> (that would force them to hold all products in memory) -- but the first time I wrote this, I was worried. What if you never consume the last item and exit the loop? Are the reader, command, and connection all disposed correctly? Of course, I was 99.999999% sure the creators of C# had already thought of this and taken care of it, but inspection in Reflector was difficult due to the nature of the state machines yield return generates, so I decided to try a quick example program to verify whether or not Dispose() will be called when an iterator is broken from outside the iterator itself -- i.e. before the iterator reports there are no more items. So I wrote a quick Sequencer class with a Dispose() method and an iterator for it. Yes, it is COMPLETELY contrived: 1: // A disposable sequence of int -- yes this is completely contrived... 2: internal class Sequencer : IDisposable 3: { 4: private int _i = 0; 5: private readonly object _mutex = new object(); 6:  7: // Constructs an int sequence. 8: public Sequencer(int start) 9: { 10: _i = start; 11: } 12:  13: // Gets the next integer 14: public int GetNext() 15: { 16: lock (_mutex) 17: { 18: return _i++; 19: } 20: } 21:  22: // Dispose the sequence of integers. 23: public void Dispose() 24: { 25: // force output immediately (flush the buffer) 26: Console.WriteLine("Disposed with last sequence number of {0}!", _i); 27: Console.Out.Flush(); 28: } 29: } And then I created a generator (infinite-loop iterator) that did the using block for auto-Disposal: 1: // simply defines an extension method off of an int to start a sequence 2: public static class SequencerExtensions 3: { 4: // generates an infinite sequence starting at the specified number 5: public static IEnumerable<int> GetSequence(this int starter) 6: { 7: // note the using here, will call Dispose() when block terminated. 8: using (var seq = new Sequencer(starter)) 9: { 10: // infinite loop on this generator, means must be bounded by caller! 11: while(true) 12: { 13: yield return seq.GetNext(); 14: } 15: } 16: } 17: } This is really the same conundrum as the database problem originally posed. Here we are using iteration (yield return) over a large collection (infinite sequence of integers). If we cut the sequence short by breaking iteration, will that using block exit and hence, Dispose be called? Well, let's see: 1: // The test program class 2: public class IteratorTest 3: { 4: // The main test method. 5: public static void Main() 6: { 7: Console.WriteLine("Going to consume 10 of infinite items"); 8: Console.Out.Flush(); 9:  10: foreach(var i in 0.GetSequence()) 11: { 12: // could use TakeWhile, but wanted to output right at break... 13: if(i >= 10) 14: { 15: Console.WriteLine("Breaking now!"); 16: Console.Out.Flush(); 17: break; 18: } 19:  20: Console.WriteLine(i); 21: Console.Out.Flush(); 22: } 23:  24: Console.WriteLine("Done with loop."); 25: Console.Out.Flush(); 26: } 27: } So, what do we see? Do we see the "Disposed" message from our dispose, or did the Dispose get skipped because from an "eyeball" perspective we should be locked in that infinite generator loop? Here's the results: 1: Going to consume 10 of infinite items 2: 0 3: 1 4: 2 5: 3 6: 4 7: 5 8: 6 9: 7 10: 8 11: 9 12: Breaking now! 13: Disposed with last sequence number of 11! 14: Done with loop. Yes indeed, when we break the loop, the state machine that C# generates for yield iterate exits the iteration through the using blocks and auto-disposes the IDisposable correctly. I must admit, though, the first time I wrote one, I began to wonder and that led to this test. If you've never seen iterators before (I wrote a previous entry here) the infinite loop may throw you, but you have to keep in mind it is not a linear piece of code, that every time you hit a "yield return" it cedes control back to the state machine generated for the iterator. And this state machine, I'm happy to say, is smart enough to clean up the using blocks correctly. I suspected those wily guys and gals at Microsoft engineered it well, and I wasn't disappointed. But, I've been bitten by assumptions before, so it's good to test and see. Yes, maybe you knew it would or figured it would, but isn't it nice to know? And as those campy 80s G.I. Joe cartoon public service reminders always taught us, "Knowing is half the battle...". Technorati Tags: C#,.NET

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• Windows 7 client can't connect to CentOS PPTP VPN

  - by Chris

  Have a Macintosh (10.8.2) that connects just fine to a CentOS 6.0 virtual private server (OpenVZ, with PPP added by the host) via PPTP. A Windows 7 Home Premium client (virtualized in Sun's Virtual Box), on the same computer, using the same Ethernet connection, cannot connect to the Linux VPN server. I have iptables disabled (for testing) on the Linux box. I have the Windows firewall turned off. /var/log/messages looks like this, for a Windows connection: Oct 12 18:44:30 production pptpd[1880]: CTRL: Client 66.104.246.168 control connection started Oct 12 18:44:30 production pptpd[1880]: CTRL: Starting call (launching pppd, opening GRE) Oct 12 18:44:30 production pppd[1881]: Plugin /usr/lib/pptpd/pptpd-logwtmp.so loaded. Oct 12 18:44:30 production pppd[1881]: pptpd-logwtmp: $Version$ Oct 12 18:44:30 production pppd[1881]: pppd options in effect: Oct 12 18:44:30 production pppd[1881]: debug#011#011# (from /etc/ppp/options.pptpd) Oct 12 18:44:30 production pppd[1881]: nologfd#011#011# (from /etc/ppp/options.pptpd) Oct 12 18:44:30 production pppd[1881]: dump#011#011# (from /etc/ppp/options.pptpd) Oct 12 18:44:30 production pppd[1881]: plugin /usr/lib/pptpd/pptpd-logwtmp.so#011#011# (from command line) Oct 12 18:44:30 production pppd[1881]: require-mschap-v2#011#011# (from /etc/ppp/options.pptpd) Oct 12 18:44:30 production pppd[1881]: refuse-pap#011#011# (from /etc/ppp/options.pptpd) Oct 12 18:44:30 production pppd[1881]: refuse-chap#011#011# (from /etc/ppp/options.pptpd) Oct 12 18:44:30 production pppd[1881]: refuse-mschap#011#011# (from /etc/ppp/options.pptpd) Oct 12 18:44:30 production pppd[1881]: name pptpd#011#011# (from /etc/ppp/options.pptpd) Oct 12 18:44:30 production pppd[1881]: pptpd-original-ip 66.104.246.168#011#011# (from command line) Oct 12 18:44:30 production pppd[1881]: 115200#011#011# (from command line) Oct 12 18:44:30 production pppd[1881]: lock#011#011# (from /etc/ppp/options.pptpd) Oct 12 18:44:30 production pppd[1881]: local#011#011# (from command line) Oct 12 18:44:30 production pppd[1881]: novj#011#011# (from /etc/ppp/options.pptpd) Oct 12 18:44:30 production pppd[1881]: novjccomp#011#011# (from /etc/ppp/options.pptpd) Oct 12 18:44:30 production pppd[1881]: ipparam 66.104.246.168#011#011# (from command line) Oct 12 18:44:30 production pppd[1881]: proxyarp#011#011# (from /etc/ppp/options.pptpd) Oct 12 18:44:30 production pppd[1881]: 192.168.97.1:192.168.97.10#011#011# (from command line) Oct 12 18:44:30 production pppd[1881]: nobsdcomp#011#011# (from /etc/ppp/options.pptpd) Oct 12 18:44:30 production pppd[1881]: require-mppe-128#011#011# (from /etc/ppp/options.pptpd) Oct 12 18:44:30 production pppd[1881]: mppe-stateful#011#011# (from /etc/ppp/options.pptpd) Oct 12 18:44:30 production pppd[1881]: pppd 2.4.5 started by root, uid 0 Oct 12 18:44:30 production pppd[1881]: Using interface ppp0 Oct 12 18:44:30 production pppd[1881]: Connect: ppp0 <--> /dev/pts/1 (At this point the Windows machine displays a dialog, reading: "Verifying user name and password...") Oct 12 18:45:00 production pppd[1881]: LCP: timeout sending Config-Requests Oct 12 18:45:00 production pppd[1881]: Connection terminated. Oct 12 18:45:00 production pppd[1881]: Modem hangup Oct 12 18:45:00 production pppd[1881]: Exit. Oct 12 18:45:00 production pptpd[1880]: GRE: read(fd=6,buffer=8059660,len=8196) from PTY failed: status = -1 error = Input/output error, usually caused by unexpected termination of pppd, check option syntax and pppd logs Oct 12 18:45:00 production pptpd[1880]: CTRL: PTY read or GRE write failed (pty,gre)=(6,7) Oct 12 18:45:00 production pptpd[1880]: CTRL: Client 66.104.246.168 control connection finished The Macintosh connecting looks like this in /var/log/messages: Oct 12 18:50:49 production pptpd[1920]: CTRL: Client 66.104.246.168 control connection started Oct 12 18:50:49 production pptpd[1920]: CTRL: Starting call (launching pppd, opening GRE) Oct 12 18:50:49 production pppd[1921]: Plugin /usr/lib/pptpd/pptpd-logwtmp.so loaded. Oct 12 18:50:49 production pppd[1921]: pptpd-logwtmp: $Version$ Oct 12 18:50:49 production pppd[1921]: pppd options in effect: Oct 12 18:50:49 production pppd[1921]: debug#011#011# (from /etc/ppp/options.pptpd) Oct 12 18:50:49 production pppd[1921]: nologfd#011#011# (from /etc/ppp/options.pptpd) Oct 12 18:50:49 production pppd[1921]: dump#011#011# (from /etc/ppp/options.pptpd) Oct 12 18:50:49 production pppd[1921]: plugin /usr/lib/pptpd/pptpd-logwtmp.so#011#011# (from command line) Oct 12 18:50:49 production pppd[1921]: require-mschap-v2#011#011# (from /etc/ppp/options.pptpd) Oct 12 18:50:49 production pppd[1921]: refuse-pap#011#011# (from /etc/ppp/options.pptpd) Oct 12 18:50:49 production pppd[1921]: refuse-chap#011#011# (from /etc/ppp/options.pptpd) Oct 12 18:50:49 production pppd[1921]: refuse-mschap#011#011# (from /etc/ppp/options.pptpd) Oct 12 18:50:49 production pppd[1921]: name pptpd#011#011# (from /etc/ppp/options.pptpd) Oct 12 18:50:49 production pppd[1921]: pptpd-original-ip 66.104.246.168#011#011# (from command line) Oct 12 18:50:49 production pppd[1921]: 115200#011#011# (from command line) Oct 12 18:50:49 production pppd[1921]: lock#011#011# (from /etc/ppp/options.pptpd) Oct 12 18:50:49 production pppd[1921]: local#011#011# (from command line) Oct 12 18:50:49 production pppd[1921]: novj#011#011# (from /etc/ppp/options.pptpd) Oct 12 18:50:49 production pppd[1921]: novjccomp#011#011# (from /etc/ppp/options.pptpd) Oct 12 18:50:49 production pppd[1921]: ipparam 66.104.246.168#011#011# (from command line) Oct 12 18:50:49 production pppd[1921]: proxyarp#011#011# (from /etc/ppp/options.pptpd) Oct 12 18:50:49 production pppd[1921]: 192.168.97.1:192.168.97.10#011#011# (from command line) Oct 12 18:50:49 production pppd[1921]: nobsdcomp#011#011# (from /etc/ppp/options.pptpd) Oct 12 18:50:49 production pppd[1921]: require-mppe-128#011#011# (from /etc/ppp/options.pptpd) Oct 12 18:50:49 production pppd[1921]: mppe-stateful#011#011# (from /etc/ppp/options.pptpd) Oct 12 18:50:49 production pppd[1921]: pppd 2.4.5 started by root, uid 0 Oct 12 18:50:49 production pppd[1921]: Using interface ppp0 Oct 12 18:50:49 production pppd[1921]: Connect: ppp0 <--> /dev/pts/1 Oct 12 18:50:52 production pppd[1921]: MPPE 128-bit stateless compression enabled Oct 12 18:50:52 production pppd[1921]: Unsupported protocol 'IPv6 Control Protocol' (0x8057) received Oct 12 18:50:52 production pppd[1921]: Unsupported protocol 'Apple Client Server Protocol Control' (0x8235) received Oct 12 18:50:52 production pppd[1921]: Cannot determine ethernet address for proxy ARP Oct 12 18:50:52 production pppd[1921]: local IP address 192.168.97.1 Oct 12 18:50:52 production pppd[1921]: remote IP address 192.168.97.10 Oct 12 18:50:52 production pppd[1921]: pptpd-logwtmp.so ip-up ppp0 chris 66.104.246.168 I'm baffled...

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• ASP.NET MVC JavaScript Routing

  - by zowens

  Have you ever done this sort of thing in your ASP.NET MVC view? The weird thing about this isn’t the alert function, it’s the code block containing the Url formation using the ASP.NET MVC UrlHelper. The terrible thing about this experience is the obvious lack of IntelliSense and this ugly inline JavaScript code. Inline JavaScript isn’t portable to other pages beyond the current page of execution. It is generally considered bad practice to use inline JavaScript in your public-facing pages. How ludicrous would it be to copy and paste the entire jQuery code base into your pages…? Not something you’d ever consider doing. The problem is that your URLs have to be generated by ASP.NET at runtime and really can’t be copied to your JavaScript code without some trickery. How about this? Does the hard-coded URL bother you? It really bothers me. The typical solution to this whole routing in JavaScript issue is to just hard-code your URLs into your JavaScript files and call it done. But what if your URLs change? You have to now go an track down the places in JavaScript and manually replace them. What if you get the pattern wrong? Do you have tests around it? This isn’t something you should have to worry about.   The Solution To Our Problems The solution is to port routing over to JavaScript. Does that sound daunting to you? It’s actually not very hard, but I decided to create my own generator that will do all the work for you. What I have created is a very basic port of the route formation feature of ASP.NET routing. It will generate the formatted URLs based on your routing patterns. Here’s how you’d do this: Does that feel familiar? It looks a lot like something you’d do inside of your ASP.NET MVC views… but this is inside of a JavaScript file… just a plain ol’ .js file.  Your first question might be why do you have to have that “.toUrl()” thing. The reason is that I wanted to make POST and GET requests dead simple. Here’s how you’d do a POST request (and the same would work with a GET request):   The first parameter is extra data passed to the post request and the second parameter is a function that handles the success of the POST request. If you’re familiar with jQuery’s Ajax goodness, you’ll know how to use it. (if not, check out http://api.jquery.com/jQuery.Post/ and the parameters are essentially the same). But we still haven’t gotten rid of the magic strings. We still have controller names and action names represented as strings. This is going to blow your mind… If you’ve seen T4MVC, this will look familiar. We’re essentially doing the same sort of thing with my JavaScript router, but we’re porting the concept to JavaScript. The good news is that parameters to the controllers are directly reflected in the action function, just like T4MVC. And the even better news… IntlliSense is easily transferred to the JavaScript version if you’re using Visual Studio as your JavaScript editor. The additional data parameter gives you the ability to pass extra routing data to the URL formatter.   About the Magic You may be wondering how this all work. It’s actually quite simple. I’ve built a simple jQuery pluggin (called routeManager) that hangs off the main jQuery namespace and routes all the URLs. Every time your solution builds, a routing file will be generated with this pluggin, all your route and controller definitions along with your documentation. Then by the power of Visual Studio, you get some really slick IntelliSense that is hard to live without. But there are a few steps you have to take before this whole thing is going to work. First and foremost, you need a reference to the JsRouting.Core.dll to your projects containing controllers or routes. Second, you have to specify your routes in a bit of a non-standard way. See, we can’t just pull routes out of your App_Start in your Global.asax. We force you to build a route source like this: The way we determine the routes is by pulling in all RouteSources and generating routes based upon the mapped routes. There are various reasons why we can’t use RouteCollection (different post for another day)… but in this case, you get the same route mapping experience. Converting the RouteSource to a RouteCollection is trivial (there’s an extension method for that). Next thing you have to do is generate a documentation XML file. This is done by going to the project settings, going to the build tab and clicking the checkbox. (this isn’t required, but nice to have). The final thing you need to do is hook up the generation mechanism. Pop open your project file and look for the AfterBuild step. Now change the build step task to look like this: The “PathToOutputExe” is the path to the JsRouting.Output.exe file. This will change based on where you put the EXE. The “PathToOutputJs” is a path to the output JavaScript file. The “DicrectoryOfAssemblies” is a path to the directory containing controller and routing DLLs. The JsRouting.Output.exe executable pulls in all these assemblies and scans them for controllers and route sources.   Now that wasn’t too bad, was it :)   The State of the Project This is definitely not complete… I have a lot of plans for this little project of mine. For starters, I need to look at the generation mechanism. Either I will be creating a utility that will do the project file manipulation or I will go a different direction. I’d like some feedback on this if you feel partial either way. Another thing I don’t support currently is areas. While this wouldn’t be too hard to support, I just don’t use areas and I wanted something up quickly (this is, after all, for a current project of mine). I’ll be adding support shortly. There are a few things that I haven’t covered in this post that I will most certainly be covering in another post, such as routing constraints and how these will be translated to JavaScript. I decided to open source this whole thing, since it’s a nice little utility I think others should really be using. Currently we’re using ASP.NET MVC 2, but it should work with MVC 3 as well. I’ll upgrade it as soon as MVC 3 is released. Along those same lines, I’m investigating how this could be put on the NuGet feed. Show me the Bits! OK, OK! The code is posted on my GitHub account. Go nuts. Tell me what you think. Tell me what you want. Tell me that you hate it. All feedback is welcome! https://github.com/zowens/ASP.NET-MVC-JavaScript-Routing

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• Underwriting in a New Frontier: Spurring Innovation

  - by [email protected]

  Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 st1\:*{behavior:url(#ieooui) } /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:10.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif";} Susan Keuer, product strategy manager for Oracle Insurance, shares her experiences and insight from the 2010 Association of Home Office Underwriters (AHOU) Annual Conference, April 11-14, in San Antonio, Texas    How can I be more innovative in underwriting?  It's a common question I hear from insurance carriers, producers and others, so it was no surprise that it was the key theme at the recent 2010 AHOU Annual Conference.  This year's event drew more than 900 insurance professionals involved in the underwriting process across life and annuities, property and casualty and reinsurance from around the globe, including the U.S., Canada, Australia, Bahamas, and more, to San Antonio - a Texas city where innovation transformed a series of downtown drainage canals into its premiere River Walk tourist destination.   CNN's Medical Correspondent Dr. Sanjay Gupta kicked off the conference with a phenomenal opening session that drove home the theme of the conference, "Underwriting in a New Frontier:  Spurring Innovation."   Drawing from his own experience as a neurosurgeon treating critically injured medical patients in the field in Iraq, Gupta inspired audience members to think outside the box during the underwriting process. He shared a compelling story of operating on a soldier who had suffered a head-related trauma in a field hospital.  With minimal supplies available Gupta used a Black and Decker saw to operate on the soldier's head and reduce pressure on his swelling brain. Drawing from this example, Gupta encouraged underwriters to think creatively, be innovative, and consider new tools and sources of information, such as social networking sites, during the underwriting process. So as you are looking at risk take into consideration all resources you have available.    Gupta also stressed the concept of IKIGAI - noting that individuals who believe that their life is worth living are less likely to die than are their counterparts without this belief.  How does one quantify this approach to life or thought process when evaluating risk?  Could this be something to consider as a "category" in the near future? How can this same belief in your own work spur innovation?   The role of technology was a hot topic of discussion throughout the conference.  Sessions delved into the latest in underwriting software to the rise of social media and how it is being increasingly integrated into underwriting process and solutions.  In one session a trio of panelists representing the carrier, producer and vendor communities stressed the importance to underwriters of leveraging new technology and the plethora of online information sources, which all could be used to accurately, honestly and consistently evaluate the risk throughout the underwriting process.   Another focused on the explosion of social media noting:  1.    Social media is growing exponentially - About eight percent of Americans used social media five years ago. Today about 46 percent of Americans do so, with 85 percent of financial services professionals using social media in their work.  2.    It will impact your business - Underwriters reconfirmed over and over that they are increasingly using "free" tools that are available in cyberspace in lieu of more costly solutions, such as inspection reports conducted by individuals in the field.  3.    Information is instantly available on the Web, anytime, anywhere - LinkedIn was mentioned as a way to connect to peers in the underwriting community and producers alike.  Many carriers and agents also are using Facebook to promote their company to customers - and as a point-of-entry to allow them to perform some functionality - such as accessing product marketing information versus directing users to go to the carrier's own proprietary website.  Other carriers have released their tight brand marketing to allow their producers to drive more business to their personal Facebook site where they offer innovative tools such as Application Capture or asking medical information in a more relaxed fashion.     Other key topics at the conference included the economy, ongoing industry consolidation, real-estate valuations as an asset and input into the underwriting process, and producer trends.  All stressed a "back to basics" approach for low cost, term products.   Finally, Connie Merritt, RN, PHN, entertained the large group of atttendees with audience-engaging insight on how to "Tame the Lions in Your Life - Dealing with Complainers, Bullies, Grump and Curmudgeon." Merritt noted "we are too busy for our own good." She shared how her overachieving personality had impacted her life.  Audience members then were asked to pick red, yellow, blue, or green shapes, without knowing that each one represented a specific personality trait.  For example, those who picked blue were the peacemakers. Those who choose yellow were social - the hint was to "Be Quiet Longer."  She then offered these "lion taming" steps:   1.    Admit It 2.    Accept It 3.    Let Go 4.    Be Present (which paralleled Gupta's IKIGAI concept)   When thinking about underwriting I encourage you to be present in the moment and think creatively, but don't be afraid to look ahead to the future and be an innovator.  I hope to see you at next year's AHOU Annual Conference, May 1-4, 2011 at The Mirage in Las Vegas, Nev.     Susan Keuer is the product strategy manager for new business underwriting.  She brings more than 20 years of insurance industry experience working with leading insurance carriers and technology companies to her role on the product strategy team for life/annuities solutions within the Oracle Insurance Global Business Unit  

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• Windows Azure Myths

  - by BuckWoody

  Windows Azure is part of the Microsoft "stack" - the suite of software and services we offer. Because we have so many products in almost every part of technology, it's hard to know everything about all parts of what we do - even for those of us who work here. So it's no surprise that some folks are not as familiar with Windows and SQL Azure as they are, say Windows Server or XBox. As I chat with folks about a solution for a business or organization need, I put Windows Azure into the mix. I always start off with "What do you already know about Windows Azure?" so that I don't bore folks with information they already have. I some cases they've checked out the product ahead of time and have specific questions, in others they aren't as familiar, and in still others there is a fair amount of mis-information. Sometimes that's because of a marketing failure, sometimes it's hearsay, and somtetimes it's active misinformation. I thought I might lay out a few of these misconceptions. As always - do your fact-checking! Never take anyone's word alone (including mine) as gospel. Make sure you educate yourself on your options. Your company or your clients depend on you to have the right information on IT, so make sure you live up to that. Myth 1: Nobody uses Windows Azure It's true that we don't give out numbers on the amount of clients on Windows and SQL Azure. But lots of folks are here - companies you may have heard of like Boeing, NASA, Fujitsu, The City of London, Nuedesic, and many others. I deal with firms small and large that use Windows Azure for mission-critical applications, sometimes totally on Windows and/or SQL Azure, sometimes in conjunction with an on-premises system, sometimes for only a specific component in Windows Azure like storage. The interesting thing is that many sites you visit have a Windows Azure component, or are running on Windows Azure. They just don't announce it. Just like the other cloud providers, the companies have asked to be completely branded themselves - they don't want you to be aware or care that they are on Windows Azure. Sometimes that's for security, other times it's for different reasons. It's just like the web sites you visit. For the most part, they don't advertise which OS or Web Server they use. It really just shouldn't matter. The point is that they just use what works to solve a given problem. Check out a few public case studies here: https://www.windowsazure.com/en-us/home/case-studies/ Myth 2: It's only for Microsoft stuff - can't use Open Source This is the one I face the most, and am the most dismayed by. We work just fine with many open source products, including Java, NodeJS, PHP, Ruby, Python, Hadoop, and many other languages and applications. You can quickly deploy a Wordpress, Umbraco and other "kits". We have software development kits (SDK's) for iPhones, iPads, Android, Windows phones and more. We have an SDK to work with FaceBook and other social networks. In short, we play well with others. More on the languages and runtimes we support here: https://www.windowsazure.com/en-us/develop/overview/ More on the SDK's here: http://www.wadewegner.com/2011/05/windows-azure-toolkit-for-ios/, http://www.wadewegner.com/2011/08/windows-azure-toolkits-for-devices-now-with-android/, http://azuretoolkit.codeplex.com/ Myth 3: Microsoft expects me to switch everything to "the cloud" No, we don't. That would be disasterous, unless the only things you run in your company uses works perfectly in Azure. Use Windows Azure  - or any cloud for that matter - where it works. Whenever I talk to companies, I focus on two things: Something that is broken and needs to be re-architected Something you want to do that is new If something is broken, and you need new tools to scale, extend, add capacity dynamically and so on, then you can consider using Windows or SQL Azure. It can help solve problems that you have, or it may include a component you don't want to write or architect yourself. Sometimes you want to do something new, like extend your company's offerings to mobile phones, to the web, or to a social network. More info on where it works here: http://blogs.msdn.com/b/buckwoody/archive/2011/01/18/windows-azure-and-sql-azure-use-cases.aspx Myth 4: I have to write code to use Windows and SQL Azure If Windows Azure is a PaaS - a Platform as a Service - then don't you have to write code to use it? Nope. Windows and SQL Azure are made up of various components. Some of those components allow you to write and deploy code (like Compute) and others don't. We have lots of customers using Windows Azure storage as a backup, to securely share files instead of using DropBox, to distribute videos or code or firmware, and more. Others use our High Performance Computing (HPC) offering to rent a supercomputer when they need one. You can even throw workloads at that using Excel! In addition there are lots of other components in Windows Azure you can use, from the Windows Azure Media Services to others. More here: https://www.windowsazure.com/en-us/home/scenarios/saas/ Myth 5: Windows Azure is just another form of "vendor lock-in" Windows Azure uses .NET, OSS languages and standard interfaces for the code. Sure, you're not going to take the code line-for-line and run it on a mainframe, but it's standard code that you write, and can port to something else. And the data is yours - you can bring it back whever you want. It's either in text or binary form, that you have complete control over. There are no licenses - you can "pay as you go", and when you're done, you can leave the service and take all your code, data and IP with you.   So go out there, read up, try it. Use it where it works. And don't believe everything you hear - sometimes the Internet doesn't get it all correct. :)

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• Creating an ITemplate from a String

  - by Damon

  I do a lot of work with control templates, and one of the pieces of functionality that I've always wanted is the ability to build a ITemplate from a string.  Throughout the years, the topic has come up from time to time, and I never really found anything about how to do it. though I have run across a number of postings from people who are also wanting the same capability.  As I was messing around with things the other day, I stumbled on how to make it work and I feel really foolish for not figuring it out sooner. ITemplate is an interface that exposes a single method named InstantiateIn.  I've been searching for years for some magical .NET framework component that would take a string and convert it into an ITemplate, when all along I could just build my own.  Here's the code: /// <summary> ///   Allows string-based ITempalte implementations /// </summary> public class StringTemplate : ITemplate {     #region Constructor(s)     ////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////     /// <summary>     ///   Constructor     /// </summary>     /// <param name="template">String based version of the control template.</param>     public StringTemplate(string template)     {         Template = template;     }     /// <summary>     ///   Constructor     /// </summary>     /// <param name="template">String based version of the control template.</param>     /// <param name="copyToContainer">True to copy intermediate container contents to the instantiation container, False to leave the intermediate container in place.</param>     public StringTemplate(string template, bool copyToContainer)     {         Template = template;         CopyToContainer = copyToContainer;     }     ////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////     #endregion     #region Properties     ////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////     /// <summary>     ///   String based template     /// </summary>     public string Template     {         get;         set;     }     /// <summary>     ///   When a StringTemplate is instantiated it is created inside an intermediate control     ///   due to limitations of the .NET Framework.  Specifying True for the CopyToContainer     ///   property copies all the controls from the intermediate container into instantiation     ///   container passed to the InstantiateIn method.     /// </summary>     public bool CopyToContainer     {         get;         set;     }     ////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////     #endregion     #region ITemplate Members     ////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////     /// <summary>     ///   Creates the template in the specified control.     /// </summary>     /// <param name="container">Control in which to make the template</param>     public void InstantiateIn(Control container)     {         Control tempContainer = container.Page.ParseControl(Template);         if (CopyToContainer)         {             for (int i = tempContainer.Controls.Count - 1; i >= 0; i--)             {                 Control tempControl = tempContainer.Controls[i];                 tempContainer.Controls.RemoveAt(i);                 container.Controls.AddAt(0, tempControl);             }                         }         else         {             container.Controls.Add(tempContainer);         }     }     ////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////     #endregion } //class Converting a string into a user control is fairly easy using the ParseControl method from a Page object.  Fortunately, the container passed into the InstantiateIn method has a Page property.  One caveat, however, is that the Page property only has a reference to a Page if the container is located ON the page.  If you run into this problem, you may have to find a creative way to get the Page reference (you can add it to the constructor, store it in the request context, etc).  Another issue that I ran into is that the ParseControl creates a new control, parses the string template, places any controls defined in the template onto the new control it created, and returns that new control with the template on it.  You cannot pass in your own container. Adding this directly to the container provided as a parameter in the InstantiateIn means that you end up with an additional "level" in the control hierarchy.  To avoid this, I added code in that removes each control from the intermediate container and places it into the actual container.  I am not, however, sure about the performance penalty associated with moving a bunch of control from one place to another, nor am I completely sure if doing such a move completely screws something up if you have a code behind, etc.  It seems to work when it's just a template, but my testing was ever-so-slightly shy of thorough when it comes to other crazy scenarios.  As a catch-all, I added a Boolean property called CopyToContainer that allows you to turn the copying on or off depending on your desires and needs. Technorati Tags: .NET,ASP.NET,ITemplate,Development,C#,Custom Controls,Server Controls

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• Movement and Collision with AABB

  - by Jeremy Giberson

  I'm having a little difficulty figuring out the following scenarios. http://i.stack.imgur.com/8lM6i.png In scenario A, the moving entity has fallen to (and slightly into the floor). The current position represents the projected position that will occur if I apply the acceleration & velocity as usual without worrying about collision. The Next position, represents the corrected projection position after collision check. The resulting end position is the falling entity now rests ON the floor--that is, in a consistent state of collision by sharing it's bottom X axis with the floor's top X axis. My current update loop looks like the following: // figure out forces & accelerations and project an objects next position // check collision occurrence from current position -> projected position // if a collision occurs, adjust projection position Which seems to be working for the scenario of my object falling to the floor. However, the situation becomes sticky when trying to figure out scenario's B & C. In scenario B, I'm attempt to move along the floor on the X axis (player is pressing right direction button) additionally, gravity is pulling the object into the floor. The problem is, when the object attempts to move the collision detection code is going to recognize that the object is already colliding with the floor to begin with, and auto correct any movement back to where it was before. In scenario C, I'm attempting to jump off the floor. Again, because the object is already in a constant collision with the floor, when the collision routine checks to make sure moving from current position to projected position doesn't result in a collision, it will fail because at the beginning of the motion, the object is already colliding. How do you allow movement along the edge of an object? How do you allow movement away from an object you are already colliding with. Extra Info My collision routine is based on AABB sweeping test from an old gamasutra article, http://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/3383/simple_intersection_tests_for_games.php?page=3 My bounding box implementation is based on top left/bottom right instead of midpoint/extents, so my min/max functions are adjusted. Otherwise, here is my bounding box class with collision routines: public class BoundingBox { public XYZ topLeft; public XYZ bottomRight; public BoundingBox(float x, float y, float z, float w, float h, float d) { topLeft = new XYZ(); bottomRight = new XYZ(); topLeft.x = x; topLeft.y = y; topLeft.z = z; bottomRight.x = x+w; bottomRight.y = y+h; bottomRight.z = z+d; } public BoundingBox(XYZ position, XYZ dimensions, boolean centered) { topLeft = new XYZ(); bottomRight = new XYZ(); topLeft.x = position.x; topLeft.y = position.y; topLeft.z = position.z; bottomRight.x = position.x + (centered ? dimensions.x/2 : dimensions.x); bottomRight.y = position.y + (centered ? dimensions.y/2 : dimensions.y); bottomRight.z = position.z + (centered ? dimensions.z/2 : dimensions.z); } /** * Check if a point lies inside a bounding box * @param box * @param point * @return */ public static boolean isPointInside(BoundingBox box, XYZ point) { if(box.topLeft.x <= point.x && point.x <= box.bottomRight.x && box.topLeft.y <= point.y && point.y <= box.bottomRight.y && box.topLeft.z <= point.z && point.z <= box.bottomRight.z) return true; return false; } /** * Check for overlap between two bounding boxes using separating axis theorem * if two boxes are separated on any axis, they cannot be overlapping * @param a * @param b * @return */ public static boolean isOverlapping(BoundingBox a, BoundingBox b) { XYZ dxyz = new XYZ(b.topLeft.x - a.topLeft.x, b.topLeft.y - a.topLeft.y, b.topLeft.z - a.topLeft.z); // if b - a is positive, a is first on the axis and we should use its extent // if b -a is negative, b is first on the axis and we should use its extent // check for x axis separation if ((dxyz.x >= 0 && a.bottomRight.x-a.topLeft.x < dxyz.x) // negative scale, reverse extent sum, flip equality ||(dxyz.x < 0 && b.topLeft.x-b.bottomRight.x > dxyz.x)) return false; // check for y axis separation if ((dxyz.y >= 0 && a.bottomRight.y-a.topLeft.y < dxyz.y) // negative scale, reverse extent sum, flip equality ||(dxyz.y < 0 && b.topLeft.y-b.bottomRight.y > dxyz.y)) return false; // check for z axis separation if ((dxyz.z >= 0 && a.bottomRight.z-a.topLeft.z < dxyz.z) // negative scale, reverse extent sum, flip equality ||(dxyz.z < 0 && b.topLeft.z-b.bottomRight.z > dxyz.z)) return false; // not separated on any axis, overlapping return true; } public static boolean isContactEdge(int xyzAxis, BoundingBox a, BoundingBox b) { switch(xyzAxis) { case XYZ.XCOORD: if(a.topLeft.x == b.bottomRight.x || a.bottomRight.x == b.topLeft.x) return true; return false; case XYZ.YCOORD: if(a.topLeft.y == b.bottomRight.y || a.bottomRight.y == b.topLeft.y) return true; return false; case XYZ.ZCOORD: if(a.topLeft.z == b.bottomRight.z || a.bottomRight.z == b.topLeft.z) return true; return false; } return false; } /** * Sweep test min extent value * @param box * @param xyzCoord * @return */ public static float min(BoundingBox box, int xyzCoord) { switch(xyzCoord) { case XYZ.XCOORD: return box.topLeft.x; case XYZ.YCOORD: return box.topLeft.y; case XYZ.ZCOORD: return box.topLeft.z; default: return 0f; } } /** * Sweep test max extent value * @param box * @param xyzCoord * @return */ public static float max(BoundingBox box, int xyzCoord) { switch(xyzCoord) { case XYZ.XCOORD: return box.bottomRight.x; case XYZ.YCOORD: return box.bottomRight.y; case XYZ.ZCOORD: return box.bottomRight.z; default: return 0f; } } /** * Test if bounding box A will overlap bounding box B at any point * when box A moves from position 0 to position 1 and box B moves from position 0 to position 1 * Note, sweep test assumes bounding boxes A and B's dimensions do not change * * @param a0 box a starting position * @param a1 box a ending position * @param b0 box b starting position * @param b1 box b ending position * @param aCollisionOut xyz of box a's position when/if a collision occurs * @param bCollisionOut xyz of box b's position when/if a collision occurs * @return */ public static boolean sweepTest(BoundingBox a0, BoundingBox a1, BoundingBox b0, BoundingBox b1, XYZ aCollisionOut, XYZ bCollisionOut) { // solve in reference to A XYZ va = new XYZ(a1.topLeft.x-a0.topLeft.x, a1.topLeft.y-a0.topLeft.y, a1.topLeft.z-a0.topLeft.z); XYZ vb = new XYZ(b1.topLeft.x-b0.topLeft.x, b1.topLeft.y-b0.topLeft.y, b1.topLeft.z-b0.topLeft.z); XYZ v = new XYZ(vb.x-va.x, vb.y-va.y, vb.z-va.z); // check for initial overlap if(BoundingBox.isOverlapping(a0, b0)) { // java pass by ref/value gotcha, have to modify value can't reassign it aCollisionOut.x = a0.topLeft.x; aCollisionOut.y = a0.topLeft.y; aCollisionOut.z = a0.topLeft.z; bCollisionOut.x = b0.topLeft.x; bCollisionOut.y = b0.topLeft.y; bCollisionOut.z = b0.topLeft.z; return true; } // overlap min/maxs XYZ u0 = new XYZ(); XYZ u1 = new XYZ(1,1,1); float t0, t1; // iterate axis and find overlaps times (x=0, y=1, z=2) for(int i = 0; i < 3; i++) { float aMax = max(a0, i); float aMin = min(a0, i); float bMax = max(b0, i); float bMin = min(b0, i); float vi = XYZ.getCoord(v, i); if(aMax < bMax && vi < 0) XYZ.setCoord(u0, i, (aMax-bMin)/vi); else if(bMax < aMin && vi > 0) XYZ.setCoord(u0, i, (aMin-bMax)/vi); if(bMax > aMin && vi < 0) XYZ.setCoord(u1, i, (aMin-bMax)/vi); else if(aMax > bMin && vi > 0) XYZ.setCoord(u1, i, (aMax-bMin)/vi); } // get times of collision t0 = Math.max(u0.x, Math.max(u0.y, u0.z)); t1 = Math.min(u1.x, Math.min(u1.y, u1.z)); // collision only occurs if t0 < t1 if(t0 <= t1 && t0 != 0) // not t0 because we already tested it! { // t0 is the normalized time of the collision // then the position of the bounding boxes would // be their original position + velocity*time aCollisionOut.x = a0.topLeft.x + va.x*t0; aCollisionOut.y = a0.topLeft.y + va.y*t0; aCollisionOut.z = a0.topLeft.z + va.z*t0; bCollisionOut.x = b0.topLeft.x + vb.x*t0; bCollisionOut.y = b0.topLeft.y + vb.y*t0; bCollisionOut.z = b0.topLeft.z + vb.z*t0; return true; } else return false; } }

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• Confirm disk is broken when it passes all diagnostics

  - by Halfgaar

  I have a system with a potentially broken disk, but the disk passes all manner of diagnostics. I have been unable to confirm that the disk is broken. What are my options? I could just replace the disk, but because this situation is very similar to another more severe situation I have (long story), I'd like to actually make a proper diagnosis as opposed to randomly binning hardware. The issue and history is this: I had a Debian Linux PC (500 MHz P3) acting as router, nagios and munin. It crashed every couple of weeks. No logs or dmesg could be obtained (because it's an old Compaq that only boots when you configure it as keyboardless, making connecting a keyboard later, once it's booted, impossible). At the time, I just replaced the computer with another Compaq (P4 2.4 GHz) because I thought the hardware was faulty. However, it still crashed every couple of weeks. the difference is that on this computer, I can still SSH into it. It gives all kinds of errors on hda. I'd like to confirm that the disk is broken, but nothing I do confirms this: SMART error logs shows no errors. Normally when a disk starts acting up, SMART my pass, but it still records a read-error in the error log. SMART self-test (smartctl -t long /dev/sda) completes without errors. re-allocated sector count (a tell-tale parameter) has been 31 all its life, even when the disk was still in use in my desktop PC years ago, and it still is. The figure never changed. dd if=/dev/sda of=/dev/null bs=4096 passes with flying colors. What else can I do to assess the health of the drive? Again, this is not about making this router fully functional again, this is a disk forensic question, because it just so happens that I have another server that potentially has the same problem, and knowing the answer to this will possibly help me greatly. For the record, below are logs and such. This is the smartctl -a output: smartctl 5.40 2010-07-12 r3124 [i686-pc-linux-gnu] (local build) Copyright (C) 2002-10 by Bruce Allen, http://smartmontools.sourceforge.net === START OF INFORMATION SECTION === Model Family: Seagate Barracuda 7200.7 and 7200.7 Plus family Device Model: ST3120026A Serial Number: 5JT1CLQM Firmware Version: 3.06 User Capacity: 120,034,123,776 bytes Device is: In smartctl database [for details use: -P show] ATA Version is: 6 ATA Standard is: ATA/ATAPI-6 T13 1410D revision 2 Local Time is: Mon Jul 1 21:18:33 2013 CEST SMART support is: Available - device has SMART capability. SMART support is: Enabled === START OF READ SMART DATA SECTION === SMART overall-health self-assessment test result: PASSED General SMART Values: Offline data collection status: (0x82) Offline data collection activity was completed without error. Auto Offline Data Collection: Enabled. Self-test execution status: ( 24) The self-test routine was aborted by the host. Total time to complete Offline data collection: ( 430) seconds. Offline data collection capabilities: (0x5b) SMART execute Offline immediate. Auto Offline data collection on/off support. Suspend Offline collection upon new command. Offline surface scan supported. Self-test supported. No Conveyance Self-test supported. Selective Self-test supported. SMART capabilities: (0x0003) Saves SMART data before entering power-saving mode. Supports SMART auto save timer. Error logging capability: (0x01) Error logging supported. No General Purpose Logging support. Short self-test routine recommended polling time: ( 1) minutes. Extended self-test routine recommended polling time: ( 85) minutes. SMART Attributes Data Structure revision number: 10 Vendor Specific SMART Attributes with Thresholds: ID# ATTRIBUTE_NAME FLAG VALUE WORST THRESH TYPE UPDATED WHEN_FAILED RAW_VALUE 1 Raw_Read_Error_Rate 0x000f 050 046 006 Pre-fail Always - 47766662 3 Spin_Up_Time 0x0003 097 096 000 Pre-fail Always - 0 4 Start_Stop_Count 0x0032 100 100 020 Old_age Always - 10 5 Reallocated_Sector_Ct 0x0033 100 100 036 Pre-fail Always - 31 7 Seek_Error_Rate 0x000f 084 060 030 Pre-fail Always - 820305 9 Power_On_Hours 0x0032 048 048 000 Old_age Always - 46373 10 Spin_Retry_Count 0x0013 100 100 097 Pre-fail Always - 0 12 Power_Cycle_Count 0x0032 100 100 020 Old_age Always - 605 194 Temperature_Celsius 0x0022 036 065 000 Old_age Always - 36 195 Hardware_ECC_Recovered 0x001a 050 046 000 Old_age Always - 47766662 197 Current_Pending_Sector 0x0012 100 100 000 Old_age Always - 0 198 Offline_Uncorrectable 0x0010 100 100 000 Old_age Offline - 0 199 UDMA_CRC_Error_Count 0x003e 200 196 000 Old_age Always - 6 200 Multi_Zone_Error_Rate 0x0000 100 253 000 Old_age Offline - 0 202 Data_Address_Mark_Errs 0x0032 100 253 000 Old_age Always - 0 SMART Error Log Version: 1 No Errors Logged SMART Self-test log structure revision number 1 Num Test_Description Status Remaining LifeTime(hours) LBA_of_first_error # 1 Extended offline Aborted by host 80% 46361 - # 2 Extended offline Completed without error 00% 46358 - # 3 Short offline Completed without error 00% 12046 - # 4 Extended offline Completed without error 00% 10472 - # 5 Short offline Completed without error 00% 10471 - # 6 Short offline Completed without error 00% 10471 - # 7 Short offline Completed without error 00% 6770 - # 8 Extended offline Aborted by host 90% 5958 - # 9 Extended offline Aborted by host 90% 5951 - #10 Short offline Completed without error 00% 5024 - #11 Extended offline Aborted by host 80% 5024 - #12 Short offline Completed without error 00% 3697 - #13 Short offline Completed without error 00% 237 - #14 Short offline Completed without error 00% 145 - #15 Short offline Completed without error 00% 69 - #16 Extended offline Completed without error 00% 68 - #17 Short offline Completed without error 00% 66 - #18 Short offline Completed without error 00% 49 - #19 Short offline Completed without error 00% 29 - #20 Short offline Completed without error 00% 29 - SMART Selective self-test log data structure revision number 1 SPAN MIN_LBA MAX_LBA CURRENT_TEST_STATUS 1 0 0 Not_testing 2 0 0 Not_testing 3 0 0 Not_testing 4 0 0 Not_testing 5 0 0 Not_testing Selective self-test flags (0x0): After scanning selected spans, do NOT read-scan remainder of disk. If Selective self-test is pending on power-up, resume after 0 minute delay. And this is the dmesg error when it has crashed (which repeats for a bunch of different sectors): [1755091.211136] sd 0:0:0:0: [sda] Unhandled error code [1755091.211144] sd 0:0:0:0: [sda] Result: hostbyte=DID_BAD_TARGET driverbyte=DRIVER_OK [1755091.211151] sd 0:0:0:0: [sda] CDB: Read(10): 28 00 08 fe ad 38 00 00 08 00 [1755091.211166] end_request: I/O error, dev sda, sector 150908216

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• CD/DVD burn error in ImgBurn and Nero

  - by bobby

  I am getting the errors shown below when I try to burn a CD/DVD on my DVD writer. I am seeing this error for every CD/DVD I try to burn. I am not able to write any CDs or DVDs using ImgBurn. The burn log below is a failed burn in Nero. What could be causing this error? Nero Burning ROM bobby 4C85-200E-4005-0004-0000-7660-0800-35X3-0000-407M-MX37-**** (*) Windows XP 6.1 IA32 WinAspi: - NT-SPTI used Nero Version: 7.11.3. Internal Version: 7, 11, 3, (Nero Express) Recorder: <HL-DT-ST DVDRAM GSA-H12N> Version: UL01 - HA 1 TA 1 - 7.11.3.0 Adapter driver: <IDE> HA 1 Drive buffer : 2048kB Bus Type : default CD-ROM: <ATAPI-CD ROM-DRIVE-52MAX > Version: 52PP - HA 1 TA 0 - 7.11.3.0 Adapter driver: <IDE> HA 1 === Scsi-Device-Map === === CDRom-Device-Map === ATAPI-CD ROM-DRIVE-52MAX F: CdRom0 HL-DT-ST DVDRAM GSA-H12N G: CdRom1 ======================= AutoRun : 1 Excluded drive IDs: WriteBufferSize: 83886080 (0) Byte BUFE : 0 Physical memory : 958MB (981560kB) Free physical memory: 309MB (317024kB) Memory in use : 67 % Uncached PFiles: 0x0 Use Inquiry : 1 Global Bus Type: default (0) Check supported media : Disabled (0) 11.6.2010 CD Image 10:43:02 AM #1 Text 0 File SCSIPTICommands.cpp, Line 450 LockMCN - completed sucessfully for IOCTL_STORAGE_MCN_CONTROL 10:43:02 AM #2 Text 0 File Burncd.cpp, Line 3186 HL-DT-ST DVDRAM GSA-H12N Buffer underrun protection activated 10:43:02 AM #3 Text 0 File Burncd.cpp, Line 3500 Turn on Disc-At-Once, using CD-R/RW media 10:43:02 AM #4 Text 0 File DlgWaitCD.cpp, Line 307 Last possible write address on media: 359848 ( 79:59.73) Last address to be written: 318783 ( 70:52.33) 10:43:02 AM #5 Text 0 File DlgWaitCD.cpp, Line 319 Write in overburning mode: NO (enabled: CD) 10:43:02 AM #6 Text 0 File DlgWaitCD.cpp, Line 2988 Recorder: HL-DT-ST DVDRAM G SA-H12N; CDR co de: 00 97 27 18; O SJ entry from: Pla smon Data systems Ltd. ATIP Data: Special Info [hex] 1: D0 00 A0, 2: 61 1B 12 (LI 97:27.18), 3: 4F 3B 4A ( LO 79:59.74) Additional Info [hex] 1: 00 00 00 (invalid), 2: 00 00 00 (invalid), 3: 00 0 0 00 (invalid) 10:43:02 AM #7 Text 0 File DlgWaitCD.cpp, Line 493 >>> Protocol of DlgWaitCD activities: <<< ========================================= 10:43:02 AM #8 Text 0 File ThreadedTransferInterface.cpp, Line 785 Nero Report 1 Nero Burning ROM Setup items (after recorder preparation) 0: TRM_DATA_MODE1 (2 - CD-ROM Mode 1, Joliet) 2 indices, index0 (150) not provided original disc pos #0 + 318784 (318784) = #318784/70:50.34 not relocatable, disc pos for caching/writing not required/not required -> TRM_DATA_MODE1, 2048, config 0, wanted index0 0 blocks, length 318784 blocks [G: HL-DT-ST DVDRAM GSA-H12N] -------------------------------------------------------------- 10:43:02 AM #9 Text 0 File ThreadedTransferInterface.cpp, Line 986 Prepare [G: HL-DT-ST DVDRAM GSA-H12N] for write in CUE-sheet-DAO DAO infos: ========== MCN: "" TOCType: 0x00; Se ssion Clo sed, disc fixated Tracks 1 to 1: Idx 0 Idx 1 Next T rk 1: TRM_DATA_MODE1, 2048/0x00, FilePos 0 307200 6531768 32, ISRC "" DAO layout: =========== ___Start_|____Track_|_Idx_|_CtrlAdr_|_____Size_|______NWA_|_RecDep__________ -150 | lead-in | 0 | 0x41 | 0 | 0 | 0x00 -150 | 1 | 0 | 0x41 | 0 | 0 | 0x00 0 | 1 | 1 | 0x41 | 318784 | 318784 | 0x00 318784 | lead-out | 1 | 0x41 | 0 | 0 | 0x00 10:43:02 AM #10 Text 0 File SCSIPTICommands.cpp, Line 240 SPTILockVolume - completed successfully for FSCTL_LOCK_VOLUME 10:43:02 AM #11 Text 0 File Burncd.cpp, Line 4286 Caching options: cache CDRom or Network-Yes, small files-Yes (<64KB) 10:43:02 AM #12 Phase 24 File dlgbrnst.cpp, Line 1767 Caching of files started 10:43:02 AM #13 Text 0 File Burncd.cpp, Line 4405 Cache writing successful. 10:43:02 AM #14 Phase 25 File dlgbrnst.cpp, Line 1767 Caching of files completed 10:43:02 AM #15 Phase 36 File dlgbrnst.cpp, Line 1767 Burn process started at 48x (7,200 KB/s) 10:43:02 AM #16 Text 0 File ThreadedTransferInterface.cpp, Line 2733 Verifying disc position of item 0 (not relocatable, no disc pos, no patch infos, orig at #0): write at #0 10:43:02 AM #17 Text 0 File MMC.cpp, Line 17806 StartDAO : CD-Text - Off 10:43:02 AM #18 Text 0 File MMC.cpp, Line 22488 Set BUFE: Buffer underrun protection -> ON 10:43:03 AM #19 Text 0 File MMC.cpp, Line 18034 CueData, Len=32 41 00 00 14 00 00 00 00 41 01 00 10 00 00 00 00 41 01 01 10 00 00 02 00 41 aa 01 14 00 46 34 22 10:43:03 AM #20 Text 0 File ThreadedTransfer.cpp, Line 268 Pipe memory size 83836800 10:43:16 AM #21 Text 0 File Cdrdrv.cpp, Line 1405 10:43:16.806 - G: HL-DT-ST DVDRAM GSA-H12N : Queue again later 10:43:42 AM #22 SPTI -1502 File SCSIPassThrough.cpp, Line 181 CdRom1: SCSIStatus(x02) WinError(0) NeroError(-1502) Sense Key: 0x04 (KEY_HARDWARE_ERROR) Nero Report 2 Nero Burning ROM Sense Code: 0x08 Sense Qual: 0x03 CDB Data: 0x2A 00 00 00 4D 00 00 00 20 00 00 00 Sense Area: 0x70 00 04 00 00 00 00 10 53 29 A1 80 08 03 Buffer x0c7d9a40: Len x10000 0xDC 87 EB 41 6E AC 61 5A 07 B2 DB 78 B5 D4 D9 24 0x8D BC 51 38 46 56 0F EE 16 15 5C 5B E3 B0 10 16 0x14 B1 C3 6E 30 2B C4 78 15 AB D5 92 09 B7 81 23 10:43:42 AM #23 CDR -1502 File Writer.cpp, Line 306 DMA-driver error, CRC error G: HL-DT-ST DVDRAM GSA-H12N 10:43:55 AM #24 Phase 38 File dlgbrnst.cpp, Line 1767 Burn process failed at 48x (7,200 KB/s) 10:43:55 AM #25 Text 0 File SCSIPTICommands.cpp, Line 287 SPTIDismountVolume - completed successfully for FSCTL_DISMOUNT_VOLUME 10:44:01 AM #26 Text 0 File Cdrdrv.cpp, Line 11412 DriveLocker: UnLockVolume completed 10:44:01 AM #27 Text 0 File SCSIPTICommands.cpp, Line 450 UnLockMCN - completed sucessfully for IOCTL_STORAGE_MCN_CONTROL Existing drivers: Registry Keys: HKLM\Software\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\WinLogon Nero Report 3

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• Adding objects to the environment at timed intervals

  - by david

  I am using an ArrayList to handle objects and at each interval of 120 frames, I am adding a new object of the same type at a random location along the z-axis of 60. The problem is, it doesn't add just 1. It depends on how many are in the list. If I kill the Fox before the time interval when one is supposed to spawn comes, then no Fox will be spawned. If I don't kill any foxes, it grows exponentially. I only want one Fox to be added every 120 frames. This problem never happened before when I created new ones and added them to the environment. Any insights? Here is my code: /**** FOX CLASS ****/ import env3d.EnvObject; import java.util.ArrayList; public class Fox extends Creature { private int frame = 0; public Fox(double x, double y, double z) { super(x, y, z); // Must use the mutator as the fields have private access // in the parent class setTexture("models/fox/fox.png"); setModel("models/fox/fox.obj"); setScale(1.4); } public void move(ArrayList<Creature> creatures, ArrayList<Creature> dead_creatures, ArrayList<Creature> new_creatures) { frame++; setX(getX()-0.2); setRotateY(270); if (frame > 120) { Fox f = new Fox(60, 1, (int)(Math.random()*28)+1); new_creatures.add(f); frame = 0; } for (Creature c : creatures) { if (this.distance(c) < this.getScale()+c.getScale() && c instanceof Tux) { dead_creatures.add(c); } } for (Creature c : creatures) { if (c.getX() < 1 && c instanceof Fox) { dead_creatures.add(c); } } } } import env3d.Env; import java.util.ArrayList; import org.lwjgl.input.Keyboard; /** * A predator and prey simulation. Fox is the predator and Tux is the prey. */ public class Game { private Env env; private boolean finished; private ArrayList<Creature> creatures; private KingTux king; private Snowball ball; private int tuxcounter; private int kills; /** * Constructor for the Game class. It sets up the foxes and tuxes. */ public Game() { // we use a separate ArrayList to keep track of each animal. // our room is 50 x 50. creatures = new ArrayList<Creature>(); for (int i = 0; i < 10; i++) { creatures.add(new Tux((int)(Math.random()*10)+1, 1, (int)(Math.random()*28)+1)); } for (int i = 0; i < 1; i++) { creatures.add(new Fox(60, 1, (int)(Math.random()*28)+1)); } king = new KingTux(25, 1, 35); ball = new Snowball(-400, -400, -400); } /** * Play the game */ public void play() { finished = false; // Create the new environment. Must be done in the same // method as the game loop env = new Env(); // Make the room 50 x 50. env.setRoom(new Room()); // Add all the animals into to the environment for display for (Creature c : creatures) { env.addObject(c); } for (Creature c : creatures) { if (c instanceof Tux) { tuxcounter++; } } env.addObject(king); env.addObject(ball); // Sets up the camera env.setCameraXYZ(30, 50, 55); env.setCameraPitch(-63); // Turn off the default controls env.setDefaultControl(false); // A list to keep track of dead tuxes. ArrayList<Creature> dead_creatures = new ArrayList<Creature>(); ArrayList<Creature> new_creatures = new ArrayList<Creature>(); // The main game loop while (!finished) { if (env.getKey() == 1 || tuxcounter == 0) { finished = true; } env.setDisplayStr("Tuxes: " + tuxcounter, 15, 0); env.setDisplayStr("Kills: " + kills, 140, 0); processInput(); ball.move(); king.check(); // Move each fox and tux. for (Creature c : creatures) { c.move(creatures, dead_creatures, new_creatures); } for (Creature c : creatures) { if (c.distance(ball) < c.getScale()+ball.getScale() && c instanceof Fox) { dead_creatures.add(c); ball.setX(-400); ball.setY(-400); ball.setZ(-400); kills++; } } // Clean up of the dead tuxes. for (Creature c : dead_creatures) { if (c instanceof Tux) { tuxcounter--; } env.removeObject(c); creatures.remove(c); } for (Creature c : new_creatures) { creatures.add(c); env.addObject(c); } // we clear the ArrayList for the next loop. We could create a new one // every loop but that would be very inefficient. dead_creatures.clear(); new_creatures.clear(); // Update display env.advanceOneFrame(); } // Just a little clean up env.exit(); } private void processInput() { int keyDown = env.getKeyDown(); int key = env.getKey(); if (keyDown == 203) { king.setX(king.getX()-1); } else if (keyDown == 205) { king.setX(king.getX()+1); } if (ball.getX() <= -400 && key == Keyboard.KEY_S) { ball.setX(king.getX()); ball.setY(king.getY()); ball.setZ(king.getZ()); } } /** * Main method to launch the program. */ public static void main(String args[]) { (new Game()).play(); } } /**** CREATURE CLASS ****/ /* (Parent class to Tux, Fox, and KingTux) */ import env3d.EnvObject; import java.util.ArrayList; abstract public class Creature extends EnvObject { private int frame; private double rand; /** * Constructor for objects of class Creature */ public Creature(double x, double y, double z) { setX(x); setY(y); setZ(z); setScale(1); rand = Math.random(); } private void randomGenerator() { rand = Math.random(); } public void move(ArrayList<Creature> creatures, ArrayList<Creature> dead_creatures, ArrayList<Creature> new_creatures) { frame++; if (frame > 12) { randomGenerator(); frame = 0; } // if (rand < 0.25) { // setX(getX()+0.3); // setRotateY(90); // } else if (rand < 0.5) { // setX(getX()-0.3); // setRotateY(270); // } else if (rand < 0.75) { // setZ(getZ()+0.3); // setRotateY(0); // } else if (rand < 1) { // setZ(getZ()-0.3); // setRotateY(180); // } if (rand < 0.5) { setRotateY(getRotateY()-7); } else if (rand < 1) { setRotateY(getRotateY()+7); } setX(getX()+Math.sin(Math.toRadians(getRotateY()))*0.5); setZ(getZ()+Math.cos(Math.toRadians(getRotateY()))*0.5); if (getX() < getScale()) setX(getScale()); if (getX() > 50-getScale()) setX(50 - getScale()); if (getZ() < getScale()) setZ(getScale()); if (getZ() > 50-getScale()) setZ(50 - getScale()); // The move method now handles collision detection if (this instanceof Fox) { for (Creature c : creatures) { if (c.distance(this) < c.getScale()+this.getScale() && c instanceof Tux) { dead_creatures.add(c); } } } } } The rest of the classes are a bit trivial to this specific problem.

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