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Interesting articles and blogs on SPARC T4

- by mv

Interesting articles and blogs on SPARC T4 processor I have consolidated all the interesting information I could get on SPARC T4 processor and its hardware cryptographic capabilities. Hope its useful. 1. Advantages of SPARC T4 processor Most important points in this T4 announcement are : "The SPARC T4 processor was designed from the ground up for high speed security and has a cryptographic stream processing unit (SPU) integrated directly into each processor core. These accelerators support 16 industry standard security ciphers and enable high speed encryption at rates 3 to 5 times that of competing processors. By integrating encryption capabilities directly inside the instruction pipeline, the SPARC T4 processor eliminates the performance and cost barriers typically associated with secure computing and makes it possible to deliver high security levels without impacting the user experience." Data Sheet has more details on these : "New on-chip Encryption Instruction Accelerators with direct non-privileged support for 16 industry-standard cryptographic algorithms plus random number generation in each of the eight cores: AES, Camellia, CRC32c, DES, 3DES, DH, DSA, ECC, Kasumi, MD5, RSA, SHA-1, SHA-224, SHA-256, SHA-384, SHA-512" I ran "isainfo -v" command on Solaris 11 Sparc T4-1 system. It shows the new instructions as expected : $ 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 32-bit sparc applications crc32c cbcond pause mont mpmul sha512 sha256 sha1 md5 camellia kasumi des aes ima hpc vis3 fmaf asi_blk_init vis2 vis popc v8plus div32 mul32 2. Dan Anderson's Blog have some interesting points about how these can be used : "New T4 crypto instructions include: aes_kexpand0, aes_kexpand1, aes_kexpand2, aes_eround01, aes_eround23, aes_eround01_l, aes_eround_23_l, aes_dround01, aes_dround23, aes_dround01_l, aes_dround_23_l. Having SPARC T4 hardware crypto instructions is all well and good, but how do we access it ? The software is available with Solaris 11 and is used automatically if you are running Solaris a SPARC T4. It is used internally in the kernel through kernel crypto modules. It is available in user space through the PKCS#11 library." 3. Dans' Blog on Where's the Crypto Libraries? Although this was written in 2009 but still is very useful "Here's a brief tour of the major crypto libraries shown in the digraph: The libpkcs11 library contains the PKCS#11 API (C_\*() functions, such as C_Initialize()). That in turn calls library pkcs11_softtoken or pkcs11_kernel, for userland or kernel crypto providers. The latter is used mostly for hardware-assisted cryptography (such as n2cp for Niagara2 SPARC processors), as that is performed more efficiently in kernel space with the "kCF" module (Kernel Crypto Framework). Additionally, for Solaris 10, strong crypto algorithms were split off in separate libraries, pkcs11_softtoken_extra libcryptoutil contains low-level utility functions to help implement cryptography. libsoftcrypto (OpenSolaris and Solaris Nevada only) implements several symmetric-key crypto algorithms in software, such as AES, RC4, and DES3, and the bignum library (used for RSA). libmd implements MD5, SHA, and SHA2 message digest algorithms" 4. Difference in T3 and T4 Diagram in this blog is good and self explanatory. Jeff's blog also highlights the differences "The T4 servers have improved crypto acceleration, described at https://blogs.oracle.com/DanX/entry/sparc_t4_openssl_engine. It is "just built in" so administrators no longer have to assign crypto accelerator units to domains - it "just happens". Every physical or virtual CPU on a SPARC-T4 has full access to hardware based crypto acceleration at all times. .... For completeness sake, it's worth noting that the T4 adds more crypto algorithms, and accelerates Camelia, CRC32c, and more SHA-x." 5. About performance counters In this blog, performance counters are explained : "Note that unlike T3 and before, T4 crypto doesn't require kernel modules like ncp or n2cp, there is no visibility of crypto hardware with kstats or cryptoadm. T4 does provide hardware counters for crypto operations. You can see these using cpustat: cpustat -c pic0=Instr_FGU_crypto 5 You can check the general crypto support of the hardware and OS with the command "isainfo -v". Since T4 crypto's implementation now allows direct userland access, there are no "crypto units" visible to cryptoadm. " For more details refer Martin's blog as well. 6. How to turn off SPARC T4 or Intel AES-NI crypto acceleration I found this interesting blog from Darren about how to turn off SPARC T4 or Intel AES-NI crypto acceleration. "One of the new Solaris 11 features of the linker/loader is the ability to have a single ELF object that has multiple different implementations of the same functions that are selected at runtime based on the capabilities of the machine. The alternate to this is having the application coded to call getisax(2) system call and make the choice itself. We use this functionality of the linker/loader when we build the userland libraries for the Solaris Cryptographic Framework (specifically libmd.so and libsoftcrypto.so) The Solaris linker/loader allows control of a lot of its functionality via environment variables, we can use that to control the version of the cryptographic functions we run. To do this we simply export the LD_HWCAP environment variable with values that tell ld.so.1 to not select the HWCAP section matching certain features even if isainfo says they are present. This will work for consumers of the Solaris Cryptographic Framework that use the Solaris PKCS#11 libraries or use libmd.so interfaces directly. For SPARC T4 : export LD_HWCAP="-aes -des -md5 -sha256 -sha512 -mont -mpul" .. For Intel systems with AES-NI support: export LD_HWCAP="-aes"" Note that LD_HWCAP is explained in http://docs.oracle.com/cd/E23823_01/html/816-5165/ld.so.1-1.html "LD_HWCAP, LD_HWCAP_32, and LD_HWCAP_64 - Identifies an alternative hardware capabilities value... A “-” prefix results in the capabilities that follow being removed from the alternative capabilities." 7. Whitepaper on SPARC T4 Servers—Optimized for End-to-End Data Center Computing This Whitepaper on SPARC T4 Servers—Optimized for End-to-End Data Center Computing explains more details. It has DTrace scripts which may come in handy : "To ensure the hardware-assisted cryptographic acceleration is configured to use and working with the security scenarios, it is recommended to use the following Solaris DTrace script. #!/usr/sbin/dtrace -s pid$1:libsoftcrypto:yf*:entry, pid$target:libsoftcrypto:rsa*:entry, pid$1:libmd:yf*:entry { @[probefunc] = count(); } tick-1sec { printa(@ops); trunc(@ops); }" Note that I have slightly modified the D Script to have RSA "libsoftcrypto:rsa*:entry" as well as per recommendations from Chi-Chang Lin. 8. References http://www.oracle.com/us/corporate/features/sparc-t4-announcement-494846.html http://www.oracle.com/us/products/servers-storage/servers/sparc-enterprise/t-series/sparc-t4-1-ds-487858.pdf https://blogs.oracle.com/DanX/entry/sparc_t4_openssl_engine https://blogs.oracle.com/DanX/entry/where_s_the_crypto_libraries https://blogs.oracle.com/darren/entry/howto_turn_off_sparc_t4 http://docs.oracle.com/cd/E23823_01/html/816-5165/ld.so.1-1.html https://blogs.oracle.com/hardware/entry/unleash_the_power_of_cryptography https://blogs.oracle.com/cmt/entry/t4_crypto_cheat_sheet https://blogs.oracle.com/martinm/entry/t4_performance_counters_explained https://blogs.oracle.com/jsavit/entry/no_mau_required_on_a http://www.oracle.com/us/products/servers-storage/servers/sparc-enterprise/t-series/sparc-t4-business-wp-524472.pdf

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Adding Volcanos and Options - Earthquake Locator, part 2

- by Bobby Diaz

Since volcanos are often associated with earthquakes, and vice versa, I decided to show recent volcanic activity on the Earthquake Locator map. I am pulling the data from a website created for a joint project between the Smithsonian's Global Volcanism Program and the US Geological Survey's Volcano Hazards Program, found here. They provide a Weekly Volcanic Activity Report as an RSS feed. I started implementing this new functionality by creating a new Volcano entity in the domain model and adding the following to the EarthquakeService class (I also factored out the common reading/parsing helper methods to a separate FeedReader class that can be used by multiple domain service classes): private static readonly string VolcanoFeedUrl = ConfigurationManager.AppSettings["VolcanoFeedUrl"]; /// <summary> /// Gets the volcano data for the previous week. /// </summary> /// <returns>A queryable collection of <see cref="Volcano"/> objects.</returns> public IQueryable<Volcano> GetVolcanos() { var feed = FeedReader.Load(VolcanoFeedUrl); var list = new List<Volcano>(); if ( feed != null ) { foreach ( var item in feed.Items ) { var quake = CreateVolcano(item); if ( quake != null ) { list.Add(quake); } } } return list.AsQueryable(); } /// <summary> /// Creates a <see cref="Volcano"/> object for each item in the RSS feed. /// </summary> /// <param name="item">The RSS item.</param> /// <returns></returns> private Volcano CreateVolcano(SyndicationItem item) { Volcano volcano = null; string title = item.Title.Text; string desc = item.Summary.Text; double? latitude = null; double? longitude = null; FeedReader.GetGeoRssPoint(item, out latitude, out longitude); if ( !String.IsNullOrEmpty(title) ) { title = title.Substring(0, title.IndexOf('-')); } if ( !String.IsNullOrEmpty(desc) ) { desc = String.Join("\n\n", desc .Replace("<p>", "") .Split( new string[] { "</p>" }, StringSplitOptions.RemoveEmptyEntries) .Select(s => s.Trim()) .ToArray()) .Trim(); } if ( latitude != null && longitude != null ) { volcano = new Volcano() { Id = item.Id, Title = title, Description = desc, Url = item.Links.Select(l => l.Uri.OriginalString).FirstOrDefault(), Latitude = latitude.GetValueOrDefault(), Longitude = longitude.GetValueOrDefault() }; } return volcano; } I then added the corresponding LoadVolcanos() method and Volcanos collection to the EarthquakeViewModel class in much the same way I did with the Earthquakes in my previous article in this series. Now that I am starting to add more information to the map, I wanted to give the user some options as to what is displayed and allowing them to choose what gets turned off. I have updated the MainPage.xaml to look like this: <UserControl x:Class="EarthquakeLocator.MainPage" xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2006/xaml/presentation" xmlns:x="http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2006/xaml" xmlns:d="http://schemas.microsoft.com/expression/blend/2008" xmlns:mc="http://schemas.openxmlformats.org/markup-compatibility/2006" xmlns:basic="clr-namespace:System.Windows.Controls;assembly=System.Windows.Controls" xmlns:bing="clr-namespace:Microsoft.Maps.MapControl;assembly=Microsoft.Maps.MapControl" xmlns:vm="clr-namespace:EarthquakeLocator.ViewModel" mc:Ignorable="d" d:DesignWidth="640" d:DesignHeight="480" > <UserControl.Resources> <DataTemplate x:Key="EarthquakeTemplate"> <Ellipse Fill="Red" Stroke="Black" StrokeThickness="1" Width="{Binding Size}" Height="{Binding Size}" bing:MapLayer.Position="{Binding Location}" bing:MapLayer.PositionOrigin="Center"> <ToolTipService.ToolTip> <StackPanel> <TextBlock Text="{Binding Title}" FontSize="14" FontWeight="Bold" /> <TextBlock Text="{Binding UtcTime}" /> <TextBlock Text="{Binding LocalTime}" /> <TextBlock Text="{Binding DepthDesc}" /> </StackPanel> </ToolTipService.ToolTip> </Ellipse> </DataTemplate> <DataTemplate x:Key="VolcanoTemplate"> <Polygon Fill="Gold" Stroke="Black" StrokeThickness="1" Points="0,10 5,0 10,10" bing:MapLayer.Position="{Binding Location}" bing:MapLayer.PositionOrigin="Center" MouseLeftButtonUp="Volcano_MouseLeftButtonUp"> <ToolTipService.ToolTip> <StackPanel> <TextBlock Text="{Binding Title}" FontSize="14" FontWeight="Bold" /> <TextBlock Text="Click icon for more information..." /> </StackPanel> </ToolTipService.ToolTip> </Polygon> </DataTemplate> </UserControl.Resources> <UserControl.DataContext> <vm:EarthquakeViewModel AutoLoadData="True" /> </UserControl.DataContext> <Grid x:Name="LayoutRoot"> <bing:Map x:Name="map" CredentialsProvider="--Your-Bing-Maps-Key--" Center="{Binding MapCenter, Mode=TwoWay}" ZoomLevel="{Binding ZoomLevel, Mode=TwoWay}"> <bing:MapItemsControl ItemsSource="{Binding Earthquakes}" ItemTemplate="{StaticResource EarthquakeTemplate}" /> <bing:MapItemsControl ItemsSource="{Binding Volcanos}" ItemTemplate="{StaticResource VolcanoTemplate}" /> </bing:Map> <basic:TabControl x:Name="tabs" VerticalAlignment="Bottom" MaxHeight="25" Opacity="0.7"> <basic:TabItem Margin="90,0,-90,0" MouseLeftButtonUp="TabItem_MouseLeftButtonUp"> <basic:TabItem.Header> <TextBlock x:Name="txtHeader" Text="Options" FontSize="13" FontWeight="Bold" /> </basic:TabItem.Header> <StackPanel Orientation="Horizontal"> <TextBlock Text="Earthquakes:" FontWeight="Bold" Margin="3" /> <StackPanel Margin="3"> <CheckBox Content=" < 4.0" IsChecked="{Binding ShowLt4, Mode=TwoWay}" /> <CheckBox Content="4.0 - 4.9" IsChecked="{Binding Show4s, Mode=TwoWay}" /> <CheckBox Content="5.0 - 5.9" IsChecked="{Binding Show5s, Mode=TwoWay}" /> </StackPanel> <StackPanel Margin="10,3,3,3"> <CheckBox Content="6.0 - 6.9" IsChecked="{Binding Show6s, Mode=TwoWay}" /> <CheckBox Content="7.0 - 7.9" IsChecked="{Binding Show7s, Mode=TwoWay}" /> <CheckBox Content="8.0 +" IsChecked="{Binding ShowGe8, Mode=TwoWay}" /> </StackPanel> <TextBlock Text="Other:" FontWeight="Bold" Margin="50,3,3,3" /> <StackPanel Margin="3"> <CheckBox Content="Volcanos" IsChecked="{Binding ShowVolcanos, Mode=TwoWay}" /> </StackPanel> </StackPanel> </basic:TabItem> </basic:TabControl> </Grid> </UserControl> Notice that I added a VolcanoTemplate that uses a triangle-shaped Polygon to represent the Volcano locations, and I also added a second <bing:MapItemsControl /> tag to the map to bind to the Volcanos collection. The TabControl found below the map houses the options panel that will present the user with several checkboxes so they can filter the different points based on type and other properties (i.e. Magnitude). Initially, the TabItem is collapsed to reduce it's footprint, but the screen shot below shows the options panel expanded to reveal the available settings: I have updated the Source Code and Live Demo to include these new features. Happy Mapping!

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When OneTug Just Isn’t Enough…

- by onefloridacoder

I stole that from the back of a T-shirt I saw at the Orlando Code Camp 2010. This was my first code camp and my first time volunteering for an event like this as well. It was an awesome day. I cannot begin to count the “aaahh”, “I did-not-know I could do that”, in the crowds and for myself. I think it was a great day of learning for everyone at all levels. All of the presenters were different and provided great insights into the topics they were presenting. Here’s a list of the ones that I attended. KodeFuGuru, “Pirates vs. Ninjas” He touched on many good topics to relax some of the ways we think when we are writing out code, and still looks good, readable, etc. As he pointed out in all of his examples, we might not always realize everything that’s going on under the covers. He exposed a bug in his own code, and verbalized the mental gymnastics he went through when he knew there was something wrong with one of his IEnumerable implementations. For me, it was great to hear that someone else labors over these gut reactions to code quickly snapped together, to the point that we rush to the refactor stage to fix what’s bothering us – and learn. He has some content on extension methods that was very interesting. My “that is so cool” moment was when he swapped out AddEntity method on an entity class and used a With extension method instead. Some of the LINQ scales fell off my eyes at that moment, and I realized my own code could be a lot more powerful (and readable) if incorporate a few of these examples at the appropriate times. And he cautioned as well… “don’t go crazy with this stuff”, there’s a place and time for everything. One of his examples demo’d toward the end of the talk is on his sight where he’s chaining methods together, cool stuff. Quotes I liked: “Extension Methods - Extension methods to put features back on the model type, without impacting the type.” “Favor Declarative Code” – Check out the ? and ?? operators if you’re not already using them. “Favor Fluent Code” “Avoid Pirate Ninja Zombies! If you see one run!” I’m definitely going to be looking at “Extract Projection” when I get into VS2010. BDD 101 – Sean Chambers http://github.com/schambers This guy had a whole host of gremlins against him, final score Sean 5, Gremlins 1. He ran the code samples from his github repo in the code github code viewer since the PC they school gave him to use didn’t have VS installed. He did a great job of converting the grammar between BDD and TDD, and how this style of development can be used in integration tests as well as the different types of gated builds on a CI box – he didn’t go into a discussion around CI, but we could infer that it could work. Like when we use WSSF, it does cause a class explosion to happen however the amount of code per class it limit to just covering the concern at hand – no more, no less. As in “When I as a <Role>, expect {something} to happen, because {}” This keeps us (the developer) from gold plating our solutions and creating less waste. He basically keeps the code that prove out the requirement to two lines of code. Nice. He uses SpecUnit to merge this grammar into his .NET projects and gave an overview on how this ties into writing his own BDD tests. Some folks were familiar with Given / When / Then as story acceptance criteria and here’s how he mapped it: “Given <Context> When <Something Happens> Then <I expect...>” There are a few base classes and overrides in the SpecUnit framework that help with setting up the context for each test which looked very handy. Successfully Running Your Own Coding Business The speaker ran through a list of items that sounded like common sense stuff LLC, banking, separating expenses, etc. Then moved into role playing with business owners and an ISV. That was pretty good stuff, it pays to be a good listener all of the time even if your client is sitting on the other side of the phone tearing you head off for you – but that’s all it is, and get used to it its par for the course. Oh, yeah always answer the phone was one simple thing that you can do to move your business forward. But like Cory Foy tweeted this week, “If you owe me a lot of money, don’t have a message that says your away for five weeks skiing in Colorado.” Lots of food for thought that’s on my list of “todo’s and to-don’ts”. Speaker Idol Next, I had the pleasure of helping Russ Fustino tape this part of Code Camp as my primary volunteer opportunity that day. You remember Russ, “know the code” from the awesome Russ’ Tool Shed series. He did a great job orchestrating and capturing the Speaker Idol finals. So I didn’t actually miss any sessions, but was able to see three back to back in one setting. The idol finalists gave a 10 minute talk and very deep subjects, but different styles of talks. No one walked away empty handed for jobs very well done. Russ has details on his site. The pictures and video captured is supposed to be published on Channel 9 at a later date. It was also a valuable experience to see what makes technical speakers effective in their talks. I picked up quite a few speaking tips from what I heard from the judges and contestants. Design For Developers – Diane Leeper If you are a great developer, you’re probably a lousy designer. Diane didn’t come to poke holes in what we think we can do with UI layout and design, but she provided some tools we can use to figure out metaphors for visualizing data. If you need help with that check out Silverlight Pivot – that’s what she was getting at. I was first introduced to her at one of John Papa’s talks last year at a Lakeland User Group meeting and she’s very passionate about design. She was able to discuss different elements of Pivot, while to a developer is just looked cool. I believe she was providing the deck from her talk to folks after her talk, so send her an email if you’re interested. She says she can talk about design for hours and hours – we all left that session believing her. Rinse and Repeat Orlando Code Camp 2010 was awesome, and would totally do it again. There were lots of folks from my shop there, and some that have left my shop to go elsewhere. So it was a reunion of sorts and a great celebration for the simple fact that its great to be a developer and there’s a community that supports and recognizes it as well. The sponsors were generous and the organizers were very tired, namely Esteban Garcia and Will Strohl who were responsible for making a lot of this magic happen. And if you don’t believe me, check out the chatter on Twitter.

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Time Tracking on an Agile Team

- by Stephen.Walther

What’s the best way to handle time-tracking on an Agile team? Your gut reaction to this question might be to resist any type of time-tracking at all. After all, one of the principles of the Agile Manifesto is “Individuals and interactions over processes and tools”. Forcing the developers on your team to track the amount of time that they devote to completing stories or tasks might seem like useless bureaucratic red tape: an impediment to getting real work done. I completely understand this reaction. I’ve been required to use time-tracking software in the past to account for each hour of my workday. It made me feel like Fred Flintstone punching in at the quarry mine and not like a professional. Why You Really Do Need Time-Tracking There are, however, legitimate reasons to track time spent on stories even when you are a member of an Agile team. First, if you are working with an outside client, you might need to track the number of hours spent on different stories for the purposes of billing. There might be no way to avoid time-tracking if you want to get paid. Second, the Product Owner needs to know when the work on a story has gone over the original time estimated for the story. The Product Owner is concerned with Return On Investment. If the team has gone massively overtime on a story, then the Product Owner has a legitimate reason to halt work on the story and reconsider the story’s business value. Finally, you might want to track how much time your team spends on different types of stories or tasks. For example, if your team is spending 75% of their time doing testing then you might need to bring in more testers. Or, if 10% of your team’s time is expended performing a software build at the end of each iteration then it is time to consider better ways of automating the build process. Time-Tracking in SonicAgile For these reasons, we added time-tracking as a feature to SonicAgile which is our free Agile Project Management tool. We were heavily influenced by Jeff Sutherland (one of the founders of Scrum) in the way that we implemented time-tracking (see his article http://scrum.jeffsutherland.com/2007/03/time-tracking-is-anti-scrum-what-do-you.html). In SonicAgile, time-tracking is disabled by default. If you want to use this feature then the project owner must enable time-tracking in Project Settings. You can choose to estimate using either days or hours. If you are estimating at the level of stories then it makes more sense to choose days. Otherwise, if you are estimating at the level of tasks then it makes more sense to use hours. After you enable time-tracking then you can assign three estimates to a story: Original Estimate – This is the estimate that you enter when you first create a story. You don’t change this estimate. Time Spent – This is the amount of time that you have already devoted to the story. You update the time spent on each story during your daily standup meeting. Time Left – This is the amount of time remaining to complete the story. Again, you update the time left during your daily standup meeting. So when you first create a story, you enter an original estimate that becomes the time left. During each daily standup meeting, you update the time spent and time left for each story on the Kanban. If you had perfect predicative power, then the original estimate would always be the same as the sum of the time spent and the time left. For example, if you predict that a story will take 5 days to complete then on day 3, the story should have 3 days spent and 2 days left. Unfortunately, never in the history of mankind has anyone accurately predicted the exact amount of time that it takes to complete a story. For this reason, SonicAgile does not update the time spent and time left automatically. Each day, during the daily standup, your team should update the time spent and time left for each story. For example, the following table shows the history of the time estimates for a story that was originally estimated to take 3 days but, eventually, takes 5 days to complete: Day Original Estimate Time Spent Time Left Day 1 3 days 0 days 3 days Day 2 3 days 1 day 2 days Day 3 3 days 2 days 2 days Day 4 3 days 3 days 2 days Day 5 3 days 4 days 0 days In the table above, everything goes as predicted until you reach day 3. On day 3, the team realizes that the work will require an additional two days. The situation does not improve on day 4. All of the sudden, on day 5, all of the remaining work gets done. Real work often follows this pattern. There are long periods when nothing gets done punctuated by occasional and unpredictable bursts of progress. We designed SonicAgile to make it as easy as possible to track the time spent and time left on a story. Detecting when a Story Goes Over the Original Estimate Sometimes, stories take much longer than originally estimated. There’s a surprise. For example, you discover that a new software component is incompatible with existing software components. Or, you discover that you have to go through a month-long certification process to finish a story. In those cases, the Product Owner has a legitimate reason to halt work on a story and re-evaluate the business value of the story. For example, the Product Owner discovers that a story will require weeks to implement instead of days, then the story might not be worth the expense. SonicAgile displays a warning on both the Backlog and the Kanban when the time spent on a story goes over the original estimate. An icon of a clock is displayed. Time-Tracking and Tasks Another optional feature of SonicAgile is tasks. If you enable Tasks in Project Settings then you can break stories into one or more tasks. You can perform time-tracking at the level of a story or at the level of a task. If you don’t break a story into tasks then you can enter the time left and time spent for the story. As soon as you break a story into tasks, then you can no longer enter the time left and time spent at the level of the story. Instead, the time left and time spent for a story is rolled up from its tasks. On the Kanban, you can see how the time left and time spent for each task gets rolled up into each story. The progress bar for the story is rolled up from the progress bars for each task. The original estimate is never rolled up – even when you break a story into tasks. A story’s original estimate is entered separately from the original estimates of each of the story’s tasks. Summary Not every Agile team can avoid time-tracking. You might be forced to track time to get paid, to detect when you are spending too much time on a particular story, or to track the amount of time that you are devoting to different types of tasks. We designed time-tracking in SonicAgile to require the least amount of work to track the information that you need. Time-tracking is an optional feature. If you enable time-tracking then you can track the original estimate, time left, and time spent for each story and task. You can use time-tracking with SonicAgile for free. Register at http://SonicAgile.com.

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OS Analytics - Deep Dive Into Your OS

- by Eran_Steiner

Enterprise Manager Ops Center provides a feature called "OS Analytics". This feature allows you to get a better understanding of how the Operating System is being utilized. You can research the historical usage as well as real time data. This post will show how you can benefit from OS Analytics and how it works behind the scenes. We will have a call to discuss this blog - please join us!Date: Thursday, November 1, 2012Time: 11:00 am, Eastern Daylight Time (New York, GMT-04:00)1. Go to https://oracleconferencing.webex.com/oracleconferencing/j.php?ED=209833067&UID=1512092402&PW=NY2JhMmFjMmFh&RT=MiMxMQ%3D%3D2. If requested, enter your name and email address.3. If a password is required, enter the meeting password: oracle1234. Click "Join". To join the teleconference:Call-in toll-free number: 1-866-682-4770 (US/Canada) Other countries: https://oracle.intercallonline.com/portlets/scheduling/viewNumbers/viewNumber.do?ownerNumber=5931260&audioType=RP&viewGa=true&ga=ONConference Code: 7629343#Security code: 7777# Here is quick summary of what you can do with OS Analytics in Ops Center: View historical charts and real time value of CPU, memory, network and disk utilization Find the top CPU and Memory processes in real time or at a certain historical day Determine proper monitoring thresholds based on historical data View Solaris services status details Drill down into a process details View the busiest zones if applicable Where to start To start with OS Analytics, choose the OS asset in the tree and click the Analytics tab. You can see the CPU utilization, Memory utilization and Network utilization, along with the current real time top 5 processes in each category (click the image to see a larger version): In the above screen, you can click each of the top 5 processes to see a more detailed view of that process. Here is an example of one of the processes: One of the cool things is that you can see the process tree for this process along with some port binding and open file descriptors. On Solaris machines with zones, you get an extra level of tabs, allowing you to get more information on the different zones: This is a good way to see the busiest zones. For example, one zone may not take a lot of CPU but it can consume a lot of memory, or perhaps network bandwidth. To see the detailed Analytics for each of the zones, simply click each of the zones in the tree and go to its Analytics tab. Next, click the "Processes" tab to see real time information of all the processes on the machine: An interesting column is the "Target" column. If you configured Ops Center to work with Enterprise Manager Cloud Control, then the two products will talk to each other and Ops Center will display the correlated target from Cloud Control in this table. If you are only using Ops Center - this column will remain empty. Next, if you view a Solaris machine, you will have a "Services" tab: By default, all services will be displayed, but you can choose to display only certain states, for example, those in maintenance or the degraded ones. You can highlight a service and choose to view the details, where you can see the Dependencies, Dependents and also the location of the service log file (not shown in the picture as you need to scroll down to see the log file). The "Threshold" tab is particularly helpful - you can view historical trends of different monitored values and based on the graph - determine what the monitoring values should be: You can ask Ops Center to suggest monitoring levels based on the historical values or you can set your own. The different colors in the graph represent the current set levels: Red for critical, Yellow for warning and Blue for Information, allowing you to quickly see how they're positioned against real data. It's important to note that when looking at longer periods, Ops Center smooths out the data and uses averages. So when looking at values such as CPU Usage, try shorter time frames which are more detailed, such as one hour or one day. Applying new monitoring values When first applying new values to monitored attributes - a popup will come up asking if it's OK to get you out of the current Monitoring Policy. This is OK if you want to either have custom monitoring for a specific machine, or if you want to use this current machine as a "Gold image" and extract a Monitoring Policy from it. You can later apply the new Monitoring Policy to other machines and also set it as a default Monitoring Profile. Once you're done with applying the different monitoring values, you can review and change them in the "Monitoring" tab. You can also click the "Extract a Monitoring Policy" in the actions pane on the right to save all the new values to a new Monitoring Policy, which can then be found under "Plan Management" -> "Monitoring Policies". Visiting the past Under the "History" tab you can "go back in time". This is very helpful when you know that a machine was busy a few hours ago (perhaps in the middle of the night?), but you were not around to take a look at it in real time. Here's a view into yesterday's data on one of the machines: You can see an interesting CPU spike happening at around 3:30 am along with some memory use. In the bottom table you can see the top 5 CPU and Memory consumers at the requested time. Very quickly you can see that this spike is related to the Solaris 11 IPS repository synchronization process using the "pkgrecv" command. The "time machine" doesn't stop here - you can also view historical data to determine which of the zones was the busiest at a given time: Under the hood The data collected is stored on each of the agents under /var/opt/sun/xvm/analytics/historical/ An "os.zip" file exists for the main OS. Inside you will find many small text files, named after the Epoch time stamp in which they were taken If you have any zones, there will be a file called "guests.zip" containing the same small files for all the zones, as well as a folder with the name of the zone along with "os.zip" in it If this is the Enterprise Controller or the Proxy Controller, you will have folders called "proxy" and "sat" in which you will find the "os.zip" for that controller The actual script collecting the data can be viewed for debugging purposes as well: On Linux, the location is: /opt/sun/xvmoc/private/os_analytics/collect On Solaris, the location is /opt/SUNWxvmoc/private/os_analytics/collect If you would like to redirect all the standard error into a file for debugging, touch the following file and the output will go into it: # touch /tmp/.collect.stderr The temporary data is collected under /var/opt/sun/xvm/analytics/.collectdb until it is zipped. If you would like to review the properties for the Analytics, you can view those per each agent in /opt/sun/n1gc/lib/XVM.properties. Find the section "Analytics configurable properties for OS and VSC" to view the Analytics specific values. I hope you find this helpful! Please post questions in the comments below. Eran Steiner

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Oracle @ E20 Conference Boston - Building Social Business

- by Michael Snow

12.00 Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 /* 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-top:0in; mso-para-margin-right:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:10.0pt; mso-para-margin-left:0in; line-height:115%; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-ascii- mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-fareast; mso-hansi- mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;} Oracle WebCenter is The Engagement Platform Powering Exceptional Experiences for Employees, Partners and Customers &amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;span id=&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;quot;XinhaEditingPostion&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;quot;&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;/span&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;lt;p&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt; &amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;/p&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt; The way we work is changing rapidly, offering an enormous competitive advantage to those who embrace the new tools that enable contextual, agile and simplified information exchange and collaboration to distributed workforces and networks of partners and customers. As many of you are aware, Enterprise 2.0 is the term for the technologies and business practices that liberate the workforce from the constraints of legacy communication and productivity tools like email. It provides business managers with access to the right information at the right time through a web of inter-connected applications, services and devices. Enterprise 2.0 makes accessible the collective intelligence of many, translating to a huge competitive advantage in the form of increased innovation, productivity and agility.The Enterprise 2.0 Conference takes a strategic perspective, emphasizing the bigger picture implications of the technology and the exploration of what is at stake for organizations trying to change not only tools, but also culture and process. Beyond discussion of the "why", there will also be in-depth opportunities for learning the "how" that will help you bring Enterprise 2.0 to your business. You won't want to miss this opportunity to learn and hear from leading experts in the fields of technology for business, collaboration, culture change and collective intelligence.Oracle was a proud Gold sponsor of the Enterprise 2.0 Conference, taking place this past week in Boston. For those of you that weren't able to make it - we've made the Oracle Social Network Presentation session available here and have posted the slides below. 12.00 Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 /* 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-top:0in; mso-para-margin-right:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:10.0pt; mso-para-margin-left:0in; line-height:115%; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-ascii- mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-fareast; mso-hansi- mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;} 12.00 Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 /* 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-top:0in; mso-para-margin-right:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:10.0pt; mso-para-margin-left:0in; line-height:115%; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-ascii- mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-fareast; mso-hansi- mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;} The following is intended to outline our general product direction. It is intended for information purposes only, and may not be incorporated into any contract. It is not a commitment to deliver any material, code, or functionality, and should not be relied upon in making purchasing decisions. The development, release, and timing of any features or functionality described for Oracle’s products remains at the sole discretion of Oracle. 12.00 Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 /* 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-top:0in; mso-para-margin-right:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:10.0pt; mso-para-margin-left:0in; line-height:115%; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:11.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-ascii-font-family:Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-fareast; mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;}

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SQL SERVER – Weekly Series – Memory Lane – #035

- by Pinal Dave

Here is the list of selected articles of SQLAuthority.com across all these years. Instead of just listing all the articles I have selected a few of my most favorite articles and have listed them here with additional notes below it. Let me know which one of the following is your favorite article from memory lane. 2007 Row Overflow Data Explanation In SQL Server 2005 one table row can contain more than one varchar(8000) fields. One more thing, the exclusions has exclusions also the limit of each individual column max width of 8000 bytes does not apply to varchar(max), nvarchar(max), varbinary(max), text, image or xml data type columns. Comparison Index Fragmentation, Index De-Fragmentation, Index Rebuild – SQL SERVER 2000 and SQL SERVER 2005 An old but like a gold article. Talks about lots of concepts related to Index and the difference from earlier version to the newer version. I strongly suggest that everyone should read this article just to understand how SQL Server has moved forward with the technology. Improvements in TempDB SQL Server 2005 had come up with quite a lots of improvements and this blog post describes them and explains the same. If you ask me what is my the most favorite article from early career. I must point out to this article as when I wrote this one I personally have learned a lot of new things. Recompile All The Stored Procedure on Specific TableI prefer to recompile all the stored procedure on the table, which has faced mass insert or update. sp_recompiles marks stored procedures to recompile when they execute next time. This blog post explains the same with the help of a script. 2008 SQLAuthority Download – SQL Server Cheatsheet You can download and print this cheat sheet and use it for your personal reference. If you have any suggestions, please let me know and I will see if I can update this SQL Server cheat sheet. Difference Between DBMS and RDBMS What is the difference between DBMS and RDBMS? DBMS – Data Base Management System RDBMS – Relational Data Base Management System or Relational DBMS High Availability – Hot Add Memory Hot Add CPU and Hot Add Memory are extremely interesting features of the SQL Server, however, personally I have not witness them heavily used. These features also have few restriction as well. I blogged about them in detail. 2009 Delete Duplicate Rows I have demonstrated in this blog post how one can identify and delete duplicate rows. Interesting Observation of Logon Trigger On All Servers – Solution The question I put forth in my previous article was – In single login why the trigger fires multiple times; it should be fired only once. I received numerous answers in thread as well as in my MVP private news group. Now, let us discuss the answer for the same. The answer is – It happens because multiple SQL Server services are running as well as intellisense is turned on. Blog post demonstrates how we can do the same with the help of SQL scripts. Management Studio New Features I have selected my favorite 5 features and blogged about it. IntelliSense for Query Editing Multi Server Query Query Editor Regions Object Explorer Enhancements Activity Monitors Maximum Number of Index per Table One of the questions I asked in my user group was – What is the maximum number of Index per table? I received lots of answers to this question but only two answers are correct. Let us now take a look at them in this blog post. 2010 Default Statistics on Column – Automatic Statistics on Column The truth is, Statistics can be in a table even though there is no Index in it. If you have the auto- create and/or auto-update Statistics feature turned on for SQL Server database, Statistics will be automatically created on the Column based on a few conditions. Please read my previously posted article, SQL SERVER – When are Statistics Updated – What triggers Statistics to Update, for the specific conditions when Statistics is updated. 2011 T-SQL Scripts to Find Maximum between Two Numbers In this blog post there are two different scripts listed which demonstrates way to find the maximum number between two numbers. I need your help, which one of the script do you think is the most accurate way to find maximum number? Find Details for Statistics of Whole Database – DMV – T-SQL Script I was recently asked is there a single script which can provide all the necessary details about statistics for any database. This question made me write following script. I was initially planning to use sp_helpstats command but I remembered that this is marked to be deprecated in future. 2012 Introduction to Function SIGN SIGN Function is very fundamental function. It will return the value 1, -1 or 0. If your value is negative it will return you negative -1 and if it is positive it will return you positive +1. Let us start with a simple small example. Template Browser – A Very Important and Useful Feature of SSMS Templates are like a quick cheat sheet or quick reference. Templates are available to create objects like databases, tables, views, indexes, stored procedures, triggers, statistics, and functions. Templates are also available for Analysis Services as well. The template scripts contain parameters to help you customize the code. You can Replace Template Parameters dialog box to insert values into the script. An invalid floating point operation occurred If you run any of the above functions they will give you an error related to invalid floating point. Honestly there is no workaround except passing the function appropriate values. SQRT of a negative number will give you result in real numbers which is not supported at this point of time as well LOG of a negative number is not possible (because logarithm is the inverse function of an exponential function and the exponential function is NEVER negative). Validating Spatial Object with IsValidDetailed Function SQL Server 2012 has introduced the new function IsValidDetailed(). This function has made my life very easy. In simple words, this function will check if the spatial object passed is valid or not. If it is valid it will give information that it is valid. If the spatial object is not valid it will return the answer that it is not valid and the reason for the same. This makes it very easy to debug the issue and make the necessary correction. Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.sqlauthority.com) Filed under: Memory Lane, PostADay, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL Query, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, T SQL, Technology

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XBRL US Conference Highlights

- by john.orourke(at)oracle.com

Back in early November I had an opportunity to attend the XBRL US National Conference in Philadelphia. At the event, XBRL US announced that Oracle had joined the initiative, so I had a chance to participate in a press conference and attend a number of sessions. Oracle joined XBRL US so we can stay ahead of the standard and leverage it in our products, and to help drive awareness with customers and improve adoption of XBRL. There were roughly 250 attendees at the event, about half of which were vendors and consultants and the rest financial reporting staff from corporate filers. Event sponsors included Ernst & Young, SWIFT and Fujitsu. There were also a number of XBRL technology and service providers exhibiting at the conference. On Monday Nov. 8th, the XBRL US Steering Committee meetings and Annual Members meeting and reception were held. At the Annual Members meeting the big news was that current XBRL US President, Mark Bolgiano, is moving to a new position at Howard Hughes Medical Center. Campbell Pryde, who had led the Taxonomy Development for XBRL US, is taking over as XBRL US President. Other items that were highlighted at the members meeting included: The US GAAP XBRL taxonomy is being used by over 1500 SEC filers and has now been handed over to the FASB to maintain and enhance 16 filer training events were held in 2010 XBRL Global Magazine was launched Corporate Actions proposal was submitted to the SEC with SWIFT in May XBRL Labs for iPhone, XBRL US Consistency Suite launched ISO 2022 Corporate Actions Alignment with XBRL achieved The XBRL Credit Rating taxonomy was accepted Tuesday Nov. 9th included Keynotes, General Sessions, Innovation Workshop for Governments and Securities Professionals, and an Opening Reception. General sessions included: Lessons Learned from the SEC's rollout of XBRL. More than 18,000 errors were identified in reviews of filings between June 2009 and September 2010. Most of these related to negative values being used where they shouldn't have. Also, the SEC feels there are too many taxonomy extensions being created - mostly in the Cash Flow Statements. They emphasize using existing elements in the US GAAP taxonomy and advise filers not to create extensions to improve the visual formatting of XBRL filings. Investors and XBRL - Setting the Standard for Data Quality. In this panel discussion, the key learning was that CFA's, academics and the financial community are not using XBRL as expected. The issues raised include the accuracy and completeness of filings, number of taxonomy extensions, and limited number of tools available to help analyze XBRL data. Another big issue that was raised is the lack of historic results in XBRL - most analysts need 10 quarters of historic data. On the positive side, XBRL has the potential to eliminate re-keying of data and errors here and can improve analytic capabilities for financial analysts once more historic data is available and more companies are providing detailed tagging of their filings. A US Roadmap for XBRL Financial Reporting. This was a panel discussion featuring Jeff Neumann(SEC), Campbell Pryde(XBRL US), and Louis Matherne(FASB). Key points included the fact that XBRL is currently used by 1500 companies, with 8000 more companies coming in 2011. XBRL for Mutual Fund Reporting will start in 2011 for 8000 funds, and a Credit Rating Taxonomy has now been submitted for review. The XBRL tagging/filing process is improving each quarter - more education is helping here. The FASB is looking at extensions to date, and potential additions to US GAAP taxonomy, while the SEC is evaluating filings for accuracy, consistency in tagging, and tools for analyzing data. The big news is that the FASB 2011 US GAAP Taxonomy has been completed and reviewed by SEC. The 2011 US GAAP Taxonomy supports new FASB accounting standards issued since 2009, has new taxonomy elements for certain industries (i.e airlines) and the elimination of 500 concepts. (meaning they can't be used going forward but are still supported for historical comparison) The 2011 US GAAP Taxonomy will be available for usage with Q2 2011 SEC filings. More information about this can be found on the FASB web site. http://www.fasb.org/home Accounting Firms and XBRL. This session covered the Role of Audit Firms, which includes awareness and education, validation of XBRL filings, and in-house transition planning. The main advice provided was that organizations should document XBRL mapping process, perform peer comparisons, and risk assessments on a regular basis. Wednesday Nov. 10th included more Keynotes, General Sessions on Corporate Actions, and XBRL Essentials Workshop Training for corporate filers. The XBRL Essentials Training included: Getting Started Once you Have the Basics Detailed Footnote Tagging and Handling Tables Quality Control and Trust in the XBRL Process Bringing XBRL In-House: What are the Options, What should you consider? The US GAAP Financial Reporting Taxonomy - Overview of the 2011 release The XBRL Essentials Training was well-attended with about 80 people. This included a good overview of the SEC's XBRL mandate, limited liability issue, tagging levels, recommended planning process, internal vs. outsourced approach, and how to manage service providers. I learned a lot from the session on detailed tagging. This is the requirement that kicks in during a company's second year of XBRL filing with the SEC and applies to financial statements, footnotes and disclosures (it does not apply to MD&A, executive communications and other information). The review of the Linkbase model, or dimensional table structure, was very interesting and can be complex to understand. The key takeaway here is that using dimensional tables in XBRL filings can help limit the number of taxonomy extensions that are required. The slides from this session are posted on the XBRL US web site. (http://xbrl.us/events/Pages/archive.aspx) For me, the main summary points and takeaways from the XBRL US conference are: XBRL for financial reporting has turned the corner and gone mainstream - with 1500 companies currently using it and 8000 more coming in 2011 The expected value is not being achieved by filers or consumers of XBRL data - this will improve when more companies are filing in XBRL, more history is available, and more software tools are available for analysis (hmm, sounds like an opportunity for Oracle) XBRL is becoming the global standard for all business communications beyond just the financials - i.e. adoption for mutual funds, corporate actions and others planned for the future If you would like to learn more about XBRL and the various training programs, services and software tools that are available check out the XBRL US web site and even better - become a member. Here's a link: http://xbrl.us/Pages/default.aspx

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The Faces in the Crowdsourcing

- by Applications User Experience

By Jeff Sauro, Principal Usability Engineer, Oracle Imagine having access to a global workforce of hundreds of thousands of people who can perform tasks or provide feedback on a design quickly and almost immediately. Distributing simple tasks not easily done by computers to the masses is called "crowdsourcing" and until recently was an interesting concept, but due to practical constraints wasn't used often. Enter Amazon.com. For five years, Amazon has hosted a service called Mechanical Turk, which provides an easy interface to the crowds. The service has almost half a million registered, global users performing a quarter of a million human intelligence tasks (HITs). HITs are submitted by individuals and companies in the U.S. and pay from $.01 for simple tasks (such as determining if a picture is offensive) to several dollars (for tasks like transcribing audio). What do we know about the people who toil away in this digital crowd? Can we rely on the work done in this anonymous marketplace? A rendering of the actual Mechanical Turk (from Wikipedia) Knowing who is behind Amazon's Mechanical Turk is fitting, considering the history of the actual Mechanical Turk. In the late 1800's, a mechanical chess-playing machine awed crowds as it beat master chess players in what was thought to be a mechanical miracle. It turned out that the creator, Wolfgang von Kempelen, had a small person (also a chess master) hiding inside the machine operating the arms to provide the illusion of automation. The field of human computer interaction (HCI) is quite familiar with gathering user input and incorporating it into all stages of the design process. It makes sense then that Mechanical Turk was a popular discussion topic at the recent Computer Human Interaction usability conference sponsored by the Association for Computing Machinery in Atlanta. It is already being used as a source for input on Web sites (for example, Feedbackarmy.com) and behavioral research studies. Two papers shed some light on the faces in this crowd. One paper tells us about the shifting demographics from mostly stay-at-home moms to young men in India. The second paper discusses the reliability and quality of work from the workers. Just who exactly would spend time doing tasks for pennies? In "Who are the crowdworkers?" University of California researchers Ross, Silberman, Zaldivar and Tomlinson conducted a survey of Mechanical Turk worker demographics and compared it to a similar survey done two years before. The initial survey reported workers consisting largely of young, well-educated women living in the U.S. with annual household incomes above $40,000. The more recent survey reveals a shift in demographics largely driven by an influx of workers from India. Indian workers went from 5% to over 30% of the crowd, and this block is largely male (two-thirds) with a higher average education than U.S. workers, and 64% report an annual income of less than $10,000 (keeping in mind $1 has a lot more purchasing power in India). This shifting demographic certainly has implications as language and culture can play critical roles in the outcome of HITs. Of course, the demographic data came from paying Turkers $.10 to fill out a survey, so there is some question about both a self-selection bias (characteristics which cause Turks to take this survey may be unrepresentative of the larger population), not to mention whether we can really trust the data we get from the crowd. Crowds can perform tasks or provide feedback on a design quickly and almost immediately for usability testing. (Photo attributed to victoriapeckham Flikr While having immediate access to a global workforce is nice, one major problem with Mechanical Turk is the incentive structure. Individuals and companies that deploy HITs want quality responses for a low price. Workers, on the other hand, want to complete the task and get paid as quickly as possible, so that they can get on to the next task. Since many HITs on Mechanical Turk are surveys, how valid and reliable are these results? How do we know whether workers are just rushing through the multiple-choice responses haphazardly answering? In "Are your participants gaming the system?" researchers at Carnegie Mellon (Downs, Holbrook, Sheng and Cranor) set up an experiment to find out what percentage of their workers were just in it for the money. The authors set up a 30-minute HIT (one of the more lengthy ones for Mechanical Turk) and offered a very high $4 to those who qualified and $.20 to those who did not. As part of the HIT, workers were asked to read an email and respond to two questions that determined whether workers were likely rushing through the HIT and not answering conscientiously. One question was simple and took little effort, while the second question required a bit more work to find the answer. Workers were led to believe other factors than these two questions were the qualifying aspect of the HIT. Of the 2000 participants, roughly 1200 (or 61%) answered both questions correctly. Eighty-eight percent answered the easy question correctly, and 64% answered the difficult question correctly. In other words, about 12% of the crowd were gaming the system, not paying enough attention to the question or making careless errors. Up to about 40% won't put in more than a modest effort to get paid for a HIT. Young men and those that considered themselves in the financial industry tended to be the most likely to try to game the system. There wasn't a breakdown by country, but given the demographic information from the first article, we could infer that many of these young men come from India, which makes language and other cultural differences a factor. These articles raise questions about the role of crowdsourcing as a means for getting quick user input at low cost. While compensating users for their time is nothing new, the incentive structure and anonymity of Mechanical Turk raises some interesting questions. How complex of a task can we ask of the crowd, and how much should these workers be paid? Can we rely on the information we get from these professional users, and if so, how can we best incorporate it into designing more usable products? Traditional usability testing will still play a central role in enterprise software. Crowdsourcing doesn't replace testing; instead, it makes certain parts of gathering user feedback easier. One can turn to the crowd for simple tasks that don't require specialized skills and get a lot of data fast. As more studies are conducted on Mechanical Turk, I suspect we will see crowdsourcing playing an increasing role in human computer interaction and enterprise computing. References: Downs, J. S., Holbrook, M. B., Sheng, S., and Cranor, L. F. 2010. Are your participants gaming the system?: screening mechanical turk workers. In Proceedings of the 28th international Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (Atlanta, Georgia, USA, April 10 - 15, 2010). CHI '10. ACM, New York, NY, 2399-2402. Link: http://doi.acm.org/10.1145/1753326.1753688 Ross, J., Irani, L., Silberman, M. S., Zaldivar, A., and Tomlinson, B. 2010. Who are the crowdworkers?: shifting demographics in mechanical turk. In Proceedings of the 28th of the international Conference Extended Abstracts on Human Factors in Computing Systems (Atlanta, Georgia, USA, April 10 - 15, 2010). CHI EA '10. ACM, New York, NY, 2863-2872. Link: http://doi.acm.org/10.1145/1753846.1753873

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Expectations + Rewards = Innovation

- by D'Arcy Lussier

“Innovation” is a heavy word. We regard those that embrace it as “Innovators”. We describe organizations as being “Innovative”. We hold those associated with the word in high regard, even though its dictionary definition is very simple: Introducing something new. What our culture has done is wrapped Innovation in white robes and a gold crown. Innovation is rarely just introducing something new. Innovations and innovators are typically associated with other terms: groundbreaking, genius, industry-changing, creative, leading. Being a true innovator and creating innovations are a big deal, and something companies try to strive for…or at least say they strive for. There’s huge value in being recognized as an innovator in an industry, since the idea is that innovation equates to increased profitability. IBM ran an ad a few years back that showed what their view of innovation is: “The point of innovation is to make actual money.” If the money aspect makes you feel uneasy, consider it another way: the point of innovation is to <insert payoff here>. Companies that innovate will be more successful. Non-profits that innovate can better serve their target clients. Governments that innovate can better provide services to their citizens. True innovation is not easy to come by though. As with anything in business, how well an organization will innovate is reliant on the employees it retains, the expectations placed on those employees, and the rewards available to them. In a previous blog post I talked about one formula: Right Employees + Happy Employees = Productive Employees I want to introduce a new one, that builds upon the previous one: Expectations + Rewards = Innovation The level of innovation your organization will realize is directly associated with the expectations you place on your staff and the rewards you make available to them. Expectations We may feel uncomfortable with the idea of placing expectations on our staff, mainly because expectation has somewhat of a negative or cold connotation to it: “I expect you to act this way or else!” The problem is in the or-else part…we focus on the negative aspects of failing to meet expectations instead of looking at the positive side. “I expect you to act this way because it will produce <insert benefit here>”. Expectations should not be set to punish but instead be set to ensure quality. At a recent conference I spoke with some Microsoft employees who told me that you have five years from starting with the company to reach a “Senior” level. If you don’t, then you’re let go. The expectation Microsoft placed on their staff is that they should be working towards improving themselves, taking more responsibility, and thus ensure that there is a constant level of quality in the workforce. Rewards Let me be clear: a paycheck is not a reward. A paycheck is simply the employer’s responsibility in the employee/employer relationship. A paycheck will never be the key motivator to drive innovation. Offering employees something over and above their required compensation can spur them to greater performance and achievement. Working in the food service industry, this tactic was used again and again: whoever has the highest sales over lunch will receive a free lunch/gift certificate/entry into a draw/etc. There was something to strive for, to try beyond the baseline of what our serving jobs were. It was through this that innovative sales techniques would be tried and honed, with key servers being top sellers time and time again. At a code camp I spoke at, I was amazed to see that all the employees from one company receive $100 Visa gift cards as a thank you for taking time to speak. Again, offering something over and above that can give that extra push for employees. Rewards work. But what about the fairness angle? In the restaurant example I gave, there were servers that would never win the competition. They just weren’t good enough at selling and never seemed to get better. So should those that did work at performing better and produce more sales for the restaurant not get rewarded because those who weren’t working at performing better might get upset? Of course not! Organizations succeed because of their top performers and those that strive to join their ranks. The Expectation/Reward Graph While the Expectations + Rewards = Innovation formula may seem like a simple mathematics formula, there’s much more going under the hood. In fact there are three different outcomes that could occur based on what you put in as values for Expectations and Rewards. Consider the graph below and the descriptions that follow: Disgruntled – High Expectation, Low Reward I worked at a company where the mantra was “Company First, Because We Pay You”. Even today I still hear stories of how this sentiment continues to be perpetuated: They provide you a paycheck and a means to live, therefore you should always put them as your top priority. Of course, this is a huge imbalance in the expectation/reward equation. Why would anyone willingly meet high expectations of availability, workload, deadlines, etc. when there is no reward other than a paycheck to show for it? Remember: paychecks are not rewards! Instead, you see employees be disgruntled which not only affects the level of production but also the level of quality within an organization. It also means that you see higher turnover. Complacent – Low Expectation, Low Reward Complacency is a systemic problem that typically exists throughout all levels of an organization. With no real expectations or rewards, nobody needs to excel. In fact, those that do try to innovate, improve, or introduce new things into the organization might be shunned or pushed out by the rest of the staff who are just doing things the same way they’ve always done it. The bigger issue for the organization with low/low values is that at best they’ll never grow beyond their current size (and may shrink actually), and at worst will cease to exist. Entitled – Low Expectation, High Reward It’s one thing to say you have the best people and reward them as such, but its another thing to actually have the best people and reward them as such. Organizations with Entitled employees are the former: their organization provides them with all types of comforts, benefits, and perks. But there’s no requirement before the rewards are dolled out, and there’s no short-list of who receives the rewards. Everyone in the company is treated the same and is given equal share of the spoils. Entitlement is actually almost identical with Complacency with one notable difference: just try to introduce higher expectations into an entitled organization! Entitled employees have been spoiled for so long that they can’t fathom having rewards taken from them, or having to achieve specific levels of performance before attaining them. Those running the organization also buy in to the Entitled sentiment, feeling that they must persist the same level of comforts to appease their staff…even though the quality of the employee pool may be suspect. Innovative – High Expectation, High Reward Finally we have the Innovative organization which places high expectations but also provides high rewards. This organization gets it: if you truly want the best employees you need to apply equal doses of pressure and praise. Realize that I’m not suggesting crazy overtime or un-realistic working conditions. I do not agree with the “Glengary-Glenross” method of encouragement. But as anyone who follows sports can tell you, the teams that win are the ones where the coaches push their players to be their best; to achieve new levels of performance that they didn’t know they could receive. And the result for the players is more money, fame, and opportunity. It’s in this environment that organizations can focus on innovation – true innovation that builds the business and allows everyone involved to truly benefit. In Closing Organizations love to use the word “Innovation” and its derivatives, but very few actually do innovate. For many, the term has just become another marketing buzzword to lump in with all the other business terms that get overused. But for those organizations that truly get the value of innovation, they will be the ones surging forward while other companies simply fade into the background. And they will be the organizations that expect more from their employees, and give them their just rewards.

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Orchestrating the Virtual Enterprise

- by John Murphy

During the American Industrial Revolution, the Ford Motor Company did it all. It turned raw materials into a showroom full of Model Ts. It owned a steel mill, a glass factory, and an automobile assembly line. The company was both self-sufficient and innovative and went on to become one of the largest and most profitable companies in the world. Nowadays, it's unusual for any business to follow this vertical integration model because its much harder to be best in class across such a wide a range of capabilities and services. Instead, businesses focus on their core competencies and outsource other business functions to specialized suppliers. They exchange vertical integration for collaboration. When done well, all parties benefit from this arrangement and the collaboration leads to the creation of an agile, lean and successful "virtual enterprise." Case in point: For Sun hardware, Oracle outsources most of its manufacturing and all of its logistics to third parties. These are vital activities, but ones where Oracle doesn't have a core competency, so we shift them to business partners who do. Within our enterprise, we always retain the core functions of product development, support, and most of the sales function, because that's what constitutes our core value to our customers. This is a perfect example of a virtual enterprise. What are the implications of this? It means that we must exchange direct internal control for indirect external collaboration. This fundamentally changes the relative importance of different business processes, the boundaries of security and information sharing, and the relationship of the supply chain systems to the ERP. The challenge is that the systems required to support this virtual paradigm are still mired in "island enterprise" thinking. But help is at hand. Developments such as the Web, social networks, collaboration, and rules-based orchestration offer great potential to fundamentally re-architect supply chain systems to better support the virtual enterprise. Supply Chain Management Systems in a Virtual Enterprise Historically enterprise software was constructed to automate the ERP - and then the supply chain systems extended the ERP. They were joined at the hip. In virtual enterprises, the supply chain system needs to be ERP agnostic, sitting above each of the ERPs that are distributed across the virtual enterprise - most of which are operating in other businesses. This is vital so that the supply chain system can manage the flow of material and the related information through the multiple enterprises. It has to have strong collaboration tools. It needs to be highly flexible. Users need to be able to see information that's coming from multiple sources and be able to react and respond to events across those sources. Oracle Fusion Distributed Order Orchestration (DOO) is a perfect example of a supply chain system designed to operate in this virtual way. DOO embraces the idea that a company's fulfillment challenge is a distributed, multi-enterprise problem. It enables users to manage the process and the trading partners in a uniform way and deliver a consistent user experience while operating over a heterogeneous, virtual enterprise. This is a fundamental shift at the core of managing supply chains. It forces virtual enterprises to think architecturally about how best to construct their supply chain systems. Case in point, almost everyone has ordered from Amazon.com at one time or another. Our orders are as likely to be fulfilled by third parties as they are by Amazon itself. To deliver the order promptly and efficiently, Amazon has to send it to the right fulfillment location and know the availability in that location. It needs to be able to track status of the fulfillment and deal with exceptions. As a virtual enterprise, Amazon's operations, using thousands of trading partners, requires a very different approach to fulfillment than the traditional 'take an order and ship it from your own warehouse' model. Amazon had no choice but to develop a complex, expensive and custom solution to tackle this problem as there used to be no product solution available. Now, other companies who want to follow similar models have a better off-the-shelf choice -- Oracle Distributed Order Orchestration (DOO). Consider how another of our customers is using our distributed orchestration solution. This major airplane manufacturer has a highly complex business and interacts regularly with the U.S. Government and major airlines. It sits in the middle of an intricate supply chain and needed to improve visibility across its many different entities. Oracle Fusion DOO gives the company an orchestration mechanism so it could improve quality, speed, flexibility, and consistency without requiring an organ transplant of these highly complex legacy systems. Many retailers face the challenge of dealing with brick and mortar, Web, and reseller channels. They all need to be knitted together into a virtual enterprise experience that is consistent for their customers. When a large U.K. grocer with a strong brick and mortar retail operation added an online business, they turned to Oracle Fusion DOO to bring these entities together. Disturbing the Peace with Acquisitions Quite often a company's ERP system is disrupted when it acquires a new company. An acquisition can inject a new set of processes and systems -- or even introduce an entirely new business like Sun's hardware did at Oracle. This challenge has been a driver for some of our DOO customers. A large power management company is using Oracle Fusion DOO to provide the flexibility to rapidly integrate additional products and services into its central fulfillment operation. The Flip Side of Fulfillment Meanwhile, we haven't ignored similar challenges on the supply side of the equation. Specifically, how to manage complex supply in a flexible way when there are multiple trading parties involved? How to manage the supply to suppliers? How to manage critical components that need to merge in a tier two or tier three supply chain? By investing in supply orchestration solutions for the virtual enterprise, we plan to give users better visibility into their network of suppliers to help them drive down costs. We also think this technology and full orchestration process can be applied to the financial side of organizations. An example is transactions that flow through complex internal structures to minimize tax exposure. We can help companies manage those transactions effectively by thinking about the internal organization as a virtual enterprise and bringing the same solution set to this internal challenge. The Clear Front Runner No other company is investing in solving the virtual enterprise supply chain issues like Oracle is. Oracle is in a unique position to become the gold standard in this market space. We have the infrastructure of Oracle technology. We already have an Oracle Fusion DOO application which embraces the best of what's required in this area. And we're absolutely committed to extending our Fusion solution to other use cases and delivering even more business value.

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CodePlex Daily Summary for Monday, August 11, 2014

CodePlex Daily Summary for Monday, August 11, 2014Popular ReleasesSpace Engineers Server Manager: SESM V1.15: V1.15 - Updated Quartz library - Correct a bug in the new mod managment - Added a warning if you have backup enabled on a server but no static map configuredAspose for Apache POI: Missing Features of Apache POI SS - v 1.2: Release contain the Missing Features in Apache POI SS SDK in comparison with Aspose.Cells What's New ? Following Examples: Create Pivot Charts Detect Merged Cells Sort Data Printing Workbooks Feedback and Suggestions Many more examples are available at Aspose Docs. Raise your queries and suggest more examples via Aspose Forums or via this social coding site.AngularGo (SPA Project Template): AngularGo.VS2013.vsix: First ReleaseTouchmote: Touchmote 1.0 beta 13: Changes Less GPU usage Works together with other Xbox 360 controls Bug fixesPublic Key Infrastructure PowerShell module: PowerShell PKI Module v3.0: Important: I would like to hear more about what you are thinking about the project? I appreciate that you like it (2000 downloads over past 6 months), but may be you have to say something? What do you dislike in the module? Maybe you would love to see some new functionality? Tell, what you think! Installation guide:Use default installation path to install this module for current user only. To install this module for all users — enable "Install for all users" check-box in installation UI ...Modern UI for WPF: Modern UI 1.0.6: The ModernUI assembly including a demo app demonstrating the various features of Modern UI for WPF. BREAKING CHANGE LinkGroup.GroupName renamed to GroupKey NEW FEATURES Improved rendering on high DPI screens, including support for per-monitor DPI awareness available in Windows 8.1 (see also Per-monitor DPI awareness) New ModernProgressRing control with 8 builtin styles New LinkCommands.NavigateLink routed command New Visual Studio project templates 'Modern UI WPF App' and 'Modern UI W...ClosedXML - The easy way to OpenXML: ClosedXML 0.74.0: Multiple thread safe improvements including AdjustToContents XLHelper XLColor_Static IntergerExtensions.ToStringLookup Exception now thrown when saving a workbook with no sheets, instead of creating a corrupt workbook Fix for hyperlinks with non-ASCII Characters Added basic workbook protection Fix for error thrown, when a spreadsheet contained comments and images Fix to Trim function Fix Invalid operation Exception thrown when the formula functions MAX, MIN, and AVG referenc...SEToolbox: SEToolbox 01.042.019 Release 1: Added RadioAntenna broadcast name to ship name detail. Added two additional columns for Asteroid material generation for Asteroid Fields. Added Mass and Block number columns to main display. Added Ellipsis to some columns on main display to reduce name confusion. Added correct SE version number in file when saving. Re-added in reattaching Motor when drag/dropping or importing ships (KeenSH have added RotorEntityId back in after removing it months ago). Added option to export and r...jQuery List DragSort: jQuery List DragSort 0.5.2: Fixed scrollContainer removing deprecated use of $.browser so should now work with latest version of jQuery. Added the ability to return false in dragEnd to revert sort order Project changes Added nuget package for dragsort https://www.nuget.org/packages/dragsort Converted repository from SVN to MercurialBraintree Client Library: Braintree 2.32.0: Allow credit card verification options to be passed outside of the nonce for PaymentMethod.create Allow billingaddress parameters and billingaddress_id to be passed outside of the nonce for PaymentMethod.create Add Subscriptions to paypal accounts Add PaymentMethod.update Add failonduplicatepaymentmethod option to PaymentMethod.create Add support for dispute webhooksThe Mario Kart 8 App: V1.0.2.1: First Codeplex release. WINDOWS INSTALLER ONLYAspose Java for Docx4j: Aspose.Words vs Docx4j - v 1.0: Release contain the Code Comparison for Features in Docx4j SDK and Aspose.Words What's New ?Following Examples: Accessing Document Properties Add Bookmarks Convert to Formats Delete Bookmarks Working with Comments Feedback and Suggestions Many more examples are available at Aspose Docs. Raise your queries and suggest more examples via Aspose Forums or via this social coding site.File System Security PowerShell Module: NTFSSecurity 2.4.1: Add-Access and Remove-Access now take multiple accoutsYourSqlDba: YourSqlDba 5.2.1.: This version improves alert message that comes a while after you install the script. First it says to get it from YourSqlDba.CodePlex.com If you don't want to update now, just-rerun the script from your installed version. To get actual version running just execute install.PrintVersionInfo. . You can go to source code / history and click on change set 72957 to see changes in the script.Manipulator: Manipulator: manipulatorXNB filetype plugin for Paint.NET: Paint.NET XNB plugin v0.4.0.0: CHANGELOG Reverted old incomplete changes. Updated library for compatibility with Paint .NET 4. Updated project to NET 4.5. Updated version to 0.4.0.0. INSTALLATION INSTRUCTIONS Extract the ZIP file to your Paint.NET\FileTypes folder.EdiFabric: Release 4.1: Changed MessageContextWix# (WixSharp) - managed interface for WiX: Release 1.0.0.0: Release 1.0.0.0 Custom UI Custom MSI Dialog Custom CLR Dialog External UIMath.NET Numerics: Math.NET Numerics v3.2.0: Linear Algebra: Vector.Map2 (map2 in F#), storage-optimized Linear Algebra: fix RemoveColumn/Row early index bound check (was not strict enough) Statistics: Entropy ~Jeff Mastry Interpolation: use Array.BinarySearch instead of local implementation ~Candy Chiu Resources: fix a corrupted exception message string Portable Build: support .Net 4.0 as well by using profile 328 instead of 344. .Net 3.5: F# extensions now support .Net 3.5 as well .Net 3.5: NuGet package now contains pro...babelua: 1.6.5.1: V1.6.5.1 - 2014.8.7New feature: Formatting code; Stability improvement: fix a bug that pop up error "System.Net.WebResponse EndGetResponse";New ProjectsDouDou: a little project.Dynamic MVC: Dynamically generate views from your model objects for a data centric MVC application.EasyDb - Simple Data Access: EasyDb is a simple library for data access that allows you to write less code.ExpressToAbroad: just go!!!!!Full Silverlight Web Video/Voice Conferencing: The Goal of this project is to provide complete Open Source (Voice/Video Chatting Client/Server) Modules Using SilverlightGaia: Gaia is an app for Windows plataform, Gaia is like Siri and Google Now or Betty but Gaia use only text commands.pxctest: pxctestSTACS: Career Management System for MIT by Team "STACS"StrongWorld: StrongWorld.WebSuiteXevas Tools: Xevas is a professional coders group of 'Nimbuzz'. We make all tools for worldwide users of nimbuzz at free of cost.????????: ????????????????: ???????????????: ??????????????: ??????????????: ??????????????: ??????????????: ??????????????: ????????????????: ????????????????: ???????????????: ???????????????: ??????????????: ??????????????: ??????????????: ??????????????: ??????????????: ??????????????: ??????????????: ???????????????: ???????????????: ??????????????: ??????????????: ??????????????: ????????????????: ????????????????: ???????????????: ???????????????: ??????????????: ??????????????: ??????????????: ??????????????: ??????????????: ??????????????: ??????????????: ??????????????: ??????????????: ??????????????: ??????????????: ??????????????: ??????????????: ??????????????: ??????????????: ??????????????: ??????????????: ???????????????: ???????????????: ??????????????: ??????????????: ??????????????: ???????????????: ???????????????: ??????????????: ??????????????: ??????????????: ??????????????: ??????????????: ??????????????: ??????????????: ??????????????: ??????????????: ??????????????: ??????????????: ??????????????: ??????????????: ??????????????: ??????????????: ??????????????: ??????????????: ??????????????: ??????????????: ??????????????: ??????????????: ??????????????: ??????????????: ??????????????: ??????????????: ??????????????: ??????????????: ??????????????: ??????????????: ??????????????: ??????????????: ??????????????: ??????????????: ??????????????: ??????????????: ??????????????: ??????????????: ??????????????: ??????????????: ???????????????: ???????????????: ??????????????: ??????????????: ??????????????: ???????????????: ????????????????: ???????????????: ??????????????: ??????????????: ??????????????: ??????????????: ??????????????: ??????????????: ???????????????: ???????????????: ??????????????: ??????????????: ??????????????: ??????????????: ??????????????: ??????????????: ??????????????: ??????????????: ???????????????: ???????????????: ??????????????: ??????????????: ??????????????: ??????????????: ????????????????: ????????????????: ??????????????: ??????????????: ??????????????: ??????????????: ??????????????: ??????????????: ??????????????: ??????????????: ??????????????: ??????????????: ??????????????: ??????????????: ??????????????: ???????????????: ???????????????: ??????????????: ??????????????: ??????????????: ????????????????: ?????????

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Java EE 7 Survey Results!

- by reza_rahman

On November 8th, the Java EE EG posted a survey to gather broad community feedback on a number of critical open issues. For reference, you can find the original survey here. We kept the survey open for about three weeks until November 30th. To our delight, over 1100 developers took time out of their busy lives to let their voices be heard! The results of the survey were sent to the EG on December 12th. The subsequent EG discussion is available here. The exact summary sent to the EG is available here. We would like to take this opportunity to thank each and every one the individuals who took the survey. It is very appreciated, encouraging and worth it's weight in gold. In particular, I tried to capture just some of the high-quality, intelligent, thoughtful and professional comments in the summary to the EG. I highly encourage you to continue to stay involved, perhaps through the Adopt-a-JSR program. We would also like to sincerely thank java.net, JavaLobby, TSS and InfoQ for helping spread the word about the survey. Below is a brief summary of the results... APIs to Add to Java EE 7 Full/Web Profile The first question asked which of the four new candidate APIs (WebSocket, JSON-P, JBatch and JCache) should be added to the Java EE 7 Full and Web profile respectively. As the following graph shows, there was significant support for adding all the new APIs to the full profile: Support is relatively the weakest for Batch 1.0, but still good. A lot of folks saw WebSocket 1.0 as a critical technology with comments such as this one: "A modern web application needs Web Sockets as first class citizens" While it is clearly seen as being important, a number of commenters expressed dissatisfaction with the lack of a higher-level JSON data binding API as illustrated by this comment: "How come we don't have a Data Binding API for JSON" JCache was also seen as being very important as expressed with comments like: "JCache should really be that foundational technology on which other specs have no fear to depend on" The results for the Web Profile is not surprising. While there is strong support for adding WebSocket 1.0 and JSON-P 1.0 to the Web Profile, support for adding JCache 1.0 and Batch 1.0 is relatively weak. There was actually significant opposition to adding Batch 1. 0 (with 51.8% casting a 'No' vote). Enabling CDI by Default The second question asked was whether CDI should be enabled in Java EE environments by default. A significant majority of 73.3% developers supported enabling CDI, only 13.8% opposed. Comments such as these two reflect a strong general support for CDI as well as a desire for better Java EE alignment with CDI: "CDI makes Java EE quite valuable!" "Would prefer to unify EJB, CDI and JSF lifecycles" There is, however, a palpable concern around the performance impact of enabling CDI by default as exemplified by this comment: "Java EE projects in most cases use CDI, hence it is sensible to enable CDI by default when creating a Java EE application. However, there are several issues if CDI is enabled by default: scanning can be slow - not all libs use CDI (hence, scanning is not needed)" Another significant concern appears to be around backwards compatibility and conflict with other JSR 330 implementations like Spring: "I am leaning towards yes, however can easily imagine situations where errors would be caused by automatically activating CDI, especially in cases of backward compatibility where another DI engine (such as Spring and the like) happens to use the same mechanics to inject dependencies and in that case there would be an overlap in injections and probably an uncertain outcome" Some commenters such as this one attempt to suggest solutions to these potential issues: "If you have Spring in use and use javax.inject.Inject then you might get some unexpected behavior that could be equally confusing. I guess there will be a way to switch CDI off. I'm tempted to say yes but am cautious for this reason" Consistent Usage of @Inject The third question was around using CDI/JSR 330 @Inject consistently vs. allowing JSRs to create their own injection annotations. A slight majority of 53.3% developers supported using @Inject consistently across JSRs. 28.8% said using custom injection annotations is OK, while 18.0% were not sure. The vast majority of commenters were strongly supportive of CDI and general Java EE alignment with CDI as illistrated by these comments: "Dependency Injection should be standard from now on in EE. It should use CDI as that is the DI mechanism in EE and is quite powerful. Having a new JSR specific DI mechanism to deal with just means more reflection, more proxies. JSRs should also be constructed to allow some of their objects Injectable. @Inject @TransactionalCache or @Inject @JMXBean etc...they should define the annotations and stereotypes to make their code less procedural. Dog food it. If there is a shortcoming in CDI for a JSR fix it and we will all be grateful" "We're trying to make this a comprehensive platform, right? Injection should be a fundamental part of the platform; everything else should build on the same common infrastructure. Each-having-their-own is just a recipe for chaos and having to learn the same thing 10 different ways" Expanding the Use of @Stereotype The fourth question was about expanding CDI @Stereotype to cover annotations across Java EE beyond just CDI. A significant majority of 62.3% developers supported expanding the use of @Stereotype, only 13.3% opposed. A majority of commenters supported the idea as well as the theme of general CDI/Java EE alignment as expressed in these examples: "Just like defining new types for (compositions of) existing classes, stereotypes can help make software development easier" "This is especially important if many EJB services are decoupled from the EJB component model and can be applied via individual annotations to Java EE components. @Stateless is a nicely compact annotation. Code will not improve if that will have to be applied in the future as @Transactional, @Pooled, @Secured, @Singlethreaded, @...." Some, however, expressed concerns around increased complexity such as this commenter: "Could be very convenient, but I'm afraid if it wouldn't make some important class annotations less visible" Expanding Interceptor Use The final set of questions was about expanding interceptors further across Java EE... A very solid 96.3% of developers wanted to expand interceptor use to all Java EE components. 35.7% even wanted to expand interceptors to other Java EE managed classes. Most developers (54.9%) were not sure if there is any place that injection is supported that should not support interceptors. 32.8% thought any place that supports injection should also support interceptors. Only 12.2% were certain that there are places where injection should be supported but not interceptors. The comments reflected the diversity of opinions, generally supportive of interceptors: "I think interceptors are as fundamental as injection and should be available anywhere in the platform" "The whole usage of interceptors still needs to take hold in Java programming, but it is a powerful technology that needs some time in the Sun. Basically it should become part of Java SE, maybe the next step after lambas?" A distinct chain of thought separated interceptors from filters and listeners: "I think that the Servlet API already provides a rich set of possibilities to hook yourself into different Servlet container events. I don't find a need to 'pollute' the Servlet model with the Interceptors API"

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Problem with setup VPN in Ubuntu Server 12.04

- by Yozone W.

I have a problem with setup VPN server on my Ubuntu VPS, here is my server environments: Ubuntu Server 12.04 x86_64 xl2tpd 1.3.1+dfsg-1 pppd 2.4.5-5ubuntu1 openswan 1:2.6.38-1~precise1 After install software and configuration: ipsec verify Checking your system to see if IPsec got installed and started correctly: Version check and ipsec on-path [OK] Linux Openswan U2.6.38/K3.2.0-24-virtual (netkey) Checking for IPsec support in kernel [OK] SAref kernel support [N/A] NETKEY: Testing XFRM related proc values [OK] [OK] [OK] Checking that pluto is running [OK] Pluto listening for IKE on udp 500 [OK] Pluto listening for NAT-T on udp 4500 [OK] Checking for 'ip' command [OK] Checking /bin/sh is not /bin/dash [WARNING] Checking for 'iptables' command [OK] Opportunistic Encryption Support [DISABLED] /var/log/auth.log message: Oct 16 06:50:54 vpn pluto[3963]: packet from [My IP Address]:2251: received Vendor ID payload [RFC 3947] method set to=115 Oct 16 06:50:54 vpn pluto[3963]: packet from [My IP Address]:2251: received Vendor ID payload [draft-ietf-ipsec-nat-t-ike] meth=114, but already using method 115 Oct 16 06:50:54 vpn pluto[3963]: packet from [My IP Address]:2251: received Vendor ID payload [draft-ietf-ipsec-nat-t-ike-08] meth=113, but already using method 115 Oct 16 06:50:54 vpn pluto[3963]: packet from [My IP Address]:2251: received Vendor ID payload [draft-ietf-ipsec-nat-t-ike-07] meth=112, but already using method 115 Oct 16 06:50:54 vpn pluto[3963]: packet from [My IP Address]:2251: received Vendor ID payload [draft-ietf-ipsec-nat-t-ike-06] meth=111, but already using method 115 Oct 16 06:50:54 vpn pluto[3963]: packet from [My IP Address]:2251: received Vendor ID payload [draft-ietf-ipsec-nat-t-ike-05] meth=110, but already using method 115 Oct 16 06:50:54 vpn pluto[3963]: packet from [My IP Address]:2251: received Vendor ID payload [draft-ietf-ipsec-nat-t-ike-04] meth=109, but already using method 115 Oct 16 06:50:54 vpn pluto[3963]: packet from [My IP Address]:2251: received Vendor ID payload [draft-ietf-ipsec-nat-t-ike-03] meth=108, but already using method 115 Oct 16 06:50:54 vpn pluto[3963]: packet from [My IP Address]:2251: received Vendor ID payload [draft-ietf-ipsec-nat-t-ike-02] meth=107, but already using method 115 Oct 16 06:50:54 vpn pluto[3963]: packet from [My IP Address]:2251: received Vendor ID payload [draft-ietf-ipsec-nat-t-ike-02_n] meth=106, but already using method 115 Oct 16 06:50:54 vpn pluto[3963]: packet from [My IP Address]:2251: ignoring Vendor ID payload [FRAGMENTATION 80000000] Oct 16 06:50:54 vpn pluto[3963]: packet from [My IP Address]:2251: received Vendor ID payload [Dead Peer Detection] Oct 16 06:50:54 vpn pluto[3963]: "L2TP-PSK-NAT"[5] [My IP Address] #5: responding to Main Mode from unknown peer [My IP Address] Oct 16 06:50:54 vpn pluto[3963]: "L2TP-PSK-NAT"[5] [My IP Address] #5: transition from state STATE_MAIN_R0 to state STATE_MAIN_R1 Oct 16 06:50:54 vpn pluto[3963]: "L2TP-PSK-NAT"[5] [My IP Address] #5: STATE_MAIN_R1: sent MR1, expecting MI2 Oct 16 06:50:55 vpn pluto[3963]: "L2TP-PSK-NAT"[5] [My IP Address] #5: NAT-Traversal: Result using draft-ietf-ipsec-nat-t-ike (MacOS X): peer is NATed Oct 16 06:50:55 vpn pluto[3963]: "L2TP-PSK-NAT"[5] [My IP Address] #5: transition from state STATE_MAIN_R1 to state STATE_MAIN_R2 Oct 16 06:50:55 vpn pluto[3963]: "L2TP-PSK-NAT"[5] [My IP Address] #5: STATE_MAIN_R2: sent MR2, expecting MI3 Oct 16 06:50:55 vpn pluto[3963]: "L2TP-PSK-NAT"[5] [My IP Address] #5: ignoring informational payload, type IPSEC_INITIAL_CONTACT msgid=00000000 Oct 16 06:50:55 vpn pluto[3963]: "L2TP-PSK-NAT"[5] [My IP Address] #5: Main mode peer ID is ID_IPV4_ADDR: '192.168.12.52' Oct 16 06:50:55 vpn pluto[3963]: "L2TP-PSK-NAT"[5] [My IP Address] #5: switched from "L2TP-PSK-NAT" to "L2TP-PSK-NAT" Oct 16 06:50:55 vpn pluto[3963]: "L2TP-PSK-NAT"[6] [My IP Address] #5: deleting connection "L2TP-PSK-NAT" instance with peer [My IP Address] {isakmp=#0/ipsec=#0} Oct 16 06:50:55 vpn pluto[3963]: "L2TP-PSK-NAT"[6] [My IP Address] #5: transition from state STATE_MAIN_R2 to state STATE_MAIN_R3 Oct 16 06:50:55 vpn pluto[3963]: "L2TP-PSK-NAT"[6] [My IP Address] #5: new NAT mapping for #5, was [My IP Address]:2251, now [My IP Address]:2847 Oct 16 06:50:55 vpn pluto[3963]: "L2TP-PSK-NAT"[6] [My IP Address] #5: STATE_MAIN_R3: sent MR3, ISAKMP SA established {auth=OAKLEY_PRESHARED_KEY cipher=aes_256 prf=oakley_sha group=modp1024} Oct 16 06:50:55 vpn pluto[3963]: "L2TP-PSK-NAT"[6] [My IP Address] #5: Dead Peer Detection (RFC 3706): enabled Oct 16 06:50:56 vpn pluto[3963]: "L2TP-PSK-NAT"[6] [My IP Address] #5: the peer proposed: [My Server IP Address]/32:17/1701 -> 192.168.12.52/32:17/0 Oct 16 06:50:56 vpn pluto[3963]: "L2TP-PSK-NAT"[6] [My IP Address] #5: NAT-Traversal: received 2 NAT-OA. using first, ignoring others Oct 16 06:50:56 vpn pluto[3963]: "L2TP-PSK-NAT"[6] [My IP Address] #6: responding to Quick Mode proposal {msgid:8579b1fb} Oct 16 06:50:56 vpn pluto[3963]: "L2TP-PSK-NAT"[6] [My IP Address] #6: us: [My Server IP Address]<[My Server IP Address]>:17/1701 Oct 16 06:50:56 vpn pluto[3963]: "L2TP-PSK-NAT"[6] [My IP Address] #6: them: [My IP Address][192.168.12.52]:17/65280===192.168.12.52/32 Oct 16 06:50:56 vpn pluto[3963]: "L2TP-PSK-NAT"[6] [My IP Address] #6: transition from state STATE_QUICK_R0 to state STATE_QUICK_R1 Oct 16 06:50:56 vpn pluto[3963]: "L2TP-PSK-NAT"[6] [My IP Address] #6: STATE_QUICK_R1: sent QR1, inbound IPsec SA installed, expecting QI2 Oct 16 06:50:56 vpn pluto[3963]: "L2TP-PSK-NAT"[6] [My IP Address] #6: Dead Peer Detection (RFC 3706): enabled Oct 16 06:50:56 vpn pluto[3963]: "L2TP-PSK-NAT"[6] [My IP Address] #6: transition from state STATE_QUICK_R1 to state STATE_QUICK_R2 Oct 16 06:50:56 vpn pluto[3963]: "L2TP-PSK-NAT"[6] [My IP Address] #6: STATE_QUICK_R2: IPsec SA established transport mode {ESP=>0x08bda158 <0x4920a374 xfrm=AES_256-HMAC_SHA1 NATOA=192.168.12.52 NATD=[My IP Address]:2847 DPD=enabled} Oct 16 06:51:16 vpn pluto[3963]: "L2TP-PSK-NAT"[6] [My IP Address] #5: received Delete SA(0x08bda158) payload: deleting IPSEC State #6 Oct 16 06:51:16 vpn pluto[3963]: "L2TP-PSK-NAT"[6] [My IP Address] #5: ERROR: netlink XFRM_MSG_DELPOLICY response for flow eroute_connection delete included errno 2: No such file or directory Oct 16 06:51:16 vpn pluto[3963]: "L2TP-PSK-NAT"[6] [My IP Address] #5: received and ignored informational message Oct 16 06:51:16 vpn pluto[3963]: "L2TP-PSK-NAT"[6] [My IP Address] #5: received Delete SA payload: deleting ISAKMP State #5 Oct 16 06:51:16 vpn pluto[3963]: "L2TP-PSK-NAT"[6] [My IP Address]: deleting connection "L2TP-PSK-NAT" instance with peer [My IP Address] {isakmp=#0/ipsec=#0} Oct 16 06:51:16 vpn pluto[3963]: packet from [My IP Address]:2847: received and ignored informational message xl2tpd -D message: xl2tpd[4289]: Enabling IPsec SAref processing for L2TP transport mode SAs xl2tpd[4289]: IPsec SAref does not work with L2TP kernel mode yet, enabling forceuserspace=yes xl2tpd[4289]: setsockopt recvref[30]: Protocol not available xl2tpd[4289]: This binary does not support kernel L2TP. xl2tpd[4289]: xl2tpd version xl2tpd-1.3.1 started on vpn.netools.me PID:4289 xl2tpd[4289]: Written by Mark Spencer, Copyright (C) 1998, Adtran, Inc. xl2tpd[4289]: Forked by Scott Balmos and David Stipp, (C) 2001 xl2tpd[4289]: Inherited by Jeff McAdams, (C) 2002 xl2tpd[4289]: Forked again by Xelerance (www.xelerance.com) (C) 2006 xl2tpd[4289]: Listening on IP address [My Server IP Address], port 1701 Then it just stopped here, and have no any response. I can't connect VPN on my mac client, the /var/log/system.log message: Oct 16 15:17:36 azone-iMac.local configd[17]: SCNC: start, triggered by SystemUIServer, type L2TP, status 0 Oct 16 15:17:36 azone-iMac.local pppd[3799]: pppd 2.4.2 (Apple version 596.13) started by azone, uid 501 Oct 16 15:17:38 azone-iMac.local pppd[3799]: L2TP connecting to server 'vpn.netools.me' ([My Server IP Address])... Oct 16 15:17:38 azone-iMac.local pppd[3799]: IPSec connection started Oct 16 15:17:38 azone-iMac.local racoon[359]: Connecting. Oct 16 15:17:38 azone-iMac.local racoon[359]: IPSec Phase1 started (Initiated by me). Oct 16 15:17:38 azone-iMac.local racoon[359]: IKE Packet: transmit success. (Initiator, Main-Mode message 1). Oct 16 15:17:38 azone-iMac.local racoon[359]: IKE Packet: receive success. (Initiator, Main-Mode message 2). Oct 16 15:17:38 azone-iMac.local racoon[359]: IKE Packet: transmit success. (Initiator, Main-Mode message 3). Oct 16 15:17:38 azone-iMac.local racoon[359]: IKE Packet: receive success. (Initiator, Main-Mode message 4). Oct 16 15:17:38 azone-iMac.local racoon[359]: IKE Packet: transmit success. (Initiator, Main-Mode message 5). Oct 16 15:17:38 azone-iMac.local racoon[359]: IKEv1 Phase1 AUTH: success. (Initiator, Main-Mode Message 6). Oct 16 15:17:38 azone-iMac.local racoon[359]: IKE Packet: receive success. (Initiator, Main-Mode message 6). Oct 16 15:17:38 azone-iMac.local racoon[359]: IKEv1 Phase1 Initiator: success. (Initiator, Main-Mode). Oct 16 15:17:38 azone-iMac.local racoon[359]: IPSec Phase1 established (Initiated by me). Oct 16 15:17:39 azone-iMac.local racoon[359]: IPSec Phase2 started (Initiated by me). Oct 16 15:17:39 azone-iMac.local racoon[359]: IKE Packet: transmit success. (Initiator, Quick-Mode message 1). Oct 16 15:17:39 azone-iMac.local racoon[359]: IKE Packet: receive success. (Initiator, Quick-Mode message 2). Oct 16 15:17:39 azone-iMac.local racoon[359]: IKE Packet: transmit success. (Initiator, Quick-Mode message 3). Oct 16 15:17:39 azone-iMac.local racoon[359]: IKEv1 Phase2 Initiator: success. (Initiator, Quick-Mode). Oct 16 15:17:39 azone-iMac.local racoon[359]: IPSec Phase2 established (Initiated by me). Oct 16 15:17:39 azone-iMac.local pppd[3799]: IPSec connection established Oct 16 15:17:59 azone-iMac.local pppd[3799]: L2TP cannot connect to the server Oct 16 15:17:59 azone-iMac.local racoon[359]: IPSec disconnecting from server [My Server IP Address] Oct 16 15:17:59 azone-iMac.local racoon[359]: IKE Packet: transmit success. (Information message). Oct 16 15:17:59 azone-iMac.local racoon[359]: IKEv1 Information-Notice: transmit success. (Delete IPSEC-SA). Oct 16 15:17:59 azone-iMac.local racoon[359]: IKE Packet: transmit success. (Information message). Oct 16 15:17:59 azone-iMac.local racoon[359]: IKEv1 Information-Notice: transmit success. (Delete ISAKMP-SA). Anyone help? Thanks a million!

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Problem with setup VPN on Ubuntu Server 12.04

- by Yozone W.

I have a problem with setup VPN server on my Ubuntu VPS, here is my server environments: Ubuntu Server 12.04 x86_64 xl2tpd 1.3.1+dfsg-1 pppd 2.4.5-5ubuntu1 openswan 1:2.6.38-1~precise1 After install software and configuration: ipsec verify Checking your system to see if IPsec got installed and started correctly: Version check and ipsec on-path [OK] Linux Openswan U2.6.38/K3.2.0-24-virtual (netkey) Checking for IPsec support in kernel [OK] SAref kernel support [N/A] NETKEY: Testing XFRM related proc values [OK] [OK] [OK] Checking that pluto is running [OK] Pluto listening for IKE on udp 500 [OK] Pluto listening for NAT-T on udp 4500 [OK] Checking for 'ip' command [OK] Checking /bin/sh is not /bin/dash [WARNING] Checking for 'iptables' command [OK] Opportunistic Encryption Support [DISABLED] /var/log/auth.log message: Oct 16 06:50:54 vpn pluto[3963]: packet from [My IP Address]:2251: received Vendor ID payload [RFC 3947] method set to=115 Oct 16 06:50:54 vpn pluto[3963]: packet from [My IP Address]:2251: received Vendor ID payload [draft-ietf-ipsec-nat-t-ike] meth=114, but already using method 115 Oct 16 06:50:54 vpn pluto[3963]: packet from [My IP Address]:2251: received Vendor ID payload [draft-ietf-ipsec-nat-t-ike-08] meth=113, but already using method 115 Oct 16 06:50:54 vpn pluto[3963]: packet from [My IP Address]:2251: received Vendor ID payload [draft-ietf-ipsec-nat-t-ike-07] meth=112, but already using method 115 Oct 16 06:50:54 vpn pluto[3963]: packet from [My IP Address]:2251: received Vendor ID payload [draft-ietf-ipsec-nat-t-ike-06] meth=111, but already using method 115 Oct 16 06:50:54 vpn pluto[3963]: packet from [My IP Address]:2251: received Vendor ID payload [draft-ietf-ipsec-nat-t-ike-05] meth=110, but already using method 115 Oct 16 06:50:54 vpn pluto[3963]: packet from [My IP Address]:2251: received Vendor ID payload [draft-ietf-ipsec-nat-t-ike-04] meth=109, but already using method 115 Oct 16 06:50:54 vpn pluto[3963]: packet from [My IP Address]:2251: received Vendor ID payload [draft-ietf-ipsec-nat-t-ike-03] meth=108, but already using method 115 Oct 16 06:50:54 vpn pluto[3963]: packet from [My IP Address]:2251: received Vendor ID payload [draft-ietf-ipsec-nat-t-ike-02] meth=107, but already using method 115 Oct 16 06:50:54 vpn pluto[3963]: packet from [My IP Address]:2251: received Vendor ID payload [draft-ietf-ipsec-nat-t-ike-02_n] meth=106, but already using method 115 Oct 16 06:50:54 vpn pluto[3963]: packet from [My IP Address]:2251: ignoring Vendor ID payload [FRAGMENTATION 80000000] Oct 16 06:50:54 vpn pluto[3963]: packet from [My IP Address]:2251: received Vendor ID payload [Dead Peer Detection] Oct 16 06:50:54 vpn pluto[3963]: "L2TP-PSK-NAT"[5] [My IP Address] #5: responding to Main Mode from unknown peer [My IP Address] Oct 16 06:50:54 vpn pluto[3963]: "L2TP-PSK-NAT"[5] [My IP Address] #5: transition from state STATE_MAIN_R0 to state STATE_MAIN_R1 Oct 16 06:50:54 vpn pluto[3963]: "L2TP-PSK-NAT"[5] [My IP Address] #5: STATE_MAIN_R1: sent MR1, expecting MI2 Oct 16 06:50:55 vpn pluto[3963]: "L2TP-PSK-NAT"[5] [My IP Address] #5: NAT-Traversal: Result using draft-ietf-ipsec-nat-t-ike (MacOS X): peer is NATed Oct 16 06:50:55 vpn pluto[3963]: "L2TP-PSK-NAT"[5] [My IP Address] #5: transition from state STATE_MAIN_R1 to state STATE_MAIN_R2 Oct 16 06:50:55 vpn pluto[3963]: "L2TP-PSK-NAT"[5] [My IP Address] #5: STATE_MAIN_R2: sent MR2, expecting MI3 Oct 16 06:50:55 vpn pluto[3963]: "L2TP-PSK-NAT"[5] [My IP Address] #5: ignoring informational payload, type IPSEC_INITIAL_CONTACT msgid=00000000 Oct 16 06:50:55 vpn pluto[3963]: "L2TP-PSK-NAT"[5] [My IP Address] #5: Main mode peer ID is ID_IPV4_ADDR: '192.168.12.52' Oct 16 06:50:55 vpn pluto[3963]: "L2TP-PSK-NAT"[5] [My IP Address] #5: switched from "L2TP-PSK-NAT" to "L2TP-PSK-NAT" Oct 16 06:50:55 vpn pluto[3963]: "L2TP-PSK-NAT"[6] [My IP Address] #5: deleting connection "L2TP-PSK-NAT" instance with peer [My IP Address] {isakmp=#0/ipsec=#0} Oct 16 06:50:55 vpn pluto[3963]: "L2TP-PSK-NAT"[6] [My IP Address] #5: transition from state STATE_MAIN_R2 to state STATE_MAIN_R3 Oct 16 06:50:55 vpn pluto[3963]: "L2TP-PSK-NAT"[6] [My IP Address] #5: new NAT mapping for #5, was [My IP Address]:2251, now [My IP Address]:2847 Oct 16 06:50:55 vpn pluto[3963]: "L2TP-PSK-NAT"[6] [My IP Address] #5: STATE_MAIN_R3: sent MR3, ISAKMP SA established {auth=OAKLEY_PRESHARED_KEY cipher=aes_256 prf=oakley_sha group=modp1024} Oct 16 06:50:55 vpn pluto[3963]: "L2TP-PSK-NAT"[6] [My IP Address] #5: Dead Peer Detection (RFC 3706): enabled Oct 16 06:50:56 vpn pluto[3963]: "L2TP-PSK-NAT"[6] [My IP Address] #5: the peer proposed: [My Server IP Address]/32:17/1701 -> 192.168.12.52/32:17/0 Oct 16 06:50:56 vpn pluto[3963]: "L2TP-PSK-NAT"[6] [My IP Address] #5: NAT-Traversal: received 2 NAT-OA. using first, ignoring others Oct 16 06:50:56 vpn pluto[3963]: "L2TP-PSK-NAT"[6] [My IP Address] #6: responding to Quick Mode proposal {msgid:8579b1fb} Oct 16 06:50:56 vpn pluto[3963]: "L2TP-PSK-NAT"[6] [My IP Address] #6: us: [My Server IP Address]<[My Server IP Address]>:17/1701 Oct 16 06:50:56 vpn pluto[3963]: "L2TP-PSK-NAT"[6] [My IP Address] #6: them: [My IP Address][192.168.12.52]:17/65280===192.168.12.52/32 Oct 16 06:50:56 vpn pluto[3963]: "L2TP-PSK-NAT"[6] [My IP Address] #6: transition from state STATE_QUICK_R0 to state STATE_QUICK_R1 Oct 16 06:50:56 vpn pluto[3963]: "L2TP-PSK-NAT"[6] [My IP Address] #6: STATE_QUICK_R1: sent QR1, inbound IPsec SA installed, expecting QI2 Oct 16 06:50:56 vpn pluto[3963]: "L2TP-PSK-NAT"[6] [My IP Address] #6: Dead Peer Detection (RFC 3706): enabled Oct 16 06:50:56 vpn pluto[3963]: "L2TP-PSK-NAT"[6] [My IP Address] #6: transition from state STATE_QUICK_R1 to state STATE_QUICK_R2 Oct 16 06:50:56 vpn pluto[3963]: "L2TP-PSK-NAT"[6] [My IP Address] #6: STATE_QUICK_R2: IPsec SA established transport mode {ESP=>0x08bda158 <0x4920a374 xfrm=AES_256-HMAC_SHA1 NATOA=192.168.12.52 NATD=[My IP Address]:2847 DPD=enabled} Oct 16 06:51:16 vpn pluto[3963]: "L2TP-PSK-NAT"[6] [My IP Address] #5: received Delete SA(0x08bda158) payload: deleting IPSEC State #6 Oct 16 06:51:16 vpn pluto[3963]: "L2TP-PSK-NAT"[6] [My IP Address] #5: ERROR: netlink XFRM_MSG_DELPOLICY response for flow eroute_connection delete included errno 2: No such file or directory Oct 16 06:51:16 vpn pluto[3963]: "L2TP-PSK-NAT"[6] [My IP Address] #5: received and ignored informational message Oct 16 06:51:16 vpn pluto[3963]: "L2TP-PSK-NAT"[6] [My IP Address] #5: received Delete SA payload: deleting ISAKMP State #5 Oct 16 06:51:16 vpn pluto[3963]: "L2TP-PSK-NAT"[6] [My IP Address]: deleting connection "L2TP-PSK-NAT" instance with peer [My IP Address] {isakmp=#0/ipsec=#0} Oct 16 06:51:16 vpn pluto[3963]: packet from [My IP Address]:2847: received and ignored informational message xl2tpd -D message: xl2tpd[4289]: Enabling IPsec SAref processing for L2TP transport mode SAs xl2tpd[4289]: IPsec SAref does not work with L2TP kernel mode yet, enabling forceuserspace=yes xl2tpd[4289]: setsockopt recvref[30]: Protocol not available xl2tpd[4289]: This binary does not support kernel L2TP. xl2tpd[4289]: xl2tpd version xl2tpd-1.3.1 started on vpn.netools.me PID:4289 xl2tpd[4289]: Written by Mark Spencer, Copyright (C) 1998, Adtran, Inc. xl2tpd[4289]: Forked by Scott Balmos and David Stipp, (C) 2001 xl2tpd[4289]: Inherited by Jeff McAdams, (C) 2002 xl2tpd[4289]: Forked again by Xelerance (www.xelerance.com) (C) 2006 xl2tpd[4289]: Listening on IP address [My Server IP Address], port 1701 Then it just stopped here, and have no any response. I can't connect VPN on my mac client, the /var/log/system.log message: Oct 16 15:17:36 azone-iMac.local configd[17]: SCNC: start, triggered by SystemUIServer, type L2TP, status 0 Oct 16 15:17:36 azone-iMac.local pppd[3799]: pppd 2.4.2 (Apple version 596.13) started by azone, uid 501 Oct 16 15:17:38 azone-iMac.local pppd[3799]: L2TP connecting to server 'vpn.netools.me' ([My Server IP Address])... Oct 16 15:17:38 azone-iMac.local pppd[3799]: IPSec connection started Oct 16 15:17:38 azone-iMac.local racoon[359]: Connecting. Oct 16 15:17:38 azone-iMac.local racoon[359]: IPSec Phase1 started (Initiated by me). Oct 16 15:17:38 azone-iMac.local racoon[359]: IKE Packet: transmit success. (Initiator, Main-Mode message 1). Oct 16 15:17:38 azone-iMac.local racoon[359]: IKE Packet: receive success. (Initiator, Main-Mode message 2). Oct 16 15:17:38 azone-iMac.local racoon[359]: IKE Packet: transmit success. (Initiator, Main-Mode message 3). Oct 16 15:17:38 azone-iMac.local racoon[359]: IKE Packet: receive success. (Initiator, Main-Mode message 4). Oct 16 15:17:38 azone-iMac.local racoon[359]: IKE Packet: transmit success. (Initiator, Main-Mode message 5). Oct 16 15:17:38 azone-iMac.local racoon[359]: IKEv1 Phase1 AUTH: success. (Initiator, Main-Mode Message 6). Oct 16 15:17:38 azone-iMac.local racoon[359]: IKE Packet: receive success. (Initiator, Main-Mode message 6). Oct 16 15:17:38 azone-iMac.local racoon[359]: IKEv1 Phase1 Initiator: success. (Initiator, Main-Mode). Oct 16 15:17:38 azone-iMac.local racoon[359]: IPSec Phase1 established (Initiated by me). Oct 16 15:17:39 azone-iMac.local racoon[359]: IPSec Phase2 started (Initiated by me). Oct 16 15:17:39 azone-iMac.local racoon[359]: IKE Packet: transmit success. (Initiator, Quick-Mode message 1). Oct 16 15:17:39 azone-iMac.local racoon[359]: IKE Packet: receive success. (Initiator, Quick-Mode message 2). Oct 16 15:17:39 azone-iMac.local racoon[359]: IKE Packet: transmit success. (Initiator, Quick-Mode message 3). Oct 16 15:17:39 azone-iMac.local racoon[359]: IKEv1 Phase2 Initiator: success. (Initiator, Quick-Mode). Oct 16 15:17:39 azone-iMac.local racoon[359]: IPSec Phase2 established (Initiated by me). Oct 16 15:17:39 azone-iMac.local pppd[3799]: IPSec connection established Oct 16 15:17:59 azone-iMac.local pppd[3799]: L2TP cannot connect to the server Oct 16 15:17:59 azone-iMac.local racoon[359]: IPSec disconnecting from server [My Server IP Address] Oct 16 15:17:59 azone-iMac.local racoon[359]: IKE Packet: transmit success. (Information message). Oct 16 15:17:59 azone-iMac.local racoon[359]: IKEv1 Information-Notice: transmit success. (Delete IPSEC-SA). Oct 16 15:17:59 azone-iMac.local racoon[359]: IKE Packet: transmit success. (Information message). Oct 16 15:17:59 azone-iMac.local racoon[359]: IKEv1 Information-Notice: transmit success. (Delete ISAKMP-SA). Anyone help? Thanks a million!

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CodePlex Daily Summary for Tuesday, March 02, 2010

CodePlex Daily Summary for Tuesday, March 02, 2010New ProjectsAcceptance Test Excel Addin: Acceptance Test Excel Addin is a tool to author, execute and analyze acceptance tests in Excel. The tester write tests using Given-When-Then (Gherk...Adrastus: Related to manage Issue/Item of any type. To be defined later TBDAn opportunity of upgrading Linux operating system: Want to add a new software in Linux operating system? Here is an opportunity. UFS (User Friendly Scheduler) has been designed to make the operating...AspNetPager: AspNetPager is a free custom paging control for ASP.NET web form application. It's one of the most popular ASP.NET third party controls used by chi...AzureRunMe: Run Java, Ruby, Python, [insert language of your choice] applications in Windows Azure. You provide a self contained ZIP file with a runme.bat f...DiffPlex - a .NET Diff Generator: DiffPlex is a combination of a .NET Diffing Library with both a Silverlight and HTML diff viewer.GPA WebClient: GPA project web client.Maintenance Service: A lot of projects need to have a windows service that execute different tasks. If am tired of creating the same service for all this project, so He...Marager Component Framework: Marager Component Framework (mcf)Pod Thrower: An application that gives a simple way to create podcast rss feeds from local computer folders.Rapidshare Episode Downloader: Rapidshare Episode Downloader is a software that enables you (yes, you!) to organize your many episodes of different TV shows in a nice list, prese...Resxus - Total .net string resource management tool: RESXUS is a resource file management tool which is being created under my job-experience of managing multilingual resx files. The first goal of th...SLFX: SLFXTheWhiteAmbit: Hybrid Scanline-Raytracing Engine. VisitorPattern based Scenegraph written in C++. DirectX9 or DirectX10 rendering is used for PrimaryRays and CUDA...TSqlMigrations: Yet another migrations platform right? This is purely sql based (tsql as it is only for Sql Server at this time). This tool is meant to help mana...WAFFLE: Windows Authentication Functional Framework (LE): WAFFLE - Windows Authentication Functional Framework (Light Edition) is a .NET library with a COM interface and a Java bridge that provides a worki...web lib api: This project aim, to pull together the major, web api/webservices for each relervant categorie.WSDLGenerator: A tool to generate a WSDL file from a c# dll which contains one more Microsoft WebServices. The project is build using VS2010RC and uses .net Fram...XNA Re-usable UI Components: The aim of this project is to create a re-usable set of UI game components helping reduce production time for your game. 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Day 2 - Game Design Documentation

- by dapostolov

So yesterday I didn't cut any code for my game but I was able to do a tiny bit of research on the XNA Game Development Technology and the communities out there and do you know what? I feel I'm a bit closer to my goal. The bad news is today I didn't cut code either. However, not all is lost because I wanted to get my ideas on paper and today I just did that. Today, I began to jot down notes about the game and how I felt the visual elements would interact with each other. Unlike my workplace, my personal level of documentation is nothing more than a task list or a mind map of my ideas; it helps me streamline my solutions quiet effectively and circumvent the long process of articulating each thought to the n-th degree. I truly dislike documentation (because I have an extremely hard time articulating my thought and solutions); however, because I tend to do a really good job with documentation I tend to get stuck writing the buggers. But as a generalist remark: 'No Developer likes documentation.' For now let's stick with my basic notes and call this post a living document. Here are my notes, fresh, from after watching the new first episode of Merlin second season! Actually, a quick recommendation to anyone who is reading this (if anyone is): I truly recommend you envelope yourself in the medium or task you're trying to tackle. Be one with moment and feel it! For instance: Are you writing a fantasy script / game? What would the music of the genre sound like? For me the Conan the Barbarian soundtrack by Basil Poledouris is frackin awesome. There are many other good CD's out there, which I listen to (some who even use medival instruments, but Conan I keep returning to. It's a creative trigger for me. Ask yourself what would the imagery look like? Time to surf google for artist renditions of fantasy! What would the game feel like? Start playing some of your favorite games that inspire you, be wary though, have some self control and don't let it absorb your time. Anyhow, onto the documentation... Screens, Scenes, and Sprites. Oh My! (groan...) The first thing that came to mind were the screens, I thought the following would suffice: Menu Screen Character Customisation Screen Loading Screen? Battle Ground The Menu Screen Ok. So, the thought here is when the game loads a huge title is displayed: Wizard Wars. The player is prompted with 3 menu items: 1 Player Game, 2 Player Game, and Exit. Since I'm targetting the PC platform, as a non-networked game to start, I picture myself running my mouse over each menu option and the visual element of the menu item changes, along with a sound to indicate that I am over a curent menu item. And as I move my mouse away, it changes back, and possibly an exit mouse sound. Maybe on the screen somewhere is a brazier alit with a magical tome open right beside it, OR, maybe the tome is the menu! I hear the menu music as mellow, not obtrusive or piercing. On a menu item select, a confirmation sound bellows to indicate the players selection. The Esc key will always return me to the previous screens or desktop. The menu screen must feel...dark, like a really important ritual is about to happen and thus the music should build up. 1 Player Game - > Customize Character(s) 2 Player Game - > Customize Character(s) Exit - > Back to Windows Notes: So the first thing I pick up here are a couple things: First and foremost, my artistic abilities suck crap, so I may have to hire an artist (now that i've said that, lets get techy) graphical objects will be positioned within a scene on each screen / window. Menu items will be represented grapically, possibly animated, and have sound / animation effects triggered by user input or a time line. I have an animated scene involving a brazier or fire on a stick IF I was to move this game to the xbox, I'd have to track which menu item is currently selected (unless I do a mouse pointer type thing.) WindowObject has a scene A Scene has many GameObjects GameObject has a position graphic or animation MenuObject is a GameObject which has a mouse in, mouse out, and click event which either does something graphically (animation), does something with sound, or moves to another screen. Character Customisation Screen With either the 1 or 2 player option selected, both selections will come to this screen; a wizard requires a name, powers, and vestements of course! Player one will configure his character first and then player two. I considered a split screen for PC but to have two people fighting over a keyboard would probably suck. For XBox, a split screen could work; maybe when I get into the networking portion (phase 2 blog?) of this game I will remove the 2 player option for PC and provide only multiplayer and I will leave 2 player for xbox...hmm... Anyhow...I picture the creation process as follows: Name: (textbox / keyboard entry) - for xbox, this would have to be different. Robe Color: (color box, or something) Stats: Speed, Oomph, and Health. (as sliders) 1 as minimum and 10 as maximum. Ok, Back, and Cancel buttons / options. Each stat has a benefit which are listed below. The idea is the player decides if he wants his wizard to run fast, be a tank and ... hit with a purse.Regardless, the player will have a pool of 12 points to use. Ideally, A balanced wizard will have 5 in each attribute. Spells? The only spell of choice is a ball of fire which comes without question. The music and screen should still feel like a ritual. The Character Speed Basically, how fast your character moves and casts. Oomph (Best Monster Truck Voice): PURE POWAH!!! The damage output of your fireball. Health How much damage you can take. Notes: I realise the game dynamics may sound uninteresting at the moment; but I think after a couple releases, we could have some other grand ideas such as: saved profiles, gold to upgrade arsenal of spells, talents, etc...but for now...a vanilla fireball thrower mage will suffice for this experiment. OK. So... a MenuObject may need to be loosely coupled to allow future items such as networking? may be a button? a CharacterObject has a name speed oomph health and a funky robe color. cap on the three stats (1-10) an arsenal of 1 spell (possibly could expand this) The Loading Screen As is. The Battleground Screen For now, I'm keeping the screen as max resolution for the PC. The screen isn't going to move or even be a split screen. I'm not aiming high here because I want to see what level of change is involved when new features / concepts are added to game content. I'm interested to find out if we could apply techniques such as MVC or MVVM to this type of development or is it too tightly coupled? This reminds me when when my best friend and I were brainstorming our game idea (this is going back a while...1994, 6?) and he cringed at the thought of bringing business technology into games, especially when I suggested a database to store character information and COM / DCOM as the medium, but it seems I wasn't far off (reflecting); just like his implementation of a xml "config file" for dynamic direct-x menus back before .net in 1999...anyhow...i digress... The Battle One screen, two characters lobing balls of fire at each other...It doesn't get better than that. Every so often a scroll appears...and the fireballs bounce off walls, or the wizard has rapid fire, or even scrolls of healing! The scroll options are endless. Two bars at the top, each the color of the wizard (with their name beside the bar) indicate how much health they have. Possibly the appearance of the scrolls means the battle is taking too long? I'm thinking 1 player controls: up, down, left, right and space to fire the button. Or even possibly, mouse click and shift - mouse button to fire a spell in the direction they are facing. Two player controls: a, s, d, f and space AND arrows (up, down, left, right) and Del key or Crtl. The game ends when a player has 0 health and a dialog box appears asking for a rematch / reconfigure / exit. Health goes down when a fireball (friendly or not), connects with a wizard. When a wizard connects with a scroll, a countdown clock / icon appears near the health bar and the wizard begins to glow. For the most part, a wizard can have only scroll 1 effect on him at a time. Notes: Ok, there's alot to cover here. a CharacterObject is a GameObject it travels at a set velocity it travels in a direction it has sounds (walking, running, casting, impact, dying, laughing, whistling, other?) it has animations (walking, running, casting, impact, dying, laughing, idle, other?) it has a lifespan (determined by health) it is alive or dead it has a position a ScrollObject is a GameObject it carries a transferance of points "damage" (or healing, bad scroll effect?) (determinde by caster) it carries a transferance of "other" it is stationary it has a sound on impact it has a stationary animation it has an impact animation / or transfers an impact animation it has a fade animation? it has a lifespan (determined by game) it is alive or dead it has a position a WallObject is a GameObject it has a sound on fireball impact? it is a still image / stationary it has an impact animation / or transfers an impact animation it is dead it has a position A FireBall is a GameObject it carries a transferance of poinst "damage" (or healing, bad scroll effect?) (determinde by caster) it travels at a set velocity it travels in a direction it has a sound it has a travel animation it has an impact animation / or transfers an impact animation it has a fade animation? it has a lifespan (determined by caster) it is alive or dead it has a position As I look at this, I can see some common attributes in each object that I can carry up to the GameObject. I think I'm going to end the documentation here, it's taken me a bit of time to type this all out, tomorrow. I'll load up my IDE and my paint studio to get some good old fashioned cowboy hacking going! D.

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Windows Azure Root CAs and SSL Client Certificates

- by Your DisplayName here!

I ran into some problems while trying to make SSL client certificates work for StarterSTS 1.5. In theory you have to do two things (via startup tasks): Unlock the SSL section in IIS Install all the root certificates for the client certs you want to accept I did that. But it still does not work. While inspecting the event log, I stumbled over an schannel error message that I’ve never seen before: “When asking for client authentication, this server sends a list of trusted certificate authorities to the client. The client uses this list to choose a client certificate that is trusted by the server. Currently, this server trusts so many certificate authorities that the list has grown too long. This list has thus been truncated. The administrator of this machine should review the certificate authorities trusted for client authentication and remove those that do not really need to be trusted.” WTF? And indeed standard Azure (web role) VMs trust 275 root CAs (see attached list). Including kinda obscure ones. I don’t really know why MS made this design decision. It seems just wrong (including breaking the SSL client cert functionality). Deleting like 60% of them made SSL client certs from my CA work. So I guess I now have to find an automated way to attach CTLs to my site…joy. Exported list of trusted CA (as of 30th Dec 2010) AC Raíz Certicámara S.A. (4/2/2030 9:42:02 PM) AC RAIZ FNMT-RCM (1/1/2030 12:00:00 AM) A-CERT ADVANCED (10/23/2011 2:14:14 PM) Actalis Authentication CA G1 (6/25/2022 2:06:00 PM) Agence Nationale de Certification Electronique (8/12/2037 9:03:17 AM) Agence Nationale de Certification Electronique (8/12/2037 9:58:14 AM) Agencia Catalana de Certificacio (NIF Q-0801176-I) (1/7/2031 10:59:59 PM) America Online Root Certification Authority 1 (11/19/2037 8:43:00 PM) America Online Root Certification Authority 2 (9/29/2037 2:08:00 PM) ANCERT Certificados CGN (2/11/2024 5:27:12 PM) ANCERT Certificados Notariales (2/11/2024 3:58:26 PM) ANCERT Corporaciones de Derecho Publico (2/11/2024 5:22:45 PM) A-Trust-nQual-01 (11/30/2014 11:00:00 PM) A-Trust-nQual-03 (8/17/2015 10:00:00 PM) A-Trust-Qual-01 (11/30/2014 11:00:00 PM) A-Trust-Qual-02 (12/2/2014 11:00:00 PM) A-Trust-Qual-03a (4/24/2018 10:00:00 PM) Austria Telekom-Control Kommission (9/24/2005 12:40:00 PM) Austrian Society for Data Protection (2/12/2009 11:30:30 AM) Austrian Society for Data Protection GLOBALTRUST Certification Service (9/18/2036 2:12:35 PM) Autoridad Certificadora Raiz de la Secretaria de Economia (5/9/2025 12:00:00 AM) Autoridad de Certificacion de la Abogacia (6/13/2030 10:00:00 PM) Autoridad de Certificacion Firmaprofesional CIF A62634068 (10/24/2013 10:00:00 PM) Autoridade Certificadora Raiz Brasileira (11/30/2011 11:59:00 PM) Baltimore CyberTrust Root (5/12/2025 11:59:00 PM) BIT AdminCA-CD-T01 (1/25/2016 12:36:19 PM) BIT Admin-Root-CA (11/10/2021 7:51:07 AM) Buypass Class 2 CA 1 (10/13/2016 10:25:09 AM) Buypass Class 3 CA 1 (5/9/2015 2:13:03 PM) CA Disig (3/22/2016 1:39:34 AM) CertEurope (3/27/2037 11:00:00 PM) CERTICAMARA S.A. (2/23/2015 5:10:37 PM) Certicámara S.A. (5/23/2011 10:00:00 PM) Certigna (6/29/2027 3:13:05 PM) Certipost E-Trust Primary Normalised CA (7/26/2020 10:00:00 AM) Certipost E-Trust Primary Qualified CA (7/26/2020 10:00:00 AM) Certipost E-Trust Primary TOP Root CA (7/26/2025 10:00:00 AM) Certisign Autoridade Certificadora AC1S (6/27/2018 12:00:00 AM) Certisign Autoridade Certificadora AC2 (6/27/2018 12:00:00 AM) Certisign Autoridade Certificadora AC3S (7/9/2018 8:56:32 PM) Certisign Autoridade Certificadora AC4 (6/27/2018 12:00:00 AM) CertPlus Class 1 Primary CA (7/6/2020 11:59:59 PM) CertPlus Class 2 Primary CA (7/6/2019 11:59:59 PM) CertPlus Class 3 Primary CA (7/6/2019 11:59:59 PM) CertPlus Class 3P Primary CA (7/6/2019 11:59:59 PM) CertPlus Class 3TS Primary CA (7/6/2019 11:59:59 PM) CertRSA01 (3/3/2010 2:59:59 PM) certSIGN Root CA (7/4/2031 5:20:04 PM) Certum (6/11/2027 10:46:39 AM) Certum Trusted Network CA (12/31/2029 12:07:37 PM) Chambers of Commerce Root - 2008 (7/31/2038 12:29:50 PM) Chambersign Chambers of Commerce Root (9/30/2037 4:13:44 PM) Chambersign Global Root (9/30/2037 4:14:18 PM) Chambersign Public Notary Root (9/30/2037 4:14:49 PM) Chunghwa Telecom Co. Ltd. (12/20/2034 2:31:27 AM) Cisco Systems (5/14/2029 8:25:42 PM) CNNIC Root (4/16/2027 7:09:14 AM) Common Policy (10/15/2027 4:08:00 PM) COMODO (12/31/2028 11:59:59 PM) COMODO (1/18/2038 11:59:59 PM) COMODO (12/31/2029 11:59:59 PM) ComSign Advanced Security CA (3/24/2029 9:55:55 PM) ComSign CA (3/19/2029 3:02:18 PM) ComSign Secured CA (3/16/2029 3:04:56 PM) Correo Uruguayo - Root CA (12/31/2030 2:59:59 AM) Cybertrust Global Root (12/15/2021 8:00:00 AM) DanID (2/11/2037 9:09:30 AM) DanID (4/5/2021 5:03:17 PM) Deutsche Telekom Root CA 2 (7/9/2019 11:59:00 PM) DigiCert (11/10/2031 12:00:00 AM) DigiCert (11/10/2031 12:00:00 AM) DigiCert (11/10/2031 12:00:00 AM) DigiNotar Root CA (3/31/2025 6:19:21 PM) DIRECCION GENERAL DE LA POLICIA (2/8/2036 10:59:59 PM) DST (ABA.ECOM) CA (7/9/2009 5:33:53 PM) DST (ANX Network) CA (12/9/2018 4:16:48 PM) DST (Baltimore EZ) CA (7/3/2009 7:56:53 PM) DST (National Retail Federation) RootCA (12/8/2008 4:14:16 PM) DST (United Parcel Service) RootCA (12/7/2008 12:25:46 AM) DST ACES CA X6 (11/20/2017 9:19:58 PM) DST Root CA X3 (9/30/2021 2:01:15 PM) DST RootCA X1 (11/28/2008 6:18:55 PM) DST RootCA X2 (11/27/2008 10:46:16 PM) DSTCA E1 (12/10/2018 6:40:23 PM) DSTCA E2 (12/9/2018 7:47:26 PM) DST-Entrust GTI CA (12/9/2018 12:32:24 AM) D-TRUST GmbH (5/16/2022 5:20:47 AM) D-TRUST GmbH (6/8/2012 11:47:46 AM) D-TRUST GmbH (5/16/2022 5:20:47 AM) EBG Elektronik Sertifika Hizmet Saglayicisi (8/14/2016 12:31:09 AM) E-Certchile (9/5/2028 7:39:41 PM) Echoworx Root CA2 (10/7/2030 10:49:13 AM) ECRaizEstado (6/23/2030 1:41:27 PM) EDICOM (4/13/2028 4:24:22 PM) E-GÜVEN Elektronik Sertifika Hizmet Saglayicisi (1/4/2017 11:32:48 AM) E-ME SSI (RCA) (5/19/2027 8:48:15 AM) Entrust (11/27/2026 8:53:42 PM) Entrust (5/25/2019 4:39:40 PM) Entrust.net (12/7/2030 5:55:54 PM) Equifax Secure eBusiness CA-1 (6/21/2020 4:00:00 AM) Equifax Secure eBusiness CA-2 (6/23/2019 12:14:45 PM) Equifax Secure Global eBusiness CA-1 (6/21/2020 4:00:00 AM) eSign Australia: eSign Imperito Primary Root CA (5/23/2012 11:59:59 PM) eSign Australia: Gatekeeper Root CA (5/23/2014 11:59:59 PM) eSign Australia: Primary Utility Root CA (5/23/2012 11:59:59 PM) Fabrica Nacional de Moneda y Timbre (3/18/2019 3:26:19 PM) GeoTrust (8/22/2018 4:41:51 PM) GeoTrust (7/16/2036 11:59:59 PM) GeoTrust Global CA (5/21/2022 4:00:00 AM) GeoTrust Global CA 2 (3/4/2019 5:00:00 AM) GeoTrust Primary Certification Authority - G2 (1/18/2038 11:59:59 PM) GeoTrust Primary Certification Authority - G3 (12/1/2037 11:59:59 PM) GeoTrust Universal CA (3/4/2029 5:00:00 AM) GeoTrust Universal CA 2 (3/4/2029 5:00:00 AM) Global Chambersign Root - 2008 (7/31/2038 12:31:40 PM) GlobalSign (1/28/2028 12:00:00 PM) GlobalSign (12/15/2021 8:00:00 AM) Go Daddy Class 2 Certification Authority (6/29/2034 5:06:20 PM) GTE CyberTrust Global Root (8/13/2018 11:59:00 PM) GTE CyberTrust Root (4/3/2004 11:59:00 PM) GTE CyberTrust Root (2/23/2006 11:59:00 PM) Halcom CA FO (6/5/2020 10:33:31 AM) Halcom CA PO 2 (2/7/2019 6:33:31 PM) Hongkong Post Root CA (1/16/2010 11:59:00 PM) Hongkong Post Root CA 1 (5/15/2023 4:52:29 AM) I.CA První certifikacní autorita a.s. (4/1/2018 12:00:00 AM) I.CA První certifikacní autorita a.s. (4/1/2018 12:00:00 AM) InfoNotary (3/6/2026 5:33:05 PM) IPS SERVIDORES (12/29/2009 11:21:07 PM) IZENPE S.A. (1/30/2018 11:00:00 PM) Izenpe.com (12/13/2037 8:27:25 AM) Japan Certification Services, Inc. SecureSign RootCA1 (9/15/2020 2:59:59 PM) Japan Certification Services, Inc. SecureSign RootCA11 (4/8/2029 4:56:47 AM) Japan Certification Services, Inc. SecureSign RootCA2 (9/15/2020 2:59:59 PM) Japan Certification Services, Inc. SecureSign RootCA3 (9/15/2020 2:59:59 PM) Japan Local Government PKI Application CA (3/31/2016 2:59:59 PM) Japanese Government ApplicationCA (12/12/2017 3:00:00 PM) Juur-SK AS Sertifitseerimiskeskus (8/26/2016 2:23:01 PM) KamuSM (8/21/2017 11:37:07 AM) KISA RootCA 1 (8/24/2025 8:05:46 AM) KISA RootCA 3 (11/19/2014 6:39:51 AM) Macao Post eSignTrust (1/29/2013 11:59:59 PM) MicroSec e-Szigno Root CA (4/6/2017 12:28:44 PM) Microsoft Authenticode(tm) Root (12/31/1999 11:59:59 PM) Microsoft Root Authority (12/31/2020 7:00:00 AM) Microsoft Root Certificate Authority (5/9/2021 11:28:13 PM) Microsoft Timestamp Root (12/30/1999 11:59:59 PM) MOGAHA Govt of Korea (4/21/2012 9:07:23 AM) MOGAHA Govt of Korea GPKI (3/15/2017 6:00:04 AM) NetLock Arany (Class Gold) Fotanúsítvány (12/6/2028 3:08:21 PM) NetLock Expressz (Class C) Tanusitvanykiado (2/20/2019 2:08:11 PM) NetLock Kozjegyzoi (Class A) Tanusitvanykiado (2/19/2019 11:14:47 PM) NetLock Minositett Kozjegyzoi (Class QA) Tanusitvanykiado (12/15/2022 1:47:11 AM) NetLock Platina (Class Platinum) Fotanúsítvány (12/6/2028 3:12:44 PM) NetLock Uzleti (Class B) Tanusitvanykiado (2/20/2019 2:10:22 PM) Netrust CA1 (3/30/2021 2:57:45 AM) Network Solutions (12/31/2029 11:59:59 PM) NLB Nova Ljubljanska Banka d.d. 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C# Neural Networks with Encog

- by JoshReuben

Neural Networks · I recently read a book Introduction to Neural Networks for C# , by Jeff Heaton. http://www.amazon.com/Introduction-Neural-Networks-C-2nd/dp/1604390093/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1296821004&sr=8-2-spell. Not the 1st ANN book I've perused, but a nice revision. · Artificial Neural Networks (ANNs) are a mechanism of machine learning – see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Artificial_neural_network , http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Machine_learning · Problems Not Suited to a Neural Network Solution- Programs that are easily written out as flowcharts consisting of well-defined steps, program logic that is unlikely to change, problems in which you must know exactly how the solution was derived. · Problems Suited to a Neural Network – pattern recognition, classification, series prediction, and data mining. Pattern recognition - network attempts to determine if the input data matches a pattern that it has been trained to recognize. Classification - take input samples and classify them into fuzzy groups. · As far as machine learning approaches go, I thing SVMs are superior (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Support_vector_machine ) - a neural network has certain disadvantages in comparison: an ANN can be overtrained, different training sets can produce non-deterministic weights and it is not possible to discern the underlying decision function of an ANN from its weight matrix – they are black box. · In this post, I'm not going to go into internals (believe me I know them). An autoassociative network (e.g. a Hopfield network) will echo back a pattern if it is recognized. · Under the hood, there is very little maths. In a nutshell - Some simple matrix operations occur during training: the input array is processed (normalized into bipolar values of 1, -1) - transposed from input column vector into a row vector, these are subject to matrix multiplication and then subtraction of the identity matrix to get a contribution matrix. The dot product is taken against the weight matrix to yield a boolean match result. For backpropogation training, a derivative function is required. In learning, hill climbing mechanisms such as Genetic Algorithms and Simulated Annealing are used to escape local minima. For unsupervised training, such as found in Self Organizing Maps used for OCR, Hebbs rule is applied. · The purpose of this post is not to mire you in technical and conceptual details, but to show you how to leverage neural networks via an abstraction API - Encog Encog · Encog is a neural network API · Links to Encog: http://www.encog.org , http://www.heatonresearch.com/encog, http://www.heatonresearch.com/forum · Encog requires .Net 3.5 or higher – there is also a Silverlight version. Third-Party Libraries – log4net and nunit. · Encog supports feedforward, recurrent, self-organizing maps, radial basis function and Hopfield neural networks. · Encog neural networks, and related data, can be stored in .EG XML files. · Encog Workbench allows you to edit, train and visualize neural networks. The Encog Workbench can generate code. Synapses and layers · the primary building blocks - Almost every neural network will have, at a minimum, an input and output layer. In some cases, the same layer will function as both input and output layer. · To adapt a problem to a neural network, you must determine how to feed the problem into the input layer of a neural network, and receive the solution through the output layer of a neural network. · The Input Layer - For each input neuron, one double value is stored. An array is passed as input to a layer. Encog uses the interface INeuralData to hold these arrays. The class BasicNeuralData implements the INeuralData interface. Once the neural network processes the input, an INeuralData based class will be returned from the neural network's output layer. · convert a double array into an INeuralData object : INeuralData data = new BasicNeuralData(= new double[10]); · the Output Layer- The neural network outputs an array of doubles, wraped in a class based on the INeuralData interface. · The real power of a neural network comes from its pattern recognition capabilities. The neural network should be able to produce the desired output even if the input has been slightly distorted. · Hidden Layers– optional. between the input and output layers. very much a “black box”. If the structure of the hidden layer is too simple it may not learn the problem. If the structure is too complex, it will learn the problem but will be very slow to train and execute. Some neural networks have no hidden layers. The input layer may be directly connected to the output layer. Further, some neural networks have only a single layer. A single layer neural network has the single layer self-connected. · connections, called synapses, contain individual weight matrixes. These values are changed as the neural network learns. Constructing a Neural Network · the XOR operator is a frequent “first example” -the “Hello World” application for neural networks. · The XOR Operator- only returns true when both inputs differ. 0 XOR 0 = 0 1 XOR 0 = 1 0 XOR 1 = 1 1 XOR 1 = 0 · Structuring a Neural Network for XOR - two inputs to the XOR operator and one output. · input: 0.0,0.0 1.0,0.0 0.0,1.0 1.0,1.0 · Expected output: 0.0 1.0 1.0 0.0 · A Perceptron - a simple feedforward neural network to learn the XOR operator. · Because the XOR operator has two inputs and one output, the neural network will follow suit. Additionally, the neural network will have a single hidden layer, with two neurons to help process the data. The choice for 2 neurons in the hidden layer is arbitrary, and often comes down to trial and error. · Neuron Diagram for the XOR Network · · The Encog workbench displays neural networks on a layer-by-layer basis. · Encog Layer Diagram for the XOR Network: · Create a BasicNetwork - Three layers are added to this network. the FinalizeStructure method must be called to inform the network that no more layers are to be added. The call to Reset randomizes the weights in the connections between these layers. var network = new BasicNetwork(); network.AddLayer(new BasicLayer(2)); network.AddLayer(new BasicLayer(2)); network.AddLayer(new BasicLayer(1)); network.Structure.FinalizeStructure(); network.Reset(); · Neural networks frequently start with a random weight matrix. This provides a starting point for the training methods. These random values will be tested and refined into an acceptable solution. However, sometimes the initial random values are too far off. Sometimes it may be necessary to reset the weights again, if training is ineffective. These weights make up the long-term memory of the neural network. Additionally, some layers have threshold values that also contribute to the long-term memory of the neural network. Some neural networks also contain context layers, which give the neural network a short-term memory as well. The neural network learns by modifying these weight and threshold values. · Now that the neural network has been created, it must be trained. Training a Neural Network · construct a INeuralDataSet object - contains the input array and the expected output array (of corresponding range). Even though there is only one output value, we must still use a two-dimensional array to represent the output. public static double[][] XOR_INPUT ={ new double[2] { 0.0, 0.0 }, new double[2] { 1.0, 0.0 }, new double[2] { 0.0, 1.0 }, new double[2] { 1.0, 1.0 } }; public static double[][] XOR_IDEAL = { new double[1] { 0.0 }, new double[1] { 1.0 }, new double[1] { 1.0 }, new double[1] { 0.0 } }; INeuralDataSet trainingSet = new BasicNeuralDataSet(XOR_INPUT, XOR_IDEAL); · Training is the process where the neural network's weights are adjusted to better produce the expected output. Training will continue for many iterations, until the error rate of the network is below an acceptable level. Encog supports many different types of training. Resilient Propagation (RPROP) - general-purpose training algorithm. All training classes implement the ITrain interface. The RPROP algorithm is implemented by the ResilientPropagation class. Training the neural network involves calling the Iteration method on the ITrain class until the error is below a specific value. The code loops through as many iterations, or epochs, as it takes to get the error rate for the neural network to be below 1%. Once the neural network has been trained, it is ready for use. ITrain train = new ResilientPropagation(network, trainingSet); for (int epoch=0; epoch < 10000; epoch++) { train.Iteration(); Debug.Print("Epoch #" + epoch + " Error:" + train.Error); if (train.Error > 0.01) break; } Executing a Neural Network · Call the Compute method on the BasicNetwork class. Console.WriteLine("Neural Network Results:"); foreach (INeuralDataPair pair in trainingSet) { INeuralData output = network.Compute(pair.Input); Console.WriteLine(pair.Input[0] + "," + pair.Input[1] + ", actual=" + output[0] + ",ideal=" + pair.Ideal[0]); } · The Compute method accepts an INeuralData class and also returns a INeuralData object. Neural Network Results: 0.0,0.0, actual=0.002782538818034049,ideal=0.0 1.0,0.0, actual=0.9903741937121177,ideal=1.0 0.0,1.0, actual=0.9836807956566187,ideal=1.0 1.0,1.0, actual=0.0011646072586172778,ideal=0.0 · the network has not been trained to give the exact results. This is normal. Because the network was trained to 1% error, each of the results will also be within generally 1% of the expected value.

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Productivity Tips

- by Brian T. Jackett

A few months ago during my first end of year review at Microsoft I was doing an assessment of my year. One of my personal goals to come out of this reflection was to improve my personal productivity. While I hear many people say “I wish I had more hours in the day so that I could get more done” I feel like that is the wrong approach. There is an inherent assumption that you are being productive with your time that you already have and thus more time would allow you to be as productive given more time. Instead of wishing I could add more hours to the day I’ve begun adopting a number of processes or behavior changes in my personal life to make better use of my time with the goal of improving productivity. The areas of focus are as follows: Focus Processes Tools Personal health Email Note: A number of these topics have spawned from reading Scott Hanselman’s blog posts on productivity, reading of David Allen’s book Getting Things Done, and discussions with friends and coworkers who had great insights into this topic. Focus Pre-reading / viewing: Overcome your work addiction Millennials paralyzed by choice Its Not What You Read Its What You Ignore (Scott Hanselman video) I highly recommend Scott Hanselman’s video above and this post before continuing with this article. It is well worth the 40+ mins price of admission for the video and couple minutes for article. One key takeaway for me was listing out my activities in an average week and realizing which ones held little or no value to me. We all have a finite amount of time to work each day. Do you know how much time and effort you spend on various aspects of your life (family, friends, religion, work, personal happiness, etc.)? Do your actions and commitments reflect your priorities? The biggest time consumers with little value for me were time spent on social media services (Twitter and Facebook), playing an MMO video game, and watching TV. I still check up on Facebook, Twitter, Microsoft internal chat forums, and other services to keep contact with others but I’ve reduced that time significantly. As for TV I’ve cut the cord and no longer subscribe to cable TV. Instead I use Netflix, RedBox, and over the air channels but again with reduced time consumption. With the time I’ve freed up I’m back to working out 2-3 times a week and reading 4 nights a week (both of which I had been neglecting previously). I’ll mention a few tools for helping measure your time in the Tools section. Processes Do not multi-task. I’ll say it again. Do not multi-task. There is no such thing as multi tasking. The human brain is optimized to work on one thing at a time. When you are “multi-tasking” you are really doing 2 or more things at less than 100%, usually by a wide margin. I take pride in my work and when I’m doing something less than 100% the results typically degrade rapidly. Now there are some ways of bending the rules of physics for this one. There is the notion of getting a double amount of work done in the same timeframe. Some examples would be listening to podcasts / watching a movie while working out, using a treadmill as your work desk, or reading while in the bathroom. Personally I’ve found good results in combining one task that does not require focus (making dinner, playing certain video games, working out) and one task that does (watching a movie, listening to podcasts). I believe this is related to me being a visual and kinesthetic (using my hands or actually doing it) learner. I’m terrible with auditory learning. My fiance and I joke that sometimes we talk and talk to each other but never really hear each other. Goals / Tasks Goals can give us direction in life and a sense of accomplishment when we complete them. Goals can also overwhelm us and give us a sense of failure when we don’t complete them. I propose that you shift your perspective and not dwell on all of the things that you haven’t gotten done, but focus instead on regularly setting measureable goals that are within reason of accomplishing. At the end of each time frame have a retrospective to review your progress. Do not feel guilty about what you did not accomplish. Feel proud of what you did accomplish and readjust your goals for the next time frame to more attainable goals. Here is a sample schedule I’ve seen proposed by some. I have not consistently set goals for each timeframe, but I do typically set 3 small goals a day (this blog post is #2 for today). Each day set 3 small goals Each week set 3 medium goals Each month set 1 large goal Each year set 2 very large goals Tools Tools are an extension of our human body. They help us extend beyond what we can physically and mentally do. Below are some tools I use almost daily or have found useful as of late. Disclaimer: I am not getting endorsed to promote any of these products. I just happen to like them and find them useful. Instapaper – Save internet links for reading later. There are many tools like this but I’ve found this to be a great one. There is even a “read it later” JavaScript button you can add to your browser so when you navigate to a site it will then add this to your list. Stacks for Instapaper – A Windows Phone 7 app for reading my Instapaper articles on the go. It does require a subscription to Instapaper (nominal $3 every three months) but is easily worth the cost. Alternatively you can set up your Kindle to sync with Instapaper easily but I haven’t done so. SlapDash Podcast – Apps for Windows Phone and Windows 8 (possibly other platforms) to sync podcast viewing / listening across multiple devices. Now that I have my Surface RT device (which I love) this is making my consumption easier to manage. Feed Reader – Simple Windows 8 app for quickly catching up on my RSS feeds. I used to have hundreds of unread items all the time. Now I’m down to 20-50 regularly and it is much easier and faster to consume on my Surface RT. There is also a free version (which I use) and I can’t see much different between the free and paid versions currently. Rescue Time – Have you ever wondered how much time you’ve spent on websites vs. email vs. “doing work”? This service tracks your computer actions and then lets you report on them. This can help you quantitatively identify areas where your actions are not in line with your priorities. PowerShell – Windows automation tool. It is now built into every client and server OS. This tool has saved me days (and I mean the full 24 hrs worth) of time and effort in the past year alone. If you haven’t started learning PowerShell and you administrating any Windows OS or server product you need to start today. Various blogging tools – I wrote a post a couple years ago called How I Blog about my blogging process and tools used. Almost all of it still applies today. Personal Health Some of these may be common sense or debatable, but I’ve found them to help prioritize my daily activities. Get plenty of sleep on a regular basis. Sacrificing sleep too many nights a week negatively impacts your cognition, attitude, and overall health. Exercise at least three days. Exercise could be lifting weights, taking the stairs up multiple flights of stairs, walking for 20 mins, or a number of other "non-traditional” activities. I find that regular exercise helps with sleep and improves my overall attitude. Eat a well balanced diet. Too much sugar, caffeine, junk food, etc. are not good for your body. This is not a matter of losing weight but taking care of your body and helping you perform at your peak potential. Email Email can be one of the biggest time consumers (i.e. waster) if you aren’t careful. Time box your email usage. Set a meeting invite for yourself if necessary to limit how much time you spend checking email. Use rules to prioritize your email. Email from external customers, my manager, or include me directly on the To line go into my inbox. Everything else goes a level down and I have 30+ rules to further sort it, mostly distribution lists. Use keyboard shortcuts (when available). I use Outlook for my primary email and am constantly hitting Alt + S to send, Ctrl + 1 for my inbox, Ctrl + 2 for my calendar, Space / Tab / Shift + Tab to mark items as read, and a number of other useful commands. Learn them and you’ll see your speed getting through emails increase. Keep emails short. No one Few people like reading through long emails. The first line should state exactly why you are sending the email followed by a 3-4 lines to support it. Anything longer might be better suited as a phone call or in person discussion. Conclusion In this post I walked through various tips and tricks I’ve found for improving personal productivity. It is a mix of re-focusing on the things that matter, using tools to assist in your efforts, and cutting out actions that are not aligned with your priorities. I originally had a whole section on keyboard shortcuts, but with my recent purchase of the Surface RT I’m finding that touch gestures have replaced numerous keyboard commands that I used to need. I see a big future in touch enabled devices. Hopefully some of these tips help you out. If you have any tools, tips, or ideas you would like to share feel free to add in the comments section. -Frog Out Links Scott Hanselman Productivity posts http://www.hanselman.com/blog/CategoryView.aspx?category=Productivity Overcome your work addiction http://blogs.hbr.org/hbsfaculty/2012/05/overcome-your-work-addiction.html?awid=5512355740280659420-3271 Millennials paralyzed by choice http://priyaparker.com/blog/millennials-paralyzed-by-choice Its Not What You Read Its What You Ignore (video) http://www.hanselman.com/blog/ItsNotWhatYouReadItsWhatYouIgnoreVideoOfScottHanselmansPersonalProductivityTips.aspx Cutting the cord – Jeff Blankenburg http://www.jeffblankenburg.com/2011/04/06/cutting-the-cord/ Building a sitting standing desk – Eric Harlan http://www.ericharlan.com/Everything_Else/building-a-sitting-standing-desk-a229.html Instapaper http://www.instapaper.com/u Stacks for Instapaper http://www.stacksforinstapaper.com/ Slapdash Podcast Windows Phone - http://www.windowsphone.com/en-us/store/app/slapdash-podcasts/90e8b121-080b-e011-9264-00237de2db9e Windows 8 - http://apps.microsoft.com/webpdp/en-us/app/slapdash-podcasts/0c62e66a-f2e4-4403-af88-3430a821741e/m/ROW Feed Reader http://apps.microsoft.com/webpdp/en-us/app/feed-reader/d03199c9-8e08-469a-bda1-7963099840cc/m/ROW Rescue Time http://www.rescuetime.com/ PowerShell Script Center http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/scriptcenter/bb410849.aspx

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top tweets WebLogic Partner Community – October 2012

- by JuergenKress

Send your tweets @wlscommunity #WebLogicCommunity and follow us at http://twitter.com/wlscommunity WebLogic Community?@wlscommunity Real World Java EE Patterns by Adam Bien http://wp.me/p1LMIb-mp Markus Eisele?@myfear #JavaOne Content Available for Free https://blogs.oracle.com/java/entry/javaone_content_available_for_free … /via @java Adam Bien?@AdamBien Thought that 1h screencast is way too long to be popular. I was wrong. Lightweight Java EE is doing very well: http://www.adam-bien.com/roller/abien/entry/lightweight_java_ee_screencast … OracleBlogs?@OracleBlogs COLLABORATE 13 Call for Papers http://ow.ly/2szPuZ Oracle WebLogic?@OracleWebLogic New Blog Post: Data Source Security Part 1 http://ow.ly/2szFbv Markus Eisele?@myfear My Three Days at #JavaOne 2012 http://yakovfain.com/2012/10/04/my-three-days-at-javaone-2012/ … < nice writeup ;) Adam Bien?@AdamBien JavaOne 2012 Announcements And Surprises: NetBeans 7.3+ comes with HTML 5, JavaScript, CSS 3 support. JavaScript... http://bit.ly/Uy14eD Andrejus Baranovskis?@andrejusb OOW'12: Oracle ADF Implementations Around the Globe: Best Practices http://fb.me/1IVg6gzU0 gschmutz?@gschmutz Just published a blog with a wrap-up of my presentations at OOW 2012. https://guidoschmutz.wordpress.com/2012/10/07/my-presentations-at-oracle-open-world-2012/ … #oow2012 #trivadis Andrejus Baranovskis?@andrejusb OOW'12: Oracle Business Process Management/Oracle ADF Integration Best Practices http://fb.me/1GY3nz1lb WebLogic Community?@wlscommunity ExaLogic 2.01 ppt & training & Installation check-list & tips & Web tier roadmap http://wp.me/p1LMIb-mh Adam Bien?@AdamBien JavaOne 2012, First Feedback and The Strange Thing: NetBeans day was surprising well attended. A big room was fu... http://bit.ly/PwWwx8 OracleSupport_WLS?@weblogicsupport Free registration for our next webcast on setting up and using a #weblogic #cluster http://pub.vitrue.com/xWV8 WebLogic Community?@wlscommunity UKOUG Application Server & Middleware SIG Meeting http://wp.me/p1LMIb-mC Ronald Luttikhuizen?@rluttikhuizen Discussing future plans for Oracle Middleware Infrastructure Group with @simon_haslam @Jphjulstad and Rene van Wijk #oow @wlscommunity JAX London?@jaxlondon Be part of #JAXLondon- only 11 days to go! Still need a ticket? http://buff.ly/TUPKmL WebLogic Community?@wlscommunity ExaLogic X3-2 launched at OOW 2012 http://wp.me/p1LMIb-mM WebLogic Community?@wlscommunity @OracleEvents Dear Oracle Team thanks for promoting the WebLogic bootcamp, new schedules are online https://blogs.oracle.com/emeapartnerweblogic/resource/weblogic12c.htm … #weblogiccommunity OracleBlogs?@OracleBlogs Partner Webcast Introducing Oracle Business Activity Monitoring - 18 October 2012 http://ow.ly/2svzyz AMIS, Oracle & Java?@AMIS_Services Grant posted a nice little video on youtube about the #ADF EMG activities during Oracle Open World. http://youtu.be/qZhtBqnK-Zc GlassFish?@glassfish ADF Essentials - Available for free and certified on GlassFish!: If you are an Oracle customer, you are probably... http://bit.ly/UCtVwY OracleBlogs?@OracleBlogs WebLogic 12 hands-on bootcamps for partnersnew dates & locations http://ow.ly/2smOfs Pieter Kranenburg?@pskranenburg I'm EXA and I know IT! How about you? Go to http://bit.ly/OnSlDd and find out! (you might win an #iphone5 ;-) #OOW please RT Andrejus Baranovskis?@andrejusb Enabling WebLogic Administrator Group Inside Custom ADF Application http://fb.me/2d5SCeJ2g Michel Schildmeijer?@MNEMONIC01 I'm EXA and I know IT! How about you? Go to http://bit.ly/OnSlDd (you might win an #iphone5 ;-) #oow OracleSupport_WLS?@weblogicsupport Step-by-step instructions on how to configure mail Alerts in #OEM 11g for #WebLogic Servers up/down status http://pub.vitrue.com/KpZq Jeff West?@jeffreyawest Answer: Deliver JMS message to a single node in a Weblogic Cluster with a Distributed Topic http://stackoverflow.com/a/12396492/697114?stw=2 … Java?@java Bucharest Java User Group: Launched and Growing! #JUG http://ow.ly/dDnbN OracleSupport_WLS?@weblogicsupport Don't shoot the messenger! #Java source code analyzer @ http://pub.vitrue.com/Cy2J JAX London?@jaxlondon .@BrianGoetz gives in depth session on the details of how #Lambda expressions are implemented in the #Java language at #JAXLondon" ADF Community DE?@ADFCommunityDE Webcast ADFNewsSession: ADF as a basis of Fusion Apps - the biggest ADF project ever. Sep 14, 8:30 AM CET. Dial in https://blogs.oracle.com/jdevotnharvest/entry/adf_partner_community_news_session … OracleBlogs?@OracleBlogs WebLogic & Coherence & Cloud presentations for customer meetings http://ow.ly/1mqwrC Pieter Kranenburg?@pskranenburg Seminar: Oracle WebLogic 12c at Qualogy. You are invited! http://bit.ly/Ps9LDF Oracle WebLogic?@OracleWebLogic New Blog Post: Oracle OpenWorld Update -- General Session: Oracle Fusion Middleware Strategies Driving Business Inno... http://ow.ly/2stylf Oracle Cloud Zone?@OracleCloudZone New partner programs for Oracle Cloud Solutions http://bit.ly/PrVq5O #cloud #oow Lucas Jellema?@lucasjellema The strategy on Java - JEE, SE, ME, FX: http://technology.amis.nl/2012/10/02/javaone-2012-strategy-and-technical-keynote/ … #javaone #oow_amis WebLogic Community?@wlscommunity Send your #WebLogicCommunity #oow pictures and blog posts @wlscommunity or http://www.facebook.com/weblogiccommunity … Enjoy OOW ;-) WebLogic Community?@wlscommunity Become an WebLogic 12c expert, attend our partner bootcampshttps://blogs.oracle.com/emeapartnerweblogic/resource/weblogic12c.htm … #WebLogicCommunity #opn AMIS, Oracle & Java?@AMIS_Services Volgende #oracle #ADF training bij @AMIS_SERVICES is van 12 tot 16 november. Meer info of aanmelden? http://www.amis.nl/Trainingen/oracle-adf-11g-applicatieontwikkeling/ … Devoxx?@Devoxx ALL the Devoxx 2011 talks are now freely available on Parleys @ http://www.parleys.com/#st=4&id=102998 Pls RT! Adam Bien?@AdamBien Use the coupon code "PLUMA" and you will get 20% off for "Real World Java EE Patterns": http://realworldpatterns.com Lucas Jellema?@lucasjellema Very good summary of the #JavaOne Technical Keynote last night: http://java.dzone.com/articles/javaone-2012-javaone-technical … Arun Gupta?@arungupta Blogged: JavaOne 2012 Keynote and GlassFish Party Pictures: Some pictures from the keynote ... And som... http://bit.ly/ViH0ue Lucas Jellema?@lucasjellema Most recent promoted build for GassFish 4.0 (EE7) has WebSocket support: to play with: http://dlc.sun.com.edgesuite.net/glassfish/4.0/promoted/ … #javaone michael palmeter?@michaelpalmeter If you haven't seen the 5-minute Exalogic demo, you need to (do it now!) - http://lnkd.in/GRqy3x Lonneke Dikmans?@lonnekedikmans VENNSTER BLOG: Running EclipseLink DBWS 2.4.0 on GlassFish 3.1.2 http://blog.vennster.nl/2012/09/running-eclipselink-dbws-240-on.html?spref=tw … WebLogic Community?@wlscommunity WebLogic Partner Community Newsletter September 2012 http://wp.me/p1LMIb-mf WebLogic Community?@wlscommunity again again again…. it is Oracle Open World 2012 http://wp.me/p1LMIb-m6 Markus Eisele?@myfear #WebLogic and #JavaEE Roadmap and Strategy Session at OOW http://ow.ly/2slZEY /via @OracleWebLogic Adam Bien?@AdamBien An Article About Java EE Connector Architectures 1.6 (JCA 1.6): The free Java Magazine article: Java EE Connect... http://bit.ly/St6sxq Lucas Jellema?@lucasjellema ADF Essentials - free to develop and to deploy (I said: free!) - http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/developer-tools/adf/overview/adfessentials-1719844.html … AMIS, Oracle & Java?@AMIS_Services Blog by Lucas Jellema: "Develop and Deploy ADF applications – free of charge using the new ADF Essentials" http://bit.ly/StAhxY Andrejus Baranovskis?@andrejusb ADF Essentials - Quick Technical Review http://fb.me/2hKCXyF43 OracleBlogs?@OracleBlogs GlassFish Extension for Oracle JDeveloper http://ow.ly/2slIO8 Retweetet von WebLogic Community Oracle Eclipse?@OEPE New Tutorial: Using ADF Faces and ADF Controller with Oracle Enterprise Pack for Eclipse. #OEPE http://pub.vitrue.com/QoUg Simon Haslam?@simon_haslam As of the last day or two there's a new Java Products Media Pack on http://edelivery.oracle.com (rather than it being in FMW pack) WebLogic Community?@wlscommunity top tweets WebLogic Partner Community – September 2012 http://wp.me/p1LMIb-m2 Adam Bien?@AdamBien I was interviewed by OTN: http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/articles/java/jaxawards-1843595.html …See you at JavaOne! Oracle WebLogic?@OracleWebLogic DevOps Basics for #WebLogic: Track Down High CPU Thread with ps, top and the new JDK7 jcmd tool. Great blog @frankmuz. http://ow.ly/dOBM4 Simon Haslam?@simon_haslam Looking for "oak style"(!) advanced content but you're a middleware specialist? See #ukoug2012 #middlewaresunday http://2012.ukoug.org/default.asp?p=9355 … Julien Ponge ?@jponge Just finished Java EE 6 + AngularJS samples for my upcoming middleware lectures. Code at https://github.com/jponge/todoapp-javaee6-angularjs … and https://github.com/jponge/todoapp-bosswatch … Markus Eisele?@myfear #Oracle #WebLogic is now totally #FREE for #Developer - more than just OTN license to develop the 1st prototype! http://bit.ly/SWltsR Markus Eisele?@myfear #WebSockets on #WebLogic Server http://ow.ly/1mv4QP by @wlsteve < need to give this a testdrive ;) OracleEnterpriseMgr?@oracle_em EM Blog : Oracle Enterprise Manager Cloud Control 12c Release 2 (12.1.0.2) is Available Now ! #em12c http://pub.vitrue.com/mk7o OracleBlogs?@OracleBlogs ADF training material now on the iPad http://ow.ly/1mqz1Q GlassFish?@glassfish GlassFish grows by 50% in Software Stack Market Share Report for August 2012 by @Jelastic http://awe.sm/o4ZAp WebLogic Partner Community For regular information become a member in the WebLogic Partner Community please visit: http://www.oracle.com/partners/goto/wls-emea ( OPN account required). If you need support with your account please contact the Oracle Partner Business Center. Blog Twitter LinkedIn Mix Forum Wiki Technorati Tags: twitter,WebLogic,WebLogic Community,Oracle,OPN,Jürgen Kress

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Your Day-by-Day Guide to Agile PLM at Oracle OpenWorld 2012

- by Kerrie Foy

This year’s Oracle OpenWorld conference is nearly here, and we’re all excited about what we have planned! With five days of activities and customer presenters from market leaders and top innovators like The Coca-Cola Company, Starbucks, JDSU, Facebook, GlobalFoundries, and more, this is an event you don't want to miss. I've compiled this day-by-day guide to help anyone keep track of all the “Product Lifecycle Management and Product Value Chain” sessions and activities at OpenWorld 2012, September 30 – October 4 in San Francisco, California. Monday, October 1 There are great networking activities on Sunday September 30, but PLM specific sessions start after general conference keynotes on Monday, October 1 at 10:45 a.m. at the InterContinental Hotel in room Telegraph Hill. In fact, most of our sessions this year will be held in this room, which is still close to the conference keynotes in Moscone, but just far enough away to allow some focused networking and discussions. This first session, 10:45 – 11:45 a.m. is a joint session with the Agile and AutoVue teams, entitled “Streamline PLM Design-to-Manufacturing Processes with AutoVue Visualization Soltuions” featuring presenters from Oracle as well as joint AutoVue and Agile PLM customer GlobalFoundries. In the following 12:15 – 1:15 p.m. slot, there are two sessions to choose from, so if you have a team of representatives attending OpenWorld, you may consider splitting up to catch both of these: a) Our General Session will be held in the InterContinental Hotel Ballroom C, which will cover our complete enterprise PLM strategy, product updates, and roadmaps. It’s our pleasure to feature a customer keynote presentation from Chris Bedi, CIO, and Rajeev Sethi, Director IT Business Engagement, of JDSU. b) A focused session on integrating PLM with Engineering and Supply Chain Systems will be held on the second floor of Moscone West (next to the InterContinental) in room 2022. Join to discover how these types of integrations help companies manage common and integrated design information across all MCAD, ECAD, and software components. After a lunch break and perhaps a visit to the Demogrounds in Moscone West, select from two product roadmap sessions in the next time slot (3:15 – 4:15 p.m.): an Agile 9.3.x session located in the InterContinental’s Ballroom C, and an Agile PLM for Process session located back in the InterContinental’s Telegraph Room. Both sessions will have strong content around each product line’s latest releases, vision, and customer examples. We are very pleased to feature Daniel Soosai of Facebook in the A9 session and Vinnie D’Agostino of The Coca-Cola Company in the PLM for Process session. Afterwards, hang in there for one last session of the day from 4:45 – 5:45 p.m.; it’s an insightful discussion on leveraging Agile PLM as the Foundation for Enterprise Quality Management, and it’s sure to be one of the best. In the Telegraph Room, this session will feature Oracle experts, partner co-presenter David Bartlett from CPG Solutions, and customer co-presenter Thomas Crowe, CIO of PL Developments. Hear their experience around implementing collaborative, integrated solutions to ensure effective knowledge transfer throughout an organization, and how to perform analysis in real time to resolve product quality issues swiftly and efficiently. On Monday evening there will be plenty of industry, product, and partner dinners, so take advantage of all the networking opportunities and catch some great tunes at the 5 day Oracle OpenWorld Music Festival! Tuesday, October 2 Tuesday starts early with a special PLM Networking Brunch, sponsored by several partners, from 8:30 a.m. – 10:30 a.m. at the B Restaurant that sits atop Yerba Buena Gardens. You’ll have the unique opportunity to meet with like-minded industry peers and a PLM partner to discuss a topic of your choosing while enjoying a delicious meal. Registration is required, so to inquire about attending this brunch, please email Terri.Hiskey-AT-oracle.com. After wrapping up your conversations over brunch, head over to the Marriott Marquis in the Nob Hill CD room for a chance to experience the Oracle Product Lifecycle Analytics solution in a Hands-On Lab, open from 10:15 a.m. – 12:45 p.m. Experts will be there to answer your questions. Back in the InterContinental Hotel’s Telegraph room, the session on “Ideation and Requirements Management: Capturing the Voice of the Customer” begins at 11:45 a.m. – 12:45 p.m. This may be the session for you if you’re struggling with challenges like too many repositories of customer needs, requests, and ideas; limited visibility into which ideas are being advanced by customers and field resources; or if you’re unable to leverage internal expertise to expose effort and potential risks. This session will discuss how Agile PLM can help you overcome ideation challenges to deliver the right products to their targeted markets and fulfill customer desires. Next, from 1:15 – 2:15 p.m. join us for a session on Managing Profitable Innovation with Oracle Product Lifecycle Analytics. If you missed the Hands-on Lab, have more questions, or simply want to be inspired by the product’s forward-thinking vision and capabilities, this is a great opportunity to meet the progressive-minded executives behind the application. After this session, it may be a good opportunity to swing by the Demogrounds in Moscone West and visit the Agile PLM demos at exhibit booths #81 for Agile PLM for Discrete Manufacturing, #70 for Agile PLM for Process, and #82 for AutoVue and Agile PLM Enterprise Visualization. Check out the related Supply Chain Management booths close by if you’re interested - here's the map. There’s always lots to see and do around the exhibit area. But don’t forget the last session of the day from 5:00 p.m. – 6:00 p.m. in Telegraph Hill on Managing Product Innovation and Compliance in Life Science Companies, a “must-see” if you’re in this industry. Launching innovative products quickly is already a high-stakes challenge, but companies in the life sciences industry face uniquely severe consequences when new products don’t perform or comply as required. In recent years, more and more regulations have become mandatory, and new ones, such as REACH, are currently going into effect for several companies. Customer presenters from pharmaceutical leader Eli Lilly will share how they’ve leveraged Agile PLM to deliver high-quality, innovative products in a fast-paced, heavily regulated market environment. Tuesday evening unwind at the Supply Chain Management Reception from 6:00 – 8:00 p.m. at the premier boutique Roe Nightclub and Lounge, which is located about three blocks down on Howard Street (on the other side of Moscone from the InterContinental Hotel). Registration is required. Click here for the details. Wednesday, October 3 We have another full line-up on Wednesday, so be ready for an action-packed day. We start with a session at 10:15 – 11:15 a.m. in the Telegraph Room where we have a session on “PLM for Consumer Products: Building an Engine for Quality and Innovation” with featured presenters from Starbucks and partner Kalypso. This is a rare opportunity to learn directly from Starbucks how they instill quality and innovation throughout their organization, products, and processes, leveraging PLM disciplines with strong support from their partner. If you’re not in the consumer products industry, we recommend attending another session at 10:15 – 11:15 a.m. in Moscone West room 3005: “Eco-Enterprise Innovation Awards and the Business Case for Sustainability” featuring Jeff Henley, Oracle’s Chairman of the Board and Jon Chorley, Chief Sustainability Officer. Oracle will honor select customers with Oracle’s Eco-Enterprise Innovation award, which recognizes customers and their respective partners who rely on Oracle products to support their green business practices to reduce their environmental impact while improving business efficiencies and reducing costs. The awards presentation is followed by a panel discussion with customers and Oracle executives, who describe how these award-winning organizations are embracing environmental initiatives as a central part of their business strategy and how information technology plays a pivotal role. Next at 11:45 a.m. – 12:45 p.m. in Telegraph Hill attend our session devoted to exploring Product Lifecycle Management’s role in Software Lifecycle Management. This is a thought leadership session with Oracle experts in the field on the importance of change management, and we’ll discuss how Oracle has for years leveraged Agile PLM to develop Agile PLM. If software lifecycle management doesn’t apply to your business or you’d rather engage in some lively one-on-one discussions, we also have a “Supply Chain Meet the Experts” session in Moscone West Room 2001A. Product experts, thought leaders and executives will be on hand to discuss your questions/topics, so come prepared. This session tends to fill up fast so try to get in early. At 1:15 – 2:15 p.m. join us back in Telegraph Hill for a session focused on leveraging the Agile Product Portfolio Management application as the Product Development Master Schedule to improve efficiencies, optimize resources, and gain visibility across projects enterprise-wide to improve portfolio profitability. Customer presenters from Broadcom will explain how they’ve leveraged the product to enable a master schedule with enterprise-level, phase-gate program and project collaboration and resource optimization. Again in Telegraph Hill from 3:30 – 4:30 p.m. we have an interesting session with leading semiconductor customer LSI and partner Kalypso on how LSI leveraged Agile PLM to advance from homegrown applications to complete Product Value Chain Management. That type of transition can be challenging, and LSI details how they were able to achieve their goals and the value they gained along the journey – a fascinating account for any company interested in leveraging best practices to innovate their business processes and even end products. Lastly, we’ll wrap up in Telegraph Hill from 5:00 – 6:00 p.m. with a session on “Ensuring New Product Success by Achieving Excellence in New Product Introduction.” This is a cross-industry session, guaranteed to deliver insight in the often elusive practice of creating winning products, and we’re very excited about. According to IDC Manufacturing Insights analyst Joe Barkai, “Product Failures are not necessarily a result of bad ideas…they are a result of suboptimal decisions.” We’ll show you how to wire your business processes to enhance decision-making and maximize product potential. Now, quickly hit your hotel room to freshen up and then catch one of the many complimentary shuttles to the much-anticipated Oracle Customer Appreciation Event on Treasure Island. We have a very exciting show planned – check out what’s in store here. Thursday, October 4 PLM has a light schedule on Thursday this year with just one session, but this again is one of our best sessions on managing the Product Value Chain: at 11:15 a.m – 12:15 p.m.in Telegraph Hill, it’s a customer and partner driven session with Sonoco Products and Deloitte telling their story about how to achieve integrated change control by interfacing Agile PLM with Oracle E-Business Suite. Sonoco Products, a global manufacturer of consumer and industrial packaging materials, with its systems integrator, Deloitte, is doing this by implementing prebuilt integration (Oracle Design-to-Release Integration Pack for Agile Product Lifecycle Management for Process and Oracle Process) to integrate Agile with Oracle Product Hub/Oracle Product Information Management and Oracle E-Business Suite. This session presents a case study of how Sonoco is leveraging this solution to improve data quality and build a framework for stronger master data governance. Even though that ends our PLM line-up at OpenWorld, there will still be many sessions and activities at the conference, so visit the Oracle OpenWorld website to review agendas and build your schedule. And of course, download and bring this guide and the latest version of the Agile PLM Focus-On Document (available soon!). San Francisco is a wonderful city to explore, and we’re glad you’re considering joining the Agile PLM team at Oracle OpenWorld! I hope to see you there! Follow me before the conference and on site for real-time updates about #OOW12 on Twitter @Kerrie_Foy or @AgilePLM.

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T-SQL Tuesday #53-Matt's Making Me Do This!

- by Most Valuable Yak (Rob Volk)

Hello everyone! It's that time again, time for T-SQL Tuesday, the wonderful blog series started by Adam Machanic (b|t). This month we are hosted by Matt Velic (b|t) who asks the question, "Why So Serious?", in celebration of April Fool's Day. He asks the contributors for their dirty tricks. And for some reason that escapes me, he and Jeff Verheul (b|t) seem to think I might be able to write about those. Shocked, I am! Nah, not really. They're absolutely right, this one is gonna be fun! I took some inspiration from Matt's suggestions, namely Resource Governor and Login Triggers. I've done some interesting login trigger stuff for a presentation, but nothing yet with Resource Governor. Best way to learn it! One of my oldest pet peeves is abuse of the sa login. Don't get me wrong, I use it too, but typically only as SQL Agent job owner. It's been a while since I've been stuck with it, but back when I started using SQL Server, EVERY application needed sa to function. It was hard-coded and couldn't be changed. (welllllll, that is if you didn't use a hex editor on the EXE file, but who would do such a thing?) My standard warning applies: don't run anything on this page in production. In fact, back up whatever server you're testing this on, including the master database. Snapshotting a VM is a good idea. Also make sure you have other sysadmin level logins on that server. So here's a standard template for a logon trigger to address those pesky sa users: CREATE TRIGGER SA_LOGIN_PRIORITY ON ALL SERVER WITH ENCRYPTION, EXECUTE AS N'sa' AFTER LOGON AS IF ORIGINAL_LOGIN()<>N'sa' OR APP_NAME() LIKE N'SQL Agent%' RETURN; -- interesting stuff goes here GO What can you do for "interesting stuff"? Books Online limits itself to merely rolling back the logon, which will throw an error (and alert the person that the logon trigger fired). That's a good use for logon triggers, but really not tricky enough for this blog. Some of my suggestions are below: WAITFOR DELAY '23:59:59'; Or: EXEC sp_MSforeach_db 'EXEC sp_detach_db ''?'';' Or: EXEC msdb.dbo.sp_add_job @job_name=N'`', @enabled=1, @start_step_id=1, @notify_level_eventlog=0, @delete_level=3; EXEC msdb.dbo.sp_add_jobserver @job_name=N'`', @server_name=@@SERVERNAME; EXEC msdb.dbo.sp_add_jobstep @job_name=N'`', @step_id=1, @step_name=N'`', @command=N'SHUTDOWN;'; EXEC msdb.dbo.sp_start_job @job_name=N'`'; Really, I don't want to spoil your own exploration, try it yourself! The thing I really like about these is it lets me promote the idea that "sa is SLOW, sa is BUGGY, don't use sa!". Before we get into Resource Governor, make sure to drop or disable that logon trigger. They don't work well in combination. (Had to redo all the following code when SSMS locked up) Resource Governor is a feature that lets you control how many resources a single session can consume. The main goal is to limit the damage from a runaway query. But we're not here to read about its main goal or normal usage! I'm trying to make people stop using sa BECAUSE IT'S SLOW! Here's how RG can do that: USE master; GO CREATE FUNCTION dbo.SA_LOGIN_PRIORITY() RETURNS sysname WITH SCHEMABINDING, ENCRYPTION AS BEGIN RETURN CASE WHEN ORIGINAL_LOGIN()=N'sa' AND APP_NAME() NOT LIKE N'SQL Agent%' THEN N'SA_LOGIN_PRIORITY' ELSE N'default' END END GO CREATE RESOURCE POOL SA_LOGIN_PRIORITY WITH ( MIN_CPU_PERCENT = 0 ,MAX_CPU_PERCENT = 1 ,CAP_CPU_PERCENT = 1 ,AFFINITY SCHEDULER = (0) ,MIN_MEMORY_PERCENT = 0 ,MAX_MEMORY_PERCENT = 1 -- ,MIN_IOPS_PER_VOLUME = 1 ,MAX_IOPS_PER_VOLUME = 1 -- uncomment for SQL Server 2014 ); CREATE WORKLOAD GROUP SA_LOGIN_PRIORITY WITH ( IMPORTANCE = LOW ,REQUEST_MAX_MEMORY_GRANT_PERCENT = 1 ,REQUEST_MAX_CPU_TIME_SEC = 1 ,REQUEST_MEMORY_GRANT_TIMEOUT_SEC = 1 ,MAX_DOP = 1 ,GROUP_MAX_REQUESTS = 1 ) USING SA_LOGIN_PRIORITY; ALTER RESOURCE GOVERNOR WITH (CLASSIFIER_FUNCTION=dbo.SA_LOGIN_PRIORITY); ALTER RESOURCE GOVERNOR RECONFIGURE; From top to bottom: Create a classifier function to determine which pool the session should go to. More info on classifier functions. Create the pool and provide a generous helping of resources for the sa login. Create the workload group and further prioritize those resources for the sa login. Apply the classifier function and reconfigure RG to use it. I have to say this one is a bit sneakier than the logon trigger, least of all you don't get any error messages. I heartily recommend testing it in Management Studio, and click around the UI a lot, there's some fun behavior there. And DEFINITELY try it on SQL 2014 with the IO settings included! You'll notice I made allowances for SQL Agent jobs owned by sa, they'll go into the default workload group. You can add your own overrides to the classifier function if needed. Some interesting ideas I didn't have time for but expect you to get to before me: Set up different pools/workgroups with different settings and randomize which one the classifier chooses Do the same but base it on time of day (Books Online example covers this)... Or, which workstation it connects from. This can be modified for certain special people in your office who either don't listen, or are attracted (and attractive) to you. And if things go wrong you can always use the following from another sysadmin or Dedicated Admin connection: ALTER RESOURCE GOVERNOR DISABLE; That will let you go in and either fix (or drop) the pools, workgroups and classifier function. So now that you know these types of things are possible, and if you are tired of your team using sa when they shouldn't, I expect you'll enjoy playing with these quite a bit! Unfortunately, the aforementioned Dedicated Admin Connection kinda poops on the party here. Books Online for both topics will tell you that the DAC will not fire either feature. So if you have a crafty user who does their research, they can still sneak in with sa and do their bidding without being hampered. Of course, you can still detect their login via various methods, like a server trace, SQL Server Audit, extended events, and enabling "Audit Successful Logins" on the server. These all have their downsides: traces take resources, extended events and SQL Audit can't fire off actions, and enabling successful logins will bloat your error log very quickly. SQL Audit is also limited unless you have Enterprise Edition, and Resource Governor is Enterprise-only. And WORST OF ALL, these features are all available and visible through the SSMS UI, so even a doofus developer or manager could find them. Fortunately there are Event Notifications! Event notifications are becoming one of my favorite features of SQL Server (keep an eye out for more blogs from me about them). They are practically unknown and heinously underutilized. They are also a great gateway drug to using Service Broker, another great but underutilized feature. Hopefully this will get you to start using them, or at least your enemies in the office will once they read this, and then you'll have to learn them in order to fix things. So here's the setup: USE msdb; GO CREATE PROCEDURE dbo.SA_LOGIN_PRIORITY_act WITH ENCRYPTION AS DECLARE @x XML, @message nvarchar(max); RECEIVE @x=CAST(message_body AS XML) FROM SA_LOGIN_PRIORITY_q; IF @x.value('(//LoginName)[1]','sysname')=N'sa' AND @x.value('(//ApplicationName)[1]','sysname') NOT LIKE N'SQL Agent%' BEGIN -- interesting activation procedure stuff goes here END GO CREATE QUEUE SA_LOGIN_PRIORITY_q WITH STATUS=ON, RETENTION=OFF, ACTIVATION (PROCEDURE_NAME=dbo.SA_LOGIN_PRIORITY_act, MAX_QUEUE_READERS=1, EXECUTE AS OWNER); CREATE SERVICE SA_LOGIN_PRIORITY_s ON QUEUE SA_LOGIN_PRIORITY_q([http://schemas.microsoft.com/SQL/Notifications/PostEventNotification]); CREATE EVENT NOTIFICATION SA_LOGIN_PRIORITY_en ON SERVER WITH FAN_IN FOR AUDIT_LOGIN TO SERVICE N'SA_LOGIN_PRIORITY_s', N'current database' GO From top to bottom: Create activation procedure for event notification queue. Create queue to accept messages from event notification, and activate the procedure to process those messages when received. Create service to send messages to that queue. Create event notification on AUDIT_LOGIN events that fire the service. I placed this in msdb as it is an available system database and already has Service Broker enabled by default. You should change this to another database if you can guarantee it won't get dropped. So what to put in place for "interesting activation procedure code"? Hmmm, so far I haven't addressed Matt's suggestion of writing a lengthy script to send an annoying message: SET @[email protected]('(//HostName)[1]','sysname') + N' tried to log in to server ' + @x.value('(//ServerName)[1]','sysname') + N' as SA at ' + @x.value('(//StartTime)[1]','sysname') + N' using the ' + @x.value('(//ApplicationName)[1]','sysname') + N' program. That''s why you''re getting this message and the attached pornography which' + N' is bloating your inbox and violating company policy, among other things. If you know' + N' this person you can go to their desk and hit them, or use the following SQL to end their session: KILL ' + @x.value('(//SPID)[1]','sysname') + N'; Hopefully they''re in the middle of a huge query that they need to finish right away.' EXEC msdb.dbo.sp_send_dbmail @recipients=N'[email protected]', @subject=N'SA Login Alert', @query_result_width=32767, @body=@message, @query=N'EXEC sp_readerrorlog;', @attach_query_result_as_file=1, @query_attachment_filename=N'UtterlyGrossPorn_SeriouslyDontOpenIt.jpg' I'm not sure I'd call that a lengthy script, but the attachment should get pretty big, and I'm sure the email admins will love storing multiple copies of it. The nice thing is that this also fires on Dedicated Admin connections! You can even identify DAC connections from the event data returned, I leave that as an exercise for you. You can use that info to change the action taken by the activation procedure, and since it's a stored procedure, it can pretty much do anything! Except KILL the SPID, or SHUTDOWN the server directly. I'm still working on those.

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CodePlex Daily Summary for Tuesday, October 15, 2013

CodePlex Daily Summary for Tuesday, October 15, 2013Popular ReleasesFFXIV Crafting Simulator: Crafting Simulator 2.4.1: -Fixed the offset for the new patch (Auto Loading function)iBoxDB.EX - Fast Transactional NoSQL Database Resources: iBoxDB.net fast transactional nosql database 1.5.2: Easily process objects and documents, zero configuration. fast embeddable transactional nosql document database, includes CURD, QueryLanguage, Master-Master-Slave Replication, MVCC, etc. supports .net2, .net4, windows phone, mono, unity3d, node.js , copy and run. http://download-codeplex.sec.s-msft.com/Download?ProjectName=iboxdb&DownloadId=737783 Benchmark with MongoDB Compatibility more platforms for java versionneurogoody: slicebox: this is the slice box jsEvent-Based Components AppBuilder: AB3.AppDesigner.55: Iteration 55 (Feature): Moving of TargetEdge (simple wires only) by mouse.Sandcastle Help File Builder: SHFB v1.9.8.0 with Visual Studio Package: General InformationIMPORTANT: On some systems, the content of the ZIP file is blocked and the installer may fail to run. Before extracting it, right click on the ZIP file, select Properties, and click on the Unblock button if it is present in the lower right corner of the General tab in the properties dialog. This new release contains bug fixes and feature enhancements. There are some potential breaking changes in this release as some features of the Help File Builder have been moved into...SharpConfig: SharpConfig 1.2: Implemented comment parsing. Comments are now part of settings and setting categories. New properties: Setting: Comment PreComments SettingCategory: Comment PreCommentsC++ REST SDK (codename "Casablanca"): C++ REST SDK 1.3.0: This release fixes multiple customer reported issues as well as the following: Full support for Dev12 binaries and project files Full support for Windows XP New sample highlighting the Client and Server APIs : BlackJack Expose underlying native handle to set custom options on http_client Improvements to Listener Library Note: Dev10 binaries have been dropped as of this release, however the Dev10 project files are still available in the Source CodeAD ACL Scanner: 1.3.2: Minor bug fixed: Powershell 4.0 will report: Select—Object: Parameter cannot be processed because the parameter name p is ambiguous.Json.NET: Json.NET 5.0 Release 7: New feature - Added support for Immutable Collections New feature - Added WriteData and ReadData settings to DataExtensionAttribute New feature - Added reference and type name handling support to extension data New feature - Added default value and required support to constructor deserialization Change - Extension data is now written when serializing Fix - Added missing casts to JToken Fix - Fixed parsing large floating point numbers Fix - Fixed not parsing some ISO date ...RESX Manager: ResxManager 0.2.1: FIXED: Many critical bugs have been fixed. New Features Error logging for improved exception handling New toolbar Improvements of user interfaceFast YouTube Downloader: YouTube Downloader 2.2.0: YouTube Downloader 2.2.0VidCoder: 1.5.8 Beta: Added hardware acceleration options: Bicubic OpenCL scaling algorithm, QSV decoding/encoding and DXVA decoding. Updated HandBrake core to SVN 5834. Updated VidCoder setup icon. Fixed crash when choosing the mp4v2 container on x86 and opening on x64. Warning: the hardware acceleration features require specific hardware or file types to work correctly: QSV: Need an Intel processor that supports Quick Sync Video encoding, with a monitor hooked up to the Intel HD Graphics output and the lat...ASP.net MVC Awesome - jQuery Ajax Helpers: 3.5.2: version 3.5.2 - fix for setting single value to multivalue controls - datepicker min max date offset fix - html encoding for keys fix - enable Column.ClientFormatFunc to be a function call that will return a function version 3.5.1 - fixed html attributes rendering - fixed loading animation rendering - css improvements version 3.5 ========================== - autosize for all popups ( can be turned off by calling in js awe.autoSize = false ) - added Parent, Paremeter extensions ...Wsus Package Publisher: Release v1.3.1310.12: Allow the Update Creation Wizard to be set in full screen mode. Fix a bug which prevent WPP to Reset Remote Sus Client ID. Change the behavior of links in the Update Detail Viewer. Left-Click to open, Right-Click to copy to the Clipboard.TerrariViewer: TerrariViewer v7 [Terraria Inventory Editor]: This is a complete overhaul but has the same core style. I hope you enjoy it. This version is compatible with 1.2.0.3 Please send issues to my Twitter or https://github.com/TJChap2840WDTVHubGen - Adds Metadata, thumbnails and subtitles to WDTV Live Hubs: WDTVHubGen.v2.1.6.maint: I think this covers all of the issues. new additions: fixed the thumbnail problem for backgrounds. general clean up and error checking. need to get this put through the wringer and all feedback is welcome.BIDS Helper: BIDS Helper 1.6.4: This BIDS Helper release brings the following new features and fixes: New Features: A new Bus Matrix style report option when you run the Printer Friendly Dimension Usage report for an SSAS cube. The Biml engine is now fully in sync with the supported subset of Varigence Mist 3.4. This includes a large number of language enhancements, bugfixes, and project deployment support. Fixed Issues: Fixed Biml execution for project connections fixing a bug with Tabular Translations Editor not a...MoreTerra (Terraria World Viewer): MoreTerra 1.11.3: =========== =New Features= =========== New Markers added for Plantera's Bulb, Heart Fruits and Gold Cache. Markers now correctly display for the gems found in rock debris on the floor. =========== =Compatibility= =========== Fixed header changes found in Terraria 1.0.3.1Media Companion: Media Companion MC3.581b: Fix in place for TVDB xml issue. New* Movie - General Preferences, allow saving of ignored 'The' or 'A' to end of movie title, stored in sorttitle field. * Movie - New Way for Cropping Posters. Fixed* Movie - Rename of folders/filename. caught error message. * Movie - Fixed Bug in Save Cropped image, only saving in Pre-Frodo format if Both model selected. * Movie - Fixed Cropped image didn't take zoomed ratio into effect. * Movie - Separated Folder Renaming and File Renaming fuctions durin...SmartStore.NET - Free ASP.NET MVC Ecommerce Shopping Cart Solution: SmartStore.NET 1.2.0: HighlightsMulti-store support "Trusted Shops" plugins Highly improved SmartStore.biz Importer plugin Add custom HTML content to pages Performance optimization New FeaturesMulti-store-support: now multiple stores can be managed within a single application instance (e.g. for building different catalogs, brands, landing pages etc.) Added 3 new Trusted Shops plugins: Seal, Buyer Protection, Store Reviews Added Display as HTML Widget to CMS Topics (store owner now can add arbitrary HT...New ProjectsArtezio SharePoint 2013 Workflow Activities: SharePoint Workflow 2013 doesn’t provide activities to work with permissions, we've fixed it using HttpSend activity that makes REST API calls.Dependency.Injection: An attempt to write a really simple dependency injection framework. Does property-based and recursive dependency injection. Handles singletons. Yay!DHGMS SUO Killer: SUO Killer is a Visual Studio extension to deal with the removal of SUO file to mitigate SUO related issues in Visual Studio. This project is written in C#.dynamicsheet: dynamicsheetExcel Comparator: Excel Comparator is an add-in for Microsoft Excel that allows the user to compare a range between two sheets. FetchAIP: FetchAIP is a utility to download the various sections of the Aeronautical Information Publication (AIP) for New Zealand.Fluent Method and Type Builder: Still working on the summary.getboost: NuGet package for Boost framework.Goldstone Forum: WebForms Forum - TelerikAcademy Team ProjectGroupMe Software Development Kit: .NET Software Development Kit for http://groupme.com/ chat service.GSLMS: ----Import Excel Files Into SQL Server: Load Excel files into SQL Database without schema changes.Inaction: ?????????? jBegin: Learning ASP.net MVC from beginning, then here will be the source code for jbegin.comKDG's Statistical Quality Control Solver: This tool will include methods that can solve sample standard deviation, sample variance, median, mode, moving average, percentiles, margin of error, etc.kpi: Key Performance Indicator (KPI)????; visual studio 2010 with .NET 4.0 runtimeLECO Remote Control Client Application: Sample code and binaries are provided to demonstrate the remote control capability of a LECO Cornerstone instrument.LinkPad: My first Windows Store app intended for student to sketch up thoughts and concepts in quick diagrams.Modler.NET - Automating Graphical Data Model Co-Evolution: Modler.NET was the tool created for a Master's thesis project, which automates the co-evolution of graphical data models and the database that they represent.MyFileManager1: SummaryNever Lotto: Korean 465 Lotto Analyzer and Simulator. The real purpose of this project is to show that this kind of lotto things are just shit.NHibernate: The purpose of this project is to demo CRUD operations using NHibernate with Mono in Visual Studio 2012 using C# language. OAuth2 Authorizer: OAuth2 Authorizer helps you get the access code for a standard OAuth2 REST service that implements 3-legged authentication.Regular Expression for Excel: Regular Expression For Excel is an Excel Plugin. It provides a regular expressions EXCEL support. We can use it in the EXCEL function.Service Tester: Service Tester is an Azure Cloud based load testing application targeted at Soap Web Services which allows you to invoke your Web Service by random parameters.Simple TypeScript and C# Class Generator: Simple GUI application to generate compatible class source code for C# and TypeScript for communications between C# and TypeScript. Soccer team management: ---Spanner: No more stringly-typed web development! Build statically typed single page web applications in C#, automatically generating all HTML, JavaScript, and Knockout.

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CodePlex Daily Summary for Saturday, October 12, 2013

CodePlex Daily Summary for Saturday, October 12, 2013Popular ReleasesTerrariViewer: TerrariViewer v7 [Terraria Inventory Editor]: This is a complete overhaul but has the same core style. I hope you enjoy it. This version is compatible with 1.2.0.3 Please send issues to my Twitter or https://github.com/TJChap2840WDTVHubGen - Adds Metadata, thumbnails and subtitles to WDTV Live Hubs: WDTVHubGen.v2.1.6.maint: I think this covers all of the issues. new additions: fixed the thumbnail problem for backgrounds. general clean up and error checking. need to get this put through the wringer and all feedback is welcome.Free language translator and file converter: Free Language Translator 3.4: fixe for new version look up.MoreTerra (Terraria World Viewer): MoreTerra 1.11.3: =========== =New Features= =========== New Markers added for Plantera's Bulb, Heart Fruits and Gold Cache. Markers now correctly display for the gems found in rock debris on the floor. =========== =Compatibility= =========== Fixed header changes found in Terraria 1.0.3.1C# Intellisense for Notepad++: Release v1.0.8.0: - fixed document formatting artifacts To avoid the DLLs getting locked by OS use MSI file for the installation.CS-Script for Notepad++ (C# intellisense and code execution): Release v1.0.8.0: - fixed document formatting artifacts To avoid the DLLs getting locked by OS use MSI file for the installation.Generic Unit of Work and Repositories Framework: v2.0: Async methods for Repostiories - Ivan (@ifarkas) OData Async - Ivan (@ifarkas) Glimpse MVC4 workig with MVC5 Glimpse EF6 Northwind.Repostiory Project (layer) best practices for extending the Repositories Northwind.Services Project (layer), best practices for implementing business facade Live Demo: http://longle.azurewebsites.net/Spa/Product#/list Documentation: http://blog.longle.net/2013/10/09/upgrading-to-async-with-entity-framework-mvc-odata-asyncentitysetcontroller-kendo-ui-gli...Media Companion: Media Companion MC3.581b: Fix in place for TVDB xml issue. New* Movie - General Preferences, allow saving of ignored 'The' or 'A' to end of movie title, stored in sorttitle field. * Movie - New Way for Cropping Posters. Fixed* Movie - Rename of folders/filename. caught error message. * Movie - Fixed Bug in Save Cropped image, only saving in Pre-Frodo format if Both model selected. * Movie - Fixed Cropped image didn't take zoomed ratio into effect. * Movie - Separated Folder Renaming and File Renaming fuctions durin...Ghostscript.NET: Ghostscript.NET v.1.1.1.: v.1.1.1. fixed problem in GhostscriptRasterizer and GhostscriptViewer when MediaBox contains negative llx or lly values. (problem reported by "Prasenjit Das"). added GhostscriptPngDevice, a friendly output device class with all png devices related switches. (GhostscriptPngDevice supports: png16m, pngalpha, pnggray, png256, png16, pngmono, pngmonod). added GhostscriptJpegDevice, a friendly output device class with all jpeg devices related switches. (GhostscriptJpegDevice supports: jpeg, jp...(Party) DJ Player: DJP.124.12: 124.12 (Feature implementation completed): Changed datatype of HistoryDateInfo from string to DateTime New: HistoryDateInfoConverter for the listbox Improved: HistoryDateInfoDeleter, HistoryDateInfoLoader, HistoryDateInfoAsynchronizer, HistoryItemLoader, HistoryItemsToHistoryDateInfoConverterSmartStore.NET - Free ASP.NET MVC Ecommerce Shopping Cart Solution: SmartStore.NET 1.2.0: HighlightsMulti-store support "Trusted Shops" plugins Highly improved SmartStore.biz Importer plugin Add custom HTML content to pages Performance optimization New FeaturesMulti-store-support: now multiple stores can be managed within a single application instance (e.g. for building different catalogs, brands, landing pages etc.) Added 3 new Trusted Shops plugins: Seal, Buyer Protection, Store Reviews Added Display as HTML Widget to CMS Topics (store owner now can add arbitrary HT...Fast YouTube Downloader: Youtube Downloader 2.1: Youtube Downloader 2.1NuGet: NuGet 2.7.1: Released October 07, 2013. Release notes: http://docs.nuget.org/docs/release-notes/nuget-2.7.1 Important note: After downloading the signed build of NuGet.exe, if you perform an update using the "nuget.exe update -self" command, it will revert back to the unsigned build.Mugen MVVM Toolkit: Mugen MVVM Toolkit 2.0: IntroductionMugen MVVM Toolkit makes it easier to develop Silverlight, WPF, WinRT and WP applications using the Model-View-ViewModel design pattern. The purpose of the toolkit is to provide a simple framework and set of tools for getting up to speed quickly with applications based on the MVVM design pattern. The core of Toolkit contains a navigation system, windows management system, models, validation, etc. Mugen MVVM Toolkit contains all the MVVM classes such as ViewModelBase, RelayCommand,...Office Ribbon Project (under active development): Ribbon (07. Oct. 2013): Fixed Scrollbar Bug if DropDown Button is bigger than screen Added Office 2013 Theme Fixed closing the Ribbon caused a null reference exception in the RibbonButton.Dispose if the DropDown was not created yet Fixed Memory leak fix (unhooked events after Dispose) Fixed ToolStrip Selected Text 2013 and 2007 for Blue and Standard themesGhostscript Studio: Ghostscript.Studio v.1.0.2: Ghostscript Studio is easy to use Ghostscript IDE, a tool that facilitates the use of the Ghostscript interpreter by providing you with a graphical interface for postscript editing and file conversions. Ghostscript Studio allows you to preview postscript files, edit the code and execute them in order to convert PDF documents and other formats. The program allows you to convert between PDF, Postscript, EPS, TIFF, JPG and PNG by using the Ghostscript.NET Processor. v.1.0.2. added custom -c s...Squiggle - A free open source LAN Messenger: Squiggle 3.3 Alpha: Allow using environment variables in configuration file (history db connection string, download folder location, display name, group and message) Fix for history viewer to show the correct history entries History saved with UTC timestamp This is alpha release and not recommended for use in productionVidCoder: 1.5.7 Beta: Updated HandBrake core to SVN 5819. About dialog now pulls down HandBrake version from the DLL. Added a confirmation dialog to Stop if the encode has been going on for more than 5 minutes. Fixed handling of unicode characters for input and output filenames. We now encode to UTF-8 before passing to HandBrake. Fixed a crash in the queue multiple titles dialog. Added code to rescue tool windows which get placed outside of the visible screen area.Vodigi Open Source Interactive Digital Signage: Vodigi Release 6.0: Please note that we have removed the Kinect support in the Vodigi Player for Version 6.0. We are in the process of building a separate Kinect-enabled Player that will support the next generation Kinect sensor. If you are currently using Kinect with the Vodigi Player, you should not upgrade to Version 6.0. The following enhancements and fixes are included in Vodigi 6.0. Vodigi Administrator - New Interface - Timelines that allow you play video and images on the Main Screen Vodigi Player -...Wsus Package Publisher: Release v1.3.1310.05: Enhance the "Reboot Remote Computers", by adding a timer before the reboot occure. So that remote users can save their documents and close applications. You can also add a message to be display. In 'Tools'->'Settings'-> Misc Tab, you can set a default message. Enhance the "Compare Computers against AD", by choosing OUs to include in the comparison.New Projects555984402e86: 555984402e86DropBoxClient: DropBoxClient is a .NET library for interacting with the DropBox Core API. EDB to PST Converter-Fastest Method for Exchange Data conversion: Enstella EDB to PST converter software-smart and valuable solution for instant and safe recovery and conversion of EDB file into PST file.How to build an autodialer with PHP using your MySQL database: As the title says we create an autodialer application, which can call multiple phones simultaneously, in the time we set up.HungNm Test: HungNm TestIBANTools: Strumento da riga di comando per il calcolo massivo dell'IBAN a partire da ABI, CAB, nazione e conto.KGitSvn: This is only a project I set up to test git-svn functionality. It will be deleted when my testing is complete.MailboxLogParser: MailboxLogParser works with Exchange ActiveSync mailbox logs to help support engineers debug issue.MiniScrum: MiniScrum is a small MVC based website to collect notes of what the team members have been up to since our last meeting. pescar2013-shop-purecss: Pescar shop, library PureCssSharePoint User Permission Check: A SP2010 webpart for any site of any site collection. Gives info on permissions of a user for: all folders in all docs, every item in all folders of the librarySocksOverHttp: Welcome free internet, kick away HTTP proxy filter.TypeScript component based framework for enterprise web application.: TypeScript component based framework for enterprise web application.ugsf migration (2007/2010/2013): UGSF ( UserGroup SharePoint France) Documentation and Ressources for SharePoint Migration ( 2007/2010/2013)weiqk's project: only test Windows Imaging Component(WIC) Demo App on WEC2013: A sample application to Demo the Windows Imaging Component(WIC) on WEC2013.WPTrakt: wptrakt

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