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

  - by Stefan Hinker

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

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• Understanding Windows 8 Recovery options

  - by stuffe

  Background: I am preparing a PC that I am sending to a relative abroad, who has little or no internet access, and next to no sensible options for getting IT support should anything go wrong. As such I am trying to provide a full set of recovery options such that they are able to reinstall the OS with minimum fuss or assistance if required. The PC is a brand new Acer laptop that came with Windows 7 pre-installed (and an associated recovery partition) and a free upgrade to Windows 8. I have installed Windows 8 from scratch performing a format and clean install from media I burned from the official download. The existing Windows 7 recovery partition is still there, and I can still boot from it. I have created recovery DVDs of that in case it is ever lost. Here are my recovery options so far. I can perform a factory reset of Win 7 via the recovery partition I can perform a factory reset of Win 7 via burned recovery DVDs I can re-install Windows 8 cleanly from a DVD All of these are useful, but not what I want, because the first 2 methods use Win 7, and still fill the machine with crapware, and the latter doesn't provide for any post-install customisation and software installation. So, I am looking to see what other options are available to perform a Windows 8 recovery that will be more than a simple install. I am aware that Win8 comes with some useful refresh tools: Refresh your PC - Re-install Win 8 over the top of your existing installation, recovering from any Windows corruption etc. I can run this from my current install, although it says some files are missing that will be provided by me install or recovery media, which seems to be code for stick your install DVD in, and it starts after I do that - unfortunately for this particular laptop you need to specify a particular WIFI driver or the install bombs out part way through with IRQL errors, and this refresh method skips the part where you can load a driver, so it's no use to me. I think I can fix this by creating a custom recovery image using the recimg.exe command but it takes hours to complete so I haven't tried it yet. Reset your PC - Perform a full install and lose all your files. Again it needs my Install media inserting before it will do anything, but then it provides an error (will include later when I recreate it...) Now, these recovery options look useful (in principal, although both are fail for me) but they rely on having a working system to access the tools, which leads me to the last option, of making a Recovery USB drive. I have made a recovery drive, and it should perform loads of useful things, including copying my WIN7 recovery partition to the drive, providing the above refresh and reset options, providing other troubleshooting options and also the ability to restore from a custom image, only none of them seem to work for me. Creating the Recovery Drive - the option to include my recovery partition is greyed out. The partition exists and works fine, why will it not copy it? Refresh - I imagine this would have the same issues as I described before, but this is moot because when I try it says that the "drive where Windows is installed is locked, please unlock the drive and try again" with no info on what that means and how to do it. Restore - Again, probably pointless as I can just use the DVD, but it also errors: "unable to reset your PC. A required drive partition is missing" System Restore - should let me roll back a bad driver etc as per normal in Windows, only it simply says "To use system restore you must specify which windows installation to restore. Restart this computer, select an operating system, and select system restore" ?!?! System Image Recovery - this seems to be offering to restore from a Windows system image, but this is deprecated in Windows 8, although you can still make one if you use the Windows 7 Backup tools, however the resultant file is too large to put on the USB stick as it's FAT formatted, and would be a massive stack of DVDs anyway. So useless. It would be nice it it would work with the custom recovery image you can use with the refresh command, but there seems no option to do this. Automatic Repair - some diagnostics, which seem useless as it happily tells me it can't fix my problem, even though I have none. Command Prompt - yay, this works! What on earth do I want to use it for... Had any of the above worked, it might be useful, but as any form of install still requires you to have the DVD, and any form of custom recovery image also requires you to have either a massive stack of DVDs or an NTFS formatted backup device in addition to the recovery drive, it sort of ruins the point. It doesn't seem rocket science. I want to create a bootable USB drive that I can refresh Windows over an existing install with, perform a clean reinstall to a bare system, or recovery a customised image with existing apps installed. If anyone can point me in a direction that allows me to make a single recovery drive do these all these things, I would appreciate it. I have a 32Gb USB3 thumb drive that I bought for this very purpose, but it's seems to be fighting to let me do anything useful. At this rate I will be making a DriveImageXML recovery stick and dumping the OS with that, which I know works, but isn't so elegant as using the proper tools..

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

  - by Chris

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

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• How does one get rid of fishy behavior in Windows?

  - by Tom Wijsman

  After I had boot my computer this morning there suddenly flooded water from the top of the screen, after which some fishes dropped into it. Now I can barely see what I am doing because the water distorts the view. Sometimes the fish follow the cursor so I need to move it away or wait for the fish to mind their own business. This makes it very annoying to use my system. What have I tried? Reboot the system. This caused the water to deplete from the desktop. Upon reboot, the screen was refilled with water and fishes. Attach another monitor. Same problem, fills that monitor as well and gives me extra fish. Clicking the fish. Makes them turn direction. Right clicking the fish. Changes color of the fish, not really useful. I'm locked out of changing the background or screen saver settings. Hence, I had to post the lady below... Safe mode doesn't save me from the fishes. It does give me another background there, but I can't screenshot easily. Other user accounts experience this as well. The Guest account seems to experience more fish than the other accounts. Using HijackThis, OTL Timekeeper List, Syninternal Autoruns, RootKitRevealer, ShellExView and similar tools I can't seem to find any entries that could be it, the Sysinternals tools show everything as verified. I'm suspecting this to be a driver problem. Randomly removing drivers doesn't seem to alleviate the problem. When removing the Graphics Drivers, it makes my screen black. While that could be considered the solution, it's not what I want. Changing the time / date settings does also not seem to affect the fishes. Changing the time a few years in the future, I would have expected the fishes to be dead. But, the same fishes are still there... They simply won't die! Tried to get used to them. They are really bothering me, looks like they require food. I don't know how to give them food, but apparently they get it elsewhere during reboot... Tried to disable my mouse pointer and use the keyboard. This works, they now swim around more randomly. They do put their attention to huge changes on the screen, so I need to type slow. Or otherwise I can't see what I'm tying exactly. Hold my laptop upside down. This seems to affect the water and fishes, but the water stays in the screen. They seem super resistant against water sickness and confusion though... What does the problem look like? What do I need? A way to get rid of these fishes on my screen forever, they are really annoying me a lot and I'm about to crack the screen to see if that makes them escape. Do you have any idea why this problem is occurring? What are my considerations? Buying an USB fish tank could make the fish leave the screen, I am uncertain though whether the fish could leave the screen through the USB cable. Using the FISh (programming language) which seems to provide EXPRESSIVE POWER and EFFICIENT EXECUTION, I can however not find any examples on how to remove fish. What are my Specifications? I'm using a Sony Vaio Fishy laptop. Sony VAIO VGN-Fishy, VAIO. Processor: 1337 MHz, Intel Core 2 Duo, T5432, 1 MB, Intel PM965 Express, 667 MHz. Memory: 1024 MB, DDR2-SDRAM, 667 MHz, 2 x 1024 MB, 4 GB. Disk Drive: 50 GB, Serial ATA, 5400 RPM. Storage Media: Memory Stick™, Memory Stick PRO™. Display: 15.4 ", 1280 x 800 pixels, LCD. Video: GeForce 8400M GT, 128 MB. Optical Drive: DVD±R/RW DL, 24 x, 24 x, 24 x, 6 x, 4 x, 6 x, 4 x, 5 x, 5 x, 8 x, 8 x, 8 x, 8 x, 6 x, 6 x, 24 x, 24 x, 24 x, 16 x. Camera: 1.3 MP, 30 fps. Networking: 2.0+EDR. Keyboard: Touchpad, AZERTY. Operating System/Software: Windows Vista Home Premium. Security: Kensington. Weight & Dimensions: 98.8 oz (2800 g), 14 " (355.8 mm), 10 " (254.4 mm), 0.98 " (24.9 mm). Other features: 100 BASE-TX/10 BASE-T, 802.11a/b/g/n/Draft n, V92/V.90, fishes. Plz! Help me...

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• .NET to iOS: From WinForms to the iPad

  - by RobertChipperfield

  One of the great things about working at Red Gate is getting to play with new technology - and right now, that means mobile. A few weeks ago, we decided that a little research into the tablet computing arena was due, and purely from a numbers point of view, that suggested the iPad as a good target device. A quick trip to iPhoneDevCon in San Diego later, and Marine and I came back full of ideas, and with some concept of how iOS development was meant to work. Here's how we went from there to the release of Stacks & Heaps, our geeky take on the classic "Snakes & Ladders" game. Step 1: Buy a Mac I've played with many operating systems in my time: from the original BBC Model B, through DOS, Windows, Linux, and others, but I'd so far managed to avoid buying fruit-flavoured computer hardware! If you want to develop for the iPhone, iPad or iPod Touch, that's the first thing that needs to change. If you've not used OS X before, the first thing you'll realise is that everything is different! In the interests of avoiding a flame war in the comments section, I'll only go so far as to say that a lot of my Windows-flavoured muscle memory no longer worked. If you're in the UK, you'll also realise your keyboard is lacking a # key, and that " and @ are the other way around from normal. The wonderful Ukelele keyboard layout editor restores some sanity here, as long as you don't look at the keyboard when you're typing. I couldn't give up the PC entirely, but a handy application called Synergy comes to the rescue - it lets you share a single keyboard and mouse between multiple machines. There's a few limitations: Alt-Tab always seems to go to the Mac, and Windows 7's UAC dialogs require the local mouse for security reasons, but it gets you a long way at least. Step 2: Register as an Apple Developer You can register as an Apple Developer free of charge, and that lets you download XCode and the iOS SDK. You also get the iPhone / iPad emulator, which is handy, since you'll need to be a paid member before you can deploy your apps to a real device. You can either enroll as an individual, or as a company. They both cost the same ($99/year), but there's a few differences between them. If you register as a company, you can add multiple developers to your team (all for the same $99 - not $99 per developer), and you get to use your company name in the App Store. However, you'll need to send off significantly more documentation to Apple, and I suspect the process takes rather longer than for an individual, where they just need to verify some credit card details. Here's a tip: if you're registering as a company, do so as early as possible. The approval process can take a while to complete, so get the application in in plenty of time. Step 3: Learn to love the square brackets! Objective-C is the language of the iPad. C and C++ are also supported, and if you're doing some serious game development, you'll probably spend most of your time in C++ talking OpenGL, but for forms-based apps, you'll be interacting with a lot of the Objective-C SDK. Like shifting from Ctrl-C to Cmd-C, it feels a little odd at first, with the familiar string.format(.) turning into: NSString *myString = [NSString stringWithFormat:@"Hello world, it's %@", [NSDate date]]; Thankfully XCode's auto-complete is normally passable, if not up to Visual Studio's standards, which coupled with a huge amount of content on Stack Overflow means you'll soon get to grips with the API. You'll need to get used to some terminology changes, though; here's an incomplete approximation: Coming from a .NET background, there's some luxuries you no longer have developing Objective C in XCode: Generics! Remember back in .NET 1.1, when all collections were just objects? Yup, we're back there now. ReSharper. Or, more generally, very much refactoring support. The not-many-keystrokes to rename a class, its file, and al references to it in Visual Studio turns into a much more painful experience in XCode. Garbage collection. This is actually rather less of an issue than you might expect: if you follow the rules, the reference counting provided by Objective C gets you a long way without too much pain. Circular references are their usual problematic self, though. Decent exception handling. You do have exceptions, but they're nowhere near as widely used. Generally, if something goes wrong, you get nil (see translation table above) back. Which brings me on to. Calling a method on a nil object isn't a failure - it just returns nil itself! There's many arguments for and against this, but personally I fall into the "stuff should fail as quickly and explicitly as possible" camp. Less specifically, I found that there's more chance of code failing at runtime rather than getting caught at compile-time: using the @selector(.) syntax to pass a method signature isn't (can't be) checked at compile-time, so the first you know about a typo is a crash when you try and call it. The solution to this is of course lots of great testing, both automated and manual, but I still find comfort in provably correct type safety being enforced in addition to testing. Step 4: Submit to the App Store Assuming you want to distribute to more than a handful of devices, you're going to need to submit your app to the Apple App Store. There's a few gotchas in terms of getting builds signed with the right certificates, and you'll be bouncing around between XCode and iTunes Connect a fair bit, but eventually you get everything checked off the to-do list, and are ready to upload your first binary! With some amount of anticipation, I pressed the Upload button in XCode, ready to release our creation into the world, but was instead greeted by an error informing me my XML file was malformed. Uh. A little Googling later, and it turned out that a simple rename from "Stacks&Heaps.app" to "StacksAndHeaps.app" worked around an XML escaping bug, and we were good to go. The next step is to wait for approval (or otherwise). After a couple of weeks of intensive development, this part is agonising. Did we make it? The Apple jury is still out at the moment, but our fingers are firmly crossed! In the meantime, you can see some screenshots and leave us your email address if you'd like us to get in touch when it does go live at the MobileFoo website. Step 5: Profit! Actually, that wasn't the idea here: Stacks & Heaps is free; there's no adverts, and we're not going to sell all your data either. So why did we do it? We wanted to get an idea of what it's like to move from coding for a desktop environment, to something completely different. We don't know whether in a year's time, the iPad will still be the dominant force, or whether Android will have smoothed out some bugs, tweaked the performance, and polished the UI, but I think it's a fairly sure bet that the tablet form factor is here to stay. We want to meet people who are using it, start chatting to them, and find out about some of the pain they're feeling. What better way to do that than do it ourselves, and get to write a cool game in the process?

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• Use BGInfo to Build a Database of System Information of Your Network Computers

  - by Sysadmin Geek

  One of the more popular tools of the Sysinternals suite among system administrators is BGInfo which tacks real-time system information to your desktop wallpaper when you first login. For obvious reasons, having information such as system memory, available hard drive space and system up time (among others) right in front of you is very convenient when you are managing several systems. A little known feature about this handy utility is the ability to have system information automatically saved to a SQL database or some other data file. With a few minutes of setup work you can easily configure BGInfo to record system information of all your network computers in a centralized storage location. You can then use this data to monitor or report on these systems however you see fit. BGInfo Setup If you are familiar with BGInfo, you can skip this section. However, if you have never used this tool, it takes just a few minutes to setup in order to capture the data you are looking for. When you first open BGInfo, a timer will be counting down in the upper right corner. Click the countdown button to keep the interface up so we can edit the settings. Now edit the information you want to capture from the available fields on the right. Since all the output will be redirected to a central location, don’t worry about configuring the layout or formatting. Configuring the Storage Database BGInfo supports the ability to store information in several database formats: SQL Server Database, Access Database, Excel and Text File. To configure this option, open File > Database. Using a Text File The simplest, and perhaps most practical, option is to store the BGInfo data in a comma separated text file. This format allows for the file to be opened in Excel or imported into a database. To use a text file or any other file system type (Excel or MS Access), simply provide the UNC to the respective file. The account running the task to write to this file will need read/write access to both the share and NTFS file permissions. When using a text file, the only option is to have BGInfo create a new entry each time the capture process is run which will add a new line to the respective CSV text file. Using a SQL Database If you prefer to have the data dropped straight into a SQL Server database, BGInfo support this as well. This requires a bit of additional configuration, but overall it is very easy. The first step is to create a database where the information will be stored. Additionally, you will want to create a user account to fill data into this table (and this table only). For your convenience, this script creates a new database and user account (run this as Administrator on your SQL Server machine): @SET Server=%ComputerName%.@SET Database=BGInfo@SET UserName=BGInfo@SET Password=passwordSQLCMD -S “%Server%” -E -Q “Create Database [%Database%]“SQLCMD -S “%Server%” -E -Q “Create Login [%UserName%] With Password=N’%Password%’, DEFAULT_DATABASE=[%Database%], CHECK_EXPIRATION=OFF, CHECK_POLICY=OFF”SQLCMD -S “%Server%” -E -d “%Database%” -Q “Create User [%UserName%] For Login [%UserName%]“SQLCMD -S “%Server%” -E -d “%Database%” -Q “EXEC sp_addrolemember N’db_owner’, N’%UserName%’” Note the SQL user account must have ‘db_owner’ permissions on the database in order for BGInfo to work correctly. This is why you should have a SQL user account specifically for this database. Next, configure BGInfo to connect to this database by clicking on the SQL button. Fill out the connection properties according to your database settings. Select the option of whether or not to only have one entry per computer or keep a history of each system. The data will then be dropped directly into a table named “BGInfoTable” in the respective database.   Configure User Desktop Options While the primary function of BGInfo is to alter the user’s desktop by adding system info as part of the wallpaper, for our use here we want to leave the user’s wallpaper alone so this process runs without altering any of the user’s settings. Click the Desktops button. Configure the Wallpaper modifications to not alter anything.   Preparing the Deployment Now we are all set for deploying the configuration to the individual machines so we can start capturing the system data. If you have not done so already, click the Apply button to create the first entry in your data repository. If all is configured correctly, you should be able to open your data file or database and see the entry for the respective machine. Now click the File > Save As menu option and save the configuration as “BGInfoCapture.bgi”.   Deploying to Client Machines Deployment to the respective client machines is pretty straightforward. No installation is required as you just need to copy the BGInfo.exe and the BGInfoCapture.bgi to each machine and place them in the same directory. Once in place, just run the command: BGInfo.exe BGInfoCapture.bgi /Timer:0 /Silent /NoLicPrompt Of course, you probably want to schedule the capture process to run on a schedule. This command creates a Scheduled Task to run the capture process at 8 AM every morning and assumes you copied the required files to the root of your C drive: SCHTASKS /Create /SC DAILY /ST 08:00 /TN “System Info” /TR “C:\BGInfo.exe C:\BGInfoCapture.bgi /Timer:0 /Silent /NoLicPrompt” Adjust as needed, but the end result is the scheduled task command should look something like this:   Download BGInfo from Sysinternals Latest Features How-To Geek ETC How To Create Your Own Custom ASCII Art from Any Image How To Process Camera Raw Without Paying for Adobe Photoshop How Do You Block Annoying Text Message (SMS) Spam? How to Use and Master the Notoriously Difficult Pen Tool in Photoshop HTG Explains: What Are the Differences Between All Those Audio Formats? 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• Does an ESEUTIL defrag of an Exchange store also perform an integrity check/repair on it?

  - by Bigbio2002

  Earlier this morning, store.exe fuzzled up in one way or another, which necessitated a restart of our Exchange server. It came back online with no errors or problems, all the transaction logs replayed successfully, and all the stores mounted as normal. To me, it was just one of those random crashes; however, our consultant suspects it was caused by corruption in one of the stores. Perhaps he's correct, since he has far more experience than me, but that's not the point. To fix the suspected errors, he's planinng to run an ESEUTIL defrag (via PerfectDisk) to fix them, which he claims will also fix any errors present. From what I understand, defrag, verify, and repair are 3 separate actions, and a defrag does not imply any kind of integrity check. Is this correct? Are there any dangers of running a straight-up defrag on a database that might be corrupt? Edit: Here's the first error in the event log, which indicated the start of the problems we were having. Anyone know what it might indicate? Event Type: Error Event Source: Microsoft Exchange Server Event Category: None Event ID: 1000 Date: 11/23/2011 Time: 8:15:47 AM User: N/A Computer: SERVER Description: Faulting application exsp.dll, version 6.5.7638.1, stamp 430e735b, faulting module kernel32.dll, version 5.2.3790.4480, stamp 49c51f0a, debug? 0, fault address 0x0000bef7. For more information, see Help and Support Center at http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/events.asp. Data: 0000: 41 00 70 00 70 00 6c 00 A.p.p.l. 0008: 69 00 63 00 61 00 74 00 i.c.a.t. 0010: 69 00 6f 00 6e 00 20 00 i.o.n. . 0018: 46 00 61 00 69 00 6c 00 F.a.i.l. 0020: 75 00 72 00 65 00 20 00 u.r.e. . 0028: 20 00 65 00 78 00 73 00 .e.x.s. 0030: 70 00 2e 00 64 00 6c 00 p...d.l. 0038: 6c 00 20 00 36 00 2e 00 l. .6... 0040: 35 00 2e 00 37 00 36 00 5...7.6. 0048: 33 00 38 00 2e 00 31 00 3.8...1. 0050: 20 00 34 00 33 00 30 00 .4.3.0. 0058: 65 00 37 00 33 00 35 00 e.7.3.5. 0060: 62 00 20 00 69 00 6e 00 b. .i.n. 0068: 20 00 6b 00 65 00 72 00 .k.e.r. 0070: 6e 00 65 00 6c 00 33 00 n.e.l.3. 0078: 32 00 2e 00 64 00 6c 00 2...d.l. 0080: 6c 00 20 00 35 00 2e 00 l. .5... 0088: 32 00 2e 00 33 00 37 00 2...3.7. 0090: 39 00 30 00 2e 00 34 00 9.0...4. 0098: 34 00 38 00 30 00 20 00 4.8.0. . 00a0: 34 00 39 00 63 00 35 00 4.9.c.5. 00a8: 31 00 66 00 30 00 61 00 1.f.0.a. 00b0: 20 00 66 00 44 00 65 00 .f.D.e. 00b8: 62 00 75 00 67 00 20 00 b.u.g. . 00c0: 30 00 20 00 61 00 74 00 0. .a.t. 00c8: 20 00 6f 00 66 00 66 00 .o.f.f. 00d0: 73 00 65 00 74 00 20 00 s.e.t. . 00d8: 30 00 30 00 30 00 30 00 0.0.0.0. 00e0: 62 00 65 00 66 00 37 00 b.e.f.7. 00e8: 0d 00 0a 00 ....

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• How To Make Hundreds of Complex Photo Edits in Seconds With Photoshop Actions

  - by Eric Z Goodnight

  Have a huge folder of images needing tweaks? A few hundred adjustments may seem like a big, time consuming job—but read one to see how Photoshop can do repetitive tasks automatically, even if you don’t know how to program! Photoshop Actions are a simple way to program simple routines in Photoshop, and are a great time saver, allowing you to re-perform tasks over and over, saving you minutes or hours, depending on the job you have to work on. See how any bunch of images and even some fairly complicated photo tweaking can be done automatically to even hundreds of images at once. When Can I use Photoshop Actions? Photoshop actions are a way of recording the tools, menus, and keys pressed while using the program. Each time you use a tool, adjust a color, or use the brush, it can be recorded and played back over any file Photoshop can open. While it isn’t perfect and can get very confused if not set up correctly, it can automate editing hundreds of images, saving you hours and hours if you have big jobs with complex edits. The image illustrated above is a template for a polaroid-style picture frame. If you had several hundred images, it would actually be a simple matter to use Photoshop Actions to create hundreds of new images inside the frame in almost no time at all. Let’s take a look at how a simple folder of images and some Image editing automation can turn lots of work into a simple and easy job. Creating a New Action Actions is a default part of the “Essentials” panel set Photoshop begins with as a default. If you can’t see the panel button under the “History” button, you can find Actions by going to Window > Actions or pressing Alt + F9. Click the in the Actions Panel, pictured in the previous illustration on the left. Choose to create a “New Set” in order to begin creating your own custom Actions. Name your action set whatever you want. Names are not relevant, you’ll simply want to make it obvious that you have created it. Click OK. Look back in the layers panel. You’ll see your new Set of actions has been added to the list. Click it to highlight it before going on. Click the again to create a “New Action” in your new set. If you care to name your action, go ahead. Name it after whatever it is you’re hoping to do—change the canvas size, tint all your pictures blue, send your image to the printer in high quality, or run multiple filters on images. The name is for your own usage, so do what suits you best. Note that you can simplify your process by creating shortcut keys for your actions. If you plan to do hundreds of edits with your actions, this might be a good idea. If you plan to record an action to use every time you use Photoshop, this might even be an invaluable step. When you create a new Action, Photoshop automatically begins recording everything you do. It does not record the time in between steps, but rather only the data from each step. So take your time when recording and make sure you create your actions the way you want them. The square button stops recording, and the circle button starts recording again. With these basics ready, we can take a look at a sample Action. Recording a Sample Action Photoshop will remember everything you input into it when it is recording, even specific photographs you open. So begin recording your action when your first photo is already open. Once your first image is open, click the record button. If you’re already recording, continue on. Using the File > Place command to insert the polaroid image can be easier for Actions to deal with. Photoshop can record with multiple open files, but it often gets confused when you try it. Keep your recordings as simple as possible to ensure your success. When the image is placed in, simply press enter to render it. Select your background layer in your layers panel. Your recording should be following along with no trouble. Double click this layer. Double clicking your background layer will create a new layer from it. Allow it to be renamed “Layer 0” and press OK. Move the “polaroid” layer to the bottom by selecting it and dragging it down below “Layer 0” in the layers panel. Right click “Layer 0” and select “Create Clipping Mask.” The JPG image is cropped to the layer below it. Coincidentally, all actions described here are being recorded perfectly, and are reproducible. Cursor actions, like the eraser, brush, or bucket fill don’t record well, because the computer uses your mouse movements and coordinates, which may need to change from photo to photo. Click the to set your Photograph layer to a “Screen” blending mode. This will make the image disappear when it runs over the white parts of the polaroid image. With your image layer (Layer 0) still selected, navigate to Edit > Transform > Scale. You can use the mouse to resize your Layer 0, but Actions work better with absolute numbers. Visit the Width and Height adjustments in the top options panel. Click the chain icon to link them together, and adjust them numerically. Depending on your needs, you may need to use more or less than 30%. Your image will resize to your specifications. Press enter to render, or click the check box in the top right of your application. + Click on your bottom layer, or “polaroid” in this case. This creates a selection of the bottom layer. Navigate to Image > Crop in order to crop down to your bottom layer selection Your image is now resized to your bottommost layer, and Photoshop is still recording to that effect. For additional effect, we can navigate to Image > Image Rotation > Arbitrary to rotate our image by a small tilt. Choosing 3 degrees clockwise , we click OK to render our choice. Our image is rotated, and this step is recorded. Photoshop will even record when you save your files. With your recording still going, find File > Save As. You can easily tell Photoshop to save in a new folder, other than the one you have been working in, so that your files aren’t overwritten. Navigate to any folder you wish, but do not change the filename. If you change the filename, Photoshop will record that name, and save all your images under whatever you type. However, you can change your filetype without recording an absolute filename. Use the pulldown tab and select a different filetype—in this instance, PNG. Simply click “Save” to create a new PNG based on your actions. Photoshop will record the destination and the change in filetype. If you didn’t edit the name of your file, it will always use the variable filename of any image you open. (This is very important if you want to edit hundreds of images at once!) Click File > Close or the red “X” in the corner to close your filetype. Photoshop can record that as well. Since we have already saved our image as a JPG, click “NO” to not overwrite your original image. Photoshop will also record your choice of “NO” for subsequent images. In your Actions panel, click the stop button to complete your action. You can always click the record button to add more steps later, if you want. This is how your new action looks with its steps expanded. Curious how to put it into effect? Read on to see how simple it is to use that recording you just made. Editing Lots of Images with Your New Action Open a large number of images—as many as you care to work with. Your action should work immediately with every image on screen, although you may have to test and re-record, depending on how you did. Actions don’t require any programming knowledge, but often can get confused or work in a counter-intuitive way. Record your action until it is perfect. If it works once without errors, it’s likely to work again and again! Find the “Play” button in your Actions Panel. With your custom action selected, click “Play” and your routine will edit, save, and close each file for you. Keep bashing “Play” for each open file, and it will keep saving and creating new files until you run out of work you need to do. And in mere moments, a complicated stack of work is done. Photoshop actions can be very complicated, far beyond what is illustrated here, and can even be combined with scripts and other actions, creating automated creation of potentially very complex files, or applying filters to an entire portfolio of digital photos. Have questions or comments concerning Graphics, Photos, Filetypes, or Photoshop? Send your questions to [email protected], and they may be featured in a future How-To Geek Graphics article. Image Credits: All images copyright Stephanie Pragnell and author Eric Z Goodnight, protected under Creative Commons. Latest Features How-To Geek ETC How To Make Hundreds of Complex Photo Edits in Seconds With Photoshop Actions How to Enable User-Specific Wireless Networks in Windows 7 How to Use Google Chrome as Your Default PDF Reader (the Easy Way) How To Remove People and Objects From Photographs In Photoshop Ask How-To Geek: How Can I Monitor My Bandwidth Usage? Internet Explorer 9 RC Now Available: Here’s the Most Interesting New Stuff Smart Taskbar Is a Thumb Friendly Android Task Launcher Comix is an Awesome Comics Archive Viewer for Linux Get the MakeUseOf eBook Guide to Speeding Up Windows for Free Need Tech Support? Call the Star Wars Help Desk! [Video Classic] Reclaim Vertical UI Space by Adding a Toolbar to the Left or Right Side of Firefox Androidify Turns You into an Android-style Avatar

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• Security in Software

  The term security has many meanings based on the context and perspective in which it is used. Security from the perspective of software/system development is the continuous process of maintaining confidentiality, integrity, and availability of a system, sub-system, and system data. This definition at a very high level can be restated as the following: Computer security is a continuous process dealing with confidentiality, integrity, and availability on multiple layers of a system. Key Aspects of Software Security Integrity Confidentiality Availability Integrity within a system is the concept of ensuring only authorized users can only manipulate information through authorized methods and procedures. An example of this can be seen in a simple lead management application.  If the business decided to allow each sales member to only update their own leads in the system and sales managers can update all leads in the system then an integrity violation would occur if a sales member attempted to update someone else’s leads. An integrity violation occurs when a team member attempts to update someone else’s lead because it was not entered by the sales member.  This violates the business rule that leads can only be update by the originating sales member. Confidentiality within a system is the concept of preventing unauthorized access to specific information or tools.  In a perfect world the knowledge of the existence of confidential information/tools would be unknown to all those who do not have access. When this this concept is applied within the context of an application only the authorized information/tools will be available. If we look at the sales lead management system again, leads can only be updated by originating sales members. If we look at this rule then we can say that all sales leads are confidential between the system and the sales person who entered the lead in to the system. The other sales team members would not need to know about the leads let alone need to access it. Availability within a system is the concept of authorized users being able to access the system. A real world example can be seen again from the lead management system. If that system was hosted on a web server then IP restriction can be put in place to limit access to the system based on the requesting IP address. If in this example all of the sales members where accessing the system from the 192.168.1.23 IP address then removing access from all other IPs would be need to ensure that improper access to the system is prevented while approved users can access the system from an authorized location. In essence if the requesting user is not coming from an authorized IP address then the system will appear unavailable to them. This is one way of controlling where a system is accessed. Through the years several design principles have been identified as being beneficial when integrating security aspects into a system. These principles in various combinations allow for a system to achieve the previously defined aspects of security based on generic architectural models. Security Design Principles Least Privilege Fail-Safe Defaults Economy of Mechanism Complete Mediation Open Design Separation Privilege Least Common Mechanism Psychological Acceptability Defense in Depth Least Privilege Design PrincipleThe Least Privilege design principle requires a minimalistic approach to granting user access rights to specific information and tools. Additionally, access rights should be time based as to limit resources access bound to the time needed to complete necessary tasks. The implications of granting access beyond this scope will allow for unnecessary access and the potential for data to be updated out of the approved context. The assigning of access rights will limit system damaging attacks from users whether they are intentional or not. This principle attempts to limit data changes and prevents potential damage from occurring by accident or error by reducing the amount of potential interactions with a resource. Fail-Safe Defaults Design PrincipleThe Fail-Safe Defaults design principle pertains to allowing access to resources based on granted access over access exclusion. This principle is a methodology for allowing resources to be accessed only if explicit access is granted to a user. By default users do not have access to any resources until access has been granted. This approach prevents unauthorized users from gaining access to resource until access is given. Economy of Mechanism Design PrincipleThe Economy of mechanism design principle requires that systems should be designed as simple and small as possible. Design and implementation errors result in unauthorized access to resources that would not be noticed during normal use. Complete Mediation Design PrincipleThe Complete Mediation design principle states that every access to every resource must be validated for authorization. Open Design Design PrincipleThe Open Design Design Principle is a concept that the security of a system and its algorithms should not be dependent on secrecy of its design or implementation Separation Privilege Design PrincipleThe separation privilege design principle requires that all resource approved resource access attempts be granted based on more than a single condition. For example a user should be validated for active status and has access to the specific resource. Least Common Mechanism Design PrincipleThe Least Common Mechanism design principle declares that mechanisms used to access resources should not be shared. Psychological Acceptability Design PrincipleThe Psychological Acceptability design principle refers to security mechanisms not make resources more difficult to access than if the security mechanisms were not present Defense in Depth Design PrincipleThe Defense in Depth design principle is a concept of layering resource access authorization verification in a system reduces the chance of a successful attack. This layered approach to resource authorization requires unauthorized users to circumvent each authorization attempt to gain access to a resource. When designing a system that requires meeting a security quality attribute architects need consider the scope of security needs and the minimum required security qualities. Not every system will need to use all of the basic security design principles but will use one or more in combination based on a company’s and architect’s threshold for system security because the existence of security in an application adds an additional layer to the overall system and can affect performance. That is why the definition of minimum security acceptably is need when a system is design because this quality attributes needs to be factored in with the other system quality attributes so that the system in question adheres to all qualities based on the priorities of the qualities. Resources: Barnum, Sean. Gegick, Michael. (2005). Least Privilege. Retrieved on August 28, 2011 from https://buildsecurityin.us-cert.gov/bsi/articles/knowledge/principles/351-BSI.html Saltzer, Jerry. (2011). BASIC PRINCIPLES OF INFORMATION PROTECTION. Retrieved on August 28, 2011 from  http://web.mit.edu/Saltzer/www/publications/protection/Basic.html Barnum, Sean. Gegick, Michael. (2005). Defense in Depth. Retrieved on August 28, 2011 from  https://buildsecurityin.us-cert.gov/bsi/articles/knowledge/principles/347-BSI.html Bertino, Elisa. (2005). Design Principles for Security. Retrieved on August 28, 2011 from  http://homes.cerias.purdue.edu/~bhargav/cs526/security-9.pdf

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• Get Started using Build-Deploy-Test Workflow with TFS 2012

  - by Jakob Ehn

  TFS 2012 introduces a new type of Lab environment called Standard Environment. This allows you to setup a full Build Deploy Test (BDT) workflow that will build your application, deploy it to your target machine(s) and then run a set of tests on that server to verify the deployment. In TFS 2010, you had to use System Center Virtual Machine Manager and involve half of your IT department to get going. Now all you need is a server (virtual or physical) where you want to deploy and test your application. You don’t even have to install a test agent on the machine, TFS 2012 will do this for you! Although each step is rather simple, the entire process of setting it up consists of a bunch of steps. So I thought that it could be useful to run through a typical setup.I will also link to some good guidance from MSDN on each topic. High Level Steps Install and configure Visual Studio 2012 Test Controller on Target Server Create Standard Environment Create Test Plan with Test Case Run Test Case Create Coded UI Test from Test Case Associate Coded UI Test with Test Case Create Build Definition using LabDefaultTemplate 1. Install and Configure Visual Studio 2012 Test Controller on Target Server First of all, note that you do not have to have the Test Controller running on the target server. It can be running on another server, as long as the Test Agent can communicate with the test controller and the test controller can communicate with the TFS server. If you have several machines in your environment (web server, database server etc..), the test controller can be installed either on one of those machines or on a dedicated machine. To install the test controller, simply mount the Visual Studio Agents media on the server and browse to the vstf_controller.exe file located in the TestController folder. Run through the installation, you might need to reboot the server since it installs .NET 4.5. When the test controller is installed, the Test Controller configuration tool will launch automatically (if it doesn’t, you can start it from the Start menu). Here you will supply the credentials of the account running the test controller service. Note that this account will be given the necessary permissions in TFS during the configuration. Make sure that you have entered a valid account by pressing the Test link. Also, you have to register the test controller with the TFS collection where your test plan is located (and usually the code base of course) When you press Apply Settings, all the configuration will be done. You might get some warnings at the end, that might or might not cause a problem later. Be sure to read them carefully.   For more information about configuring your test controllers, see Setting Up Test Controllers and Test Agents to Manage Tests with Visual Studio 2. Create Standard Environment Now you need to create a Lab environment in Microsoft Test Manager. Since we are using an existing physical or virtual machine we will create a Standard Environment. Open MTM and go to Lab Center. Click New to create a new environment Enter a name for the environment. Since this environment will only contain one machine, we will use the machine name for the environment (TargetServer in this case) On the next page, click Add to add a machine to the environment. Enter the name of the machine (TargetServer.Domain.Com), and give it the Web Server role. The name must be reachable both from your machine during configuration and from the TFS app tier server. You also need to supply an account that is a local administration on the target server. This is needed in order to automatically install a test agent later on the machine. On the next page, you can add tags to the machine. This is not needed in this scenario so go to the next page. Here you will specify which test controller to use and that you want to run UI tests on this environment. This will in result in a Test Agent being automatically installed and configured on the target server. The name of the machine where you installed the test controller should be available on the drop down list (TargetServer in this sample). If you can’t see it, you might have selected a different TFS project collection. Press Next twice and then Verify to verify all the settings: Press finish. This will now create and prepare the environment, which means that it will remote install a test agent on the machine. As part of this installation, the remote server will be restarted. 3-5. Create Test Plan, Run Test Case, Create Coded UI Test I will not cover step 3-5 here, there are plenty of information on how you create test plans and test cases and automate them using Coded UI Tests. In this example I have a test plan called My Application and it contains among other things a test suite called Automated Tests where I plan to put test cases that should be automated and executed as part of the BDT workflow. For more information about Coded UI Tests, see Verifying Code by Using Coded User Interface Tests   6. Associate Coded UI Test with Test Case OK, so now we want to automate our Coded UI Test and have it run as part of the BDT workflow. You might think that you coded UI test already is automated, but the meaning of the term here is that you link your coded UI Test to an existing Test Case, thereby making the Test Case automated. And the test case should be part of the test suite that we will run during the BDT. Open the solution that contains the coded UI test method. Open the Test Case work item that you want to automate. Go to the Associated Automation tab and click on the “…” button. Select the coded UI test that you corresponds to the test case: Press OK and the save the test case For more information about associating an automated test case with a test case, see How to: Associate an Automated Test with a Test Case 7. Create Build Definition using LabDefaultTemplate Now we are ready to create a build definition that will implement the full BDT workflow. For this purpose we will use the LabDefaultTemplate.11.xaml that comes out of the box in TFS 2012. This build process template lets you take the output of another build and deploy it to each target machine. Since the deployment process will be running on the target server, you will have less problem with permissions and firewalls than if you were to remote deploy your solution. So, before creating a BDT workflow build definition, make sure that you have an existing build definition that produces a release build of your application. Go to the Builds hub in Team Explorer and select New Build Definition Give the build definition a meaningful name, here I called it MyApplication.Deploy Set the trigger to Manual Define a workspace for the build definition. Note that a BDT build doesn’t really need a workspace, since all it does is to launch another build definition and deploy the output of that build. But TFS doesn’t allow you to save a build definition without adding at least one mapping. On Build Defaults, select the build controller. Since this build actually won’t produce any output, you can select the “This build does not copy output files to a drop folder” option. On the process tab, select the LabDefaultTemplate.11.xaml. This is usually located at $/TeamProject/BuildProcessTemplates/LabDefaultTemplate.11.xaml. To configure it, press the … button on the Lab Process Settings property First, select the environment that you created before: Select which build that you want to deploy and test. The “Select an existing build” option is very useful when developing the BDT workflow, because you do not have to run through the target build every time, instead it will basically just run through the deployment and test steps which speeds up the process. Here I have selected to queue a new build of the MyApplication.Test build definition On the deploy tab, you need to specify how the application should be installed on the target server. You can supply a list of deployment scripts with arguments that will be executed on the target server. In this example I execute the generated web deploy command file to deploy the solution. If you for example have databases you can use sqlpackage.exe to deploy the database. If you are producing MSI installers in your build, you can run them using msiexec.exe and so on. A good practice is to create a batch file that contain the entire deployment that you can run both locally and on the target server. Then you would just execute the deployment batch file here in one single step. The workflow defines some variables that are useful when running the deployments. These variables are: $(BuildLocation) The full path to where your build files are located $(InternalComputerName_<VM Name>) The computer name for a virtual machine in a SCVMM environment $(ComputerName_<VM Name>) The fully qualified domain name of the virtual machine As you can see, I specify the path to the myapplication.deploy.cmd file using the $(BuildLocation) variable, which is the drop folder of the MyApplication.Test build. Note: The test agent account must have read permission in this drop location. You can find more information here on Building your Deployment Scripts On the last tab, we specify which tests to run after deployment. Here I select the test plan and the Automated Tests test suite that we saw before: Note that I also selected the automated test settings (called TargetServer in this case) that I have defined for my test plan. In here I define what data that should be collected as part of the test run. For more information about test settings, see Specifying Test Settings for Microsoft Test Manager Tests We are done! Queue your BDT build and wait for it to finish. If the build succeeds, your build summary should look something like this:

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• CodePlex Daily Summary for Saturday, September 01, 2012

  CodePlex Daily Summary for Saturday, September 01, 2012Popular ReleasesDotNetNuke® Form and List: 06.00.04: DotNetNuke Form and List 06.00.04 Don't forget to backup your installation before upgrade. Changes in 06.00.04 Fix: Sql Scripts for 6.003 missed object qualifiers within stored procedures Fix: added missing resource "cmdCancel.Text" in form.ascx.resx Changes in 06.00.03 Fix: MakeThumbnail was broken if the application pool was configured to .Net 4 Change: Data is now stored in nvarchar(max) instead of ntext Changes in 06.00.02 The scripts are now compatible with SQL Azure, tested in a ne...EntLib.com????????: EntLib.com???????? v3.0: EntLib eCommerce Solution ???Microsoft .Net Framework?????????????????????。Coevery - Free CRM: Coevery 1.0.0.24: Add a sample database, and installation instructions.NicAudio: NicAudio 2.0.6: ac3,dts Solved some initialization issues with no-linear decode.ExpressProfiler: Initial release of ExpressProfiler v1.2: This is initial release of ExpressProfilerMath.NET Numerics: Math.NET Numerics v2.2.1: Major linear algebra rework since v2.1, now available on Codeplex as well (previous versions were only available via NuGet). Since v2.2.0: Student-T density more robust for very large degrees of freedom Sparse Kronecker product much more efficient (now leverages sparsity) Direct access to raw matrix storage implementations for advanced extensibility Now also separate package for signed core library with a strong name (we dropped strong names in v2.2.0) Also available as NuGet packages...Microsoft SQL Server Product Samples: Database: AdventureWorks Databases – 2012, 2008R2 and 2008: About this release This release consolidates AdventureWorks databases for SQL Server 2012, 2008R2 and 2008 versions to one page. Each zip file contains an mdf database file and ldf log file. This should make it easier to find and download AdventureWorks databases since all OLTP versions are on one page. There are no database schema changes. For each release of the product, there is a light-weight and full version of the AdventureWorks sample database. The light-weight version is denoted by ...Christoc's DotNetNuke Module Development Template: DotNetNuke Project Templates V1.1 for VS2012: This release is specifically for Visual Studio 2012 Support, distributed through the Visual Studio Extensions gallery at http://visualstudiogallery.msdn.microsoft.com/ After you build in Release mode the installable packages (source/install) can be found in the INSTALL folder now, within your module's folder, not the packages folder anymore Check out the blog post for all of the details about this release. http://www.dotnetnuke.com/Resources/Blogs/EntryId/3471/New-Visual-Studio-2012-Projec...Home Access Plus+: v8.0: v8.0.0901.1830 RELEASE CHANGED TO BETA Any issues, please log them on http://www.edugeek.net/forums/home-access-plus/ This is full release, NO upgrade ZIP will be provided as most files require replacing. To upgrade from a previous version, delete everything but your AppData folder, extract all but the AppData folder and run your HAP+ install Documentation is supplied in the Web Zip The Quota Services require executing a script to register the service, this can be found in there install ...Phalanger - The PHP Language Compiler for the .NET Framework: 3.0.0.3406 (September 2012): New features: Extended ReflectionClass libxml error handling, constants DateTime::modify(), DateTime::getOffset() TreatWarningsAsErrors MSBuild option OnlyPrecompiledCode configuration option; allows to use only compiled code Fixes: ArgsAware exception fix accessing .NET properties bug fix ASP.NET session handler fix for OutOfProc mode DateTime methods (WordPress posting fix) Phalanger Tools for Visual Studio: Visual Studio 2010 & 2012 New debugger engine, PHP-like debugging ...NougakuDoCompanion: v1.1.0: Add temp folder of local resource, Resize local resource. Change launch ruby commnadline args from rack to bundle. 1.NougakuDoCompanion v1.1.0 cspkg.zip - cspkg and ServiceConfiguration.xml (small , medium, large, extra large vm) - include NougakudoSetupTool.exe and readme.txt 2.NougakuDoCompanion v1.1.0.zip - Source code. include NougakudoSetupTool.exe - include activerecord-sqlserver-adapter patch in paches folder. 3.Depends tools. - Windows Azure SDK for .NET June 2012(1.7SP1) - Windows ...WatchersNET CKEditor™ Provider for DotNetNuke®: CKEditor Provider 1.14.06: Whats New Added CKEditor 3.6.4 oEmbed Plugin can now handle short urls changes The Template File can now parsed from an xml file instead of js (More Info...) Style Sets can now parsed from an xml file instead of js (More Info...) Fixed Showing wrong Pages in Child Portal in the Link Dialog Fixed Urls in dnnpages Plugin Fixed Issue #6969 WordCount Plugin Fixed Issue #6973 File-Browser: Fixed Deleting of Files File-Browser: Improved loading time File-Browser: Improved the loa...MabiCommerce: MabiCommerce 1.0.1: What's NewSetup now creates shortcuts Fix spelling errors Minor enhancement to the Map window.ScintillaNET: ScintillaNET 2.5.2: This release has been built from the 2.5 branch. Version 2.5.2 is functionally identical to the 2.5.1 release but also includes the XML documentation comments file generated by Visual Studio. It is not 100% comprehensive but it will give you Visual Studio IntelliSense for a large part of the API. Just make sure the ScintillaNET.xml file is in the same folder as the ScintillaNET.dll reference you're using in your projects. (The XML file does not need to be distributed with your application)....Facebook Web Parts for SharePoint 2010: Version 1.0.1 - WSP: SharePoint 2010 solution (WSP) Resolved a bug from Version 1.0 - WSP where user profile names would not properly update.CUDAfy.NET: CUDAfy V1.10 BETA: This beta version of CUDAfy V1.10 requires CUDA 5.0 RC when using the Maths libraries. Add: Support for CUDA 5 RC (required if using Maths libraries). Fix: Lock method when multi-threading enabled could dead-lock. Add: Architecture sm_35. Add: Support for context switching. Fix: Translation of PI and E must be done using InvariantCulture. Add: tcc driver property (HighPerformanceDriver). Add: GetDevice always sets the current context to the device context that was got. Add: D...Contactor: GSMContactorProgram V1.0 - Source Code: This is the source code for the program, For Visual Studio 2012 RCTouchInjector: TouchInjector 1.1: Version 1.1: fixed a bug with the autorun optionWinRT XAML Toolkit: WinRT XAML Toolkit - 1.2.0: WinRT XAML Toolkit based on the Windows 8 RTM SDK. Download the latest source from the SOURCE CODE page. For compiled version use NuGet. You can add it to your project in Visual Studio by going to View/Other Windows/Package Manager Console and entering: PM> Install-Package winrtxamltoolkit Features AsyncUI extensions Controls and control extensions Converters Debugging helpers Imaging IO helpers VisualTree helpers Samples Recent changes NOTE: Namespace changes DebugConsol...BlackJumboDog: Ver5.7.1: 2012.08.25 Ver5.7.1 (1)?????·?????LING?????????????? (2)SMTP???（????）????、?????\?????????????????????New Projectsberry: xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxBore Holes: A C program to read data of 11 bore holes which were drilled around a site in Sarawak, Malaysia. The data is displayed graphically as well as on a console.codeSHOW: This is a Windows 8 HTML/JS project with the express goal of showing simple how-to concepts for developing in Windows 8 using JavaScript (codefoster.com)crt-upgrade: ??????C???????????????。????????，????，?????、??、??、?、???、??????。 ???????C????????????，?????C????????????。?????????????????。DnevnikEnvironment?hange: bla bla blaDotNetNuke Translator: This is a Windows Application that can be used locally to translate resources (resx files) for a DotNetNuke installation.Get Connected with twitter & Pull data from user's twitter account: This source code will be useful for ASP.Net MVC C# developers. This contains Get Connected with Twitter & Pull user's information with his permission.GuideCP: ?????????? ??????? ??????????? ?? ??????? ?????? ??????, ?????? ??????, ????????? ? ???? ?? ???????????.Heart of Iron Smart Editor: This is A Heart Of Iron 3 SaveGame editorJSMerge: JSCombine is a command-line utility that is designed to help authors of Javascript libraries combine numerous *.js files into one, comprehensive file.Open Source Compiler, Optimizer and VM for a C-Like Language: Here, you can download an open-source compiler, optimizer and multi-core code generator for a C-like language and modify it in order to meet your requirements.OpenShip .NET - multi-carrier shipping system for Fedex, UPS and USPS: This is a proposed project for a multi-carrier shipping system to create shipments, get rates and track packages for Fedex, UPS and USPS.PogoPlug.NET: Low- and high-level class libraries encapsulating the PogoPlug API.Qi: Qi breathes life into your .NET projects by providing a collection of common helper methods and extensions so that you can get on with building your applicationSalesforce SSIS Transfer: This a project that leverages Salesforce.com's API (both Bulk and standard) to incrementally download a copy of your org's SF.com database.ServiceMon - Extensible Service Monitoring Utility: Standalone service monitoring tool which uses an extensible, scriptable plugin model to define monitoring actions with built-in support for HTTP GET Seven Up Seven Down: Seven Up Seven Down Game by Aditya Gupta Readme - How to play 1. Choose a bet amount 2. Select either 7up or 7down or 7 3. For 7up and 7down if you win yoSharePoint Import Data Timer: Custom timer job for Sharepoint 2010 which imports the results from SQL queries into Sharepoint lists.Smart Rabbit: M-Rabbit is Mihmojsos platform! Whit Smart Rabbit you can boot your Mihmojsos OS without restarting your computer!Sofire Suite: Sofire Suite ?????? 2009 ? 08 ??????????。????????????，???? V ??? Sofire2011（???????????????），???? Sofire.v1.5 ???。To be decided: summary testzwparking: zwparking

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• Does Test Driven Development (TDD) improve Quality and Correctness? (Part 1)

  - by David V. Corbin

  Since the dawn of the computer age, various methodologies have been introduced to improve quality and reduce cost. In this posting, I will by sharing my experiences with Test Driven Development; both its benefits and limitations. To start this topic, we need to agree on what TDD is. The first is to define each of the three words as used in this context. Test - An item or action which measures something in some quantifiable form. Driven - The primary motivation or focus of a series of activities (process) Development - All phases of a software project/product from concept through delivery. The above are very simple definitions that result in the following: "TDD is a process where the primary focus is on measuring and quantifying all aspects of the creation of a (software) product." There are many places where TDD is used outside of software development, even though it is not known by this name. Consider the (conventional) education process that most of us grew up on. The focus was to get the best grades as measured by different tests. Many of these tests measured rote memorization and not understanding of the subject matter. The result of this that many people graduated with high scores but without "quality and correctness" in their ability to utilize the subject matter (of course, the flip side is true where certain people DID understand the material but were not very good at taking this type of test). Returning to software development, let us look at some common scenarios. While these items are generally applicable regardless of platform, language and tools; the remainder of this post will utilize Microsoft Visual Studio and Team Foundation Server (TFS) for examples. It should be realized that everyone does at least some aspect of TDD. At the most rudimentary level, getting a program to compile involves a "pass/fail" measurement (is the syntax valid) that drives their ability to proceed further (run the program). Other developers may create "Unit Tests" in the belief that having a test for every method/property of a class and good code coverage is the goal of TDD. These items may be helpful and even important, but really only address a small aspect of the overall effort. To see TDD in a bigger view, lets identify the various activities that are part of the Software Development LifeCycle. These are going to be presented in a Waterfall style for simplicity, but each item also occurs within Iterative methodologies such as Agile/Scrum. the key ones here are: Requirements Gathering Architecture Design Implementation Quality Assurance Can each of these items be subjected to a process which establishes metrics (quantified metrics) that reflect both the quality and correctness of each item? It should be clear that conventional Unit Tests do not apply to all of these items; at best they can verify that a local aspect (e.g. a Class/Method) of implementation matches the (test writers perspective of) the appropriate design document. So what can we do? For each of area, the goal is to create tests that are quantifiable and durable. The ability to quantify the measurements (beyond a simple pass/fail) is critical to tracking progress(eventually measuring the level of success that has been achieved) and for providing clear information on what items need to be addressed (along with the appropriate time to address them - in varying levels of detail) . Durability is important so that the test can be reapplied (ideally in an automated fashion) over the entire cycle. Returning for a moment back to our "education example", one must also be careful of how the tests are organized and how the measurements are taken. If a test is in a multiple choice format, there is a significant statistical probability that a correct answer might be the result of a random guess. Also, in many situations, having the student simply provide a final answer can obscure many important elements. For example, on a math test, having the student simply provide a numeric answer (rather than showing the methodology) may result in a complete mismatch between the process and the result. It is hard to determine which is worse: The student who makes a simple arithmetric error at one step of a long process (resulting in a wrong answer) or The student who (without providing the "workflow") uses a completely invalid approach, yet still comes up with the right number. The "Wrong Process"/"Right Answer" is probably the single biggest problem in software development. Even very simple items can suffer from this. As an example consider the following code for a "straight line" calculation....Is it correct? (for Integral Points)         int Solve(int m, int b, int x) { return m * x + b; }   Most people would respond "Yes". But let's take the question one step further... Is it correct for all possible values of m,b,x??? (no fair if you cheated by being focused on the bolded text!)  Without additional information regarding constrains on "the possible values of m,b,x" the answer must be NO, there is the risk of overflow/wraparound that will produce an incorrect result! To properly answer this question (i.e. Test the Code), one MUST be able to backtrack from the implementation through the design, and architecture all the way back to the requirements. And the requirement itself must be tested against the stakeholder(s). It is only when the bounding conditions are defined that it is possible to determine if the code is "Correct" and has "Quality". Yet, how many of us (myself included) have written such code without even thinking about it. In many canses we (think we) "know" what the bounds are, and that the code will be correct. As we all know, requirements change, "code reuse" causes implementations to be applied to different scenarios, etc. This leads directly to the types of system failures that plague so many projects. This approach to TDD is much more holistic than ones which start by focusing on the details. The fundamental concepts still apply: Each item should be tested. The test should be defined/implemented before (or concurrent with) the definition/implementation of the actual item. We also add concepts that expand the scope and alter the style by recognizing: There are many things beside "lines of code" that benefit from testing (measuring/evaluating in a formal way) Correctness and Quality can not be solely measured by "correct results" In the future parts, we will examine in greater detail some of the techniques that can be applied to each of these areas....

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• A Good Developer is So Hard to Find

  - by James Michael Hare

  Let me start out by saying I want to damn the writers of the Toughest Developer Puzzle Ever – 2. It is eating every last shred of my free time! But as I've been churning through each puzzle and marvelling at the brain teasers and trivia within, I began to think about interviewing developers and why it seems to be so hard to find good ones.  The problem is, it seems like no matter how hard we try to find the perfect way to separate the chaff from the wheat, inevitably someone will get hired who falls far short of expectations or someone will get passed over for missing a piece of trivia or a tricky brain teaser that could have been an excellent team member.   In shops that are primarily software-producing businesses or other heavily IT-oriented businesses (Microsoft, Amazon, etc) there often exists a much tighter bond between HR and the hiring development staff because development is their life-blood. Unfortunately, many of us work in places where IT is viewed as a cost or just a means to an end. In these shops, too often, HR and development staff may work against each other due to differences in opinion as to what a good developer is or what one is worth.  It seems that if you ask two different people what makes a good developer, often you will get three different opinions.   With the exception of those shops that are purely development-centric (you guys have it much easier!), most other shops have management who have very little knowledge about the development process.  Their view can often be that development is simply a skill that one learns and then once aquired, that developer can produce widgets as good as the next like workers on an assembly-line floor.  On the other side, you have many developers that feel that software development is an art unto itself and that the ability to create the most pure design or know the most obscure of keywords or write the shortest-possible obfuscated piece of code is a good coder.  So is it a skill?  An Art?  Or something entirely in between?   Saying that software is merely a skill and one just needs to learn the syntax and tools would be akin to saying anyone who knows English and can use Word can write a 300 page book that is accurate, meaningful, and stays true to the point.  This just isn't so.  It takes more than mere skill to take words and form a sentence, join those sentences into paragraphs, and those paragraphs into a document.  I've interviewed candidates who could answer obscure syntax and keyword questions and once they were hired could not code effectively at all.  So development must be more than a skill.   But on the other end, we have art.  Is development an art?  Is our end result to produce art?  I can marvel at a piece of code -- see it as concise and beautiful -- and yet that code most perform some stated function with accuracy and efficiency and maintainability.  None of these three things have anything to do with art, per se.  Art is beauty for its own sake and is a wonderful thing.  But if you apply that same though to development it just doesn't hold.  I've had developers tell me that all that matters is the end result and how you code it is entirely part of the art and I couldn't disagree more.  Yes, the end result, the accuracy, is the prime criteria to be met.  But if code is not maintainable and efficient, it would be just as useless as a beautiful car that breaks down once a week or that gets 2 miles to the gallon.  Yes, it may work in that it moves you from point A to point B and is pretty as hell, but if it can't be maintained or is not efficient, it's not a good solution.  So development must be something less than art.   In the end, I think I feel like development is a matter of craftsmanship.  We use our tools and we use our skills and set about to construct something that satisfies a purpose and yet is also elegant and efficient.  There is skill involved, and there is an art, but really it boils down to being able to craft code.  Crafting code is far more than writing code.  Anyone can write code if they know the syntax, but so few people can actually craft code that solves a purpose and craft it well.  So this is what I want to find, I want to find code craftsman!  But how?   I used to ask coding-trivia questions a long time ago and many people still fall back on this.  The thought is that if you ask the candidate some piece of coding trivia and they know the answer it must follow that they can craft good code.  For example:   What C++ keyword can be applied to a class/struct field to allow it to be changed even from a const-instance of that class/struct?  (answer: mutable)   So what do we prove if a candidate can answer this?  Only that they know what mutable means.  One would hope that this would infer that they'd know how to use it, and more importantly when and if it should ever be used!  But it rarely does!  The problem with triva questions is that you will either: Approve a really good developer who knows what some obscure keyword is (good) Reject a really good developer who never needed to use that keyword or is too inexperienced to know how to use it (bad) Approve a really bad developer who googled "C++ Interview Questions" and studied like hell but can't craft (very bad) Many HR departments love these kind of tests because they are short and easy to defend if a legal issue arrises on hiring decisions.  After all it's easy to say a person wasn't hired because they scored 30 out of 100 on some trivia test.  But unfortunately, you've eliminated a large part of your potential developer pool and possibly hired a few duds.  There are times I've hired candidates who knew every trivia question I could throw out them and couldn't craft.  And then there are times I've interviewed candidates who failed all my trivia but who I took a chance on who were my best finds ever.    So if not trivia, then what?  Brain teasers?  The thought is, these type of questions measure the thinking power of a candidate.  The problem is, once again, you will either: Approve a good candidate who has never heard the problem and can solve it (good) Reject a good candidate who just happens not to see the "catch" because they're nervous or it may be really obscure (bad) Approve a candidate who has studied enough interview brain teasers (once again, you can google em) to recognize the "catch" or knows the answer already (bad). Once again, you're eliminating good candidates and possibly accepting bad candidates.  In these cases, I think testing someone with brain teasers only tests their ability to answer brain teasers, not the ability to craft code. So how do we measure someone's ability to craft code?  Here's a novel idea: have them code!  Give them a computer and a compiler, or a whiteboard and a pen, or paper and pencil and have them construct a piece of code.  It just makes sense that if we're going to hire someone to code we should actually watch them code.  When they're done, we can judge them on several criteria: Correctness - does the candidate's solution accurately solve the problem proposed? Accuracy - is the candidate's solution reasonably syntactically correct? Efficiency - did the candidate write or use the more efficient data structures or algorithms for the job? Maintainability - was the candidate's code free of obfuscation and clever tricks that diminish readability? Persona - are they eager and willing or aloof and egotistical?  Will they work well within your team? It may sound simple, or it may sound crazy, but when I'm looking to hire a developer, I want to see them actually develop well-crafted code.

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• How can I keep the cpu temp low?

  - by Newton

  I have an HP pavilion dv7, I'm using ubuntu 12.04 so the overheating problem with sandybridge cpu is a lot better. However my laptop is still becoming too hot to keep on my legs. The problem is that the fan wait too much before starting, so the medium temp is too hight. When I'm using windows 7 the laptop is room-temperature cold, I've absolutely no problem. On windows the fan is always spinning very low & very silently so the heat is continuously removed, without reaching an unconfortable temp. How can I force the computer to act like that also on ubuntu? PS The bios can't let me control this kind of thing, and this is my experience with lm-sensors and fancontrol al@notebook:~$ sudo sensors-detect [sudo] password for al: # sensors-detect revision 5984 (2011-07-10 21:22:53 +0200) # System: Hewlett-Packard HP Pavilion dv7 Notebook PC (laptop) # Board: Hewlett-Packard 1800 This program will help you determine which kernel modules you need to load to use lm_sensors most effectively. It is generally safe and recommended to accept the default answers to all questions, unless you know what you're doing. Some south bridges, CPUs or memory controllers contain embedded sensors. Do you want to scan for them? This is totally safe. (YES/no): y Module cpuid loaded successfully. Silicon Integrated Systems SIS5595... No VIA VT82C686 Integrated Sensors... No VIA VT8231 Integrated Sensors... No AMD K8 thermal sensors... No AMD Family 10h thermal sensors... No AMD Family 11h thermal sensors... No AMD Family 12h and 14h thermal sensors... No AMD Family 15h thermal sensors... No AMD Family 15h power sensors... No Intel digital thermal sensor... Success! (driver `coretemp') Intel AMB FB-DIMM thermal sensor... No VIA C7 thermal sensor... No VIA Nano thermal sensor... No Some Super I/O chips contain embedded sensors. We have to write to standard I/O ports to probe them. This is usually safe. Do you want to scan for Super I/O sensors? (YES/no): y Probing for Super-I/O at 0x2e/0x2f Trying family `National Semiconductor/ITE'... No Trying family `SMSC'... No Trying family `VIA/Winbond/Nuvoton/Fintek'... No Trying family `ITE'... No Probing for Super-I/O at 0x4e/0x4f Trying family `National Semiconductor/ITE'... Yes Found unknown chip with ID 0x8518 Some hardware monitoring chips are accessible through the ISA I/O ports. We have to write to arbitrary I/O ports to probe them. This is usually safe though. Yes, you do have ISA I/O ports even if you do not have any ISA slots! Do you want to scan the ISA I/O ports? (YES/no): y Probing for `National Semiconductor LM78' at 0x290... No Probing for `National Semiconductor LM79' at 0x290... No Probing for `Winbond W83781D' at 0x290... No Probing for `Winbond W83782D' at 0x290... No Lastly, we can probe the I2C/SMBus adapters for connected hardware monitoring devices. This is the most risky part, and while it works reasonably well on most systems, it has been reported to cause trouble on some systems. Do you want to probe the I2C/SMBus adapters now? (YES/no): y Using driver `i2c-i801' for device 0000:00:1f.3: Intel Cougar Point (PCH) Module i2c-i801 loaded successfully. Module i2c-dev loaded successfully. Next adapter: i915 gmbus disabled (i2c-0) Do you want to scan it? (YES/no/selectively): y Next adapter: i915 gmbus ssc (i2c-1) Do you want to scan it? (YES/no/selectively): y Next adapter: i915 GPIOB (i2c-2) Do you want to scan it? (YES/no/selectively): y Next adapter: i915 gmbus vga (i2c-3) Do you want to scan it? (YES/no/selectively): y Next adapter: i915 GPIOA (i2c-4) Do you want to scan it? (YES/no/selectively): y Next adapter: i915 gmbus panel (i2c-5) Do you want to scan it? (YES/no/selectively): y Client found at address 0x50 Probing for `Analog Devices ADM1033'... No Probing for `Analog Devices ADM1034'... No Probing for `SPD EEPROM'... No Probing for `EDID EEPROM'... Yes (confidence 8, not a hardware monitoring chip) Next adapter: i915 GPIOC (i2c-6) Do you want to scan it? (YES/no/selectively): y Client found at address 0x50 Probing for `Analog Devices ADM1033'... No Probing for `Analog Devices ADM1034'... No Probing for `SPD EEPROM'... No Probing for `EDID EEPROM'... Yes (confidence 8, not a hardware monitoring chip) Next adapter: i915 gmbus dpc (i2c-7) Do you want to scan it? (YES/no/selectively): y Next adapter: i915 GPIOD (i2c-8) Do you want to scan it? (YES/no/selectively): y Next adapter: i915 gmbus dpb (i2c-9) Do you want to scan it? (YES/no/selectively): y Next adapter: i915 GPIOE (i2c-10) Do you want to scan it? (YES/no/selectively): y Next adapter: i915 gmbus reserved (i2c-11) Do you want to scan it? (YES/no/selectively): y Next adapter: i915 gmbus dpd (i2c-12) Do you want to scan it? (YES/no/selectively): y Next adapter: i915 GPIOF (i2c-13) Do you want to scan it? (YES/no/selectively): y Next adapter: DPDDC-B (i2c-14) Do you want to scan it? (YES/no/selectively): y Now follows a summary of the probes I have just done. Just press ENTER to continue: Driver `coretemp': * Chip `Intel digital thermal sensor' (confidence: 9) To load everything that is needed, add this to /etc/modules: #----cut here---- # Chip drivers coretemp #----cut here---- If you have some drivers built into your kernel, the list above will contain too many modules. Skip the appropriate ones! Do you want to add these lines automatically to /etc/modules? (yes/NO)y Successful! Monitoring programs won't work until the needed modules are loaded. You may want to run 'service module-init-tools start' to load them. Unloading i2c-dev... OK Unloading i2c-i801... OK Unloading cpuid... OK al@notebook:~$ sudo /etc/init.d/module-init-tools restart Rather than invoking init scripts through /etc/init.d, use the service(8) utility, e.g. service module-init-tools restart Since the script you are attempting to invoke has been converted to an Upstart job, you may also use the stop(8) and then start(8) utilities, e.g. stop module-init-tools ; start module-init-tools. The restart(8) utility is also available. module-init-tools stop/waiting al@notebook:~$ sudo service module-init-tools restart stop: Unknown instance: module-init-tools stop/waiting al@notebook:~$ sudo service module-init-tools start module-init-tools stop/waiting al@notebook:~$ sudo pwmconfig # pwmconfig revision 5857 (2010-08-22) This program will search your sensors for pulse width modulation (pwm) controls, and test each one to see if it controls a fan on your motherboard. Note that many motherboards do not have pwm circuitry installed, even if your sensor chip supports pwm. We will attempt to briefly stop each fan using the pwm controls. The program will attempt to restore each fan to full speed after testing. However, it is ** very important ** that you physically verify that the fans have been to full speed after the program has completed. /usr/sbin/pwmconfig: There are no pwm-capable sensor modules installed Is my case too desperate?

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• CodePlex Daily Summary for Monday, August 27, 2012

  CodePlex Daily Summary for Monday, August 27, 2012Popular ReleasesHome Access Plus+: v8.0: v8.0827.1800 RELEASE CHANGED TO BETA Any issues, please log them on http://www.edugeek.net/forums/home-access-plus/ This is full release, NO upgrade ZIP will be provided as most files require replacing. To upgrade from a previous version, delete everything but your AppData folder, extract all but the AppData folder and run your HAP+ install Documentation is supplied in the Web Zip The Quota Services require executing a script to register the service, this can be found in there install di...Math.NET Numerics: Math.NET Numerics v2.2.0: Major linear algebra rework since v2.1, now available on Codeplex as well (previous versions were only available via NuGet). Also available as NuGet packages: PM> Install-Package MathNet.Numerics PM> Install-Package MathNet.Numerics.FSharp New: instead of the special Silverlight build we now provide a portable version supporting .Net 4, Silverlight 5 and .Net Core (WinRT) 4.5: PM> Install-Package MathNet.Numerics.PortableMetodología General Ajustada - MGA: 03.00.08: Cambios Aury: Cambios realizados en el reporte de la MGA: Errores en la generación cuando se seleccionan todas las opciones y Que sólo se imprima la información de la alternativa seleccionada para el proyecto. Cambios John: Integración de código con cambios enviados por Aury Niño. Generación de instaladores. Soporte técnico por correo electrónico y telefónico.Phalanger - The PHP Language Compiler for the .NET Framework: 3.0.0.3391 (September 2012): New features: Extended ReflectionClass libxml error handling, constants TreatWarningsAsErrors MSBuild option OnlyPrecompiledCode configuration option; allows to use only compiled code Fixes: ArgsAware exception fix accessing .NET properties bug fix ASP.NET session handler fix for OutOfProc mode Phalanger Tools for Visual Studio: Visual Studio 2010 & 2012 New debugger engine, PHP-like debugging Lot of fixes of project files, formatting, smart indent, colorization etc. Improved ...WatchersNET CKEditor™ Provider for DotNetNuke®: CKEditor Provider 1.14.06: Whats New Added CKEditor 3.6.4 oEmbed Plugin can now handle short urls changes The Template File can now parsed from an xml file instead of js (More Info...) Style Sets can now parsed from an xml file instead of js (More Info...) Fixed Showing wrong Pages in Child Portal in the Link Dialog Fixed Urls in dnnpages Plugin Fixed Issue #6969 WordCount Plugin Fixed Issue #6973 File-Browser: Fixed Deleting of Files File-Browser: Improved loading time File-Browser: Improved the loa...MabiCommerce: MabiCommerce 1.0.1: What's NewSetup now creates shortcuts Fix spelling errors Minor enhancement to the Map window.ScintillaNET: ScintillaNET 2.5.2: This release has been built from the 2.5 branch. Version 2.5.2 is functionally identical to the 2.5.1 release but also includes the XML documentation comments file generated by Visual Studio. It is not 100% comprehensive but it will give you Visual Studio IntelliSense for a large part of the API. Just make sure the ScintillaNET.xml file is in the same folder as the ScintillaNET.dll reference you're using in your projects. (The XML file does not need to be distributed with your application)....TouchInjector: TouchInjector 1.1: Version 1.1: fixed a bug with the autorun optionWinRT XAML Toolkit: WinRT XAML Toolkit - 1.2.0: WinRT XAML Toolkit based on the Windows 8 RTM SDK. Download the latest source from the SOURCE CODE page. For compiled version use NuGet. You can add it to your project in Visual Studio by going to View/Other Windows/Package Manager Console and entering: PM> Install-Package winrtxamltoolkit Features AsyncUI extensions Controls and control extensions Converters Debugging helpers Imaging IO helpers VisualTree helpers Samples Recent changes NOTE: Namespace changes DebugConsol...BlackJumboDog: Ver5.7.1: 2012.08.25 Ver5.7.1 (1)?????·?????LING?????????????? (2)SMTP???（????）????、?????\?????????????????????Christoc's DotNetNuke Module Development Template: 00.00.09 for DNN6: Probably the final VS2010 Release as I have some new VS2012 templates coming. BEFORE USE YOU need to install the MSBuild Community Tasks available from https://github.com/loresoft/msbuildtasks/downloads For best results you should configure your development environment as described in this blog post Then read this latest blog post about customizing and using these custom templates. Installation is simple To use this template place the ZIP (not extracted) file in your My Documents\Visual ...Visual Studio Team Foundation Server Branching and Merging Guide: v2 - Visual Studio 2012: Welcome to the Branching and Merging Guide Quality-Bar Details Documentation has been reviewed by Visual Studio ALM Rangers Documentation has been through an independent technical review Documentation has been reviewed by the quality and recording team All critical bugs have been resolved Known Issues / Bugs Spelling, grammar and content revisions are in progress. Hotfix will be published.Microsoft Ajax Minifier: Microsoft Ajax Minifier 4.62: Fix for issue #18525 - escaped characters in CSS identifiers get double-escaped if the character immediately after the backslash is not normally allowed in an identifier. fixed symbol problem with nuget package. 4.62 should have nuget symbols available again. Also want to highlight again the breaking change introduced in 4.61 regarding the renaming of the DLL from AjaxMin.dll to AjaxMinLibrary.dll to fix strong-name collisions between the DLL and the EXE. Please be aware of this change and...nopCommerce. Open source shopping cart (ASP.NET MVC): nopcommerce 2.65: As some of you may know we were planning to release version 2.70 much later (the end of September). But today we have to release this intermediate version (2.65). It fixes a critical issue caused by a third-party assembly when running nopCommerce on a server with .NET 4.5 installed. No major features have been introduced with this release as our development efforts were focused on further enhancements and fixing bugs. To see the full list of fixes and changes please visit the release notes p...MyRouter (Virtual WiFi Router): MyRouter 1.2.9: . Fix: Some missing changes for fixing the window subclassing crash. · Fix: fixed bug when Run MyRouter at the first Time. · Fix: Log File · Fix: improve performance speed application · fix: solve some Exception.TFS Project Test Migrator: TestPlanMigration v1.0.0: Release 1.0.0 This first version do not create the test cases in the target project because the goal was to restore a Test Plan + Test Suite hierarchy after a manual user deletion without restoring all the Project Collection Database. As I discovered, deleting a Test Plan will do the following : - Delete all TestSuiteEntry (the link between a Test Suite node and a Test Case) - Delete all TestSuite (the nodes in the test hierarchy), including root TestSuite - Delete the TestPlan Test c...ERPStore eCommerce FrontOffice: ERPStore.Core V4.0.0.2 MVC4 RTM: ERPStore.Core V4.0.0.2 MVC4 RTM (Code Source)ZXing.Net: ZXing.Net 0.8.0.0: sync with rev. 2393 of the java version improved API, direct support for multiple barcode decoding, wrapper for barcode generating many other improvements and fixes encoder and decoder command line clients demo client for emguCV dev documentation startedMFCMAPI: August 2012 Release: Build: 15.0.0.1035 Full release notes at SGriffin's blog. If you just want to run the MFCMAPI or MrMAPI, get the executables. If you want to debug them, get the symbol files and the source. The 64 bit builds will only work on a machine with Outlook 2010 64 bit installed. All other machines should use the 32 bit builds, regardless of the operating system. Facebook BadgePulse: Pulse Beta 5: Whats new in this release? Well to start with we now have Wallbase.cc Authentication! so you can access favorites or NSFW. This version requires .NET 4.0, you probably already have it, but if you don't it's a free and easy download from Microsoft. Pulse can bet set to start on Windows startup now too. The Wallpaper setter has settings now, so you can change the background color of the desktop and the Picture Position (Tile/Center/Fill/etc...) I've switched to Windows Forms instead of WPF...New ProjectsAStar Sample WPF Application by Ben Scharbach: The A* Pathfinding component contains an A* Manager, with three A* path finding engines, allowing for 3 simultaneous path searches on PC and XBOX. - By BenContactor: Programs and Schematics for sending a Short Message Service from a computer.JCI Page: gfdsgfdsgfdsL-Calc: Przykladowy kalkulator liczacy indukcyjnosc poprzez odczyt czestotliwosci obwodu rezonansowego.LibXmlSocket: XmlSocket LibraryNavegar: WPF Navigation pour MVVM Light et SimpleIocNUnit Comparisons: A set of libraries which extend the NUnit constraint framework to support deeper comparisons and report detailed differences useful to test debugging. ORMAC: ORMAC is a micro .NET ORM PersonalDataCenter: PDCNet1Project WarRoom: An experimental chatroom jQuery widget for instant messaging functionality on web applications.Quantum.Net: Quantum.Net is a free computation library developp in C#. Contains some mathematics functions and physical element.Specification Framework: A small framework to get started with a type safe variation of the specification pattern.Sphere Community: Sphere Community Pack 2.0TouchInjector: Generate Windows 8 Touch from TUIO messages.

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• CodePlex Daily Summary for Monday, November 04, 2013

  CodePlex Daily Summary for Monday, November 04, 2013Popular ReleasesDNN Blog: 06.00.01: 06.00.01 ReleaseThis is the first bugfix release of the new v6 blog module. These are the changes: Added some robustness in v5-v6 scripts to cater for some rare upgrade scenarios Changed the name of the module definition to avoid clash with Evoq Social Addition of sitemap providerStock Track: Version 1.2 Stable: Overhaul and re-think of the user interface in normal mode. Added stock history view in normal mode. Allows user to enter orders in normal mode. Allow advanced user to run database queries within the program. Improved sales statistics feature, able to calculate against a single category.VG-Ripper & PG-Ripper: VG-Ripper 2.9.50: changes NEW: Added Support for "ImageHostHQ.com" links NEW: Added Support for "ImgMoney.net" links NEW: Added Support for "ImgSavy.com" links NEW: Added Support for "PixTreat.com" links Bug fixesVidCoder: 1.5.11 Beta: Added Encode Details window. Exposes elapsed time, ETA, current and average FPS, running file size, current pass and pass progress. Open it by going to Windows -> Encode Details while an encode is running. Subtitle dialog now disables the "Burn In" checkbox when it's either unavailable or it's the only option. It also disables the "Forced Only" when the subtitle type doesn't support the "Forced" flag. Updated HandBrake core to SVN 5872. Fixed crash in the preview window when a source fil...Wsus Package Publisher: Release v1.3.1311.02: Add three new Actions in Custom Updates : Work with Files (Copy, Delete, Rename), Work with Folders (Add, Delete, Rename) and Work with Registry Keys (Add, Delete, Rename). Fix a bug, where after resigning an update, the display is not refresh. Modify the way WPP sort rows in 'Updates Detail Viewer' and 'Computer List Viewer' so that dates are correctly sorted. Add a Tab in the settings form to set Proxy settings when WPP needs to go on Internet. Fix a bug where 'Manage Catalogs Subsc...uComponents: uComponents v6.0.0: This release of uComponents will compile against and support the new API in Umbraco v6.1.0. What's new in uComponents v6.0.0? New DataTypesImage Point XML DropDownList XPath Templatable List New features / Resolved issuesThe following workitems have been implemented and/or resolved: 14781 14805 14808 14818 14854 14827 14868 14859 14790 14853 14790 DataType Grid 14788 14810 14873 14833 14864 14855 / 14860 14816 14823 Drag & Drop support for rows Su...SharePoint 2013 Global Metadata Navigation: SP 2013 Metadata Navigation Sandbox Solution: SharePoint 2013 Global Metadata Navigation sandbox solution version 1.0. Upload to your site collection solution store and activate. See the Documentation tab for detailed instructions.SmartStore.NET - Free ASP.NET MVC Ecommerce Shopping Cart Solution: SmartStore.NET 1.2.1: New FeaturesAdded option Limit to current basket subtotal to HadSpentAmount discount rule Items in product lists can be labelled as NEW for a configurable period of time Product templates can optionally display a discount sign when discounts were applied Added the ability to set multiple favicons depending on stores and/or themes Plugin management: multiple plugins can now be (un)installed in one go Added a field for the HTML body id to store entity (Developer) New property 'Extra...CodeGen Code Generator: CodeGen 4.3.2: Changes in this release include: Removed old tag tokens from several example templates. Fixed a bug which was causing the default author and company names not to be picked up from the registry under .NET. Added several additional tag loop expressions: <IF FIRST_TAG>, <IF LAST_TAG>, <IF MULTIPLE_TAGS> and<IF SINGLE_TAG>. Upgraded to Synergy/DE 10.1.1b, Visual Studio 2013 and Installshield Limited Edition 2013.Dynamics CRM 2013 Easy Solution Importer: Dynamics CRM 2013 Easy Solution Importer 1.0.0.0: First Version of Easy Solution Importer contains: - Entity to handle solutions - PBL to deactivate fields in form - Business Process Flow to launch the Solution Import - Plugin to import solutions - ChartSQL Power Doc: Version 1.0.2.2 BETA 1: Fixes for issues introduced with PowerShell 4.0 with serialization/deserialization. Fixed an issue with the max length of an Excel cell being exceeded by AD groups with a large number of members.Community Forums NNTP bridge: Community Forums NNTP Bridge V54 (LiveConnect): This is the first release which can be used with the new LiveConnect authentication. Fixes the problem that the authentication will not work after 1 hour. Also a logfile will now be stored in "%AppData%\Community\CommunityForumsNNTPServer". If you have any problems please feel free to sent me the file "LogFile.txt".AutoAudit: AutoAudit 3.20f: Here is a high level list of the things I have changed between AutoAudit 2.00h and 3.20f ... Note: 3.20f corrects a minor bug found in 3.20e in the _RowHistory UDF when using column names with spaces. 1. AutoAudit has been tested on SQL Server 2005, 2008, 2008R2 and 2012. 2. Added the capability for AutoAudit to handle primary keys with up to 5 columns. 3. Added the capability for AutoAudit to save changes for a subset of the columns in a table. 4. Normalized the Audit table and created...Aricie - Friendlier Url Provider: Aricie - Friendlier Url Provider Version 2.5.3: This is mainly a maintenance release to stabilize the new Url Group paradigm. As usual, don't forget to install the Aricie - Shared extension first Highlights Fixed: UI bugs Min Requirements: .Net 3.5+ DotNetNuke 4.8.1+ Aricie - Shared 1.7.7+Aricie Shared: Aricie.Shared Version 1.7.7: This is mainly a maintenance version. Fixes in Property Editor: list import/export Min Requirements: DotNetNuke 4.8.1+ .Net 3.5+WPF Extended DataGrid: WPF Extended DataGrid 2.0.0.9 binaries: Fixed issue with ICollectionView containg null values (AutoFilter issue)SuperSocket, an extensible socket server framework: SuperSocket 1.6 stable: Changes included in this release: Process level isolation SuperSocket ServerManager (include server and client) Connect to client from server side initiatively Client certificate validation New configuration attributes "textEncoding", "defaultCulture", and "storeLocation" (certificate node) Many bug fixes http://docs.supersocket.net/v1-6/en-US/New-Features-and-Breaking-ChangesBarbaTunnel: BarbaTunnel 8.1: Check Version History for more information about this release.NAudio: NAudio 1.7: full release notes available at http://mark-dot-net.blogspot.co.uk/2013/10/naudio-17-release-notes.htmlDirectX Tool Kit: October 2013: October 28, 2013 Updated for Visual Studio 2013 and Windows 8.1 SDK RTM Added DGSLEffect, DGSLEffectFactory, VertexPositionNormalTangentColorTexture, and VertexPositionNormalTangentColorTextureSkinning Model loading and effect factories support loading skinned models MakeSpriteFont now has a smooth vs. sharp antialiasing option: /sharp Model loading from CMOs now handles UV transforms for texture coordinates A number of small fixes for EffectFactory Minor code and project cleanup ...New ProjectsActive Directory User Home Directory and Home Drive Management: The script is great for migrations and overall user management. Questions please send an email to delagardecodeplex@hotmail.com.Computational Mathematics in TSQL: Combinatorial mathematics is easily expressed with computational assistance. The SQL Server engine is the canvas.Demo3: this is a demoEraDeiFessi: Un parser per un certo sito molto pesante e scomodo da navigareFinditbyme Local Search: Multi-lingual search engine that can index entities with multiple attributes.MVC Demo Project - 6: Demo project showing how to use partial views inside an ASP.NET MVC application.OLM to PST Converters: An Ideal Approach for Mac Users: OLM to PST converter helps you to access MAC Outlook emails with Windows platformOpen Source Grow Pack Ship: The Open Source Grow Pack Ship system is for the produce industry. It will allow companies with low funds and infrastructure to operate inside their own budget.Pauli: Pauli is a small .NET based password manager for home use. The Software helps a user to organize passwords, PIN codes, login accounts and notes.Refraction: Member element sorting. Contains reusable Visual Studio Extensibility code in the 'CodeManifold' project.Sensarium Cybernetic Art: Sensarium Cybernetic Art will use Kinect and brainwave technologies to create a true cybernetic art system. SharePoint - Tetris WebPart: Tetris webpart for SharePoint 2013Software Product Licensing: Dot License is very easy for your software product licensing. Product activation based on AES encryption, Processor ID and a single GUID key.VBS Class Framework: The 'VBS Class Framework' is an experimental project whcih aims at delivering 'Visual Basic Script Classes' for some commonly used Objects / Components (COM).VisualME7Logger: Graphical tools for logging real time performance statistics from VW and Audi automobilesVM Role Authoring Tool: VM ROLE Authoring Tool is used to author consistent VM Role gallery workloads for Windows Azure Pack and Windows Azure. wallet: Wallet Windows 8 Store Application: Windows 8 Store Application with XAML and C#Windows Azure Cache Extension Library: Windows Azure Cache Extension LibraryWindows Firewall Notifier: Windows Firewall Notifier (WFN) extends the default Windows embedded firewall behavior, allowing to visualize and handle incoming or outgoing connections.

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• CodePlex Daily Summary for Sunday, June 01, 2014

  CodePlex Daily Summary for Sunday, June 01, 2014Popular ReleasesSandcastle Help File Builder: Help File Builder and Tools v2014.5.31.0: 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 release completes removal of the branding transformations and implements the new VS2013 presentation style that utilizes the new lightweight website format. Several breaking cha...Tooltip Web Preview: ToolTip Web Preview: Version 1.0Database Helper: Release 1.0.0.0: First Release of Database HelperCoMaSy: CoMaSy1.0.2: !Contact Management SystemImage View Slider: Image View Slider: This is a .NET component. We create this using VB.NET. Here you can use an Image Viewer with several properties to your application form. We wish somebody to improve freely. Try this out! Author : Steven Renaldo Antony Yustinus Arjuna Purnama Putra Andre Wijaya P Martin Lidau PBK GENAP 2014 - TI UKDWAspose for Apache POI: Missing Features of Apache POI WP - v 1.1: Release contain the Missing Features in Apache POI WP SDK in Comparison with Aspose.Words for dealing with Microsoft Word. What's New ?Following Examples: Insert Picture in Word Document Insert Comments Set Page Borders Mail Merge from XML Data Source Moving the Cursor Feedback and Suggestions Many more examples are yet to come here. Keep visiting us. Raise your queries and suggest more examples via Aspose Forums or via this social coding site.babelua: V1.5.6.0: V1.5.6.0 - 2014.5.30New feature: support quick-cocos2d-x project now; support text search in scripts folder now, you can use this function in Search Result Window;SEToolbox: 01.032.014 Release 1: Added fix when loading game Textures for icons causing 'Unable to read beyond the end of the stream'. Added new Resource Report, that displays all in game resources in a concise report. Added in temp directory cleaner, to keep excess files from building up. Fixed use of colors on the windows, to work better with desktop schemes. Adding base support for multilingual resources. This will allow loading of the Space Engineers resources to show localized names, and display localized date a...ClosedXML - The easy way to OpenXML: ClosedXML 0.71.2: More memory and performance improvements. Fixed an issue with pivot table field order.Fancontroller: Fancontroller: Initial releaseVi-AIO SearchBar: Vi – AIO Search Bar: Version 1.0Top Verses ( Ayat Emas ): Binary Top Verses: This one is the bin folder of the component. the .dll component is inside.Traditional Calendar Component: Traditional Calender Converter: Duta Wacana Christian University This file containing Traditional Calendar Component and Demo Aplication that using Traditional Calendar Component. This component made with .NET Framework 4 and the programming language is C# .SQLSetupHelper: 1.0.0.0: First Stable Version of SQL SetupComposite Iconote: Composite Iconote: This is a composite has been made by Microsoft Visual Studio 2013. Requirement: To develop this composite or use this component in your application, your computer must have .NET framework 4.5 or newer.Magick.NET: Magick.NET 6.8.9.101: Magick.NET linked with ImageMagick 6.8.9.1. Breaking changes: - Int/short Set methods of WritablePixelCollection are now unsigned. - The Q16 build no longer uses HDRI, switch to the new Q16-HDRI build if you need HDRI.fnr.exe - Find And Replace Tool: 1.7: Bug fixes Refactored logic for encoding text values to command line to handle common edge cases where find/replace operation works in GUI but not in command line Fix for bug where selection in Encoding drop down was different when generating command line in some cases. It was reported in: https://findandreplace.codeplex.com/workitem/34 Fix for "Backslash inserted before dot in replacement text" reported here: https://findandreplace.codeplex.com/discussions/541024 Fix for finding replacing...VG-Ripper & PG-Ripper: VG-Ripper 2.9.59: changes NEW: Added Support for 'GokoImage.com' links NEW: Added Support for 'ViperII.com' links NEW: Added Support for 'PixxxView.com' links NEW: Added Support for 'ImgRex.com' links NEW: Added Support for 'PixLiv.com' links NEW: Added Support for 'imgsee.me' links NEW: Added Support for 'ImgS.it' linksToolbox for Dynamics CRM 2011/2013: XrmToolBox (v1.2014.5.28): XrmToolbox improvement XrmToolBox updates (v1.2014.5.28)Fix connecting to a connection with custom authentication without saved password Tools improvement New tool!Solution Components Mover (v1.2014.5.22) Transfer solution components from one solution to another one Import/Export NN relationships (v1.2014.3.7) Allows you to import and export many to many relationships Tools updatesAttribute Bulk Updater (v1.2014.5.28) Audit Center (v1.2014.5.28) View Layout Replicator (v1.2014.5.28) Scrip...Microsoft Ajax Minifier: Microsoft Ajax Minifier 5.10: Fix for Issue #20875 - echo switch doesn't work for CSS CSS should honor the SASS source-file comments JS should allow multi-line comment directivesNew ProjectsCet MicroWPF: WPF-like library for simple graphic-UI application using Netduino (Plus) 2 and the FTDI FT800 Eve board.Fakemons: Some Fakmons, powered by XML, XSLT, CSS and JavascriptFling OS: Fling OS is a C# operating system project aiming to create a new, managed operating system from the ground up.MudRoom: Experimental tool sets in mud parsing and area definitionOOP-2112110158: My name's NgocDungRoslynResearch: Roslyn ResearchTHD - Control de Usuarios: control de usuarios y permisosWPF Kinect User Controls: WPF Kinect User Control project provide simple Tilt and Skeleton Tracking Parameter Controls.

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• Why is my Internet connection randomly dropping?

  - by Jeanno

  Ever since I have installed 12.04 (clean install not an upgrade), i have been having a drop in the Internet connection. The drop in the connection can be anything from 15 seconds to about 3 mins, and then the connection comes back. This behaviour happens while I am actively browsing the Internet, or if I wake up the computer and open Firefox (sometimes I have connection and sometimes I don't) . Please note that when the internet connection is on, it is not slow (as speedtest.net results show) In the beginning, I thought it was a problem with the driver r8169 for my RTL8111/8168B Ethernet card, so I downloaded the r8168 from Realtek website, followed the detailed instructions (blacklisted r8169, changed the file to '.bsh' ...), but still the same problem persisted. So I switched to a wireless connection, and I got the same problem with internet connection dropping randomly. Any ideas? Thanks in advance Output from 'lspci -v' Code: 00:00.0 Host bridge: Intel Corporation 2nd Generation Core Processor Family DRAM Controller (rev 09) Subsystem: Dell Device 04a7 Flags: bus master, fast devsel, latency 0 Capabilities: [e0] Vendor Specific Information: Len=0c <?> 00:01.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation Xeon E3-1200/2nd Generation Core Processor Family PCI Express Root Port (rev 09) (prog-if 00 [Normal decode]) Flags: bus master, fast devsel, latency 0 Bus: primary=00, secondary=01, subordinate=01, sec-latency=0 I/O behind bridge: 0000e000-0000efff Memory behind bridge: f8000000-fa0fffff Prefetchable memory behind bridge: 00000000d0000000-00000000dbffffff Capabilities: [88] Subsystem: Dell Device 04a7 Capabilities: [80] Power Management version 3 Capabilities: [90] MSI: Enable+ Count=1/1 Maskable- 64bit- Capabilities: [a0] Express Root Port (Slot+), MSI 00 Capabilities: [100] Virtual Channel Capabilities: [140] Root Complex Link Kernel driver in use: pcieport Kernel modules: shpchp 00:01.1 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation Xeon E3-1200/2nd Generation Core Processor Family PCI Express Root Port (rev 09) (prog-if 00 [Normal decode]) Flags: bus master, fast devsel, latency 0 Bus: primary=00, secondary=02, subordinate=02, sec-latency=0 I/O behind bridge: 0000d000-0000dfff Memory behind bridge: f4000000-f60fffff Prefetchable memory behind bridge: 00000000c0000000-00000000cbffffff Capabilities: [88] Subsystem: Dell Device 04a7 Capabilities: [80] Power Management version 3 Capabilities: [90] MSI: Enable+ Count=1/1 Maskable- 64bit- Capabilities: [a0] Express Root Port (Slot+), MSI 00 Capabilities: [100] Virtual Channel Capabilities: [140] Root Complex Link Kernel driver in use: pcieport Kernel modules: shpchp 00:16.0 Communication controller: Intel Corporation 6 Series/C200 Series Chipset Family MEI Controller #1 (rev 04) Subsystem: Dell Device 04a7 Flags: bus master, fast devsel, latency 0, IRQ 52 Memory at f6108000 (64-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=16] Capabilities: [50] Power Management version 3 Capabilities: [8c] MSI: Enable+ Count=1/1 Maskable- 64bit+ Kernel driver in use: mei Kernel modules: mei 00:1a.0 USB controller: Intel Corporation 6 Series/C200 Series Chipset Family USB Enhanced Host Controller #2 (rev 05) (prog-if 20 [EHCI]) Subsystem: Dell Device 04a7 Flags: bus master, medium devsel, latency 0, IRQ 16 Memory at f6107000 (32-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=1K] Capabilities: [50] Power Management version 2 Capabilities: [58] Debug port: BAR=1 offset=00a0 Capabilities: [98] PCI Advanced Features Kernel driver in use: ehci_hcd 00:1b.0 Audio device: Intel Corporation 6 Series/C200 Series Chipset Family High Definition Audio Controller (rev 05) Subsystem: Dell Device 04a7 Flags: bus master, fast devsel, latency 0, IRQ 53 Memory at f6100000 (64-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=16K] Capabilities: [50] Power Management version 2 Capabilities: [60] MSI: Enable+ Count=1/1 Maskable- 64bit+ Capabilities: [70] Express Root Complex Integrated Endpoint, MSI 00 Capabilities: [100] Virtual Channel Capabilities: [130] Root Complex Link Kernel driver in use: snd_hda_intel Kernel modules: snd-hda-intel 00:1c.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 6 Series/C200 Series Chipset Family PCI Express Root Port 1 (rev b5) (prog-if 00 [Normal decode]) Flags: bus master, fast devsel, latency 0 Bus: primary=00, secondary=03, subordinate=03, sec-latency=0 Memory behind bridge: fa400000-fa4fffff Capabilities: [40] Express Root Port (Slot+), MSI 00 Capabilities: [80] MSI: Enable- Count=1/1 Maskable- 64bit- Capabilities: [90] Subsystem: Dell Device 04a7 Capabilities: [a0] Power Management version 2 Kernel driver in use: pcieport Kernel modules: shpchp 00:1c.1 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 6 Series/C200 Series Chipset Family PCI Express Root Port 2 (rev b5) (prog-if 00 [Normal decode]) Flags: bus master, fast devsel, latency 0 Bus: primary=00, secondary=04, subordinate=04, sec-latency=0 I/O behind bridge: 0000c000-0000cfff Prefetchable memory behind bridge: 00000000dc100000-00000000dc1fffff Capabilities: [40] Express Root Port (Slot+), MSI 00 Capabilities: [80] MSI: Enable- Count=1/1 Maskable- 64bit- Capabilities: [90] Subsystem: Dell Device 04a7 Capabilities: [a0] Power Management version 2 Kernel driver in use: pcieport Kernel modules: shpchp 00:1c.2 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 6 Series/C200 Series Chipset Family PCI Express Root Port 3 (rev b5) (prog-if 00 [Normal decode]) Flags: bus master, fast devsel, latency 0 Bus: primary=00, secondary=05, subordinate=05, sec-latency=0 I/O behind bridge: 0000b000-0000bfff Memory behind bridge: fa300000-fa3fffff Capabilities: [40] Express Root Port (Slot+), MSI 00 Capabilities: [80] MSI: Enable- Count=1/1 Maskable- 64bit- Capabilities: [90] Subsystem: Dell Device 04a7 Capabilities: [a0] Power Management version 2 Kernel driver in use: pcieport Kernel modules: shpchp 00:1c.3 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 6 Series/C200 Series Chipset Family PCI Express Root Port 4 (rev b5) (prog-if 00 [Normal decode]) Flags: bus master, fast devsel, latency 0 Bus: primary=00, secondary=06, subordinate=06, sec-latency=0 I/O behind bridge: 0000a000-0000afff Memory behind bridge: fa200000-fa2fffff Capabilities: [40] Express Root Port (Slot+), MSI 00 Capabilities: [80] MSI: Enable- Count=1/1 Maskable- 64bit- Capabilities: [90] Subsystem: Dell Device 04a7 Capabilities: [a0] Power Management version 2 Kernel driver in use: pcieport Kernel modules: shpchp 00:1d.0 USB controller: Intel Corporation 6 Series/C200 Series Chipset Family USB Enhanced Host Controller #1 (rev 05) (prog-if 20 [EHCI]) Subsystem: Dell Device 04a7 Flags: bus master, medium devsel, latency 0, IRQ 23 Memory at f6106000 (32-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=1K] Capabilities: [50] Power Management version 2 Capabilities: [58] Debug port: BAR=1 offset=00a0 Capabilities: [98] PCI Advanced Features Kernel driver in use: ehci_hcd 00:1f.0 ISA bridge: Intel Corporation P67 Express Chipset Family LPC Controller (rev 05) Subsystem: Dell Device 04a7 Flags: bus master, medium devsel, latency 0 Capabilities: [e0] Vendor Specific Information: Len=0c <?> Kernel modules: iTCO_wdt 00:1f.2 RAID bus controller: Intel Corporation 82801 SATA Controller [RAID mode] (rev 05) Subsystem: Dell Device 04a7 Flags: bus master, 66MHz, medium devsel, latency 0, IRQ 42 I/O ports at f070 [size=8] I/O ports at f060 [size=4] I/O ports at f050 [size=8] I/O ports at f040 [size=4] I/O ports at f020 [size=32] Memory at f6105000 (32-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=2K] Capabilities: [80] MSI: Enable+ Count=1/1 Maskable- 64bit- Capabilities: [70] Power Management version 3 Capabilities: [a8] SATA HBA v1.0 Capabilities: [b0] PCI Advanced Features Kernel driver in use: ahci 00:1f.3 SMBus: Intel Corporation 6 Series/C200 Series Chipset Family SMBus Controller (rev 05) Subsystem: Dell Device 04a7 Flags: medium devsel, IRQ 5 Memory at f6104000 (64-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=256] I/O ports at f000 [size=32] Kernel modules: i2c-i801 01:00.0 VGA compatible controller: NVIDIA Corporation Device 0dc5 (rev a1) (prog-if 00 [VGA controller]) Subsystem: NVIDIA Corporation Device 085b Flags: bus master, fast devsel, latency 0, IRQ 16 Memory at f8000000 (32-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=16M] Memory at d0000000 (64-bit, prefetchable) [size=128M] Memory at d8000000 (64-bit, prefetchable) [size=32M] I/O ports at e000 [size=128] Expansion ROM at fa000000 [disabled] [size=512K] Capabilities: [60] Power Management version 3 Capabilities: [68] MSI: Enable- Count=1/1 Maskable- 64bit+ Capabilities: [78] Express Endpoint, MSI 00 Capabilities: [b4] Vendor Specific Information: Len=14 <?> Capabilities: [100] Virtual Channel Capabilities: [128] Power Budgeting <?> Capabilities: [600] Vendor Specific Information: ID=0001 Rev=1 Len=024 <?> Kernel driver in use: nouveau Kernel modules: nouveau, nvidiafb 01:00.1 Audio device: NVIDIA Corporation GF106 High Definition Audio Controller (rev a1) Subsystem: NVIDIA Corporation Device 085b Flags: bus master, fast devsel, latency 0, IRQ 17 Memory at fa080000 (32-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=16K] Capabilities: [60] Power Management version 3 Capabilities: [68] MSI: Enable- Count=1/1 Maskable- 64bit+ Capabilities: [78] Express Endpoint, MSI 00 Kernel driver in use: snd_hda_intel Kernel modules: snd-hda-intel 02:00.0 VGA compatible controller: NVIDIA Corporation Device 0dc5 (rev a1) (prog-if 00 [VGA controller]) Subsystem: NVIDIA Corporation Device 085b Flags: bus master, fast devsel, latency 0, IRQ 17 Memory at f4000000 (32-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=32M] Memory at c0000000 (64-bit, prefetchable) [size=128M] Memory at c8000000 (64-bit, prefetchable) [size=64M] I/O ports at d000 [size=128] Expansion ROM at f6000000 [disabled] [size=512K] Capabilities: [60] Power Management version 3 Capabilities: [68] MSI: Enable- Count=1/1 Maskable- 64bit+ Capabilities: [78] Express Endpoint, MSI 00 Capabilities: [b4] Vendor Specific Information: Len=14 <?> Capabilities: [100] Virtual Channel Capabilities: [128] Power Budgeting <?> Capabilities: [600] Vendor Specific Information: ID=0001 Rev=1 Len=024 <?> Kernel driver in use: nouveau Kernel modules: nouveau, nvidiafb 02:00.1 Audio device: NVIDIA Corporation GF106 High Definition Audio Controller (rev a1) Subsystem: NVIDIA Corporation Device 085b Flags: bus master, fast devsel, latency 0, IRQ 18 Memory at f6080000 (32-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=16K] Capabilities: [60] Power Management version 3 Capabilities: [68] MSI: Enable- Count=1/1 Maskable- 64bit+ Capabilities: [78] Express Endpoint, MSI 00 Kernel driver in use: snd_hda_intel Kernel modules: snd-hda-intel 03:00.0 USB controller: NEC Corporation uPD720200 USB 3.0 Host Controller (rev 03) (prog-if 30 [XHCI]) Subsystem: Dell Device 04a7 Flags: bus master, fast devsel, latency 0, IRQ 16 Memory at fa400000 (64-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=8K] Capabilities: [50] Power Management version 3 Capabilities: [70] MSI: Enable- Count=1/8 Maskable- 64bit+ Capabilities: [90] MSI-X: Enable+ Count=8 Masked- Capabilities: [a0] Express Endpoint, MSI 00 Capabilities: [100] Advanced Error Reporting Capabilities: [140] Device Serial Number ff-ff-ff-ff-ff-ff-ff-ff Capabilities: [150] Latency Tolerance Reporting Kernel driver in use: xhci_hcd 04:00.0 Ethernet controller: Realtek Semiconductor Co., Ltd. RTL8111/8168B PCI Express Gigabit Ethernet controller (rev 06) Subsystem: Dell Device 04a7 Flags: bus master, fast devsel, latency 0, IRQ 51 I/O ports at c000 [size=256] Memory at dc104000 (64-bit, prefetchable) [size=4K] Memory at dc100000 (64-bit, prefetchable) [size=16K] Capabilities: [40] Power Management version 3 Capabilities: [50] MSI: Enable+ Count=1/1 Maskable- 64bit+ Capabilities: [70] Express Endpoint, MSI 01 Capabilities: [b0] MSI-X: Enable- Count=4 Masked- Capabilities: [d0] Vital Product Data Capabilities: [100] Advanced Error Reporting Capabilities: [140] Virtual Channel Capabilities: [160] Device Serial Number 03-00-00-00-68-4c-e0-00 Kernel driver in use: r8168 Kernel modules: r8168 05:00.0 FireWire (IEEE 1394): VIA Technologies, Inc. VT6315 Series Firewire Controller (rev 01) (prog-if 10 [OHCI]) Subsystem: Dell Device 04a7 Flags: bus master, fast devsel, latency 0, IRQ 18 Memory at fa300000 (64-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=2K] I/O ports at b000 [size=256] Capabilities: [50] Power Management version 3 Capabilities: [80] MSI: Enable- Count=1/1 Maskable+ 64bit+ Capabilities: [98] Express Endpoint, MSI 00 Capabilities: [100] Advanced Error Reporting Capabilities: [130] Device Serial Number 00-10-dc-ff-ff-cf-56-1a Kernel driver in use: firewire_ohci Kernel modules: firewire-ohci 06:00.0 SATA controller: JMicron Technology Corp. JMB362 SATA Controller (rev 10) (prog-if 01 [AHCI 1.0]) Subsystem: Dell Device 04a7 Flags: bus master, fast devsel, latency 0, IRQ 19 I/O ports at a040 [size=8] I/O ports at a030 [size=4] I/O ports at a020 [size=8] I/O ports at a010 [size=4] I/O ports at a000 [size=16] Memory at fa210000 (32-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=512] Capabilities: [8c] Power Management version 3 Capabilities: [50] Express Legacy Endpoint, MSI 00 Kernel driver in use: ahci Note that my wireless card is not showing, I have the Ralink 3390 card (which apparently does not show up on Ubuntu for some reason), however I am able to connect to wireless network and connect to the internet (when it is working)

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• What is Causing this IIS 7 Web Service Sporadic Connectivity Error?

  - by dpalau

  On sporadic occasions we receive the following error when attempting to call an .asmx web service from a .Net client application: "The underlying connection was closed: A connection that was expected to be kept alive was closed by the server. Unable to read data from the transport connection: An existing connection was forcibly closed by the remote host." By sporadic I mean that it might occur zero, once every few days, or a half-dozen times a day for some users. It will never occur for the first web service call of a user. And the subsequent (usually the same) call will always work immediately after the failure. The failures happen across a variety of methods in the service and usually happens between 15-20 seconds (according to the log) from the time of the request. Looking in the IIS site log for the particular call will show one or the other of the following windows error codes: 121: The semaphore timeout period has elapsed. 1236: The network connection was aborted by the local system. Some additional environment details: Running on internal network web farm consisting of two servers running IIS7 on Windows Server 2008 OS. These problems did not occur when running in an older IIS6 web farm of three servers running on Windows Server 2003 (and we use a single IIS6/2003 instance for our development and staging environments with no issues). EDIT: Also, all of these server instances are VMWare virtual machines, not sure if that is a surprise anymore or not. The web service is a .Net 2.0/3.5 compiled .asmx web service that has its own application pool (.Net 2.0, integrated pipeline). Only has Windows Authentication enabled. We have another web service on the farm that uses the same physical path as the primary service, the only difference being that Basic Authentication is enabled. This is used for a portion of our ERP system. Have tried using the same and different application pool - no effect on the error. This site isn't hit as often as the primary site and has never had an error. As mentioned, the error will only happen when called from the .Net client - not from other applications. The client application is always creating a new web service object for each request and setting the service credentials to System.Net.CredentialCache.DefaultCredentials. The application is either deployed locally to a client or run in a Citrix server session. Those users running in Citrix doesn't seem to experience the issue, only locally deployed clients. The Citrix servers and the web farm are located in the same physical location and are located in the same IP range (10.67.xx.xx). Locally deployed clients experiencing the error are located elsewhere (10.105.xx.xx, 10.31.xx.xx). I've checked the OS logs to see if I can see any problems but nothing really sticks out. EDIT: Actually, I myself just ran into the error a little bit ago. I decided to check out the logs again and saw that there was a Security log entry of "Audit Failure" at the 'same' time (IIS log entry at 1:39:59, event log entry at 1:39:50). Not sure if this is a coincidence or not, I'll have to check out the logs of previous errors. I'm probably grasping for straws but the details: Log Name: Security Source: Microsoft-Windows-Security-Auditing Date: 7/8/2009 1:39:50 PM Event ID: 5159 Task Category: Filtering Platform Connection Level: Information Keywords: Audit Failure User: N/A Computer: is071019.<**.net Description: The Windows Filtering Platform has blocked a bind to a local port. Application Information: Process ID: 1260 Application Name: \device\harddiskvolume1\windows\system32\svchost.exe Network Information: Source Address: 0.0.0.0 Source Port: 54802 Protocol: 17 Filter Information: Filter Run-Time ID: 0 Layer Name: Resource Assignment Layer Run-Time ID: 36 I've also tried to use Failed Request Tracing in IIS7 but the service call never actually gets to where FRT can capture it (even though the failure is logged in the web service log). The network infrastructure group said they checked out the DNS and any NIC settings are correct so there is no 'flapping'. Everything pans out. I'm not sure that they checked out any domain controller servers though to see if that could be an issue. Any ideas? Or any other debugging strategies to get to the bottom of this? I'm just the developer in charge of the software and don't really have the knowledge on what to investigate from the networking side of things - although it does sound like a networking issue to me based on what is happening. Thanks in advance for any help.

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• You Say You Want a (Customer Experience) Revolution

  - by Christie Flanagan

  Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE /* 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-hansi-font-family:Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;} rev-o-lu-tion [rev-uh-loo-shuhn] noun 1. a sudden, radical or complete change 2. fundamental change in the way of thinking about or visualizing something; a change of paradigm 3. a changeover in use or preference especially in technology <the computer revolution> Lately, I've been hearing an awful lot about the customer experience revolution.  Tonight Oracle will be hosting The Experience Revolution, an evening of exploration and networking with customer experience executives in New York City where Oracle President Mark Hurd will introduce Oracle Customer Experience, a cross-stack suite of customer experience products that includes Oracle WebCenter and a number of other Oracle technologies. Then on Tuesday and Wednesday, the Forrester Customer Experience Forum East also kicks off in New York City where they'll examine how businesses can "reap the full business benefits of the customer experience revolution." So, are we in the midst of a customer experience revolution? As a consumer, I can answer that question with a definitive “yes.” When I bought my very first car, I had a lot of questions. How do I know if I’m paying a fair price? How do I know if this dealer is honest? Why do I have to sit through these good cop, bad cop shenanigans between sales and sales management at the dealership? Why do I feel like I’m doing these people a favor by giving them my business? In the end the whole experience left me feeling deeply unsatisfied. I didn’t feel that I held all that much power over the experience and the only real negotiating trick I had was to walk out, which I did, many times before actually making a purchase. Fast forward to a year ago and I found myself back in the market for a new car. The very first car that I bought had finally kicked the bucket after many years, many repair bills, and much wear and tear. Man, I had loved that car. It was time to move on, but I had a knot in my stomach when I reflected back on my last car purchase experience and dreaded the thought of going through that again. Could that have been the reason why I drove my old car for so long? But as I started the process of researching new cars, I started to feel really confident. I had a wealth of online information that helped me in my search. I went to Edmunds and plugged in some information on my preferences and left with a short list of vehicles. After an afternoon spent test driving the cars my short list, I had determined my favorite – it was a model I didn’t even know about until my research on Edmunds! But I didn’t want to go back to the dealership where I test drove it. They were clearly old school and wanted me to buy the way that they wanted to sell. No thanks! After that I went back online. I figured out exactly what people had paid for this car in my area. I found out what kind of discount others were able to negotiate from an online community forum dedicated to the make and model. I found out how the sales people were being incentivized by the manufacturer that month. I learned which dealers had the best ratings and reviews. This was actually getting exciting. I was feeling really empowered. My next step was to request online quotes from the some of the highest rated dealers but I already knew exactly how much I was going to pay. This was really a test for the dealers. My new mantra was “let he who delivers the best customer experience win.” An inside sales rep from one dealer responded to my quote request within a couple of hours. I told him I had already decided on the make and model and it was just a matter of figuring out who I would buy it from. I also told them that I was really busy and wouldn’t set foot in the dealership unless we had come to terms beforehand. Lastly, I let him know that I’d prefer to work out the details via email. He promised to get back to me shortly with a detailed quote. Over the next few days I received calls from other dealers. One asked me a host of questions that I had already answered in their lengthy online form. Another blamed their website performance issues for their delay in responding to my request. But by then it didn’t really matter because I’d already bought the car days before from the dealer who responded to me first and who was willing to adjust their sales process to accommodate my buying one. So, yes, I really do believe we are in the midst of a customer experience revolution. And every revolution leaves some victorious and other vanquished. Which side do you want to be on when it comes to the customer experience revolution?

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• CodePlex Daily Summary for Tuesday, November 05, 2013

  CodePlex Daily Summary for Tuesday, November 05, 2013Popular ReleasesSocial Network Importer for NodeXL: SocialNetImporter(v.1.9.1): This new version includes: - Include me option is back - Fixed the login bug reported latelyCaptcha MVC: Captcha MVC 2.5: v 2.5: Added support for MVC 5. The DefaultCaptchaManager is no longer throws an error if the captcha values was entered incorrectly. Minor changes. v 2.4.1: Fixed issues with deleting incorrect values of the captcha token in the SessionStorageProvider. This could lead to a situation when the captcha was not working with the SessionStorageProvider. Minor changes. v 2.4: Changed the IIntelligencePolicy interface, added ICaptchaManager as parameter for all methods. Improved font size ...DNN Blog: 06.00.01: 06.00.01 ReleaseThis is the first bugfix release of the new v6 blog module. These are the changes: Added some robustness in v5-v6 scripts to cater for some rare upgrade scenarios Changed the name of the module definition to avoid clash with Evoq Social Addition of sitemap providerStock Track: Version 1.2 Stable: Overhaul and re-think of the user interface in normal mode. Added stock history view in normal mode. Allows user to enter orders in normal mode. Allow advanced user to run database queries within the program. Improved sales statistics feature, able to calculate against a single category. Updated database script file. Now compatible with lower version of SQL Server.VG-Ripper & PG-Ripper: VG-Ripper 2.9.50: changes NEW: Added Support for "ImageHostHQ.com" links NEW: Added Support for "ImgMoney.net" links NEW: Added Support for "ImgSavy.com" links NEW: Added Support for "PixTreat.com" links Bug fixesVidCoder: 1.5.11 Beta: Added Encode Details window. Exposes elapsed time, ETA, current and average FPS, running file size, current pass and pass progress. Open it by going to Windows -> Encode Details while an encode is running. Subtitle dialog now disables the "Burn In" checkbox when it's either unavailable or it's the only option. It also disables the "Forced Only" when the subtitle type doesn't support the "Forced" flag. Updated HandBrake core to SVN 5872. Fixed crash in the preview window when a source fil...Wsus Package Publisher: Release v1.3.1311.02: Add three new Actions in Custom Updates : Work with Files (Copy, Delete, Rename), Work with Folders (Add, Delete, Rename) and Work with Registry Keys (Add, Delete, Rename). Fix a bug, where after resigning an update, the display is not refresh. Modify the way WPP sort rows in 'Updates Detail Viewer' and 'Computer List Viewer' so that dates are correctly sorted. Add a Tab in the settings form to set Proxy settings when WPP needs to go on Internet. Fix a bug where 'Manage Catalogs Subsc...uComponents: uComponents v6.0.0: This release of uComponents will compile against and support the new API in Umbraco v6.1.0. What's new in uComponents v6.0.0? New DataTypesImage Point XML DropDownList XPath Templatable List New features / Resolved issuesThe following workitems have been implemented and/or resolved: 14781 14805 14808 14818 14854 14827 14868 14859 14790 14853 14790 DataType Grid 14788 14810 14873 14833 14864 14855 / 14860 14816 14823 Drag & Drop support for rows Su...SharePoint 2013 Global Metadata Navigation: SP 2013 Metadata Navigation Sandbox Solution: SharePoint 2013 Global Metadata Navigation sandbox solution version 1.0. Upload to your site collection solution store and activate. See the Documentation tab for detailed instructions.SmartStore.NET - Free ASP.NET MVC Ecommerce Shopping Cart Solution: SmartStore.NET 1.2.1: New FeaturesAdded option Limit to current basket subtotal to HadSpentAmount discount rule Items in product lists can be labelled as NEW for a configurable period of time Product templates can optionally display a discount sign when discounts were applied Added the ability to set multiple favicons depending on stores and/or themes Plugin management: multiple plugins can now be (un)installed in one go Added a field for the HTML body id to store entity (Developer) New property 'Extra...CodeGen Code Generator: CodeGen 4.3.2: Changes in this release include: Removed old tag tokens from several example templates. Fixed a bug which was causing the default author and company names not to be picked up from the registry under .NET. Added several additional tag loop expressions: <IF FIRST_TAG>, <IF LAST_TAG>, <IF MULTIPLE_TAGS> and<IF SINGLE_TAG>. Upgraded to Synergy/DE 10.1.1b, Visual Studio 2013 and Installshield Limited Edition 2013.SQL Power Doc: Version 1.0.2.2 BETA 1: Fixes for issues introduced with PowerShell 4.0 with serialization/deserialization. Fixed an issue with the max length of an Excel cell being exceeded by AD groups with a large number of members.Community Forums NNTP bridge: Community Forums NNTP Bridge V54 (LiveConnect): This is the first release which can be used with the new LiveConnect authentication. Fixes the problem that the authentication will not work after 1 hour. Also a logfile will now be stored in "%AppData%\Community\CommunityForumsNNTPServer". If you have any problems please feel free to sent me the file "LogFile.txt".AutoAudit: AutoAudit 3.20f: Here is a high level list of the things I have changed between AutoAudit 2.00h and 3.20f ... Note: 3.20f corrects a minor bug found in 3.20e in the _RowHistory UDF when using column names with spaces. 1. AutoAudit has been tested on SQL Server 2005, 2008, 2008R2 and 2012. 2. Added the capability for AutoAudit to handle primary keys with up to 5 columns. 3. Added the capability for AutoAudit to save changes for a subset of the columns in a table. 4. Normalized the Audit table and created...Aricie - Friendlier Url Provider: Aricie - Friendlier Url Provider Version 2.5.3: This is mainly a maintenance release to stabilize the new Url Group paradigm. As usual, don't forget to install the Aricie - Shared extension first Highlights Fixed: UI bugs Min Requirements: .Net 3.5+ DotNetNuke 4.8.1+ Aricie - Shared 1.7.7+Aricie Shared: Aricie.Shared Version 1.7.7: This is mainly a maintenance version. Fixes in Property Editor: list import/export Min Requirements: DotNetNuke 4.8.1+ .Net 3.5+WPF Extended DataGrid: WPF Extended DataGrid 2.0.0.9 binaries: Fixed issue with ICollectionView containg null values (AutoFilter issue)Community TFS Build Extensions: October 2013: The October 2013 release contains Scripts - a new addition to our delivery. These are a growing library of PowerShell scripts to use with VS2013. See our documentation for more on scripting. VS2010 Activities(target .NET 4.0) VS2012 Activities (target .NET 4.5) VS2013 Activities (target .NET 4.5.1) Community TFS Build Manager VS2012 Community TFS Build Manager VS2013 The Community TFS Build Managers for VS2010, 2012 and 2013 can also be found in the Visual Studio Gallery where upda...SuperSocket, an extensible socket server framework: SuperSocket 1.6 stable: Changes included in this release: Process level isolation SuperSocket ServerManager (include server and client) Connect to client from server side initiatively Client certificate validation New configuration attributes "textEncoding", "defaultCulture", and "storeLocation" (certificate node) Many bug fixes http://docs.supersocket.net/v1-6/en-US/New-Features-and-Breaking-ChangesBarbaTunnel: BarbaTunnel 8.1: Check Version History for more information about this release.New ProjectsAForge.NET FFmpeg - LGPL Version: AForge.Video.FFMPEG recompiled under LGPLv3 which can be distributed with proprietary projects, without requiring you to release all of your proprietary source.Albatross Shell: Albatross Shell is a WPF based Shell program that can host other WPF application modules.Analysis Services ServerActivity Monitor (ASSAM) 2014: Analysis Services Server Activity Monitor (ASSAM 2014) is an upgraded version of the Analysis Services Activity Monitor 2012.AsuraCode: AsuraCode 0.1Chimera - Automated Testing Suite: Chimera is an automated testing suite, intended to simplify and automate system and tests deployment. Oriented around the MVC architecture, it has web based UI.Create Sitemap for your Website (Sitemap Writer): Sitemap Writer help create sitemap for your website. It recursively look for links on your each page and add up in list to write a site map. DataSync: ????HCS Analyzer: HCS Analyzerk? toán thu? dona: chuong trình k? toán thu? donaLanguage improver: startedOrchard Abstractions: An Orchard module for providing higher-level abstractions to Orchard services.Orchard Abstractions - Examples: Examples for Orchard Abstractions (https://orchardabstractions.codeplex.com/)Role Based Views in Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011: This tool will allow you to configure visibility and setting the default view of a logged in user based on security roles.SF.DotNet.Utilities: DotNet.UtilitiesShot: A real time C# web application framework designed in the image of ASP.NET.Soccer Managment System: Soccer Management SystemSTAR FOX XNA: Remake of a classic videogame. In this case, that videogame will be Star Fox (1993) for SNES game console.The Dargon Project: DargonTweetFeed: A small widget that enables you to display a twitter search or profile on your Sitecore siteWPF Themes HighRobotics: WPF Themes by High Robotics company????????? ????????: ?????????, ??????????? ?????????? ???????? ????????: ??????????? ????? ????? ??????????, ?????????? ????????? ??????.

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• Why did Ubuntu suddenly get so slow?

  - by user101383

  12.10 has been slowing down mysteriously. Normally, in past versions, I can log in, open Firefox, and it will pop up within seconds. 12.10 is like that upon install too, though once I install my old apps, it gets very slow by Ubuntu standards. After login the hard drive will just make noise for a while before the OS will do anything. Hardware: enter description: Desktop Computer product: XPS 8300 () vendor: Dell Inc. serial: B6G2WR1 width: 64 bits capabilities: smbios-2.6 dmi-2.6 vsyscall32 configuration: boot=normal chassis=desktop uuid=44454C4C-3600-1047-8032-C2C04F575231 core description: Motherboard product: 0Y2MRG vendor: Dell Inc. physical id: 0 version: A00 serial: ..CN7360419G04VQ. slot: To Be Filled By O.E.M. *cpu description: CPU product: Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-2600 CPU @ 3.40GHz vendor: Intel Corp. physical id: 4 bus info: cpu@0 version: Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-2600 CPU @ 3.40GHz serial: To Be Filled By O.E.M. slot: CPU 1 size: 1600MHz capacity: 1600MHz width: 64 bits clock: 100MHz capabilities: x86-64 fpu fpu_exception wp vme de pse tsc msr pae mce cx8 apic sep mtrr pge mca cmov pat pse36 clflush dts acpi mmx fxsr sse sse2 ss ht tm pbe syscall nx rdtscp constant_tsc arch_perfmon pebs bts rep_good nopl xtopology nonstop_tsc aperfmperf pni pclmulqdq dtes64 monitor ds_cpl vmx smx est tm2 ssse3 cx16 xtpr pdcm pcid sse4_1 sse4_2 x2apic popcnt tsc_deadline_timer aes xsave avx lahf_lm ida arat epb xsaveopt pln pts dtherm tpr_shadow vnmi flexpriority ept vpid cpufreq configuration: cores=4 enabledcores=1 threads=2 *-cache:0 description: L1 cache physical id: 5 slot: L1-Cache size: 256KiB capacity: 256KiB capabilities: internal write-through unified *-cache:1 description: L2 cache physical id: 6 slot: L2-Cache size: 1MiB capacity: 1MiB capabilities: internal write-through unified *-cache:2 DISABLED description: L3 cache physical id: 7 slot: L3-Cache size: 8MiB capacity: 8MiB capabilities: internal write-back unified *-memory description: System Memory physical id: 20 slot: System board or motherboard size: 8GiB *-bank:0 description: SODIMM DDR3 Synchronous 1333 MHz (0.8 ns) product: NT2GC64B88B0NF-CG vendor: Nanya physical id: 0 serial: 7228183 slot: DIMM3 size: 2GiB width: 64 bits clock: 1333MHz (0.8ns) *-bank:1 description: SODIMM DDR3 Synchronous 1333 MHz (0.8 ns) product: NT2GC64B88B0NF-CG vendor: Nanya physical id: 1 serial: 1E28183 slot: DIMM1 size: 2GiB width: 64 bits clock: 1333MHz (0.8ns) *-bank:2 description: SODIMM DDR3 Synchronous 1333 MHz (0.8 ns) product: NT2GC64B88B0NF-CG vendor: Nanya physical id: 2 serial: 9E28183 slot: DIMM4 size: 2GiB width: 64 bits clock: 1333MHz (0.8ns) *-bank:3 description: SODIMM DDR3 Synchronous 1333 MHz (0.8 ns) product: NT2GC64B88B0NF-CG vendor: Nanya physical id: 3 serial: 5527183 slot: DIMM2 size: 2GiB width: 64 bits clock: 1333MHz (0.8ns) *-firmware description: BIOS vendor: Dell Inc. physical id: 0 version: A05 date: 09/21/2011 size: 64KiB capacity: 4032KiB capabilities: mca pci upgrade shadowing escd cdboot bootselect socketedrom edd int13floppy1200 int13floppy720 int13floppy2880 int5printscreen int9keyboard int14serial int17printer int10video acpi usb zipboot biosbootspecification *-pci description: Host bridge product: 2nd Generation Core Processor Family DRAM Controller vendor: Intel Corporation physical id: 100 bus info: pci@0000:00:00.0 version: 09 width: 32 bits clock: 33MHz *-pci:0 description: PCI bridge product: Xeon E3-1200/2nd Generation Core Processor Family PCI Express Root Port vendor: Intel Corporation physical id: 1 bus info: pci@0000:00:01.0 version: 09 width: 32 bits clock: 33MHz capabilities: pci pm msi pciexpress normal_decode bus_master cap_list configuration: driver=pcieport resources: irq:40 ioport:e000(size=4096) memory:fe600000-fe6fffff ioport:d0000000(size=268435456) *-display description: VGA compatible controller product: Juniper [Radeon HD 5700 Series] vendor: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] nee ATI physical id: 0 bus info: pci@0000:01:00.0 version: 00 width: 64 bits clock: 33MHz capabilities: pm pciexpress msi vga_controller bus_master cap_list rom configuration: driver=radeon latency=0 resources: irq:44 memory:d0000000-dfffffff memory:fe620000-fe63ffff ioport:e000(size=256) memory:fe600000-fe61ffff *-multimedia description: Audio device product: Juniper HDMI Audio [Radeon HD 5700 Series] vendor: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] nee ATI physical id: 0.1 bus info: pci@0000:01:00.1 version: 00 width: 64 bits clock: 33MHz capabilities: pm pciexpress msi bus_master cap_list configuration: driver=snd_hda_intel latency=0 resources: irq:48 memory:fe640000-fe643fff *-communication description: Communication controller product: 6 Series/C200 Series Chipset Family MEI Controller #1 vendor: Intel Corporation physical id: 16 bus info: pci@0000:00:16.0 version: 04 width: 64 bits clock: 33MHz capabilities: pm msi bus_master cap_list configuration: driver=mei latency=0 resources: irq:45 memory:fe708000-fe70800f *-usb:0 description: USB controller product: 6 Series/C200 Series Chipset Family USB Enhanced Host Controller #2 vendor: Intel Corporation physical id: 1a bus info: pci@0000:00:1a.0 version: 05 width: 32 bits clock: 33MHz capabilities: pm debug ehci bus_master cap_list configuration: driver=ehci_hcd latency=0 resources: irq:16 memory:fe707000-fe7073ff *-multimedia description: Audio device product: 6 Series/C200 Series Chipset Family High Definition Audio Controller vendor: Intel Corporation physical id: 1b bus info: pci@0000:00:1b.0 version: 05 width: 64 bits clock: 33MHz capabilities: pm msi pciexpress bus_master cap_list configuration: driver=snd_hda_intel latency=0 resources: irq:46 memory:fe700000-fe703fff *-pci:1 description: PCI bridge product: 6 Series/C200 Series Chipset Family PCI Express Root Port 1 vendor: Intel Corporation physical id: 1c bus info: pci@0000:00:1c.0 version: b5 width: 32 bits clock: 33MHz capabilities: pci pciexpress msi pm normal_decode bus_master cap_list configuration: driver=pcieport resources: irq:41 memory:fe500000-fe5fffff *-network description: Network controller product: BCM4313 802.11b/g/n Wireless LAN Controller vendor: Broadcom Corporation physical id: 0 bus info: pci@0000:02:00.0 version: 01 width: 64 bits clock: 33MHz capabilities: pm msi pciexpress bus_master cap_list configuration: driver=bcma-pci-bridge latency=0 resources: irq:16 memory:fe500000-fe503fff *-pci:2 description: PCI bridge product: 6 Series/C200 Series Chipset Family PCI Express Root Port 4 vendor: Intel Corporation physical id: 1c.3 bus info: pci@0000:00:1c.3 version: b5 width: 32 bits clock: 33MHz capabilities: pci pciexpress msi pm normal_decode bus_master cap_list configuration: driver=pcieport resources: irq:42 memory:fe400000-fe4fffff *-network description: Ethernet interface product: NetLink BCM57788 Gigabit Ethernet PCIe vendor: Broadcom Corporation physical id: 0 bus info: pci@0000:03:00.0 logical name: eth0 version: 01 serial: 18:03:73:e1:a7:71 size: 100Mbit/s capacity: 1Gbit/s width: 64 bits clock: 33MHz capabilities: pm msi pciexpress bus_master cap_list ethernet physical tp mii 10bt 10bt-fd 100bt 100bt-fd 1000bt 1000bt-fd autonegotiation configuration: autonegotiation=on broadcast=yes driver=tg3 driverversion=3.123 duplex=full firmware=sb ip=192.168.1.3 latency=0 link=yes multicast=yes port=MII speed=100Mbit/s resources: irq:47 memory:fe400000-fe40ffff *-usb:1 description: USB controller product: 6 Series/C200 Series Chipset Family USB Enhanced Host Controller #1 vendor: Intel Corporation physical id: 1d bus info: pci@0000:00:1d.0 version: 05 width: 32 bits clock: 33MHz capabilities: pm debug ehci bus_master cap_list configuration: driver=ehci_hcd latency=0 resources: irq:23 memory:fe706000-fe7063ff *-isa description: ISA bridge product: H67 Express Chipset Family LPC Controller vendor: Intel Corporation physical id: 1f bus info: pci@0000:00:1f.0 version: 05 width: 32 bits clock: 33MHz capabilities: isa bus_master cap_list configuration: latency=0 *-storage description: SATA controller product: 6 Series/C200 Series Chipset Family SATA AHCI Controller vendor: Intel Corporation physical id: 1f.2 bus info: pci@0000:00:1f.2 version: 05 width: 32 bits clock: 66MHz capabilities: storage msi pm ahci_1.0 bus_master cap_list configuration: driver=ahci latency=0 resources: irq:43 ioport:f070(size=8) ioport:f060(size=4) ioport:f050(size=8) ioport:f040(size=4) ioport:f020(size=32) memory:fe705000-fe7057ff *-serial UNCLAIMED description: SMBus product: 6 Series/C200 Series Chipset Family SMBus Controller vendor: Intel Corporation physical id: 1f.3 bus info: pci@0000:00:1f.3 version: 05 width: 64 bits clock: 33MHz configuration: latency=0 resources: memory:fe704000-fe7040ff ioport:f000(size=32) *-scsi:0 physical id: 1 logical name: scsi0 capabilities: emulated *-disk description: ATA Disk product: Hitachi HUA72201 vendor: Hitachi physical id: 0.0.0 bus info: scsi@0:0.0.0 logical name: /dev/sda version: JP4O serial: JPW9J0HD21BTZC size: 931GiB (1TB) capabilities: partitioned partitioned:dos configuration: ansiversion=5 sectorsize=512 signature=000641dc *-volume:0 description: EXT4 volume vendor: Linux physical id: 1 bus info: scsi@0:0.0.0,1 logical name: /dev/sda1 logical name: / version: 1.0 serial: 4e3d91b7-fd38-4f44-a9e9-ba3c39b926ec size: 585GiB capacity: 585GiB capabilities: primary journaled extended_attributes large_files huge_files dir_nlink recover extents ext4 ext2 initialized configuration: created=2012-10-21 16:26:50 filesystem=ext4 lastmountpoint=/ modified=2012-10-29 18:12:08 mount.fstype=ext4 mount.options=rw,relatime,errors=remount-ro,data=ordered mounted=2012-10-29 18:12:08 state=mounted *-volume:1 description: Extended partition physical id: 2 bus info: scsi@0:0.0.0,2 logical name: /dev/sda2 size: 7823MiB capacity: 7823MiB capabilities: primary extended partitioned partitioned:extended *-logicalvolume description: Linux swap / Solaris partition physical id: 5 logical name: /dev/sda5 capacity: 7823MiB capabilities: nofs *-volume:2 description: Windows NTFS volume physical id: 3 bus info: scsi@0:0.0.0,3 logical name: /dev/sda3 version: 3.1 serial: 84a92aae-347b-7940-a2d1-f4745b885ef2 size: 337GiB capacity: 337GiB capabilities: primary bootable ntfs initialized configuration: clustersize=4096 created=2012-10-21 18:43:39 filesystem=ntfs modified_by_chkdsk=true mounted_on_nt4=true resize_log_file=true state=dirty upgrade_on_mount=true *-scsi:1 physical id: 2 logical name: scsi1 capabilities: emulated *-cdrom description: DVD-RAM writer product: DVDRWBD DH-12E3S vendor: PLDS physical id: 0.0.0 bus info: scsi@1:0.0.0 logical name: /dev/cdrom logical name: /dev/cdrw logical name: /dev/dvd logical name: /dev/dvdrw logical name: /dev/sr0 version: MD11 capabilities: removable audio cd-r cd-rw dvd dvd-r dvd-ram configuration: ansiversion=5 status=nodisc *-scsi:2 physical id: 3 bus info: usb@2:1.8 logical name: scsi6 capabilities: emulated scsi-host configuration: driver=usb-storage *-disk:0 description: SCSI Disk physical id: 0.0.0 bus info: scsi@6:0.0.0 logical name: /dev/sdb configuration: sectorsize=512 *-disk:1 description: SCSI Disk physical id: 0.0.1 bus info: scsi@6:0.0.1 logical name: /dev/sdc configuration: sectorsize=512 *-disk:2 description: SCSI Disk physical id: 0.0.2 bus info: scsi@6:0.0.2 logical name: /dev/sdd configuration: sectorsize=512 *-disk:3 description: SCSI Disk product: MS/MS-Pro vendor: Generic- physical id: 0.0.3 bus info: scsi@6:0.0.3 logical name: /dev/sde version: 1.03 serial: 3 capabilities: removable configuration: sectorsize=512 *-medium physical id: 0 logical name: /dev/sde

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• How to Use the Signature Editor in Outlook 2013

  - by Lori Kaufman

  The Signature Editor in Outlook 2013 allows you to create a custom signature from text, graphics, or business cards. We will show you how to use the various features of the Signature Editor to customize your signatures. To open the Signature Editor, click the File tab and select Options on the left side of the Account Information screen. Then, click Mail on the left side of the Options dialog box and click the Signatures button. For more details, refer to one of the articles mentioned above. Changing the font for your signature is pretty self-explanatory. Select the text for which you want to change the font and select the desired font from the drop-down list. You can also set the justification (left, center, right) for each line of text separately. The drop-down list that reads Automatic by default allows you to change the color of the selected text. Click OK to accept your changes and close the Signatures and Stationery dialog box. To see your signature in an email, click Mail on the Navigation Bar. Click New Email on the Home tab. The Message window displays and your default signature is inserted into the body of the email. NOTE: You shouldn’t use fonts that are not common in your signatures. In order for the recipient to see your signature as you intended, the font you choose also needs to be installed on the recipient’s computer. If the font is not installed, the recipient would see a different font, the wrong characters, or even placeholder characters, which are empty square boxes. Close the Message window using the File tab or the X button in the upper, right corner of the Message window. You can save it as a draft if you want, but it’s not necessary. If you decide to use a font that is not common, a better way to do so would be to create a signature as an image, or logo. Create your image or logo in an image editing program making it the exact size you want to use in your signature. Save the image in a file size as small as possible. The .jpg format works well for pictures, the .png format works well for detailed graphics, and the .gif format works well for simple graphics. The .gif format generally produces the smallest files. To insert an image in your signature, open the Signatures and Stationery dialog box again. Either delete the text currently in the editor, if any, or create a new signature. Then, click the image button on the editor’s toolbar. On the Insert Picture dialog box, navigate to the location of your image, select the file, and click Insert. If you want to insert an image from the web, you must enter the full URL for the image in the File name edit box (instead of the local image filename). For example, http://www.somedomain.com/images/signaturepic.gif. If you want to link to the image at the specified URL, you must also select Link to File from the Insert drop-down list to maintain the URL reference. The image is inserted into the Edit signature box. Click OK to accept your changes and close the Signatures and Stationery dialog box. Create a new email message again. You’ll notice the image you inserted into the signature displays in the body of the message. Close the Message window using the File tab or the X button in the upper, right corner of the Message window. You may want to put a link to a webpage or an email link in your signature. To do this, open the Signatures and Stationery dialog box again. Enter the text to display for the link, highlight the text, and click the Hyperlink button on the editor’s toolbar. On the Insert Hyperlink dialog box, select the type of link from the list on the left and enter the webpage, email, or other type of address in the Address edit box. You can change the text that will display in the signature for the link in the Text to display edit box. Click OK to accept your changes and close the dialog box. The link displays in the editor with the default blue, underlined text. Click OK to accept your changes and close the Signatures and Stationery dialog box. Here’s an example of an email message with a link in the signature. Close the Message window using the File tab or the X button in the upper, right corner of the Message window. You can also insert your contact information into your signature as a Business Card. To do so, click Business Card on the editor’s toolbar. On the Insert Business Card dialog box, select the contact you want to insert as a Business Card. Select a size for the Business Card image from the Size drop-down list. Click OK. The Business Card image displays in the Signature Editor. Click OK to accept your changes and close the Signatures and Stationery dialog box. When you insert a Business Card into your signature, the Business Card image displays in the body of the email message and a .vcf file containing your contact information is attached to the email. This .vcf file can be imported into programs like Outlook that support this format. Close the Message window using the File tab or the X button in the upper, right corner of the Message window. You can also insert your Business Card into your signature without the image or without the .vcf file attached. If you want to provide recipients your contact info in a .vcf file, but don’t want to attach it to every email, you can upload the .vcf file to a location on the internet and add a link to the file, such as “Get my vCard,” in your signature. NOTE: If you want to edit your business card, such as applying a different template to it, you must select a different View other than People for your Contacts folder so you can open the full contact editing window.     

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• Can Microsoft Build Appliances?

  - by andrewbrust

  Billy Hollis, my Visual Studio Live! colleague and fellow Microsoft Regional Director said recently, and I am paraphrasing, that the computing world, especially on the consumer side, has shifted from one of building hardware and software that makes things possible to do, to building products and technologies that make things easy to do.  Billy crystalized things perfectly, as he often does. In this new world of “easy to do,” Apple has done very well and Microsoft has struggled.  In the old world, customers wanted a Swiss Army Knife, with the most gimmicks and gadgets possible.  In the new world, people want elegantly cutlery.  They may want cake cutters and utility knives too, but they don’t want one device that works for all three tasks.  People don’t want tools, they want utensils.  People don’t want machines.  They want appliances. Microsoft Appliances: They Do Exist Microsoft has built a few appliance-like devices.  I would say XBox 360 is an appliance,  It’s versatile, mind you, but it’s the kind of thing you plug in, turn on and use, as opposed to set-up, tune, and open up to upgrade the internals.  Windows Phone 7 is an appliance too.  It’s a true smartphone, unlike Windows Mobile which was a handheld computer with a radio stack.  Zune is an appliance too, and a nice one.  It hasn’t attained much traction in the market, but that’s probably because the seminal consumer computing appliance -- the iPod – got there so much more quickly. In the embedded world, Mediaroom, Microsoft’s set-top product for the cable industry (used by AT&T U-Verse and others) is an appliance.  So is Microsoft’s Sync technology, used in Ford automobiles.  Even on the enterprise side, Microsoft has an appliance: SQL Server Parallel Data Warehouse Edition (PDW) combines Microsoft software with select OEMs’ server, networking and storage hardware.  You buy the appliance units from the OEMs, plug them in, connect them and go. I would even say that Bing is an appliance.  Not in the hardware sense, mind you.  But from the software perspective, it’s a single-purpose product that you visit or run, use and then move on.  You don’t have to install it (except the iOS and Android native apps where it’s pretty straightforward), you don’t have to customize it, you don’t have to program it.  Basically, you just use it. Microsoft Appliances that Should Exist But Microsoft builds a bunch of things that are not appliances.  Media Center is not an appliance, and it most certainly should be.  Instead, it’s an app that runs on Windows 7.  It runs full-screen and you can use this configuration to conceal the fact that Windows is under it, but eventually something will cause you to abandon that masquerade (like Patch Tuesday). The next version of Windows Home Server won’t, in my opinion, be an appliance either.  Now that the Drive Extender technology is gone, and users can’t just add and remove drives into and from a single storage pool, the product is much more like a IT server and less like an appliance-premised one.  Much has been written about this decision by Microsoft.  I’ll just sum it up in one word: pity. Microsoft doesn’t have anything remotely appliance-like in the tablet category, either.  Until it does, it likely won’t have much market share in that space either.  And of course, the bulk of Microsoft’s product catalog on the business side is geared to enterprise machines and not personal appliances. Appliance DNA: They Gotta Have It. The consumerization of IT is real, because businesspeople are consumers too.  They appreciate the fit and finish of appliances at home, and they increasingly feel entitled to have it at work too.  Secure and reliable push email in a smartphone is necessary, but it isn’t enough.  People want great apps and a pleasurable user experience too.  The full Microsoft Office product is needed at work, but a PC with a keyboard and mouse, or maybe a touch screen that uses a stylus (or requires really small fingers), to run Office isn’t enough either.  People want a flawless touch experience available for the times they want to read and take quick notes.  Until Microsoft realizes this fully and internalizes it, it will suffer defeats in the consumer market and even setbacks in the business market.  Think about how slow the Office upgrade cycle is…now imagine if the next version of Office had a first-class alternate touch UI and consider the possible acceleration in adoption rates. Can Microsoft make the appliance switch?  Can the appliance mentality become pervasive at the company?  Can Microsoft hasten its release cycles dramatically and shed the “some assembly required” paradigm upon which many of its products are based?  Let’s face it, the chances that Microsoft won’t make this transition are significant. But there are also encouraging signs, and they should not be ignored.  The appliances we have already discussed, especially Xbox, Zune and Windows Phone 7, are the most obvious in this regard.  The fact that SQL Server has an appliance SKU now is a more subtle but perhaps also more significant outcome, because that product sits so smack in the middle of Microsoft’s enterprise stack.  Bing is encouraging too, especially given its integrated travel, maps and augmented reality capabilities.  As Bing gains market share, Microsoft has tangible proof that it can transform and win, even when everyone outside the company, and many within it, would bet otherwise. That Great Big Appliance in the Sky Perhaps the most promising (and evolving) proof points toward the appliance mentality, though, are Microsoft’s cloud offerings -- Azure and BPOS/Office 365.  While the cloud does not represent a physical appliance (quite the opposite in fact) its ability to make acquisition, deployment and use of technology simple for the user is absolutely an embodiment of the appliance mentality and spirit.  Azure is primarily a platform as a service offering; it doesn’t just provide infrastructure.  SQL Azure does likewise for databases.  And Office 365 does likewise for SharePoint, Exchange and Lync. You don’t administer, tune and manage servers; instead, you create databases or site collections or mailboxes and start using them. Upgrades come automatically, and it seems like releases will come more frequently.  Fault tolerance and content distribution is just there.  No muss.  No fuss.  You use these services; you don’t have to set them up and think about them.  That’s how appliances work.  To me, these signs point out that Microsoft has the full capability of transforming itself.  But there’s a lot of work ahead.  Microsoft may say they’re “all in” on the cloud, but the majority of the company is still oriented around its old products and models.  There needs to be a wholesale cultural transformation in Redmond.  It can happen, but product management, program management, the field and executive ranks must unify in the effort. So must partners, and even customers.  New leaders must rise up and Microsoft must be able to see itself as a winner.  If Microsoft does this, it could lock-in decades of new success, and be a standard business school case study for doing so.  If not, the company will have missed an opportunity, and may see its undoing.

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• Developing with Fluid UI – The Fluid Home Page

  - by Dave Bain

  v\:* {behavior:url(#default#VML);} o\:* {behavior:url(#default#VML);} w\:* {behavior:url(#default#VML);} .shape {behavior:url(#default#VML);} The first place to start with Fluid UI is with the Fluid Home Page. Sometimes it’s referred to as the landing page, but it’s formally called the Fluid Home Page. It’s delivered with PeopleTools 8.54, and the nice thing about it is, it’s a component. That’s one thing you’ll discover with Fluid UI. Fluid UI is built int PeopleTools with Fluid UI. The Home Page is a component, the tiles or grouplets are group boxes, and the search and prompt pages are just pages. It makes it easy to find things, customize and brand the applications (and of course to see what’s going on) when you can open it in AppDesigner. To see what makes a component fluid, let’s start with the Fluid Home Page. It’s a component called PT_LANDINGPAGE. You can open it in AppDesigner and see what’s unique and different about Fluid UI. If you open the Component Properties dialog, you’ll see a new tab called Fluid On the Component Properties Fluid tab you’ll see the most important checkbox of all, Fluid Mode. That is the one flag that will tell PeopleSoft if the component is Fluid (responsive, dynamic layout) or classic (pixel perfect). Now that you know it’s a single flag, you know that a component can’t be both Fluid UI and Classic at the same time, it’s one or the other. There are some other interesting fields on this page. The Small Form Factor Optimized field tells us whether or not to display this on a small device (think smarphone). Header Toolbar Actions offer standard options that are set at the component level so you have complete control of the components header bar. You’ll notice that the PT_LANDINGPAGE has got some PostBuild PeopleCode. That’s to build the grouplets that are used to launch Fluid UI Pages (more about those later). Probably not a good idea to mess with that code! The next thing to look at is the Page Definition for the PT_LANDINGPAGE component. When you open the page PT_LANDINGPAGE it will look different than anything you’ve ever seen. You’re probably thinking “What’s up with all the group boxes”? That is where Fluid UI is so different. In classic PeopleSoft, you put a button, field, group, any control on a page and that’s where it shows up, no questions asked. With Fluid UI, everything is positioned relative to something else. That’s why there are so many containers (you know them as group boxes). They are UI objects that are used for dynamic positioning. The Fluid Home Page has some special behavior and special settings. The first is in the Web Profile Configuration settings (Main Menu->PeopleTools->Web Profile->Web Profile Configuration from the main menu). There are two checkboxes that control the behavior of Fluid UI. Disable Fluid Mode and Disable Fluid On Desktop. Disable Fluid Mode prevents any Fluid UI component from being run from this installation. This is a web profile setting for users that want to run later versions of PeopleTools but only want to run Classic PeopleSoft pages. The second setting, Disable Fluid On Desktop allows the Fluid UI to be run on mobile devices such as smartphones and tablets, but prevents Fluid UI from running on a desktop computer. Fluid UI settings are also make in My Personalizations (Main Menu->My Personalizations from the Main Menu), in the General Options section. In that section, each user has the choice to determine the home page for their desktop and for tablets. Now that you know the Fluid UI landing page is just a component, and the profile and personalization settings, you should be able to launch one. It’s pretty easy to add a menu using Structure and Content, just make sure the proper security is set up. You’ll have to run a Fluid UI supported browser in order to see it. Latest versions of Chrome, Firefox and IE will do. Check the certification page on MOS for all the details. When you open the first Fluid Landing Page, there’s not much there. Not to worry, we’ll get some content on it soon. Take a moment to navigate around and look at some of the header actions that were set up from the component properties. The home button takes you back to the classic system. You won’t see any notifications and the personalization doesn’t have any content to add. The NavBar icon on the top right has a lot of content, including a Navigator and Classic home. Spend some time looking through what’s available. Stay tuned for more. Next up is adding some content. 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