Search Results

Search found 17860 results on 715 pages for 'virtual pc'.

Page 677/715 | < Previous Page | 673 674 675 676 677 678 679 680 681 682 683 684  | Next Page >

• EHome IR receiver and Ubuntu 13 - any one have this working?

  - by squakie

  I have a "generic" USB IR receiver I purchased off of Ebay to make my life a little easier with XBMC on my Ubuntu box. I am currently running 13.10 and have never tried nor have any knowledge of IR in Ubuntu. I know of lirc, and I know a lot of it is now included in the kernel. My understanding is that lirc in basic terms maps pulses from an remote control to functions - like keyboard or mouse clicks. It is also my understanding that I might still need a driver or something for my device. lsusb shows the device as: Bus 006 Device 003: ID 147a:e016 Formosa Industrial Computing, Inc. eHome Infrared Receiver dmesg shows the following pertaining to the device: [43635.311985] usb 6-2: USB disconnect, device number 2 [43641.344387] usb 6-2: new full-speed USB device number 3 using ohci-pci [43641.543454] usb 6-2: New USB device found, idVendor=147a, idProduct=e016 [43641.543467] usb 6-2: New USB device strings: Mfr=1, Product=2, SerialNumber=3 [43641.543473] usb 6-2: Product: eHome Infrared Transceiver [43641.543478] usb 6-2: Manufacturer: Formosa21 [43641.543483] usb 6-2: SerialNumber: FM000623 [43641.555736] Registered IR keymap rc-rc6-mce [43641.555968] input: Media Center Ed. eHome Infrared Remote Transceiver (147a:e016) as /devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:12.0/usb6/6-2/6-2:1.0/rc/rc2/input15 [43641.556221] rc2: Media Center Ed. eHome Infrared Remote Transceiver (147a:e016) as /devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:12.0/usb6/6-2/6-2:1.0/rc/rc2 [43641.556584] input: MCE IR Keyboard/Mouse (mceusb) as /devices/virtual/input/input16 [43641.557186] rc rc2: lirc_dev: driver ir-lirc-codec (mceusb) registered at minor = 0 [43641.731965] mceusb 6-2:1.0: Registered Formosa21 eHome Infrared Transceiver with mce emulator interface version 1 [43641.731978] mceusb 6-2:1.0: 2 tx ports (0x0 cabled) and 2 rx sensors (0x0 active) (excuse the double spacing, but I had to put in extra cr/lf using "enter" or the entire thing was just one long unreadable string). When I connect the same IR receiver to a Raspberry Pi running OpenELEC/XBMC there is no flashing led unless I press a remote button, and the device works. In Ubuntu, the led is constantly blinking, and nothing happens when I press a remote key. I tried the command line program to test but it never echoes anything back to the terminal window. I believe it must need some sort of driver or something else, but I am completely in the dark on this. If it matters I also have: - Logitech wireless keyboard/mouse USB receiver - Tenda USB wireless adapter And.....I've also noticed some errors now that show in dmesg that seem to somehow related to HDMI if that makes any sense: 46721.144731] HDMI: ELD buf size is 0, force 128 [46721.144749] HDMI: invalid ELD data byte 0 [46721.444025] HDMI: ELD buf size is 0, force 128 [46721.444061] HDMI: invalid ELD data byte 0 [46721.743375] HDMI: ELD buf size is 0, force 128 [46721.743411] HDMI: invalid ELD data byte 0 [46722.043092] HDMI: ELD buf size is 0, force 128 [46722.043118] HDMI: invalid ELD data byte 0 [46722.343086] HDMI: ELD buf size is 0, force 128 [46722.343122] HDMI: invalid ELD data byte 0 [46722.642517] HDMI: ELD buf size is 0, force 128 [46722.642574] HDMI: invalid ELD data byte 0 [46722.942459] HDMI: ELD buf size is 0, force 128 [46722.942485] HDMI: invalid ELD data byte 0 [46723.242103] HDMI: ELD buf size is 0, force 128 [46723.242129] HDMI: invalid ELD data byte 0 [46723.541877] HDMI: ELD buf size is 0, force 128 [46723.541923] HDMI: invalid ELD data byte 0 [58366.651954] HDMI: ELD buf size is 0, force 128 [58366.651980] HDMI: invalid ELD data byte 0 [58366.951523] HDMI: ELD buf size is 0, force 128 [58366.951549] HDMI: invalid ELD data byte 0 [58367.251075] HDMI: ELD buf size is 0, force 128 [58367.251121] HDMI: invalid ELD data byte 0 [58367.550517] HDMI: ELD buf size is 0, force 128 [58367.550563] HDMI: invalid ELD data byte 0 [58367.850219] HDMI: ELD buf size is 0, force 128 [58367.850256] HDMI: invalid ELD data byte 0 [58368.150160] HDMI: ELD buf size is 0, force 128 [58368.150185] HDMI: invalid ELD data byte 0 [58368.449544] HDMI: ELD buf size is 0, force 128 [58368.449570] HDMI: invalid ELD data byte 0 [58368.749583] HDMI: ELD buf size is 0, force 128 [58368.749629] HDMI: invalid ELD data byte 0 [58369.049280] HDMI: ELD buf size is 0, force 128 [58369.049326] HDMI: invalid ELD data byte 0 [58394.706273] HDMI: ELD buf size is 0, force 128 [58394.706300] HDMI: invalid ELD data byte 0 [58394.706350] HDMI: ELD buf size is 0, force 128 [58394.706367] HDMI: invalid ELD data byte 0 [58395.003032] HDMI: ELD buf size is 0, force 128 [58395.003058] HDMI: invalid ELD data byte 0 [58395.302680] HDMI: ELD buf size is 0, force 128 [58395.302705] HDMI: invalid ELD data byte 0 [58395.602442] HDMI: ELD buf size is 0, force 128 [58395.602477] HDMI: invalid ELD data byte 0 [58395.902143] HDMI: ELD buf size is 0, force 128 [58395.902179] HDMI: invalid ELD data byte 0 [58396.201839] HDMI: ELD buf size is 0, force 128 [58396.201875] HDMI: invalid ELD data byte 0 [58396.501538] HDMI: ELD buf size is 0, force 128 [58396.501574] HDMI: invalid ELD data byte 0 [58396.801232] HDMI: ELD buf size is 0, force 128 [58396.801268] HDMI: invalid ELD data byte 0 [58397.100583] HDMI: ELD buf size is 0, force 128 [58397.100627] HDMI: invalid ELD data byte 0 [63095.766042] systemd-hostnamed[8875]: Warning: nss-myhostname is not installed. Changing the local hostname might make it unresolveable. Please install nss-myhostname! dave@davepc:~$ EDIT: Maybe another way to look at this would be what does Ubuntu do or not do that OpenELEC does or doesn't do (on Raspberry Pi) such that it works in OpenELEC but not in Ubuntu?

  Read the article

• Responsible BI for Excel, Even for Older Versions

  - by andrewbrust

  On Wednesday, I will have the honor of co-presenting, for both The Data Warehouse Institute (TDWI) and the New York Technology Council. on the subject of Excel and BI. My co-presenter will be none other than Bill Baker, who was a Microsoft Distinguished Engineer and, essentially, the father of BI at that company.  Details on the events are here and here. We'll be talking about PowerPivot, of course, but that's not all. Probably even more important than any one product, will be our discussion of whether the usual characterization of Excel as the nemesis of IT, the guilty pleasure of business users and the antithesis of formal BI is really valid and/or hopelessly intractable. Without giving away our punchline, I'll tell you that we are much more optimistic than that. There are huge upsides to Excel and while there are real dangers to using it in the BI space, there are standards and practices you can employ to ensure Excel is used responsibly. And when those practices are followed, Excel becomes quite powerful indeed. One of the keys to this is using Excel as a data consumer rather than data storage mechanism. Caching data in Excel is OK, but only if that data is (a) not modified and (b) configured for automated periodic refresh. PowerPivot meets both criteria -- it stores a read-only copy of your data in the form of a model, and once workbook containing a PowerPivot model is published to SharePoint, it can be configured for scheduled data refresh, on the server, requiring no user intervention whatsoever. Data refresh is a bit like hard drive backup: it will only happen reliably if it's automated, and super-easy to configure. PowerPivot hits a real home run here (as does Windows Home Server for PC backup, but I digress). The thing about PowerPivot is that it's an add-in for Excel 2010. What if you're not planning to go to that new version for quite a while? What if you’ve just deployed Office 2007 in your organization? What if you're still on Office 2003, or an even earlier version? What can you do immediately to share data responsibly and easily? As it turns out, there's a feature in Excel that's been around for quite a while, that can help: Web Queries.  The Web Query feature was introduced, ostensibly, to allow Excel to pull data in from Internet Web pages…for example, data in a stock quote history table will come in nicely, as will any data in a Web page that is displayed in an HTML table.  To use the feature In Excel 2007 or 2010, click the Data Tab or the ribbon and click the “From Web” button towards the left; in older versions use the corresponding option in  the menu or  toolbars.  Next, paste a URL into the resulting dialog box and tap Enter or click the Go button.  A preview of the Web page will come up, and the dialog will allow you to select the specific table within the page whose data you’d like to import.  Here’s an example: Now just click the table, click the Import button, and the Import Data dialog appears.  You can simply click OK to bring in your data or you can first click the Properties… button and configure the data import to be refreshed at an interval in minutes that you select.  Now your data’s in the spreadsheet and ready to worked with: Your data may be vulnerable to modification, but if you’ve set up the data refresh, any accidental or malicious changes will be corrected in time anyway. The thing about this feature is that it’s most useful not for public Web pages, but for pages behind the firewall.  In effect, the Web Query feature provides an incredibly easy way to consume data in Excel that’s “published” from an application.  Users just need a URL.  They don’t need to know server and database names and since the data is read-only, providing credentials may be unnecessary, or can be handled using integrated security.  If that’s not good enough, the Web Query can be saved to a special .iqy file, which can be edited to provide POST parameter data. The only requirement is that the data must be provided in an HTML table, with the first row providing the column names.  From an ASP.NET project, it couldn’t be easier: a simple bound GridView control is totally compatible.  Use a data source control with it, and you don’t even have to write any code.  Users can link to pages that are part of an application’s UI, or developers can create pages that are specially designed for the purpose of providing an interface to the Web Query import feature.  And none of this is Microsoft- or .NET-specific.  You can create pages in any language you want (PHP comes to mind) that output the result set of a query in HTML table format, and then consume that data in a Web Query.  Then build PivotTables and charts on the data, and in Excel 2007 or 2010 you can use conditional formatting to create scorecards and dashboards. This strategy allows you to create pages that function quite similarly to the OData XML feeds rendered when .NET developers create an “Astoria” WCF Data Service.  And while it’s cool that PowerPivot and Excel 2010 can import such OData feeds, it’s good to know that older versions of Excel can function in a similar fashion, and can consume data produced by virtually any Web development platform. As a final matter, instead of just telling you that “older versions” of Excel support this feature, I’ll be more specific.  To discover what the first version of Excel was to support Web queries, go to http://bit.ly/OldSchoolXL.

  Read the article

• Windows 7 doesn't boot after Ubuntu install

  - by Omu

  I had windows 7 installed on my pc, then I installed Ubuntu 10.10/ During the installation process I have chosen to manually set my partitions: I set a 10GB drive for ubuntu root 1GB drive for swap and for boot drive I've chosen the one used by windows 7 Now I can boot ubuntu, I have the windows 7 option in the boot list, but when I choose Windows 7, it shows me a black screen for a second and returns back to boot screen. Boot Info Script 0.55 dated February 15th, 2010 ============================= Boot Info Summary: ============================== = Windows is installed in the MBR of /dev/sda sda1: _________________________________________________________________________ File system: ntfs Boot sector type: Grub 2 Boot sector info: Grub 2 is installed in the boot sector of sda1 and looks at sector 304908237 of the same hard drive for core.img, but core.img can not be found at this location. No errors found in the Boot Parameter Block. Operating System: Windows 7 Boot files/dirs: /bootmgr /Boot/BCD /Windows/System32/winload.exe sda2: _________________________________________________________________________ File system: ntfs Boot sector type: Windows XP Boot sector info: No errors found in the Boot Parameter Block. Operating System: Boot files/dirs: sda3: _________________________________________________________________________ File system: Extended Partition Boot sector type: - Boot sector info: sda5: _________________________________________________________________________ File system: ext4 Boot sector type: - Boot sector info: Operating System: Ubuntu 10.10 Boot files/dirs: /boot/grub/grub.cfg /etc/fstab /boot/grub/core.img sda4: _________________________________________________________________________ File system: swap Boot sector type: - Boot sector info: =========================== Drive/Partition Info: ============================= Drive: sda ___________________ _____________________________________________________ Disk /dev/sda: 160.0 GB, 160041885696 bytes 255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 19457 cylinders, total 312581808 sectors Units = sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes Partition Boot Start End Size Id System /dev/sda1 * 63 62,894,474 62,894,412 7 HPFS/NTFS /dev/sda2 62,894,478 291,579,749 228,685,272 7 HPFS/NTFS /dev/sda3 291,579,811 309,157,937 17,578,127 5 Extended /dev/sda5 291,579,813 309,157,937 17,578,125 83 Linux /dev/sda4 309,159,936 312,580,095 3,420,160 82 Linux swap / Solaris blkid -c /dev/null: ____________________________________________________________ Device UUID TYPE LABEL /dev/sda1 1266BB2766BB0A8D ntfs /dev/sda2 BEDBF1147C76F703 ntfs DATA /dev/sda3: PTTYPE="dos" /dev/sda4 dd38226d-c7c9-4ae5-a726-6d18d34a22e4 swap /dev/sda5 e1dafd1c-f855-406b-8f9a-f9d527c70255 ext4 /dev/sda: PTTYPE="dos" ============================ "mount | grep ^/dev output: =========================== Device Mount_Point Type Options /dev/sda5 / ext4 (rw,errors=remount-ro,commit=0) =========================== sda5/boot/grub/grub.cfg: =========================== # # DO NOT EDIT THIS FILE # # It is automatically generated by grub-mkconfig using templates # from /etc/grub.d and settings from /etc/default/grub # ### BEGIN /etc/grub.d/00_header ### if [ -s $prefix/grubenv ]; then set have_grubenv=true load_env fi set default="0" if [ "${prev_saved_entry}" ]; then set saved_entry="${prev_saved_entry}" save_env saved_entry set prev_saved_entry= save_env prev_saved_entry set boot_once=true fi function savedefault { if [ -z "${boot_once}" ]; then saved_entry="${chosen}" save_env saved_entry fi } function recordfail { set recordfail=1 if [ -n "${have_grubenv}" ]; then if [ -z "${boot_once}" ]; then save_env recordfail; fi; fi } function load_video { insmod vbe insmod vga } insmod part_msdos insmod ext2 set root='(hd0,msdos5)' search --no-floppy --fs-uuid --set e1dafd1c-f855-406b-8f9a-f9d527c70255 if loadfont /usr/share/grub/unicode.pf2 ; then set gfxmode=640x480 load_video insmod gfxterm fi terminal_output gfxterm insmod part_msdos insmod ext2 set root='(hd0,msdos5)' search --no-floppy --fs-uuid --set e1dafd1c-f855-406b-8f9a-f9d527c70255 set locale_dir=($root)/boot/grub/locale set lang=en insmod gettext if [ "${recordfail}" = 1 ]; then set timeout=-1 else set timeout=10 fi ### END /etc/grub.d/00_header ### ### BEGIN /etc/grub.d/05_debian_theme ### set menu_color_normal=white/black set menu_color_highlight=black/light-gray ### END /etc/grub.d/05_debian_theme ### ### BEGIN /etc/grub.d/10_linux ### menuentry 'Ubuntu, with Linux 2.6.35-22-generic' --class ubuntu --class gnu-linux --class gnu --class os { recordfail insmod part_msdos insmod ext2 set root='(hd0,msdos5)' search --no-floppy --fs-uuid --set e1dafd1c-f855-406b-8f9a-f9d527c70255 linux /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.35-22-generic root=UUID=e1dafd1c-f855-406b-8f9a-f9d527c70255 ro quiet splash initrd /boot/initrd.img-2.6.35-22-generic } menuentry 'Ubuntu, with Linux 2.6.35-22-generic (recovery mode)' --class ubuntu --class gnu-linux --class gnu --class os { recordfail insmod part_msdos insmod ext2 set root='(hd0,msdos5)' search --no-floppy --fs-uuid --set e1dafd1c-f855-406b-8f9a-f9d527c70255 echo 'Loading Linux 2.6.35-22-generic ...' linux /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.35-22-generic root=UUID=e1dafd1c-f855-406b-8f9a-f9d527c70255 ro single echo 'Loading initial ramdisk ...' initrd /boot/initrd.img-2.6.35-22-generic } ### END /etc/grub.d/10_linux ### ### BEGIN /etc/grub.d/20_linux_xen ### ### END /etc/grub.d/20_linux_xen ### ### BEGIN /etc/grub.d/20_memtest86+ ### menuentry "Memory test (memtest86+)" { insmod part_msdos insmod ext2 set root='(hd0,msdos5)' search --no-floppy --fs-uuid --set e1dafd1c-f855-406b-8f9a-f9d527c70255 linux16 /boot/memtest86+.bin } menuentry "Memory test (memtest86+, serial console 115200)" { insmod part_msdos insmod ext2 set root='(hd0,msdos5)' search --no-floppy --fs-uuid --set e1dafd1c-f855-406b-8f9a-f9d527c70255 linux16 /boot/memtest86+.bin console=ttyS0,115200n8 } ### END /etc/grub.d/20_memtest86+ ### ### BEGIN /etc/grub.d/30_os-prober ### menuentry "Windows 7 (loader) (on /dev/sda1)" { insmod part_msdos insmod ntfs set root='(hd0,msdos1)' search --no-floppy --fs-uuid --set 1266bb2766bb0a8d chainloader +1 } ### END /etc/grub.d/30_os-prober ### ### BEGIN /etc/grub.d/40_custom ### # This file provides an easy way to add custom menu entries. Simply type the # menu entries you want to add after this comment. Be careful not to change # the 'exec tail' line above. ### END /etc/grub.d/40_custom ### ### BEGIN /etc/grub.d/41_custom ### if [ -f $prefix/custom.cfg ]; then source $prefix/custom.cfg; fi ### END /etc/grub.d/41_custom ### =============================== sda5/etc/fstab: =============================== # /etc/fstab: static file system information. # # Use 'blkid -o value -s UUID' to print the universally unique identifier # for a device; this may be used with UUID= as a more robust way to name # devices that works even if disks are added and removed. See fstab(5). # # proc /proc proc nodev,noexec,nosuid 0 0 /dev/sda5 / ext4 errors=remount-ro 0 1 # swap was on /dev/sda4 during installation UUID=dd38226d-c7c9-4ae5-a726-6d18d34a22e4 none swap sw 0 0 =================== sda5: Location of files loaded by Grub: =================== 156.1GB: boot/grub/core.img 156.3GB: boot/grub/grub.cfg 149.9GB: boot/initrd.img-2.6.35-22-generic 156.3GB: boot/vmlinuz-2.6.35-22-generic 149.9GB: initrd.img 156.3GB: vmlinuz

  Read the article

• Big Data – Buzz Words: What is Hadoop – Day 6 of 21

  - by Pinal Dave

  In yesterday’s blog post we learned what is NoSQL. In this article we will take a quick look at one of the four most important buzz words which goes around Big Data – Hadoop. What is Hadoop? Apache Hadoop is an open-source, free and Java based software framework offers a powerful distributed platform to store and manage Big Data. It is licensed under an Apache V2 license. It runs applications on large clusters of commodity hardware and it processes thousands of terabytes of data on thousands of the nodes. Hadoop is inspired from Google’s MapReduce and Google File System (GFS) papers. The major advantage of Hadoop framework is that it provides reliability and high availability. What are the core components of Hadoop? There are two major components of the Hadoop framework and both fo them does two of the important task for it. Hadoop MapReduce is the method to split a larger data problem into smaller chunk and distribute it to many different commodity servers. Each server have their own set of resources and they have processed them locally. Once the commodity server has processed the data they send it back collectively to main server. This is effectively a process where we process large data effectively and efficiently. (We will understand this in tomorrow’s blog post). Hadoop Distributed File System (HDFS) is a virtual file system. There is a big difference between any other file system and Hadoop. When we move a file on HDFS, it is automatically split into many small pieces. These small chunks of the file are replicated and stored on other servers (usually 3) for the fault tolerance or high availability. (We will understand this in the day after tomorrow’s blog post). Besides above two core components Hadoop project also contains following modules as well. Hadoop Common: Common utilities for the other Hadoop modules Hadoop Yarn: A framework for job scheduling and cluster resource management There are a few other projects (like Pig, Hive) related to above Hadoop as well which we will gradually explore in later blog posts. A Multi-node Hadoop Cluster Architecture Now let us quickly see the architecture of the a multi-node Hadoop cluster. A small Hadoop cluster includes a single master node and multiple worker or slave node. As discussed earlier, the entire cluster contains two layers. One of the layer of MapReduce Layer and another is of HDFC Layer. Each of these layer have its own relevant component. The master node consists of a JobTracker, TaskTracker, NameNode and DataNode. A slave or worker node consists of a DataNode and TaskTracker. It is also possible that slave node or worker node is only data or compute node. The matter of the fact that is the key feature of the Hadoop. In this introductory blog post we will stop here while describing the architecture of Hadoop. In a future blog post of this 31 day series we will explore various components of Hadoop Architecture in Detail. Why Use Hadoop? There are many advantages of using Hadoop. Let me quickly list them over here: Robust and Scalable – We can add new nodes as needed as well modify them. Affordable and Cost Effective – We do not need any special hardware for running Hadoop. We can just use commodity server. Adaptive and Flexible – Hadoop is built keeping in mind that it will handle structured and unstructured data. Highly Available and Fault Tolerant – When a node fails, the Hadoop framework automatically fails over to another node. Why Hadoop is named as Hadoop? In year 2005 Hadoop was created by Doug Cutting and Mike Cafarella while working at Yahoo. Doug Cutting named Hadoop after his son’s toy elephant. Tomorrow In tomorrow’s blog post we will discuss Buzz Word – MapReduce. Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.sqlauthority.com) Filed under: Big Data, PostADay, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL Query, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, T SQL

  Read the article

• Searching for the Perfect Developer&rsquo;s Laptop.

  - by mbcrump

  I have been in the market for a new computer for several months. I set out with a budget of around $1200. I knew up front that the machine would be used for developing applications and maybe some light gaming. I kept switching between buying a laptop or a desktop but the laptop won because: With a Laptop, I can carry it everywhere and with a desktop I can’t. I searched for about 2 weeks and narrowed it down to a list of must-have’s : i7 Processor (I wasn’t going to settle for an i5 or AMD. I wanted a true Quad-core machine, not 2 dual-core fused together). 15.6” monitor SSD 128GB or Larger. – It’s almost 2011 and I don’t want an old standard HDD in this machine. 8GB of DDR3 Ram. – The more the better, right? 1GB Video Card (Prefer NVidia) – I might want to play games with this. HDMI Port – Almost a standard on new Machines. This would be used when I am on the road and want to stream Netflix to the HDTV in the Hotel room. Webcam Built-in – This would be to video chat with the wife and kids if I am on the road. 6-Cell Battery. – I’ve read that an i7 in a laptop really kills the battery. A 6-cell or 9-cell is even better. That is a pretty long list for a budget of around $1200. I searched around the internet and could not buy this machine prebuilt for under $1200. That was even with coupons and my company’s 10% Dell discount. The only way that I would get a machine like this was to buy a prebuilt and replace parts. I chose the  Lenovo Y560 on Newegg to start as my base. Below is a top-down picture of it.   Part 1: The Hardware The Specs for this machine: Color :  GrayOperating System : Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bitCPU Type : Intel Core i7-740QM(1.73GHz)Screen : 15.6" WXGAMemory Size : 4GB DDR3Hard Disk : 500GBOptical Drive : DVD±R/RWGraphics Card : ATI Mobility Radeon HD 5730Video Memory : 1GBCommunication : Gigabit LAN and WLANCard slot : 1 x Express Card/34Battery Life : Up to 3.5 hoursDimensions : 15.20" x 10.00" x 0.80" - 1.30"Weight : 5.95 lbs. This computer met most of the requirements above except that it didn’t come with an SSD or have 8GB of DDR3 Memory. So, I needed to start shopping except this time for an SSD. I asked around on twitter and other hardware forums and everyone pointed me to the Crucial C300 SSD. After checking prices of the drive, it was going to cost an extra $275 bucks and I was going from a spacious 500GB drive to 128GB. After watching some of the SSD videos on YouTube I started feeling better. Below is a pic of the Crucial C300 SSD. The second thing that I needed to upgrade was the RAM. It came with 4GB of DDR3 RAM, but it was slow. I decided to buy the Crucial 8GB (4GB x 2) Kit from Newegg. This RAM cost an extra $120 and had a CAS Latency of 7. In the end this machine delivered everything that I wanted and it cost around $1300. You are probably saying, well your budget was $1200. I have spare parts that I’m planning on selling on eBay or Anandtech.  =) If you are interested then shoot me an email and I will give you a great deal mbcrump[at]gmail[dot]com. 500GB Laptop 7200RPM HDD 4GB of DDR3 RAM (2GB x 2) faceVision HD 720p Camera – Unopened In the end my Windows Experience Rating of the SSD was 7.7 and the CPU 7.1. The max that you can get is a 7.9. Part 2: The Software I’m very lucky that I get a lot of software for free. When choosing a laptop, the OS really doesn’t matter because I would never keep the bloatware pre-installed or Windows 7 Home Premium on my main development machine. Matter of fact, as soon as I got the laptop, I immediately took out the old HDD without booting into it. After I got the SSD into the machine, I installed Windows 7 Ultimate 64-Bit. The BIOS was out of date, so I updated that to the latest version and started downloading drivers off of Lenovo’s site. I had to download the Wireless Networking Drivers to a USB-Key before I could get my machine on my wireless network. I also discovered that if the date on your computer is off then you cannot join the Windows 7 Homegroup until you fix it. I’m aware that most people like peeking into what programs other software developers use and I went ahead and listed my “essentials” of a fresh build. I am a big Silverlight guy, so naturally some of the software listed below is specific to Silverlight. You should also check out my master list of Tools and Utilities for the .NET Developer. See a killer app that I’m missing? Feel free to leave it in the comments below. My Software Essential List. CPU-Z Dropbox Everything Search Tool Expression Encoder Update Expression Studio 4 Ultimate Foxit Reader Google Chrome Infragistics NetAdvantage Ultimate Edition Keepass Microsoft Office Professional Plus 2010 Microsoft Security Essentials 2  Mindscape Silverlight Elements Notepad 2 (with shell extension) Precode Code Snippet Manager RealVNC Reflector ReSharper v5.1.1753.4 Silverlight 4 Toolkit Silverlight Spy Snagit 10 SyncFusion Reporting Controls for Silverlight Telerik Silverlight RadControls TweetDeck Virtual Clone Drive Visual Studio 2010 Feature Pack 2 Visual Studio 2010 Ultimate VS KB2403277 Update to get Feature Pack 2 to work. Windows 7 Ultimate 64-Bit Windows Live Essentials 2011 Windows Live Writer Backup. Windows Phone Development Tools That is pretty much it, I have a new laptop and am happy with the purchase. If you have any questions then feel free to leave a comment below.  Subscribe to my feed

  Read the article

• ASP.NET Web Forms Extensibility: Control Adapters

  - by Ricardo Peres

  All ASP.NET controls from version 2.0 can be associated with a control adapter. A control adapter is a class that inherits from ControlAdapter and it has the chance to interact with the control(s) it is targeting so as to change some of its properties or alter its output. I talked about control adapters before and they really a cool feature. The ControlAdapter class exposes virtual methods for some well known lifecycle events, OnInit, OnLoad, OnPreRender and OnUnload that closely match their Control counterparts, but are fired before them. Because the control adapter has a reference to its target Control, it can cast it to its concrete class and do something with it before its lifecycle events are actually fired. The adapter is also notified before the control is rendered (BeginRender), after their children are renderes (RenderChildren) and after itself is rendered (Render): this way the adapter can modify the control’s output. Control adapters may be specified for any class inheriting from Control, including abstract classes, web server controls and even pages. You can, for example, specify a control adapter for the WebControl and UserControl classes, but, curiously, not for Control itself. When specifying a control adapter for a page, it must inherit from PageAdapter instead of ControlAdapter. The adapter for a control, if specified, can be found on the protected Adapter property, and for a page, on the PageAdapter property. The first use of control adapters that came to my attention was for changing the output of standard ASP.NET web controls so that they were more based on CSS and less on HTML tables: it was the CSS Friendly Control Adapters project, now available at http://code.google.com/p/aspnetcontroladapters/. They are interesting because you specify them in one location and they apply anywhere a control of the target type is created. Mind you, it applies to controls declared on markup as well as controls created by code with the new operator. So, how do you use control adapters? The most usual way is through a browser definition file. In it, you specify a set of control adapters and their target controls, for a given browser. This browser definition file is a XML file with extension .Browser, and can either be global (%WINDIR%\Microsoft.NET\Framework64\vXXXX\Config\Browsers) or local to the web application, in which case, it must be placed inside the App_Browsers folder at the root of the web site. It looks like this: 1: <browsers> 2: <browser refID="Default"> 3: <controlAdapters> 4: <adapter controlType="System.Web.UI.WebControls.TextBox" adapterType="MyNamespace.TextBoxAdapter, MyAssembly" /> 5: </controlAdapters> 6: </browser> 7: </browsers> A browser definition file targets a specific browser, so you can have different definitions for Chrome, IE, Firefox, Opera, as well as for specific version of each of those (like IE8, Firefox3). Alternatively, if you set the target to Default, it will apply to all. The reason to pick a specific browser and version might be, for example, in order to circumvent some limitation present in that specific version, so that on markup you don’t need to be concerned with that. Another option is through the the current Browser object of the request: 1: this.Context.Request.Browser.Adapters.Add(typeof(TextBox).FullName, typeof(TextBoxAdapter).FullName); This must go very early on the page lifecycle, for example, on the OnPreInit event, or even on Application_Start. You have to specify the full class name for both the target control and the adapter. Of course, you have to do this for every request, because it won’t be persisted. As an example, you may know that the classic TextBox control renders an HTML input tag if its TextMode is set to SingleLine and a textarea if set to MultiLine. Because the textarea has no notion of maximum length, unlike the input, something must be done in order to enforce this. Here’s a simple suggestion: 1: public class TextBoxControlAdapter : ControlAdapter 2: { 3: protected TextBox Target 4: { 5: get 6: { 7: return (this.Control as TextBox); 8: } 9: } 10:  11: protected override void OnLoad(EventArgs e) 12: { 13: if ((this.Target.MaxLength > 0) && (this.Target.TextMode == TextBoxMode.MultiLine)) 14: { 15: if (this.Target.Page.ClientScript.IsClientScriptBlockRegistered("TextBox_KeyUp") == false) 16: { 17: if (this.Target.Page.ClientScript.IsClientScriptBlockRegistered(this.Target.Page.GetType(), "TextBox_KeyUp") == false) 18: { 19: String script = String.Concat("function TextBox_KeyUp(sender) { if (sender.value.length > ", this.Target.MaxLength, ") { sender.value = sender.value.substr(0, ", this.Target.MaxLength, "); } }\n"); 20:  21: this.Target.Page.ClientScript.RegisterClientScriptBlock(this.Target.Page.GetType(), "TextBox_KeyUp", script, true); 22: } 23:  24: this.Target.Attributes["onkeyup"] = "TextBox_KeyUp(this)"; 25: } 26: } 27: 28: base.OnLoad(e); 29: } 30: } What it does is, for every TextBox control, if it is set for multi line and has a defined maximum length, it injects some JavaScript that will filter out any content that exceeds this maximum length. This will occur for any TextBox that you may have on your site, or any class that inherits from it. You can use any of the previous options to register this adapter. Stay tuned for more ASP.NET Web Forms extensibility tips!

  Read the article

• ORACLE RIGHTNOW DYNAMIC AGENT DESKTOP CLOUD SERVICE - Putting the Dynamite into Dynamic Agent Desktop

  - by Andreea Vaduva

  Untitled Document There’s a mountain of evidence to prove that a great contact centre experience results in happy, profitable and loyal customers. The very best Contact Centres are those with high first contact resolution, customer satisfaction and agent productivity. But how many companies really believe they are the best? And how many believe that they can be? We know that with the right tools, companies can aspire to greatness – and achieve it. Core to this is ensuring their agents have the best tools that give them the right information at the right time, so they can focus on the customer and provide a personalised, professional and efficient service. Today there are multiple channels through which customers can communicate with you; phone, web, chat, social to name a few but regardless of how they communicate, customers expect a seamless, quality experience. Most contact centre agents need to switch between lots of different systems to locate the right information. This hampers their productivity, frustrates both the agent and the customer and increases call handling times. With this in mind, Oracle RightNow has designed and refined a suite of add-ins to optimize the Agent Desktop. Each is designed to simplify and adapt the agent experience for any given situation and unify the customer experience across your media channels. Let’s take a brief look at some of the most useful tools available and see how they make a difference. Contextual Workspaces: The screen where agents do their job. Agents don’t want to be slowed down by busy screens, scrolling through endless tabs or links to find what they’re looking for. They want quick, accurate and easy. Contextual Workspaces are fully configurable and through workspace rules apply if, then, else logic to display only the information the agent needs for the issue at hand . Assigned at the Profile level, different levels of agent, from a novice to the most experienced, get a screen that is relevant to their role and responsibilities and ensures their job is done quickly and efficiently the first time round. Agent Scripting: Sometimes, agents need to deliver difficult or sensitive messages while maximising the opportunity to cross-sell and up-sell. After all, contact centres are now increasingly viewed as revenue generators. Containing sophisticated branching logic, scripting helps agents to capture the right level of information and guides the agent step by step, ensuring no mistakes, inconsistencies or missed opportunities. Guided Assistance: This is typically used to solve common troubleshooting issues, displaying a series of question and answer sets in a decision-tree structure. This means agents avoid having to bookmark favourites or rely on written notes. Agents find particular value in these guides - to quickly craft chat and email responses. What’s more, by publishing guides in answers on support pages customers, can resolve issues themselves, without needing to contact your agents. And b ecause it can also accelerate agent ramp-up time, it ensures that even novice agents can solve customer problems like an expert. Desktop Workflow: Take a step back and look at the full customer interaction of your agents. It probably spans multiple systems and multiple tasks. With Desktop Workflows you control the design workflows that span the full customer interaction from start to finish. As sequences of decisions and actions, workflows are unique in that they can create or modify different records and provide automation behind the scenes. This means your agents can save time and provide better quality of service by having the tools they need and the relevant information as required. And doing this boosts satisfaction among your customers, your agents and you – so win, win, win! I have highlighted above some of the tools which can be used to optimise the desktop; however, this is by no means an exhaustive list. In approaching your design, it’s important to understand why and how your customers contact you in the first place. Once you have this list of “whys” and “hows”, you can design effective policies and procedures to handle each category of problem, and then implement the right agent desktop user interface to support them. This will avoid duplication and wasted effort. Five Top Tips to take away: Start by working out “why” and “how” customers are contacting you. Implement a clean and relevant agent desktop to support your agents. If your workspaces are getting complicated consider using Desktop Workflow to streamline the interaction. Enhance your Knowledgebase with Guides. Agents can access them proactively and can be published on your web pages for customers to help themselves. Script any complex, critical or sensitive interactions to ensure consistency and accuracy. Desktop optimization is an ongoing process so continue to monitor and incorporate feedback from your agents and your customers to keep your Contact Centre successful.   Want to learn more? Having attending the 3-day Oracle RightNow Customer Service Administration class your next step is to attend the Oracle RightNow Customer Portal Design and 2-day Dynamic Agent Desktop Administration class. Here you’ll learn not only how to leverage the Agent Desktop tools but also how to optimise your self-service pages to enhance your customers’ web experience.   Useful resources: Review the Best Practice Guide Review the tune-up guide   About the Author: Angela Chandler joined Oracle University as a Senior Instructor through the RightNow Customer Experience Acquisition. Her other areas of expertise include Business Intelligence and Knowledge Management.  She currently delivers the following Oracle RightNow courses in the classroom and as a Live Virtual Class: RightNow Customer Service Administration (3 days) RightNow Customer Portal Design and Dynamic Agent Desktop Administration (2 days) RightNow Analytics (2 days) Rightnow Chat Cloud Service Administration (2 days)

  Read the article

• Wednesday at OpenWorld: Identity Management

  - by Tanu Sood

  Divide and conquer! Yes, divide and conquer today at Oracle OpenWorld with your colleagues to make the most of all things Identity Management since there’s a lot going on. Here’ the line-up for today: Wednesday, October 3, 2012 CON9458: End End-User-Managed Passwords and Increase Security with Oracle Enterprise Single Sign-On Plus 10:15 a.m. – 11:15 a.m., Moscone West 3008 Most customers have a broad variety of applications (internal, external, web, client server, host etc) and single sign-on systems that extend to some, but not all systems. This session will focus on how customers are using enterprise single sign-on can help extend single sign-on to virtually any application, without costly application modification while laying a foundation that will enable integration with a broader identity management platform. CON9494: Sun2Oracle: Identity Management Platform Transformation 11:45 a.m. – 12:45 p.m., Moscone West 3008 Sun customers are actively defining strategies for how they will modernize their identity deployments. Learn how customers like Avea and SuperValu are leveraging their Sun investment, evaluating areas of expansion/improvement and building momentum. CON9631: Entitlement-centric Access to SOA and Cloud Services 11:45 a.m. – 12:45 p.m., Marriott Marquis, Salon 7 How do you enforce that a junior trader can submit 10 trades/day, with a total value of $5M, if market volatility is low? How can hide sensitive patient information from clerical workers but make it visible to specialists as long as consent has been given or there is an emergency? In this session, Uberether and HerbaLife take the stage with Oracle to demonstrate how you can enforce such entitlements on a service not just within your intranet but also right at the perimeter. CON3957 - Delivering Secure Wi-Fi on the Tube as an Olympics Legacy from London 2012 11:45 a.m. – 12:45 p.m., Moscone West 3003 In this session, Virgin Media, the U.K.’s first combined provider of broadband, TV, mobile, and home phone services, shares how it is providing free secure Wi-Fi services to the London Underground, using Oracle Virtual Directory and Oracle Entitlements Server, leveraging back-end legacy systems that were never designed to be externalized. As an Olympics 2012 legacy, the Oracle architecture will form a platform to be consumed by other Virgin Media services such as video on demand. CON9493: Identity Management and the Cloud 1:15 p.m. – 2:15 p.m., Moscone West 3008 Security is the number one barrier to cloud service adoption.  Not so for industry leading companies like SaskTel, ConAgra foods and UPMC. This session will explore how these organizations are using Oracle Identity with cloud services and how some are offering identity management as a cloud service. CON9624: Real-Time External Authorization for Middleware, Applications, and Databases 3:30 p.m. – 4:30 p.m., Moscone West 3008 As organizations seek to grant access to broader and more diverse user populations, the importance of centrally defined and applied authorization policies become critical; both to identify who has access to what and to improve the end user experience.  This session will explore how customers are using attribute and role-based access to achieve these goals. CON9625: Taking Control of WebCenter Security 5:00 p.m. – 6:00 p.m., Moscone West 3008 Many organizations are extending WebCenter in a business to business scenario requiring secure identification and authorization of business partners and their users. Leveraging LADWP’s use case, this session will focus on how customers are leveraging, securing and providing access control to Oracle WebCenter portal and mobile solutions. EVENTS: Identity Management Customer Advisory Board 2:30 p.m. – 3:30 p.m., Four Seasons – Yerba Buena Room This invitation-only event is designed exclusively for Customer Advisory Board (CAB) members to provide product strategy and roadmap updates. Identity Management Meet & Greet Networking Event 3:30 p.m. – 4:30 p.m., Meeting Session 4:30 p.m. – 5:30 p.m., Cocktail Reception Yerba Buena Room, Four Seasons Hotel, 757 Market Street, San Francisco The CAB meeting will be immediately followed by an open Meet & Greet event hosted by Oracle Identity Management executives and product management team. Do take this opportunity to network with your peers and connect with the Identity Management customers. For a complete listing, refer to the Focus on Identity Management document. And as always, you can find us on @oracleidm on twitter and FaceBook. Use #oow and #idm to join in the conversation.

  Read the article

• Subterranean IL: Constructor constraints

  - by Simon Cooper

  The constructor generic constraint is a slightly wierd one. The ECMA specification simply states that it: constrains [the type] to being a concrete reference type (i.e., not abstract) that has a public constructor taking no arguments (the default constructor), or to being a value type. There seems to be no reference within the spec to how you actually create an instance of a generic type with such a constraint. In non-generic methods, the normal way of creating an instance of a class is quite different to initializing an instance of a value type. For a reference type, you use newobj: newobj instance void IncrementableClass::.ctor() and for value types, you need to use initobj: .locals init ( valuetype IncrementableStruct s1 ) ldloca 0 initobj IncrementableStruct But, for a generic method, we need a consistent method that would work equally well for reference or value types. Activator.CreateInstance<T> To solve this problem the CLR designers could have chosen to create something similar to the constrained. prefix; if T is a value type, call initobj, and if it is a reference type, call newobj instance void !!0::.ctor(). However, this solution is much more heavyweight than constrained callvirt. The newobj call is encoded in the assembly using a simple reference to a row in a metadata table. This encoding is no longer valid for a call to !!0::.ctor(), as different constructor methods occupy different rows in the metadata tables. Furthermore, constructors aren't virtual, so we would have to somehow do a dynamic lookup to the correct method at runtime without using a MethodTable, something which is completely new to the CLR. Trying to do this in IL results in the following verification error: newobj instance void !!0::.ctor() [IL]: Error: Unable to resolve token. This is where Activator.CreateInstance<T> comes in. We can call this method to return us a new T, and make the whole issue Somebody Else's Problem. CreateInstance does all the dynamic method lookup for us, and returns us a new instance of the correct reference or value type (strangely enough, Activator.CreateInstance<T> does not itself have a .ctor constraint on its generic parameter): .method private static !!0 CreateInstance<.ctor T>() { call !!0 [mscorlib]System.Activator::CreateInstance<!!0>() ret } Going further: compiler enhancements Although this method works perfectly well for solving the problem, the C# compiler goes one step further. If you decompile the C# version of the CreateInstance method above: private static T CreateInstance() where T : new() { return new T(); } what you actually get is this (edited slightly for space & clarity): .method private static !!T CreateInstance<.ctor T>() { .locals init ( [0] !!T CS$0$0000, [1] !!T CS$0$0001 ) DetectValueType: ldloca.s 0 initobj !!T ldloc.0 box !!T brfalse.s CreateInstance CreateValueType: ldloca.s 1 initobj !!T ldloc.1 ret CreateInstance: call !!0 [mscorlib]System.Activator::CreateInstance<T>() ret } What on earth is going on here? Looking closer, it's actually quite a clever performance optimization around value types. So, lets dissect this code to see what it does. The CreateValueType and CreateInstance sections should be fairly self-explanatory; using initobj for value types, and Activator.CreateInstance for reference types. How does the DetectValueType section work? First, the stack transition for value types: ldloca.s 0 // &[!!T(uninitialized)] initobj !!T // ldloc.0 // !!T box !!T // O[!!T] brfalse.s // branch not taken When the brfalse.s is hit, the top stack entry is a non-null reference to a boxed !!T, so execution continues to to the CreateValueType section. What about when !!T is a reference type? Remember, the 'default' value of an object reference (type O) is zero, or null. ldloca.s 0 // &[!!T(null)] initobj !!T // ldloc.0 // null box !!T // null brfalse.s // branch taken Because box on a reference type is a no-op, the top of the stack at the brfalse.s is null, and so the branch to CreateInstance is taken. For reference types, Activator.CreateInstance is called which does the full dynamic lookup using reflection. For value types, a simple initobj is called, which is far faster, and also eliminates the unboxing that Activator.CreateInstance has to perform for value types. However, this is strictly a performance optimization; Activator.CreateInstance<T> works for value types as well as reference types. Next... That concludes the initial premise of the Subterranean IL series; to cover the details of generic methods and generic code in IL. I've got a few other ideas about where to go next; however, if anyone has any itching questions, suggestions, or things you've always wondered about IL, do let me know.

  Read the article

• Backup Your Windows Home Server Off-Site with Asus Webstorage

  - by Mysticgeek

  Windows Home Server lets you backup machines on your network easily. But what about backing up the server data? Today we take a look at ASUS WebStorage for Windows Home Server, which provides you with secure off-site backup for WHS. To use the ASUS WebStorage service you’ll need to sign up for a free account. It offers 1GB of free storage, then you can purchase an unlimited backup package for $39.99 for a year subscription. Note: They also offer online storage for individual PCs as well. Install ASUS WebStorage for WHS Browse to your shared folders on the server and open the Add-Ins folder and copy over the WHSConnectorSetup2.2.4.088.msi file (link below) then close out of the folder. Now launch Windows Home Server Console from one of the computers on your network, click Settings, then Add-ins. Under Available Add-ins click the Available tab and you’ll see the Asus WebStorage installer file we just copied over. Click the Install button. Installation kicks off and when it’s complete, you’ll need to close out of the console and reconnect. Using ASUS WebStorage WHS Connector  When you reconnect to WHS Console, scroll over to the ASUS WebStorage icon and click on Settings. Now log into your ASUS account… Now select the folders you want to backup to the WebStorage service. Select the radio button next to Enable to initialize the backup process… The backup process begins. You can change which folders are backed up simply by disabling the backup process, uncheck the folder(s), then enable the backup again. ASUS WebStorage Site After you have files backed up to the ASUS site, log into your account, and your presented with an overview of the amount of storage you’re using. It also shows what type of files are taking certain amounts of space.   You can browse through your backed up files and folders. It allows you to share and sync backed up data as well. Navigate to the file you want and you can easily download it by clicking on it, or share it out by clicking the share link below it. If you choose to share it, you’re provided with a link to the file to send out to other users.   Conclusion Users of Windows Home Server have been looking for an inexpensive cloud backup solution for quite some time. There are services such as JungleDisk, KeepVault, Wuala…etc. These services probably do a better job, but can start getting expensive once you start uploading a GBs of data. Another disappointment of ASUS WebStorage is you can only backup your WHS shares (from what we’ve been able to determine), it’s an “all or nothing” type of thing. You cannot go in and select individual files and folders. The initial upload speeds can be a bit slow as well, although that might have something to do with limited upload speeds on the DSL connection we used to test it. Retrieving your data from the ASUS site is a breeze though, and all the data files are organized quite well. The WHS Addin is very easy to install and use. If you’re looking for an off-site solution to backup your WHS data, you can test out ASUS WebStorage for free with a 1GB limit. This is good for testing the service and it might be exactly what you’re looking for. Other users may want a more advanced solution like KeepVault or CloudBerry…which is a front end for Amazon S3 storage. Download ASUS WebStorage WHS Addin Other WHS Offsite Backup Solutions CloudBerry, JungleDisk, KeepVault, Wuala Similar Articles Productive Geek Tips Restore Files from Backups on Windows Home ServerGMedia Blog: Setting Up a Windows Home ServerCreate A Windows Home Server Home Computer Restore DiscRemove a Network Computer from Windows Home ServerShare Ubuntu Home Directories using Samba TouchFreeze Alternative in AutoHotkey The Icy Undertow Desktop Windows Home Server – Backup to LAN The Clear & Clean Desktop Use This Bookmarklet to Easily Get Albums Use AutoHotkey to Assign a Hotkey to a Specific Window Latest Software Reviews Tinyhacker Random Tips DVDFab 6 Revo Uninstaller Pro Registry Mechanic 9 for Windows PC Tools Internet Security Suite 2010 Gadfly is a cool Twitter/Silverlight app Enable DreamScene in Windows 7 Microsoft’s “How Do I ?” Videos Home Networks – How do they look like & the problems they cause Check Your IMAP Mail Offline In Thunderbird Follow Finder Finds You Twitter Users To Follow

  Read the article

• SQLCMD Mode: give it one more chance

  - by Maria Zakourdaev

    - Click on me. Choose me. - asked one forgotten feature when some bored DBA was purposelessly wondering through the Management Studio menu at the end of her long and busy working day. - Why would I use you? I have heard of no one who does. What are you for? - perplexedly wondered aged and wise DBA. At least that DBA thought she was aged and wise though each day tried to prove to her that she wasn't. - I know you. You are quite lazy. Why would you do additional clicks to move from window to window? From Tool to tool ? This is irritating, isn't it? I can run windows system commands, sql statements and much more from the same script, from the same query window! - I have all my tools that I‘m used to, I have Management Studio, Cmd, Powershell. They can do anything for me. I don’t need additional tools. - I promise you, you will like me. – the thing continued to whine . - All right, show me. – she gave up. It’s always this way, she thought sadly, - easier to agree than to explain why you don’t want. - Enable me and then think about anything that you always couldn’t do through the management studio and had to use other tools. - Ok. Google for me the list of greatest features of SQL SERVER 2012. - Well... I’m not sure... Think about something else. - Ok, here is something easy for you. I want to check if file folder exists or if file is there. Though, I can easily do this using xp_cmdshell … - This is easy for me. – rejoiced the feature. By the way, having the items of the menu talking to you usually means you should stop working and go home. Or drink coffee. Or both. Well, aged and wise dba wasn’t thinking about the weirdness of the situation at that moment. - After enabling me, – said unfairly forgotten feature (it was thinking of itself in such manner) – after enabling me you can use all command line commands in the same management studio query window by adding two exclamation marks !! at the beginning of the script line to denote that you want to use cmd command: -Just keep in mind that when using this feature, you are actually running the commands ON YOUR computer and not on SQL server that query window is connected to. This is main difference from using xp_cmdshell which is executing commands on sql server itself. Bottomline, use UNC path instead of local path. - Look, there are much more than that. - The SQLCMD feature was getting exited.- You can get IP of your servers, create, rename and drop folders. You can see the contents of any file anywhere and even start different tools from the same query window: Not so aged and wise DBA was getting interested: - I also want to run different scripts on different servers without changing connection of the query window. - Sure, sure! Another great feature that CMDmode is providing us with and giving more power to querying. Use “:” to use additional features, like :connect that allows you to change connection: - Now imagine, you have one script where you have all your changes, like creating staging table on the DWH staging server, adding fact table to DWH itself and updating stored procedures in the server where reporting database is located. - Now, give me more challenges! - Script out a list of stored procedures into the text files. - You can do it easily by using command :out which will write the query results into the specified text file. The output can be the code of the stored procedure or any data. Actually this is the same as changing the query output into the file instead of the grid. - Now, take all of the scripts and run all of them, one by one, on the different server.  - Easily - Come on... I’m sure that you can not... -Why not? Naturally, I can do it using :r commant which is opening a script and executing it. Look, I can also use :setvar command to define an environment variable in SQLCMD mode. Just note that you have to leave the empty string between :r commands, otherwise it’s not working although I have no idea why. - Wow.- She was really impressed. - Ok, I’ll go to try all those… -Wait, wait! I know how to google the SQL SERVER features for you! This example will open chrome explorer with search results for the “SQL server 2012 top features” ( change the path to suit your PC): “Well, this can be probably useful stuff, maybe this feature is really unfairly forgotten”, thought the DBA while going through the dark empty parking lot to her lonely car. “As someone really wise once said: “It is what we think we know that keeps us from learning. Learn, unlearn and relearn”.

  Read the article

• Monitoring your WCF Web Apis with AppFabric

  - by cibrax

  The other day, Ron Jacobs made public a template in the Visual Studio Gallery for enabling monitoring capabilities to any existing WCF Http service hosted in Windows AppFabric. I thought it would be a cool idea to reuse some of that for doing the same thing on the new WCF Web Http stack. Windows AppFabric provides a dashboard that you can use to dig into some metrics about the services usage, such as number of calls, errors or information about different events during a service call. Those events not only include information about the WCF pipeline, but also custom events that any developer can inject and make sense for troubleshooting issues.      This monitoring capabilities can be enabled on any specific IIS virtual directory by using the AppFabric configuration tool or adding the following configuration sections to your existing web app, <system.serviceModel> <serviceHostingEnvironment aspNetCompatibilityEnabled="true" multipleSiteBindingsEnabled="true" /> <diagnostics etwProviderId="3e99c707-3503-4f33-a62d-2289dfa40d41"> <endToEndTracing propagateActivity="true" messageFlowTracing="true" /> </diagnostics> <behaviors> <serviceBehaviors> <behavior name=""> <etwTracking profileName="EndToEndMonitoring Tracking Profile" /> </behavior> </serviceBehaviors> </behaviors> </system.serviceModel>   <microsoft.applicationServer> <monitoring> <default enabled="true" connectionStringName="ApplicationServerMonitoringConnectionString" monitoringLevel="EndToEndMonitoring" /> </monitoring> </microsoft.applicationServer> Bad news is that none of the configuration above can be easily set on code by using the new configuration model for WCF Web stack.  A good thing is that you easily disable it in the configuration when you no longer need it, and also uses ETW, a general-purpose and high-speed tracing facility provided by the operating system (it’s part of the windows kernel). By adding that configuration section, AppFabric will start monitoring your service automatically and providing some basic event information about the service calls. You need some custom code for injecting custom events in the monitoring data. What I did here is to copy and refactor the “WCFUserEventProvider” class provided as sample in the Ron’s template to make it more TDD friendly when using IoC. I created a simple interface “ILogger” that any service (or resource) can use to inject custom events or monitoring information in the AppFabric database. public interface ILogger { bool WriteError(string name, string format, params object[] args); bool WriteWarning(string name, string format, params object[] args); bool WriteInformation(string name, string format, params object[] args); } The “WCFUserEventProvider” class implements this interface by making possible to send the events to the AppFabric monitoring database. The service or resource implementation can receive an “ILogger” as part of the constructor. [ServiceContract] [Export] public class OrderResource { IOrderRepository repository; ILogger logger;   [ImportingConstructor] public OrderResource(IOrderRepository repository, ILogger logger) { this.repository = repository; this.logger = logger; }   [WebGet(UriTemplate = "{id}")] public Order Get(string id, HttpResponseMessage response) { var order = this.repository.All.FirstOrDefault(o => o.OrderId == int.Parse(id, CultureInfo.InvariantCulture)); if (order == null) { response.StatusCode = HttpStatusCode.NotFound; response.Content = new StringContent("Order not found"); }   this.logger.WriteInformation("Order Requested", "Order Id {0}", id);   return order; } } The example above uses “MEF” as IoC for injecting a repository and the logger implementation into the service. You can also see how the logger is used to write an information event in the monitoring database. The following image illustrates how the custom event is injected and the information becomes available for any user in the dashboard. An issue that you might run into and I hope the WCF and AppFabric teams fixed soon is that any WCF service that uses friendly URLs with ASP.NET routing does not get listed as a available service in the WCF services tab in the AppFabric console. The complete example is available to download from here.

  Read the article

• Top Reasons You Need A User Engagement Platform

  - by Michael Snow

  Guest post by: Amit Sircar, Senior Sales Consultant, Oracle Deliver complex enterprise functionality through a simple intuitive and unified User Interface (UI) The modern enterprise contains a wide range of applications that are used to manage the business and drive competitive advantages. Organizations respond by creating a complex structure that results in a functional and management grouping of users. Each of these groups of users requires access to multiple applications and information sources in order to perform their job functions. This leads to the lack of a unified view of enterprise information, inconsistent user interfaces and disjointed security. To be effective, portals must be designed from the end-user perspective, enabling the user to accomplish as many tasks as possible while visiting the fewest number of portals. This requires rethinking the way that portals are built, moving from a functional business unit perspective to a user-focused, process-oriented point of view. Oracle WebCenter provides the Common User Experience Architecture that allows organizations to seamlessly present a unified view of enterprise information tailored to a particular user’s role and preferences. This architecture provides the best practices, design patterns and delivery mechanism for myriad services, applications, and data sources.  In order to serve as a primary system of access, Oracle WebCenter also provides access to unstructured content and to other users via integrated search, service-oriented artifacts, content management, and collaboration tools. Provide a modern and engaging experience without modifying the core business application Web 2.0 technologies such as blogs, wikis, forums or social media sites are having a profound impact in the public internet.  These technologies can be leveraged by enterprises to add significant value to the business. Organizations need to integrate these technologies directly into their business applications while continuing to meet their security and governance needs. To deliver richer connections and become a more agile and intelligent business, WebCenter provides an enterprise portal platform that contains pre-integrated, standards-based Enterprise 2.0 services. These Enterprise 2.0 services can be easily accessed, integrated and utilized by users. By giving users the ability to use and integrate Enterprise 2.0 services such as tags, links, wikis, activities, blogs or social networking directly with their portals and applications, they are empowered to make richer connections, optimize their productivity, and ultimately increase the value of their applications. Foster a collaborative experience The organizational workplace has undergone a major change in the last decade. With increasing globalization and a distributed workforce, project teams may be physically separated by large distances. Online collaboration technologies are becoming a critical resource to enable virtual teams to share information and work together effectively. Oracle WebCenter delivers dynamic business communities with rich Services to empower teams to quickly and efficiently manage their information, applications, projects, and people without requiring IT assistance. It brings together the latest technology around Enterprise 2.0 and social computing, communities, personal productivity, and ad-hoc team interactions without any development effort. It enables the sharing and collaboration on team content, focusing an organization’s valuable resources on solving business problems, tapping into new ideas, and reducing time-to-market. Mobile Support The traditional workplace dynamics that required employees to access their work applications from their desktops have undergone a fundamental shift. Employees were used to primarily working from company offices and utilized an IT-issued computer for performing their job functions. With the introduction of flexible work hours and the growth of remote workers, more and more employees need the ability to remain productive even when they do not have access to a computer via the use of tablets and smartphones.  In addition, customers and citizens have come to expect 24x7 access to resources and websites from wherever they are located. Tablets and smartphones have empowered everyone to quickly access services they need anytime and from any place.  WebCenter provides out of the box capabilities to deliver the mobile experience in a seamless manner. Seeded device profiles and toolkits within WebCenter can be used to render the same web pages into multiple target devices such iPads, iPhones and android devices. Web designers can preview the portal using the built in simulator, make necessary updates and then deploy their UI design for the targeted device. Conclusion The competitive economy and resource constraints facing organizations today require them to find ways to make their applications, portals and Web sites more agile and intelligent and their knowledge workers more productive no matter where they are located. Organizations need to provide faster access to relevant information and resources, enhance existing applications and business processes with rich Enterprise 2.0 services, and seamlessly deliver content to mobile platforms. Oracle WebCenter successfully meets these challenges by providing the modern user experience platform for the enterprise and the Web.

  Read the article

• The clock hands of the buffer cache

  - by Tony Davis

  Over a leisurely beer at our local pub, the Waggon and Horses, Phil Factor was holding forth on the esoteric, but strangely poetic, language of SQL Server internals, riddled as it is with 'sleeping threads', 'stolen pages', and 'memory sweeps'. Generally, I remain immune to any twinge of interest in the bowels of SQL Server, reasoning that there are certain things that I don't and shouldn't need to know about SQL Server in order to use it successfully. Suddenly, however, my attention was grabbed by his mention of the 'clock hands of the buffer cache'. Back at the office, I succumbed to a moment of weakness and opened up Google. He wasn't lying. SQL Server maintains various memory buffers, or caches. For example, the plan cache stores recently-used execution plans. The data cache in the buffer pool stores frequently-used pages, ensuring that they may be read from memory rather than via expensive physical disk reads. These memory stores are classic LRU (Least Recently Updated) buffers, meaning that, for example, the least frequently used pages in the data cache become candidates for eviction (after first writing the page to disk if it has changed since being read into the cache). SQL Server clearly needs some mechanism to track which pages are candidates for being cleared out of a given cache, when it is getting too large, and it is this mechanism that is somewhat more labyrinthine than I previously imagined. Each page that is loaded into the cache has a counter, a miniature "wristwatch", which records how recently it was last used. This wristwatch gets reset to "present time", each time a page gets updated and then as the page 'ages' it clicks down towards zero, at which point the page can be removed from the cache. But what is SQL Server is suffering memory pressure and urgently needs to free up more space than is represented by zero-counter pages (or plans etc.)? This is where our 'clock hands' come in. Each cache has associated with it a "memory clock". Like most conventional clocks, it has two hands; one "external" clock hand, and one "internal". Slava Oks is very particular in stressing that these names have "nothing to do with the equivalent types of memory pressure". He's right, but the names do, in that peculiar Microsoft tradition, seem designed to confuse. The hands do relate to memory pressure; the cache "eviction policy" is determined by both global and local memory pressures on SQL Server. The "external" clock hand responds to global memory pressure, in other words pressure on SQL Server to reduce the size of its memory caches as a whole. Global memory pressure – which just to confuse things further seems sometimes to be referred to as physical memory pressure – can be either external (from the OS) or internal (from the process itself, e.g. due to limited virtual address space). The internal clock hand responds to local memory pressure, in other words the need to reduce the size of a single, specific cache. So, for example, if a particular cache, such as the plan cache, reaches a defined "pressure limit" the internal clock hand will start to turn and a memory sweep will be performed on that cache in order to remove plans from the memory store. During each sweep of the hands, the usage counter on the cache entry is reduced in value, effectively moving its "last used" time to further in the past (in effect, setting back the wrist watch on the page a couple of hours) and increasing the likelihood that it can be aged out of the cache. There is even a special Dynamic Management View, sys.dm_os_memory_cache_clock_hands, which allows you to interrogate the passage of the clock hands. Frequently turning hands equates to excessive memory pressure, which will lead to performance problems. Two hours later, I emerged from this rather frightening journey into the heart of SQL Server memory management, fascinated but still unsure if I'd learned anything that I'd put to any practical use. However, I certainly began to agree that there is something almost Tolkeinian in the language of the deep recesses of SQL Server. Cheers, Tony.

  Read the article

• Rip and Convert DVD’s to an ISO Image

  - by Mysticgeek

  If you own a lot of DVD’s, you might want to convert them to an ISO image for backup and easily playing them on your media center. Today we take a look at ripping your discs using DVDFab, then using ImgBurn to create an ISO image of the ripped DVD files. Rip DVD with DVDFab6 DVDFab will remove copy protection and rip the DVD files for free. Other components in the suite require you to purchase a license after the 30 day trial, but you’ll still be able to rip DVD’s after the trial. Install DVDFab by accepting the defaults (link below)…a system restart is required to complete the install process. The first time you run it, a welcome screen is displayed. If you don’t want to see it again check the box Do not show again, then Start DVDFab.  Pop the DVD in your drive and click Next. Now select your region and check Do not show again, then OK. It will then open the DVD and begin to scan it. Under DVD to DVD you can select either Full Disc or Main Movie depending on what you want to rip. If you want to burn the DVD to a disc after it’s created select the Full Disc option. Now click the Start button to begin the ripping process. After the ripping process has completed, you’ll get a message telling you it’s waiting for you to put in a blank DVD. Since we aren’t burning the disc, just cancel the message. Click Finish and close out of DVDFab or just minimize it if you’re going to keep using it to rip another DVD. By default the temporary directory is in My Documents \ DVDFab \ Temp…however you can change it in settings. If you go to the Temp directory you’ll see the DVD files listed there… Convert Files to ISO with ImgBurn Now that we have the files ripped from the DVD, we need to convert them to an ISO image using ImgBurn (link below). Open it up and from the main menu click on Create image file from files/folders. Click on the folder icon to browse to the location of the ripped DVD files. Browse to the DVDFab temp directory and the VIDEO_TS folder for the source and click Ok. Then choose a destination directory, give the ISO a name, and click Save. In this case we ripped the Unbreakable DVD, so named it that.   So now in ImgBurn you have the source being the ripped DVD files, and the destination for the ISO…then click the Build button. If you don’t create a volume label, ImgBurn is kind enough to create on for you. If everything looks correct, click Ok. Now wait while ImgBurn goes through the process of converting the ripped DVD files to an ISO image. The process has successfully completed. The ISO image of the DVD will be in the output directory you selected earlier. Now you can burn the ISO image to a blank DVD or store it on an external hard drive for safe keeping. When you’re done, you’ll probably want to go into the temp DVDFab folder and delete the VOB and other files in the Video_TS folder as they will take up a lot of space on your hard drive.   Conclusion Although this method requires two programs to make an ISO out of a DVD, it’s extremely quick. When burning DVD’s of various lengths, it took less than 30 minutes to get the final ISO. Now, you’ll have your DVD movies backed up in case something were to happen to the discs and are no longer playable. If you use Windows Media Center to watch your movies, check out our article on how to automatically mount and view ISO files in Windows 7 Media Center. With DVDFab, you get a 30 day fully functional trial for all of its features. You’ll still be able rip DVD’s even after the 30 day trial has ended. The more we’ve been using DVDFab, the more impressed we are with its capabilities, so after the 30 day trial you should consider purchasing a license. We will have a full review of the of it to share with you soon.  Download DVDFab Download ImgBurn Similar Articles Productive Geek Tips How To Rip DVDs with VLCCalculate with Qalculate on LinuxConvert a Row to a Column in Excel the Easy WayEnjoy Quick & Easy Unit Conversion with Convert for WindowsConvert Older Excel Documents to Excel 2007 Format TouchFreeze Alternative in AutoHotkey The Icy Undertow Desktop Windows Home Server – Backup to LAN The Clear & Clean Desktop Use This Bookmarklet to Easily Get Albums Use AutoHotkey to Assign a Hotkey to a Specific Window Latest Software Reviews Tinyhacker Random Tips Revo Uninstaller Pro Registry Mechanic 9 for Windows PC Tools Internet Security Suite 2010 PCmover Professional Beware Hover Kitties Test Drive Mobile Phones Online With TryPhone Ben & Jerry’s Free Cone Day, 3/23/10 New Stinger from McAfee Helps Remove ‘FakeAlert’ Threats Google Apps Marketplace: Tools & Services For Google Apps Users Get News Quick and Precise With Newser

  Read the article

• Keep it Professional &ndash; Multiple Environments

  - by AjarnMark

  I have certainly been reading blogs a whole lot more than writing them the last several weeks, and it’s about time I got back to writing.  I have been collecting several topics and references for blog posts…some of which will probably just never get written as the timeliness of the topics fade over time.  Nonetheless, I’m back, and I think it is time to revive my Doing Business Right series, this time coming from the slant of managing a development team rather than the previous angle of being self-employed.  First up: separating Dev, Test, and Prod. A few months ago, Colin Stasiuk (@BenchmarkIT) wrote a great post about separating your Dev, Test/UAT, and Prod environments.  This post covers all the important points such as removing Developer access from both PROD and UAT, and the importance of proper deployment (a.k.a. promotion) procedures.  I won’t repeat it all here, go read the original!  But what I do want to address is what I believe to be the #1 excuse people use for not having separate environments:  Money.  I discussed this briefly in my comment on Colin’s post at the time, but let me repeat it here and expand on it a bit. Don’t let the size of your company or the size of its budget dictate whether you do things professionally or not.  I am convinced that most developers and development teams would agree that it is a best practice to have separate environments for development, testing, and production (a.k.a. Live).  So why don’t they?  Because they think that it means separate servers which means more money.  While having separate physical servers for the different environments would be ideal, it is not an absolute requirement in order to make this work.  Here are a few ideas: Use multiple instances of SQL Server and multiple Web Sites with Headers or Ports.  For no additional fees* you can install multiple instances of SQL Server on the same machine.  This gives you a nice separation, allowing you to even use the same database names as will appear in PROD, yet isolating the data and security access.  And in IIS, you can create multiple Web Sites on the same server just by using Host Headers or different port numbers to separate them.  This approach does still pose the risk of non-Prod environments impacting performance on Prod, but when your application is busy enough for that to be a concern, you can probably afford one of the other options. Use desktop PCs instead of servers.  Instead of investing in full server-grade hardware, you can mimic the separate environments on old desktop PCs and at least get functional equivalency, if not performance matching.  The last I checked, Microsoft did not require separate licensing for SQL Server if that installation was used exclusively for dev or test purposes*.  There may be some version or performance differences between this approach and what you have in Prod, but you have isolated test from impacting Prod resources this way. Virtualization.  This is of course one of the hot topics of the day, and I would be remiss if I did not suggest this.  It is quite easy these days to setup virtual machines so that, again, your environments are fairly isolated from one another, and you retain all the security and procedural benefits of having separate environments. So the point is, keep your high professional standards intact.  You don’t need to compromise on using proper procedure just because you work in a small company with a small budget.  Keep doing things the right way! By the way, where I work, our DEV environment is not on a server.  All development is done on the developer’s individual workstation where it can be isolated from other developers’ work for the duration of writing the code, but also where the developers have to reconcile (merge) differences in code under concurrent development.  This usually means that each change is executed multiple times (once per developer to update their environments with the latest changes from others) giving us an extra, informal. test deployment before even going to the Test/UAT server.  It also means that if the network goes down, the developers can continue to hum along because they are not dependent on networked resources.  In fact, they will likely be even more productive because they aren’t being interrupted by email…but that’s another post I need to write. * I am not a lawyer, nor a licensing specialist, but it appeared to be so the last time I checked.  When in doubt, consult an expert on the topic.

  Read the article

• using isight camera in macbookpro(8,2) on ubuntu 12.04 virtualbox VM

  - by Kurt Spindler

  I'm having a lot of trouble using the built-in isight camera on my macbookpro8,2 (early 2011) from an ubuntu 12.04 virtual machine, run inside VirtualBox. The following is the log I get when I try to run guvcview ubuntu@ubuntu:~$ guvcview guvcview 1.5.3 ALSA lib pcm.c:2217:(snd_pcm_open_noupdate) Unknown PCM cards.pcm.rear ALSA lib pcm.c:2217:(snd_pcm_open_noupdate) Unknown PCM cards.pcm.center_lfe ALSA lib pcm.c:2217:(snd_pcm_open_noupdate) Unknown PCM cards.pcm.side ALSA lib pcm.c:2217:(snd_pcm_open_noupdate) Unknown PCM cards.pcm.surround71 ALSA lib setup.c:565:(add_elem) Cannot obtain info for CTL elem (MIXER,'IEC958 Playback Default',0,0,0): No such file or directory ALSA lib setup.c:565:(add_elem) Cannot obtain info for CTL elem (MIXER,'IEC958 Playback Default',0,0,0): No such file or directory ALSA lib setup.c:565:(add_elem) Cannot obtain info for CTL elem (MIXER,'IEC958 Playback Default',0,0,0): No such file or directory ALSA lib pcm.c:2217:(snd_pcm_open_noupdate) Unknown PCM cards.pcm.hdmi ALSA lib pcm.c:2217:(snd_pcm_open_noupdate) Unknown PCM cards.pcm.hdmi ALSA lib pcm.c:2217:(snd_pcm_open_noupdate) Unknown PCM cards.pcm.modem ALSA lib pcm.c:2217:(snd_pcm_open_noupdate) Unknown PCM cards.pcm.modem ALSA lib pcm.c:2217:(snd_pcm_open_noupdate) Unknown PCM cards.pcm.phoneline ALSA lib pcm.c:2217:(snd_pcm_open_noupdate) Unknown PCM cards.pcm.phoneline ALSA lib audio/pcm_bluetooth.c:1614:(audioservice_expect) BT_GET_CAPABILITIES failed : Input/output error(5) ALSA lib audio/pcm_bluetooth.c:1614:(audioservice_expect) BT_GET_CAPABILITIES failed : Input/output error(5) ALSA lib audio/pcm_bluetooth.c:1614:(audioservice_expect) BT_GET_CAPABILITIES failed : Input/output error(5) ALSA lib audio/pcm_bluetooth.c:1614:(audioservice_expect) BT_GET_CAPABILITIES failed : Input/output error(5) ALSA lib pcm_dmix.c:957:(snd_pcm_dmix_open) The dmix plugin supports only playback stream Cannot connect to server socket err = No such file or directory Cannot connect to server socket jack server is not running or cannot be started video device: /dev/video0 Init. FaceTime HD Camera (Built-in) (location: usb-0000:00:0b.0-1) { pixelformat = 'YUYV', description = 'YUV 4:2:2 (YUYV)' } { discrete: width = 160, height = 120 } Time interval between frame: 100/2997, 1/25, 1/24, 1/15, { discrete: width = 176, height = 144 } Time interval between frame: 100/2997, 1/25, 1/24, 1/15, { discrete: width = 320, height = 240 } Time interval between frame: 100/2997, 1/25, 1/24, 1/15, { discrete: width = 352, height = 288 } Time interval between frame: 100/2997, 1/25, 1/24, 1/15, { discrete: width = 640, height = 480 } Time interval between frame: 100/2997, 1/25, 1/24, 1/15, { discrete: width = 1280, height = 720 } Time interval between frame: 1/10, { pixelformat = 'MJPG', description = 'MJPEG' } { discrete: width = 960, height = 540 } Time interval between frame: 100/2997, 1/25, 1/24, 1/15, { discrete: width = 1024, height = 576 } Time interval between frame: 100/2997, 1/25, 1/24, 1/15, { discrete: width = 1280, height = 720 } Time interval between frame: 100/2997, 1/25, 1/24, 1/15, { pixelformat = 'RGB3', description = 'RGB3' } { discrete: width = 160, height = 120 } Time interval between frame: 100/2997, 1/25, 1/24, 1/15, { discrete: width = 176, height = 144 } Time interval between frame: 100/2997, 1/25, 1/24, 1/15, { discrete: width = 320, height = 240 } Time interval between frame: 100/2997, 1/25, 1/24, 1/15, { discrete: width = 352, height = 288 } Time interval between frame: 100/2997, 1/25, 1/24, 1/15, { discrete: width = 640, height = 480 } Time interval between frame: 100/2997, 1/25, 1/24, 1/15, { discrete: width = 1280, height = 720 } Time interval between frame: 100/2997, 1/25, 1/24, 1/15, { discrete: width = 960, height = 540 } Time interval between frame: 100/2997, 1/25, 1/24, 1/15, { discrete: width = 1024, height = 576 } Time interval between frame: 100/2997, 1/25, 1/24, 1/15, { pixelformat = 'BGR3', description = 'BGR3' } { discrete: width = 160, height = 120 } Time interval between frame: 100/2997, 1/25, 1/24, 1/15, { discrete: width = 176, height = 144 } Time interval between frame: 100/2997, 1/25, 1/24, 1/15, { discrete: width = 320, height = 240 } Time interval between frame: 100/2997, 1/25, 1/24, 1/15, { discrete: width = 352, height = 288 } Time interval between frame: 100/2997, 1/25, 1/24, 1/15, { discrete: width = 640, height = 480 } Time interval between frame: 100/2997, 1/25, 1/24, 1/15, { discrete: width = 1280, height = 720 } Time interval between frame: 100/2997, 1/25, 1/24, 1/15, { discrete: width = 960, height = 540 } Time interval between frame: 100/2997, 1/25, 1/24, 1/15, { discrete: width = 1024, height = 576 } Time interval between frame: 100/2997, 1/25, 1/24, 1/15, { pixelformat = 'YU12', description = 'YU12' } { discrete: width = 160, height = 120 } Time interval between frame: 100/2997, 1/25, 1/24, 1/15, { discrete: width = 176, height = 144 } Time interval between frame: 100/2997, 1/25, 1/24, 1/15, { discrete: width = 320, height = 240 } Time interval between frame: 100/2997, 1/25, 1/24, 1/15, { discrete: width = 352, height = 288 } Time interval between frame: 100/2997, 1/25, 1/24, 1/15, { discrete: width = 640, height = 480 } Time interval between frame: 100/2997, 1/25, 1/24, 1/15, { discrete: width = 1280, height = 720 } Time interval between frame: 100/2997, 1/25, 1/24, 1/15, { discrete: width = 960, height = 540 } Time interval between frame: 100/2997, 1/25, 1/24, 1/15, { discrete: width = 1024, height = 576 } Time interval between frame: 100/2997, 1/25, 1/24, 1/15, { pixelformat = 'YV12', description = 'YV12' } { discrete: width = 160, height = 120 } Time interval between frame: 100/2997, 1/25, 1/24, 1/15, { discrete: width = 176, height = 144 } Time interval between frame: 100/2997, 1/25, 1/24, 1/15, { discrete: width = 320, height = 240 } Time interval between frame: 100/2997, 1/25, 1/24, 1/15, { discrete: width = 352, height = 288 } Time interval between frame: 100/2997, 1/25, 1/24, 1/15, { discrete: width = 640, height = 480 } Time interval between frame: 100/2997, 1/25, 1/24, 1/15, { discrete: width = 1280, height = 720 } Time interval between frame: 100/2997, 1/25, 1/24, 1/15, { discrete: width = 960, height = 540 } Time interval between frame: 100/2997, 1/25, 1/24, 1/15, { discrete: width = 1024, height = 576 } Time interval between frame: 100/2997, 1/25, 1/24, 1/15, vid:05ac pid:8509 driver:uvcvideo checking format: 1196444237 VIDIOC_G_COMP:: Invalid argument compression control not supported fps is set to 1/25 drawing controls no codec detected for H264 no codec detected for MP3 - (lavc) Checking video mode 960x540@32bpp : OK Could not grab image (select timeout): Resource temporarily unavailable Could not grab image (select timeout): Resource temporarily unavailable Could not grab image (select timeout): Resource temporarily unavailable Could not grab image (select timeout): Resource temporarily unavailable Could not grab image (select timeout): Resource temporarily unavailable Could not grab image (select timeout): Resource temporarily unavailable Could not grab image (select timeout): Resource temporarily unavailable Could not grab image (select timeout): Resource temporarily unavailable Could not grab image (select timeout): Resource temporarily unavailable write /home/ubuntu/.guvcviewrc OK free controls cleaned allocations - 100% Closing portaudio ...OK Closing GTK... OK ubuntu@ubuntu:~$ Any help would be greatly appreciated. Only clue I have is that I initially was having problems, tried using the old method of fixing isights (involving installing isight-firmware-tools) before realizing that I just hadn't turned on the VM setting to allow the VM to access the webcam. :) Anyway, I wonder if installing that messed something up. However, I think this is a red herring because I've: shut down and turned back on the Mac, restarted the VM, tried a different VM (for which I never installed isight-firmware-tools, and created an entirely new ubuntu vm. All instances have had this problem. Similarly, other viewers, such as cheese, avplay, avconv have had all various kinds of errors.

  Read the article

• In the Mobile and Tablet World, How Much is Too Much?

  - by andrewbrust

  The week of April 26th was a huge one in the world of mobile and tablet devices,  There were so many individual developments, announcements and solidifications of strategy, it’s almost impossible to believe they occurred in the same month, let alone the same week. Things started with Apple and Gizmodo having a Law and Order moment over the latter’s procurement of what appears to be the former’s 4th gen iPhone prototype.  We found out on the 26th that Gizmodo blogger Jason Chen’s apartment was raided by police and, honestly, that was a bit much. But Apple didn’t stop there.  They also published Steve Job’s critique of Adobe Flash and his explanation of Cupertino’s embargo of Flash on iPhones, iPods and iPads.  If you ask me, this too, was a bit much. Apple finished up the week by releasing the 3G version of its iPad product to the US market. I like (iLike?) my WiFi iPad.  The idea of getting a version of it that required a second 3G service monthly subscription, is, well, a bit  much. Microsoft was in the news too.  It killed a project it hadn’t even acknowledged the existence of: the Courier tablet.  That’s a bit much too.  If a tree falls in the woods, and Microsoft says they can’t hear it anyway, could they really have chopped it down? Maybe Microsoft Research should have licensed some of Courier’s technology from other parts of Microsoft.  Then maybe they could have kept the product alive.  Ask HTC: they’re going to be licensing technology from Microsoft because Redmond insists that Google’s Android operating system infringes on certain of their patents.  And since HTC now builds a number of handsets on Android, instead of being beholden, as they once were, to Windows Mobile, that means they can keep making their products.  Why does HTC have to pay the royalties, and not Google?  Maybe Microsoft decided that going after GOOG would have been a bit much, even for them. The agreement came not a moment to soon: HTC released their “Droid Incredible” (that name’s a bit much), an Android 2.1 handset with amazing hardware and HTC’s own Sense UI, on April 30th (this past Friday). This phone is very well-reviewed.  Maybe that’s why Google basically decided to beg off introducing a version of its Nexus One phone (also manufactured by HTC) on the Verizon Wireless network.  Google backing down?  That’s incredible, if not also a bit much. And that brings us to HP.  Which this week announced its acquisition of Palm and its webOS mobile phone touch-oriented operating system.  HP also killed its own Slate initiative.  Apparently HP realized that Windows 7, even with a proprietary HP touch UI added on top, is no match for the iPad.  I’m guessing they think webOS might work a bit better,  And I’m wondering if HP even wants to use webOS for phone handsets, beyond the Pre and Pixi.  Using it just for slate devices would be a bit extreme, but maybe not too much. Honestly, this was not Microsoft’s best week.  It killed a project and a close partner did likewise.  Then that same partner bought a competing OS product, while another partner released their new product that uses yet another competing OS platform. What did Microsoft actually produce this past week? An update to its Windows Phone 7 developer tools that actually works with the version of Visual Studio 2010 released on April 12th, and the version of Silverlight released three days later. That took three weeks to get synced up, and that’s a bit much too. But at least it happened. Windows Phone 7 is Microsoft’s best hope for a comeback in the SmartPhone market and to offer a credible touch-based tablet device.  This week, two of Microsoft’s slate initiatives died, and its only mobile phone victory was around its competitor’s operating system.  I hope the new platform gets Redmond out of the PC ghetto and into the classes of device that get people really excited today.  If it can’t, that would be a bit much; probably too much.  And, as the signs at the Lonestar Cafe in NYC used to say, too much ain’t enough.

  Read the article

• Windows Azure Recipe: Enterprise LOBs

  - by Clint Edmonson

  Enterprises are more and more dependent on their specialized internal Line of Business (LOB) applications than ever before. Naturally, the more software they leverage on-premises, the more infrastructure they need manage. It’s frequently the case that our customers simply can’t scale up their hardware purchases and operational staff as fast as internal demand for software requires. The result is that getting new or enhanced applications in the hands of business users becomes slower and more expensive every day. Being able to quickly deliver applications in a rapidly changing business environment while maintaining high standards of corporate security is a challenge that can be met right now by moving enterprise LOBs out into the cloud and leveraging Azure’s Access Control services. In fact, we’re seeing many of our customers (both large and small) see huge benefits from moving their web based business applications such as corporate help desks, expense tracking, travel portals, timesheets, and more to Windows Azure. Drivers Cost Reduction Time to market Security Solution Here’s a sketch of how many Windows Azure Enterprise LOBs are being architected and deployed: Ingredients Web Role – this will host the core of the application. Each web role is a virtual machine hosting an application written in ASP.NET (or optionally php, or node.js). The number of web roles can be scaled up or down as needed to handle peak and non-peak traffic loads. Many Java based applications are also being deployed to Windows Azure with a little more effort. Database – every modern web application needs to store data. SQL Azure databases look and act exactly like their on-premise siblings but are fault tolerant and have data redundancy built in. Access Control – this service is necessary to establish federated identity between the cloud hosted application and an enterprise’s corporate network. It works in conjunction with a secure token service (STS) that is hosted on-premises to establish the corporate user’s identity and credentials. The source code for an on-premises STS is provided in the Windows Azure training kit and merely needs to be customized for the corporate environment and published on a publicly accessible corporate web site. Once set up, corporate users see a near seamless single sign-on experience. Reporting – businesses live and die by their reports and SQL Azure Reporting, based on SQL Server Reporting 2008 R2, can serve up reports with tables, charts, maps, gauges, and more. These reports can be accessed from the Windows Azure Portal, through a web browser, or directly from applications. Service Bus (optional) – if deep integration with other applications and systems is needed, the service bus is the answer. It enables secure service layer communication between applications hosted behind firewalls in on-premises or partner datacenters and applications hosted inside Windows Azure. The Service Bus provides the ability to securely expose just the information and services that are necessary to create a simpler, more secure architecture than opening up a full blown VPN. Data Sync (optional) – in cases where the data stored in the cloud needs to be shared internally, establishing a secure one-way or two-way data-sync connection between the on-premises and off-premises databases is a perfect option. It can be very granular, allowing us to specify exactly what tables and columns to synchronize, setup filters to sync only a subset of rows, set the conflict resolution policy for two-way sync, and specify how frequently data should be synchronized Training Labs These links point to online Windows Azure training labs where you can learn more about the individual ingredients described above. (Note: The entire Windows Azure Training Kit can also be downloaded for offline use.) Windows Azure (16 labs) Windows Azure is an internet-scale cloud computing and services platform hosted in Microsoft data centers, which provides an operating system and a set of developer services which can be used individually or together. It gives developers the choice to build web applications; applications running on connected devices, PCs, or servers; or hybrid solutions offering the best of both worlds. New or enhanced applications can be built using existing skills with the Visual Studio development environment and the .NET Framework. With its standards-based and interoperable approach, the services platform supports multiple internet protocols, including HTTP, REST, SOAP, and plain XML SQL Azure (7 labs) Microsoft SQL Azure delivers on the Microsoft Data Platform vision of extending the SQL Server capabilities to the cloud as web-based services, enabling you to store structured, semi-structured, and unstructured data. Windows Azure Services (9 labs) As applications collaborate across organizational boundaries, ensuring secure transactions across disparate security domains is crucial but difficult to implement. Windows Azure Services provides hosted authentication and access control using powerful, secure, standards-based infrastructure. See my Windows Azure Resource Guide for more guidance on how to get started, including links web portals, training kits, samples, and blogs related to Windows Azure.

  Read the article

• Trigger Happy

  - by Tim Dexter

  Its been a while, I know, we’ll say no more OK? I’ll just write …In the latest BIP 11.1.1.6 release and if I’m really honest; the release before this (we'll call it dot 5 for brevity.) The boys and gals in the engine room have been real busy enhancing BIP with some new functionality. Those of you that use the scheduling engine in OBIEE may already know and use the ‘conditional scheduling’ feature. This allows you to be more intelligent about what reports get run and sent to folks on a scheduled basis. You create a ‘trigger’ analysis (answer) that is executed at schedule time prior to the main report. When the schedule rolls around, the trigger is run, if it returns rows, then the main report is run and delivered. If there are no rows returned, then the main report is not run. Useful right? Your users are not bombarded with 20 reports in their inbox every week that they need to wade throu. They get a handful that they know they need to look at. If you ensure you use conditional formatting in the report then they can find the anomalous data in the reports very quickly and move on to the rest of their day more quickly. You could even think of OBIEE as a virtual team member, scouring the data on your behalf 24/7 and letting you know when its found an issue.BI Publisher, wanting the team t-shirt and the khaki pants, has followed suit. You can now set up ‘triggers’ for it to execute before it runs the main report. Just like its big brother, if the scheduled report trigger returns rows of data; it then executes the main report. Otherwise, the report is skipped until the next schedule time rolls around. Sound familiar?BIP differs a little, in that you only need to construct a query to act as the trigger rather than a complete report. Let assume we have a monthly wage by department report on a schedule. We only want to send the report to managers if their departmental wages reach and/or exceed a certain amount. The toughest part about this is coming up with the SQL to test the business rule you want to implement. For my example, its not that tough: select d.department_name, sum(e.salary) as wage_total from employees e, departments d where d.department_id = e.department_id group by d.department_name having sum(e.salary) > 230000 We're looking for departments where the wage cost is greater than 230,000 Dexter Dollars! With a bit of messing I found out you can parametrize the query. Users can then set a value at schedule time if they need to. To create the trigger is straightforward enough. You can create multiple triggers for users to select at schedule time. Notice I also used a parameter in the query, :wamount. Note the matching parameter in the tree on the left. You also dont need to return multiple columns, one is fine, the key is if there are rows returned. You can build the rest of your report as usual. At scheduling time the Schedule tab has a bit more on it. If your users want to set the trigger, they check the Use Trigger box. The page will then pop fields to pick the appropriate trigger they want to use, even a trigger on another data model if needed. Note it will also ask for the parameter value associated with the trigger. At this point you should note that the data model does not make a distinction between trigger and data model (extract) parameters. So users will see the parameters on the General and Schedule tabs. If per chance you do need to just have a trigger parameters. You can just hide them from the report using the Parameters popup in the report designer, just un-check the 'Show' box I have tested the opposite case where you do not want main report parameters seen in the trigger section. BIP handles that for you! Once the report hits its allotted schedule time, the trigger is executed. Based on the results the report will either run or be 'skipped.' Now, you have a smarter scheduler that will only deliver reports when folks need to see them and take action on the contents. More official info here for developers and here for users.

  Read the article

• Trying to install Team viewer on Ubuntu 12.04

  - by Teknikk

  I recently got Ubuntu installed on my server, I wanted to install TeamViewer so i could easy manage the virtual machines, However, I get errors when installing it from App store?, And I also get errors, but more detailed on the terminal. Error output: tek@tek-G53SW:~/Download$ sudo dpkg -i ipts teamviewer_linux_x64.deb dpkg: error processing ipts (--install): cannot access archive: No such file or directory (Reading database ... 142115 files and directories currently installed.) Preparing to replace teamviewer7 7.0.9360 (using teamviewer_linux_x64.deb) ... Unpacking replacement teamviewer7 ... dpkg: dependency problems prevent configuration of teamviewer7: teamviewer7 depends on libc6-i386 (>= 2.7); however: Package libc6-i386 is not installed. teamviewer7 depends on lib32asound2; however: Package lib32asound2 is not installed. teamviewer7 depends on lib32z1; however: Package lib32z1 is not installed. teamviewer7 depends on ia32-libs; however: Package ia32-libs is not installed. dpkg: error processing teamviewer7 (--install): dependency problems - leaving unconfigured Errors were encountered while processing: ipts teamviewer7 I tried to install it manually, but with no luck, I heard some others has this problems. I am running Ubuntu 12.04 x64. Error @ sudo apt-get install libc6-i386 lib32asound2 lib32z1 ia32-libs : tek@tek-G53SW:~/Download$ sudo apt-get install libc6-i386 lib32asound2 lib32z1 ia32-libs Reading package lists... Done Building dependency tree Reading state information... Done You might want to run 'apt-get -f install' to correct these: The following packages have unmet dependencies: ia32-libs : Depends: ia32-libs-multiarch E: Unmet dependencies. Try 'apt-get -f install' with no packages (or specify a solution). tek@tek-G53SW:~/Download$ More errors tek@tek-G53SW:~/Download$ sudo apt-get -f install [sudo] password for tek: Reading package lists... Done Building dependency tree Reading state information... Done Correcting dependencies... Done The following packages will be REMOVED: teamviewer7 0 upgraded, 0 newly installed, 1 to remove and 0 not upgraded. 1 not fully installed or removed. After this operation, 81.9 MB disk space will be freed. Do you want to continue [Y/n]? y (Reading database ... 142441 files and directories currently installed.) Removing teamviewer7 ... tek@tek-G53SW:~/Download$ sudo apt-get install libc6-i386 lib32asound2 lib32z1 ia32-libs Reading package lists... Done Building dependency tree Reading state information... Done lib32z1 is already the newest version. libc6-i386 is already the newest version. lib32asound2 is already the newest version. Some packages could not be installed. This may mean that you have requested an impossible situation or if you are using the unstable distribution that some required packages have not yet been created or been moved out of Incoming. The following information may help to resolve the situation: The following packages have unmet dependencies: ia32-libs : Depends: ia32-libs-multiarch E: Unable to correct problems, you have held broken packages. tek@tek-G53SW:~/Download$ sudo apt-get install ia32-libs-multiarch Reading package lists... Done Building dependency tree Reading state information... Done Some packages could not be installed. This may mean that you have requested an impossible situation or if you are using the unstable distribution that some required packages have not yet been created or been moved out of Incoming. The following information may help to resolve the situation: The following packages have unmet dependencies: ia32-libs-multiarch:i386 : Depends: gstreamer0.10-plugins-good:i386 but it is not going to be installed Depends: gtk2-engines:i386 but it is not going to be installed Depends: gtk2-engines-murrine:i386 but it is not going to be installed Depends: gtk2-engines-pixbuf:i386 but it is not going to be installed Depends: gtk2-engines-oxygen:i386 but it is not going to be installed Depends: ibus-gtk:i386 but it is not going to be installed Depends: libcanberra-gtk-module:i386 but it is not going to be installed Depends: libcups2:i386 but it is not going to be installed Depends: libcupsimage2:i386 but it is not going to be installed Depends: libfontconfig1:i386 but it is not going to be installed Depends: libgail-common:i386 but it is not going to be installed Depends: libgphoto2-2:i386 but it is not going to be installed Depends: libgtk2.0-0:i386 but it is not going to be installed Depends: libnss3:i386 but it is not going to be installed Depends: libqt4-opengl:i386 but it is not going to be installed Depends: libqt4-qt3support:i386 but it is not going to be installed Depends: libqt4-scripttools:i386 but it is not going to be installed Depends: libqt4-svg:i386 but it is not going to be installed Depends: libqtgui4:i386 but it is not going to be installed Depends: libqtwebkit4:i386 but it is not going to be installed Depends: librsvg2-common:i386 but it is not going to be installed Depends: libsane:i386 but it is not going to be installed E: Unable to correct problems, you have held broken packages. tek@tek-G53SW:~/Download$

  Read the article

• Master Data Management Implementation Styles

  - by david.butler(at)oracle.com

  In any Master Data Management solution deployment, one of the key decisions to be made is the choice of the MDM architecture. Gartner and other analysts describe some different Hub deployment styles, which must be supported by a best of breed MDM solution in order to guarantee the success of the deployment project.   Registry Style: In a Registry Style MDM Hub, the various source systems publish their data and a subscribing Hub stores only the source system IDs, the Foreign Keys (record IDs on source systems) and the key data values needed for matching. The Hub runs the cleansing and matching algorithms and assigns unique global identifiers to the matched records, but does not send any data back to the source systems. The Registry Style MDM Hub uses data federation capabilities to build the "virtual" golden view of the master entity from the connected systems.   Consolidation Style: The Consolidation Style MDM Hub has a physically instantiated, "golden" record stored in the central Hub. The authoring of the data remains distributed across the spoke systems and the master data can be updated based on events, but is not guaranteed to be up to date. The master data in this case is usually not used for transactions, but rather supports reporting; however, it can also be used for reference operationally.   Coexistence Style: The Coexistence Style MDM Hub involves master data that's authored and stored in numerous spoke systems, but includes a physically instantiated golden record in the central Hub and harmonized master data across the application portfolio. The golden record is constructed in the same manner as in the consolidation style, and, in the operational world, Consolidation Style MDM Hubs often evolve into the Coexistence Style. The key difference is that in this architectural style the master data stored in the central MDM system is selectively published out to the subscribing spoke systems.   Transaction Style: In this architecture, the Hub stores, enhances and maintains all the relevant (master) data attributes. It becomes the authoritative source of truth and publishes this valuable information back to the respective source systems. The Hub publishes and writes back the various data elements to the source systems after the linking, cleansing, matching and enriching algorithms have done their work. Upstream, transactional applications can read master data from the MDM Hub, and, potentially, all spoke systems subscribe to updates published from the central system in a form of harmonization. The Hub needs to support merging of master records. Security and visibility policies at the data attribute level need to be supported by the Transaction Style hub, as well.   Adaptive Transaction Style: This is similar to the Transaction Style, but additionally provides the capability to respond to diverse information and process requests across the enterprise. This style emerged most recently to address the limitations of the above approaches. With the Adaptive Transaction Style, the Hub is built as a platform for consolidating data from disparate third party and internal sources and for serving unified master entity views to operational applications, analytical systems or both. This approach delivers a real-time Hub that has a reliable, persistent foundation of master reference and relationship data, along with all the history and lineage of data changes needed for audit and compliance tracking. On top of this persistent master data foundation, the Hub can dynamically aggregate transaction data on demand from different source systems to deliver the unified golden view to downstream systems. Data can also be accessed through batch interfaces, published to a message bus or served through a real-time services layer. New data sources can be readily added in this approach by extending the data model and by configuring the new source mappings and the survivorship rules, meaning that all legacy data hubs can be leveraged to contribute their records/rules into the new transaction hub. Finally, through rich user interfaces for data stewardship, it allows exception handling by business analysts to keep it current with business rules/practices while maintaining the reliability of best-of-breed master records.   Confederation Style: In this architectural style, several Hubs are maintained at departmental and/or agency and/or territorial level, and each of them are connected to the other Hubs either directly or via a central Super-Hub. Each Domain level Hub can be implemented using any of the previously described styles, but normally the Central Super-Hub is a Registry Style one. This is particularly important for Public Sector organizations, where most of the time it is practically or legally impossible to store in a single central hub all the relevant constituent information from all departments.   Oracle MDM Solutions can be deployed according to any of the above MDM architectural styles, and have been specifically designed to fully support the Transaction and Adaptive Transaction styles. Oracle MDM Solutions provide strong data federation and integration capabilities which are key to enabling the use of the Confederated Hub as a possible architectural style approach. Don't lock yourself into a solution that cannot evolve with your needs. With Oracle's support for any type of deployment architecture, its ability to leverage the outstanding capabilities of the Oracle technology stack, and its open interfaces for non-Oracle technology stacks, Oracle MDM Solutions provide a low TCO and a quick ROI by enabling a phased implementation strategy.

  Read the article

• Goto for the Java Programming Language

  - by darcy

  Work on JDK 8 is well-underway, but we thought this late-breaking JEP for another language change for the platform couldn't wait another day before being published. Title: Goto for the Java Programming Language Author: Joseph D. Darcy Organization: Oracle. Created: 2012/04/01 Type: Feature State: Funded Exposure: Open Component: core/lang Scope: SE JSR: 901 MR Discussion: compiler dash dev at openjdk dot java dot net Start: 2012/Q2 Effort: XS Duration: S Template: 1.0 Reviewed-by: Duke Endorsed-by: Edsger Dijkstra Funded-by: Blue Sun Corporation Summary Provide the benefits of the time-testing goto control structure to Java programs. The Java language has a history of adding new control structures over time, the assert statement in 1.4, the enhanced for-loop in 1.5,and try-with-resources in 7. Having support for goto is long-overdue and simple to implement since the JVM already has goto instructions. Success Metrics The goto statement will allow inefficient and verbose recursive algorithms and explicit loops to be replaced with more compact code. The effort will be a success if at least twenty five percent of the JDK's explicit loops are replaced with goto's. Coordination with IDE vendors is expected to help facilitate this goal. Motivation The goto construct offers numerous benefits to the Java platform, from increased expressiveness, to more compact code, to providing new programming paradigms to appeal to a broader demographic. In JDK 8, there is a renewed focus on using the Java platform on embedded devices with more modest resources than desktop or server environments. In such contexts, static and dynamic memory footprint is a concern. One significant component of footprint is the code attribute of class files and certain classes of important algorithms can be expressed more compactly using goto than using other constructs, saving footprint. For example, to implement state machines recursively, some parties have asked for the JVM to support tail calls, that is, to perform a complex transformation with security implications to turn a method call into a goto. Such complicated machinery should not be assumed for an embedded context. A better solution is just to expose to the programmer the desired functionality, goto. The web has familiarized users with a model of traversing links among different HTML pages in a free-form fashion with some state being maintained on the side, such as login credentials, to effect behavior. This is exactly the programming model of goto and code. While in the past this has been derided as leading to "spaghetti code," spaghetti is a tasty and nutritious meal for programmers, unlike quiche. The invokedynamic instruction added by JSR 292 exposes the JVM's linkage operation to programmers. This is a low-level operation that can be leveraged by sophisticated programmers. Likewise, goto is a also a low-level operation that should not be hidden from programmers who can use more efficient idioms. Some may object that goto was consciously excluded from the original design of Java as one of the removed feature from C and C++. However, the designers of the Java programming languages have revisited these removals before. The enum construct was also left out only to be added in JDK 5 and multiple inheritance was left out, only to be added back by the virtual extension method methods of Project Lambda. As a living language, the needs of the growing Java community today should be used to judge what features are needed in the platform tomorrow; the language should not be forever bound by the decisions of the past. Description From its initial version, the JVM has had two instructions for unconditional transfer of control within a method, goto (0xa7) and goto_w (0xc8). The goto_w instruction is used for larger jumps. All versions of the Java language have supported labeled statements; however, only the break and continue statements were able to specify a particular label as a target with the onerous restriction that the label must be lexically enclosing. The grammar addition for the goto statement is: GotoStatement: goto Identifier ; The new goto statement similar to break except that the target label can be anywhere inside the method and the identifier is mandatory. The compiler simply translates the goto statement into one of the JVM goto instructions targeting the right offset in the method. Therefore, adding the goto statement to the platform is only a small effort since existing compiler and JVM functionality is reused. Other language changes to support goto include obvious updates to definite assignment analysis, reachability analysis, and exception analysis. Possible future extensions include a computed goto as found in gcc, which would replace the identifier in the goto statement with an expression having the type of a label. Testing Since goto will be implemented using largely existing facilities, only light levels of testing are needed. Impact Compatibility: Since goto is already a keyword, there are no source compatibility implications. Performance/scalability: Performance will improve with more compact code. JVMs already need to handle irreducible flow graphs since goto is a VM instruction.

  Read the article

• Configure IPv6 on your Linux system (Ubuntu)

  After the presentation on IPv6 at the first event of the Emtel Knowledge Series and some recent discussion on social media networks with other geeks and Linux interested IT people here in Mauritius, I thought that I should give it a try (finally) and tweak my local network infrastructure. Honestly, I have been to busy with contractual project work and it never really occurred to me to set up IPv6 in my LAN. Well, the following paragraphs are going to shed some light on those aspects of modern computer and network technology. This is the first article in a series on IPv6 configuration: Configure IPv6 on your Linux system DHCPv6: Provide IPv6 information in your local network Enabling DNS for IPv6 infrastructure Accessing your web server via IPv6 Piece of advice: This is based on my findings on the internet while reading other people's helpful articles and going through a couple of man-pages on my local system. Let's embrace IPv6 The basic configuration on Linux is actually very simple as the kernel, operating system, and user-space programs support that protocol natively. If your system is ready to go for IP (aka: IPv4), then you are good to go for anything else. At least, I didn't have to install any additional packages on my system(s). We are going to assign a static IPv6 address to the system. Hence, we have to modify the definition of interfaces and check whether we have an inet6 entry specified. Open your favourite text editor and check the following entries (it should be at least similar to this): $ sudo nano /etc/network/interfaces auto eth0# IPv4 configurationiface eth0 inet static  address 192.168.1.2  network 192.168.1.0  netmask 255.255.255.0  broadcast 192.168.1.255# IPv6 configurationiface eth0 inet6 static  pre-up modprobe ipv6  address 2001:db8:bad:a55::2  netmask 64 Of course, you might have to adjust your interface device (eth0) or you might be interested to have multiple directives for additional devices (eth1, eth2, etc.). The auto instruction takes care that your device is enabled and configured during the booting phase. The use of the pre-up directive depends on your kernel configuration but in most scenarios this might be an optional line. Anyways, it doesn't hurt to have it enabled after all - just to be on the safe side. Next, either restart your network subsystem like so: $ sudo service networking restart Or you might prefer to do it manually with identical parameters, like so: $ sudo ifconfig eth0 inet6 add 2001:db8:bad:a55::2/64 In case that you're logged in remotely into your PC (ie. via ssh), it is highly advised to opt for the second choice and add the device manually. You can check your configuration afterwards with one of the following commands (depends on whether it is installed): $ sudo ifconfig eth0eth0      Link encap:Ethernet  HWaddr 00:21:5a:50:d7:94            inet addr:192.168.160.2  Bcast:192.168.160.255  Mask:255.255.255.0          inet6 addr: fe80::221:5aff:fe50:d794/64 Scope:Link          inet6 addr: 2001:db8:bad:a55::2/64 Scope:Global          UP BROADCAST RUNNING MULTICAST  MTU:1500  Metric:1 $ sudo ip -6 address show eth03: eth0: <BROADCAST,MULTICAST,UP,LOWER_UP> mtu 1500 qlen 1000    inet6 2001:db8:bad:a55::2/64 scope global        valid_lft forever preferred_lft forever    inet6 fe80::221:5aff:fe50:d794/64 scope link        valid_lft forever preferred_lft forever In both cases, it confirms that our network device has been assigned a valid IPv6 address. That's it in general for your setup on one system. But of course, you might be interested to enable more services for IPv6, especially if you're already running a couple of them in your IP network. More details are available on the official Ubuntu Wiki. Continue to configure your network to provide IPv6 address information automatically in your local infrastructure.

  Read the article

• Integrating Windows Form Click Once Application into SharePoint 2007 &ndash; Part 2 of 4

  - by Kelly Jones

  In my last post, I explained why we decided to use a Click Once application to solve our business problem. To quickly review, we needed a way for our business users to upload documents to a SharePoint 2007 document library in mass, set the meta data, set the permissions per document, and to do so easily. Let’s look at the pieces that make up our solution.  First, we have the Windows Form application.  This app is deployed using Click Once and calls SharePoint web services in order to upload files and then calls web services to set the meta data (SharePoint columns and permissions).  Second, we have a custom action.  The custom action is responsible for providing our users a link that will launch the Windows app, as well as passing values to it via the query string.  And lastly, we have the web services that the Windows Form application calls.  For our solution, we used both out of the box web services and a custom web service in order to set the column values in the document library as well as the permissions on the documents. Now, let’s look at the technical details of each of these pieces.  (All of the code is downloadable from here: )   Windows Form application deployed via Click Once The Windows Form application, called “Custom Upload”, has just a few classes in it: Custom Upload -- the form FileList.xsd -- the dataset used to track the names of the files and their meta data values SharePointUpload -- this class handles uploading the file SharePointUpload uses an HttpWebRequest to transfer the file to the web server. We had to change this code from a WebClient object to the HttpWebRequest object, because we needed to be able to set the time out value.  public bool UploadDocument(string localFilename, string remoteFilename) { bool result = true; //Need to use an HttpWebRequest object instead of a WebClient object // so we can set the timeout (WebClient doesn't allow you to set the timeout!) HttpWebRequest req = (HttpWebRequest)WebRequest.Create(remoteFilename); try { req.Method = "PUT"; req.Timeout = 60 * 1000; //convert seconds to milliseconds req.AllowWriteStreamBuffering = true; req.Credentials = System.Net.CredentialCache.DefaultCredentials; req.SendChunked = false; req.KeepAlive = true; Stream reqStream = req.GetRequestStream(); FileStream rdr = new FileStream(localFilename, FileMode.Open, FileAccess.Read); byte[] inData = new byte[4096]; int bytesRead = rdr.Read(inData, 0, inData.Length); while (bytesRead > 0) { reqStream.Write(inData, 0, bytesRead); bytesRead = rdr.Read(inData, 0, inData.Length); } reqStream.Close(); rdr.Close(); System.Net.HttpWebResponse response = (HttpWebResponse)req.GetResponse(); if (response.StatusCode != HttpStatusCode.OK && response.StatusCode != HttpStatusCode.Created) { String msg = String.Format("An error occurred while uploading this file: {0}\n\nError response code: {1}", System.IO.Path.GetFileName(localFilename), response.StatusCode.ToString()); LogWarning(msg, "2ACFFCCA-59BA-40c8-A9AB-05FA3331D223"); result = false; } } catch (Exception ex) { LogException(ex, "{E9D62A93-D298-470d-A6BA-19AAB237978A}"); result = false; } return result; } The class also contains the LogException() and LogWarning() methods. When the application is launched, it parses the query string for some initial values.  The query string looks like this: string queryString = "Srv=clickonce&Sec=N&Doc=DMI&SiteName=&Speed=128000&Max=50"; This Srv is the path to the server (my Virtual Machine is name “clickonce”), the Sec is short for security – meaning HTTPS or HTTP, the Doc is the shortcut for which document library to use, and SiteName is the name of the SharePoint site.  Speed is used to calculate an estimate for download speed for each file.  We added this so our users uploading documents would realize how long it might take for clients in remote locations (using slow WAN connections) to download the documents. The last value, Max, is the maximum size that the SharePoint site will allow documents to be.  This allowed us to give users a warning that a file is too large before we even attempt to upload it. Another critical piece is the meta data collection.  We organized our site using SharePoint content types, so when the app loads, it gets a list of the document library’s content types.  The user then select one of the content types from the drop down list, and then we query SharePoint to get a list of the fields that make up that content type.  We used both an out of the box web service, and one that we custom built, in order to get these values. Once we have the content type fields, we then add controls to the form.  Which type of control we add depends on the data type of the field.  (DateTime pickers for date/time fields, etc)  We didn’t write code to cover every data type, since we were working with a limited set of content types and field data types. Here’s a screen shot of the Form, before and after someone has selected the content types and our code has added the custom controls:     The other piece of meta data we collect is the in the upper right corner of the app, “Users with access”.  This box lists the different SharePoint Groups that we have set up and by checking the boxes, the user can set the permissions on the uploaded documents. All of this meta data is collected and submitted to our custom web service, which then sets the values on the documents on the list.  We’ll look at these web services in a future post. In the next post, we’ll walk through the Custom Action we built.

  Read the article

< Previous Page | 673 674 675 676 677 678 679 680 681 682 683 684  | Next Page >