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  • perl Getopt::Long madness

    - by ennuikiller
    The following code works in one script yet in another only works if a specify the "--" end of options flag before specifying an option: my $opt; GetOptions( 'help|h' => sub { usage("you want help?? hahaha, hopefully your not serious!!"); }, 'file|f=s' => \$opt->{FILE}, 'report|r' => \$opt->{REPORT}, ) or usage("Bad Options"); In other words, the same code words in good.pl and bad.pl like so: good.pl -f bad.pl -- -f If I try bad.pl -f I get "unknown option:f" Anyone have any clue as to what can cause this behavior? Thanks in advnace!

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  • Storing secret keys on iPhone source and project resources

    - by hgpc
    Is storing secret keys (internal use passwords and such) on iPhone source code and project resources (such as plist files) secure? Obviously nothing is 100% secure, but can this information be extracted easily from an installed app? How do you recommend storing these keys to use them in the source code? Just in case, this question is not about storing user passwords.

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  • Calling method after view has loaded

    - by iamdadude
    My iPhone app allows for users to type in their usernames and passwords so that they can login. When they login once, their usernames and passwords are saved so that users don't have to type it in again. My problem is, when the app starts again, it immediately starts logging them in, leaving the interface completely black. How would I go about calling my login method AFTER all the UI methods are loaded?

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  • iphone localization

    - by hardik
    hello all when i run the command to generate Localizable.string file from my terminal it says me bad entry in to the classes file the file gets generated but it has no entry in it infact it should have entry in it. Here is what i am running in my terminal but somehow it is not happening please guide me need to solve this Last login: Mon Jun 7 18:02:09 on ttys000 comp10:~ admin$ cd .. comp10:Users admin$ cd .. comp10:/ admin$ cd /Users/admin/Desktop/localisationwithcode comp10:localisationwithcode admin$ sudo usage: sudo -K | -L | -V | -h | -k | -l | -v usage: sudo [-HPSb] [-p prompt] [-u username|#uid] { -e file [...] | -i | -s | <command> } comp10:localisationwithcode admin$ genstrings Classes/*.m Bad entry in file Classes/localisationwithcodeViewController.m (line = 35): Argument is not a literal string. Bad entry in file Classes/localisationwithcodeViewController.m (line = 36): Argument is not a literal string. Bad entry in file Classes/localisationwithcodeViewController.m (line = 37): Argument is not a literal string. Bad entry in file Classes/localisationwithcodeViewController.m (line = 38): Argument is not a literal string. 2010-06-07 18:04:45.047 genstrings[3851:10b] _CFGetHostUUIDString: unable to determine UUID for host. Error: 35 comp10:localisationwithcode admin$

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  • Why does the same Getopt::Long code work differently in different programs?

    - by ennuikiller
    The following code works in one script yet in another only works if a specify the -- end of options flag before specifying an option: my $opt; GetOptions( 'help|h' => sub { usage("you want help?? hahaha, hopefully you're not serious!!"); }, 'file|f=s' => \$opt->{FILE}, 'report|r' => \$opt->{REPORT}, ) or usage("Bad Options"); In other words, the same code words in good.pl and bad.pl like so: good.pl -f bad.pl -- -f If I try bad.pl -f I get unknown option:f. Anyone have any clue as to what can cause this behavior? Thanks in advance! I've solved this..... and btw it's a VERY clear question (so why the downvotes)? I'll state it again: What would cause the identical GetOptions block to work in these 2 ways: "good.pl -f" "bad.pl -- -f" see how clear? Maybe you guys should think about it as if it were a TEST!

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  • Excel VBA Application.OnTime. I think its a bad idea to use this... thoughts either way?

    - by FinancialRadDeveloper
    I have a number of users I support that are asking for things to happen automatically ( well more automagically but that's another point!). One want events to happen every 120 secs ( see my other question ) and also another wants 1 thing to happen say at 5pm each business day. This has to be on the Excel sheet so therefore VBA as addins etc will be a no no, as it needs to be self contained. I have a big dislike of using Application.OnTime I think its dangerous and unreliable, what does everyone else think?

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  • Is this a good or bad way to use constructor chaining? (... to allow for testing).

    - by panamack
    My motivation for chaining my class constructors here is so that I have a default constructor for mainstream use by my application and a second that allows me to inject a mock and a stub. It just seems a bit ugly 'new'-ing things in the ":this(...)" call and counter-intuitive calling a parametrized constructor from a default constructor , I wondered what other people would do here? (FYI - SystemWrapper) using SystemWrapper; public class MyDirectoryWorker{ // SystemWrapper interface allows for stub of sealed .Net class. private IDirectoryInfoWrap dirInf; private FileSystemWatcher watcher; public MyDirectoryWorker() : this( new DirectoryInfoWrap(new DirectoryInfo(MyDirPath)), new FileSystemWatcher()) { } public MyDirectoryWorker(IDirectoryInfoWrap dirInf, FileSystemWatcher watcher) { this.dirInf = dirInf; if(!dirInf.Exists){ dirInf.Create(); } this.watcher = watcher; watcher.Path = dirInf.FullName; watcher.NotifyFilter = NotifyFilters.FileName; watcher.Created += new FileSystemEventHandler(watcher_Created); watcher.Deleted += new FileSystemEventHandler(watcher_Deleted); watcher.Renamed += new RenamedEventHandler(watcher_Renamed); watcher.EnableRaisingEvents = true; } public static string MyDirPath{get{return Settings.Default.MyDefaultDirPath;}} // etc... }

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  • Counting viable sublist lengths from an array.

    - by Ben B.
    This is for a genetic algorithm fitness function, so it is important I can do this as efficiently as possible, as it will be repeated over and over. Lets say there is a function foo(int[] array) that returns true if the array is a "good" array and false if the array is a "bad" array. What makes it good or bad does not matter here. Given the full array [1,6,8,9,5,11,45,16,9], lets say that subarray [1,6,8] is a "good" array and [9,5,11,45] is a "good" array. Furthermore [5,11,45,16,9] is a "good" array, and also the longest "good" subarray. Notice that while [9,5,11,45] is a "good" array, and [5,11,45,16,9] is a "good" array, [9,5,11,45,16,9] is a "bad" array. We wants the length counts of all "good" arrays, but not subarrays of "good" arrays. Furthermore, as described above, a "good" array might begin in the middle of another "good" array, but the combination of the two might be a "bad" array.

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  • Ticket Bayesian(or something else) Categorization

    - by vinnitu
    Hi. I search solution for ticket managment system. Do you know any commercial offers? For now I have only own dev prjects with using dspam library. Maybe I am wrong use it but it show bad results. My idea was divide all prerated ticket in 2 group: spam (it is my category) and rest to (ham - all not the same with this category). After that i trained my dspam. After I redivide all tickets in new groups (for next category) and teach dspam again (with new user - by category name)... And it works bad... My thoughs about is - bad data base tickes (i mean not correct tagging before) - bad my algorythm (it is more posible) Please give me a direction to go forward. Thanks. I am integesting any idea and suggestion. Thanks again.

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  • Bad performance function in PHP. With large files memory blows up! How can I refactor?

    - by André
    Hi I have a function that strips out lines from files. I'm handling with large files(more than 100Mb). I have the PHP Memory with 256MB but the function that handles with the strip out of lines blows up with a 100MB CSV File. What the function must do is this: Originally I have the CSV like: Copyright (c) 2007 MaxMind LLC. All Rights Reserved. locId,country,region,city,postalCode,latitude,longitude,metroCode,areaCode 1,"O1","","","",0.0000,0.0000,, 2,"AP","","","",35.0000,105.0000,, 3,"EU","","","",47.0000,8.0000,, 4,"AD","","","",42.5000,1.5000,, 5,"AE","","","",24.0000,54.0000,, 6,"AF","","","",33.0000,65.0000,, 7,"AG","","","",17.0500,-61.8000,, 8,"AI","","","",18.2500,-63.1667,, 9,"AL","","","",41.0000,20.0000,, When I pass the CSV file to this function I got: locId,country,region,city,postalCode,latitude,longitude,metroCode,areaCode 1,"O1","","","",0.0000,0.0000,, 2,"AP","","","",35.0000,105.0000,, 3,"EU","","","",47.0000,8.0000,, 4,"AD","","","",42.5000,1.5000,, 5,"AE","","","",24.0000,54.0000,, 6,"AF","","","",33.0000,65.0000,, 7,"AG","","","",17.0500,-61.8000,, 8,"AI","","","",18.2500,-63.1667,, 9,"AL","","","",41.0000,20.0000,, It only strips out the first line, nothing more. The problem is the performance of this function with large files, it blows up the memory. The function is: public function deleteLine($line_no, $csvFileName) { // this function strips a specific line from a file // if a line is stripped, functions returns True else false // // e.g. // deleteLine(-1, xyz.csv); // strip last line // deleteLine(1, xyz.csv); // strip first line // Assigna o nome do ficheiro $filename = $csvFileName; $strip_return=FALSE; $data=file($filename); $pipe=fopen($filename,'w'); $size=count($data); if($line_no==-1) $skip=$size-1; else $skip=$line_no-1; for($line=0;$line<$size;$line++) if($line!=$skip) fputs($pipe,$data[$line]); else $strip_return=TRUE; return $strip_return; } It is possible to refactor this function to not blow up with the 256MB PHP Memory? Give me some clues. Best Regards,

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  • How should I ethically approach user password storage for later plaintext retrieval?

    - by Shane
    As I continue to build more and more websites and web applications I am often asked to store user's passwords in a way that they can be retrieved if/when the user has an issue (either to email a forgotten password link, walk them through over the phone, etc.) When I can I fight bitterly against this practice and I do a lot of ‘extra’ programming to make password resets and administrative assistance possible without storing their actual password. When I can’t fight it (or can’t win) then I always encode the password in some way so that it at least isn’t stored as plaintext in the database—though I am aware that if my DB gets hacked that it won’t take much for the culprit to crack the passwords as well—so that makes me uncomfortable. In a perfect world folks would update passwords frequently and not duplicate them across many different sites—unfortunately I know MANY people that have the same work/home/email/bank password, and have even freely given it to me when they need assistance. I don’t want to be the one responsible for their financial demise if my DB security procedures fail for some reason. Morally and ethically I feel responsible for protecting what can be, for some users, their livelihood even if they are treating it with much less respect. I am certain that there are many avenues to approach and arguments to be made for salting hashes and different encoding options, but is there a single ‘best practice’ when you have to store them? In almost all cases I am using PHP and MySQL if that makes any difference in the way I should handle the specifics. Additional Information for Bounty I want to clarify that I know this is not something you want to have to do and that in most cases refusal to do so is best. I am, however, not looking for a lecture on the merits of taking this approach I am looking for the best steps to take if you do take this approach. In a note below I made the point that websites geared largely toward the elderly, mentally challenged, or very young can become confusing for people when they are asked to perform a secure password recovery routine. Though we may find it simple and mundane in those cases some users need the extra assistance of either having a service tech help them into the system or having it emailed/displayed directly to them. In such systems the attrition rate from these demographics could hobble the application if users were not given this level of access assistance, so please answer with such a setup in mind. Thanks to Everyone This has been a fun questions with lots of debate and I have enjoyed it. In the end I selected an answer that both retains password security (I will not have to keep plain text or recoverable passwords), but also makes it possible for the user base I specified to log into a system without the major drawbacks I have found from normal password recovery. As always there were about 5 answers that I would like to have marked correct for different reasons, but I had to choose the best one--all the rest got a +1. Thanks everyone!

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  • Node.js A Good authentication module ? or whats the proper way to authenticate users?

    - by Mohamed Ahmed
    I'm learning Node.js and looking forward to create a simple web application which will be based on Express and I was thinking of something like creating user groups and each group has its own users and each group has its own permissions (Just like ACL in Cakephp) So can anyone recommend a good module or whatever to do so ? Also I'm a little curious about security and how these passwords are going to be saved and what type of encryption the passwords will be encrypted in. Thanks :)

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  • Finding out the windows group by virtue of which a user is able to access a database in sql server?

    - by Raghu Dodda
    There is a SQL Server 2005 database with mixed-mode authentication. Among others, we have the following logins on the server: our-domain\developers-group-1, and our-domain\developers-group-2 which are AD groups. The our-domain\developer-group-2 is added to the sysadmin role on the server, by virture of which all domain users of that group can access any database as SQL Server implictly maps the sysadmin role to the dbo user in each database. There are two users our-domain\good-user and our-domain\bad-user The issue is the following: Both the good-user and the bad-user have the exact same AD group memberships. They are both members of our-domain\developers-group-1 and our-domain\developers-group-2. The good-user is able to access all the databases, and the bad-user is not. The bad-user is able to login, but he is unable access any databases. By the way, I am the good-user. How do I go about finding out why? Here's what I tried so far: When I do print current_user, I get dbo When I do print system_user, I get my-domain\good-user When I do select * from fn_my_permissions(NULL, 'SERVER'), I see permissions. But if do execute as user='my-domain\good-user'; select * from fn_my_permissions(NULL, 'SERVER'), I dont see any permisisons. And When I do, execute as user='my-domain\bad-user'; select * from fn_my_permissions(NULL, 'SERVER'), I dont see any permisisons. Also, I was wondering if there is a sql command that will tell me, "hey! the current database user is able to access this database because he is a member such-and-such ad-group, which is a login that is mapped to such-and-such user in this database".

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  • How can I make my password fields always empty?

    - by ggfan
    I have a form field where users can change their passwords, but if they set their settings to remember passwords, their password shows up. Is there a way to make the field always empty? So that they always have to type their password. <label for="oldpassword" class="styled">Old password:</label> <input type="password" id="oldpassword" name="oldpassword"/><br />

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  • Why is IIS Anonymous authentication being used with administrative UNC drive access?

    - by Mark Lindell
    My account is local administrator on my machine. If I try to browse to a non-existent drive letter on my own box using a UNC path name: \mymachine\x$ my account would get locked out. I would also get the following warning (Event ID 100, Type “Warning”) 5 times under the “System” group in Event Viewer on my box: The server was unable to logon the Windows NT account 'ourdomain\myaccount' due to the following error: Logon failure: unknown user name or bad password. I would also get the following warning 3 times: The server was unable to logon the Windows NT account 'ourdomain\myaccount' due to the following error: The referenced account is currently locked out and may not be logged on to. On the domain controller, Event ID 680 of type “Failure Audit” would appear 4 times under the “Security” group in Event Viewer: Logon attempt by: MICROSOFT_AUTHENTICATION_PACKAGE_V1_0 Logon account: myaccount Followed by Event ID 644: User Account Locked Out: Target Account Name: myaccount Target Account ID: OURDOMAIN\myaccount Caller Machine Name: MYMACHINE Caller User Name: STAN$ Caller Domain: OURDOMAIN Caller Logon ID: (0x0,0x3E7) Followed by another 4 errors having Event ID 680. Strangely, every time I tried to browse to the UNC path I would be prompted for a user name and password, the above errors would be written to the log, and my account would be locked out. When I hit “Cancel” in response to the user name/password prompt, the following message box would display: Windows cannot find \mymachine\x$. Check the spelling and try again, or try searching for the item by clicking the Start button and then clicking Search. I checked with others in the group using XP and they only got the above message box when browsing to a “bad” drive letter on their box. No one else was prompted for a user name/password and then locked out. So, every time I tried to browse to the “bad” drive letter, behind the scenes XP was trying to login 8 times using bad credentials (or, at least a bad password as the login was correct), causing my account to get locked out on the 4th try. Interestingly, If I tried browsing to a “good” drive such as “c$” it would work fine. As a test, I tried logging on to my box as a different login and browsing the “bad” UNC path. Strangely, my “ourdomain\myaccount” account was getting locked out – not the one I was logged in as! I was totally confused as to why the credentials for the other login were being passed. After much Googling, I found a link referring to some IIS settings I was vaguely familiar with from the past but could not see how they would affect this issue. It was related to the IIS directory security setting “Anonymous access and authentication control” located under: Control Panel/Administrative Tools/Computer Management/Services and Applications/Internet Information Services/Web Sites/Default Web Site/Properties/Directory Security/Anonymous access and authentication control/Edit/Password I found no indication while scouring the Internet that this property was related to my UNC problem. But, I did notice that this property was set to my domain user name and password. And, my password did age recently but I had not reset the password accordingly for this property. Sure enough, keying in the new password corrected the problem. I was no longer prompted for a user name/password when browsing the UNC path and the account lock-outs ceased. Now, a couple of questions: Why would an IIS setting affect the browsing of a UNC path on a local box? Why had I not encountered this problem before? My password has aged several times and I’ve never encountered this problem. And, I can’t remember the last time I updated the “Anonymous access” IIS password it’s been so long. I’ve run the script after a password reset before and never had my account locked-out due to the UNC problem (the script accesses UNC paths as a normal part of its processing). Windows Update did install “Cumulative Security Update for Internet Explorer 7 for Windows XP (KB972260)” on my box on 7/29/2009. I wonder if this is responsible.

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  • Building KPIs to monitor your business Its not really about the Technology

    When I have discussions with people about Business Intelligence, one of the questions the inevitably come up is about building KPIs and how to accomplish that. From a technical level the concept of a KPI is very simple, almost too simple in that it is like the tip of an iceberg floating above the water. The key to that iceberg is not really the tip, but the mass of the iceberg that is hidden beneath the surface upon which the tip sits. The analogy of the iceberg is not meant to indicate that the foundation of the KPI is overly difficult or complex. The disparity in size in meant to indicate that the larger thing that needs to be defined is not the technical tip, but the underlying business definition of what the KPI means. From a technical perspective the KPI consists of primarily the following items: Actual Value This is the actual value data point that is being measured. An example would be something like the amount of sales. Target Value This is the target goal for the KPI. This is a number that can be measured against Actual Value. An example would be $10,000 in monthly sales. Target Indicator Range This is the definition of ranges that define what type of indicator the user will see comparing the Actual Value to the Target Value. Most often this is defined by stoplight, but can be any indicator that is going to show a status in a quick fashion to the user. Typically this would be something like: Red Light = Actual Value more than 5% below target; Yellow Light = Within 5% of target either direction; Green Light = More than 5% higher than Target Value Status\Trend Indicator This is an optional attribute of a KPI that is typically used to show some kind of trend. The vast majority of these indicators are used to show some type of progress against a previous period. As an example, the status indicator might be used to show how the monthly sales compare to last month. With this type of indicator there needs to be not only a definition of what the ranges are for your status indictor, but then also what value the number needs to be compared against. So now we have an idea of what data points a KPI consists of from a technical perspective lets talk a bit about tools. As you can see technically there is not a whole lot to them and the choice of technology is not as important as the definition of the KPIs, which we will get to in a minute. There are many different types of tools in the Microsoft BI stack that you can use to expose your KPI to the business. These include Performance Point, SharePoint, Excel, and SQL Reporting Services. There are pluses and minuses to each technology and the right technology is based a lot on your goals and how you want to deliver the information to the users. Additionally, there are other non-Microsoft tools that can be used to expose KPI indicators to your business users. Regardless of the technology used as your front end, the heavy lifting of KPI is in the business definition of the values and benchmarks for that KPI. The discussion about KPIs is very dependent on the history of an organization and how much they are exposed to the attributes of a KPI. Often times when discussing KPIs with a business contact who has not been exposed to KPIs the discussion tends to also be a session educating the business user about what a KPI is and what goes into the definition of a KPI. The majority of times the business user has an idea of what their actual values are and they have been tracking those numbers for some time, generally in Excel and all manually. So they will know the amount of sales last month along with sales two years ago in the same month. Where the conversation tends to get stuck is when you start discussing what the target value should be. The actual value is answering the What and How much questions. When you are talking about the Target values you are asking the question Is this number good or bad. Typically, the user will know whether or not the value is good or bad, but most of the time they are not able to quantify what is good or bad. Their response is usually something like I just know. Because they have been watching the sales quantity for years now, they can tell you that a 5% decrease in sales this month might actually be a good thing, maybe because the salespeople are all waiting until next month when the new versions come out. It can sometimes be very hard to break the business people of this habit. One of the fears generally is that the status indicator is not subjective. Thus, in the scenario above, the business user is going to be fearful that their boss, just looking at a negative red indicator, is going to haul them out to the woodshed for a bad month. But, on the flip side, if all you are displaying is the amount of sales, only a person with knowledge of last month sales and the target amount for this month would have any idea if $10,000 in sales is good or not. Here is where a key point about KPIs needs to be communicated to both the business user and any user who might be viewing the results of that KPI. The KPI is just one tool that is used to report on business performance. The KPI is meant as a quick indicator of one business statistic. It is not meant to tell the entire story. It does not answer the question Why. Its primary purpose is to objectively and quickly expose an area of the business that might warrant more review. There is always going to be the need to do further analysis on any potential negative or neutral KPI. So, hopefully, once you have convinced your business user to come up with some target numbers and ranges for status indicators, you then need to take the next step and help them answer the Why question. The main question here to ask is, Okay, you see the indicator and you need to discover why the number is what is, where do you go?. The answer is usually a combination of sources. A sales manager might have some of the following items at their disposal (Marketing report showing a decrease in the promotional discounts for the month, Pricing Report showing the reduction of prices of older models, an Inventory Report showing the discontinuation of a particular product line, or a memo showing the ending of a large affiliate partnership. The answers to the question Why are never as simple as a single indicator value. Bring able to quickly get to this information is all about designing how a user accesses the KPIs and then also how easily they can get to the additional information they need. This is where a Dashboard mentality can come in handy. For example, the business user can have a dashboard that shows their KPIs, but also has links to some of the common reports that they run regarding Sales Data. The users boss may have the same KPIs on their dashboard, but instead of links to individual reports they are going to have a link to a status report that was created by the user that pulls together all the data about the KPI in a summary format the users boss can review. So some of the key things to think about when building or evaluating KPIs for your organization: Technology should not be the driving factor KPIs are of little value without some indicator for whether a value is good, bad or neutral. KPIs only give an answer to the Is this number good\bad? question Make sure the ability to drill into the Why of a KPI is close at hand and relevant to the user who is viewing the KPI. The KPI is a key business tool when defined properly to help monitor business performance across the enterprise in an objective and consistent manner. At times it might feel like the process of defining the business aspects of a KPI can sometimes be arduous, the payoff in the end can far outweigh the costs. Some of the benefits of going through this process are a better understanding of the key metrics for an organization and the measure of those metrics and a consistent snapshot of business performance that can be utilized across the organization. And I think that these are benefits to any organization regardless of the technology or the implementation.Did you know that DotNetSlackers also publishes .net articles written by top known .net Authors? We already have over 80 articles in several categories including Silverlight. Take a look: here.

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  • A Good Developer is So Hard to Find

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

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  • SQL Server MCM is too easy, is it?

    - by simonsabin
    We all know that Brent Ozar did the MCM training/certification over the past few weeks. He wrote an interesting article on Friday about the bad bits ( http://www.brentozar.com/archive/2010/04/sql-mcm-now-bad-stuff/ ) of the training and it lead me to thinking about the certification process again(I often think about it, and it appears often in response to something from Brent http://sqlblogcasts.com/blogs/simons/archive/2010/02/12/Whats-missing-in-the-SQL-Certification-process-.aspx ) This time what...(read more)

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  • How to mount ext4 partition?

    - by Flint
    How do I mount an ext4 partition as my user account so I wouldn't require root access to r/w on it? I used -o uid=flint,gid=flint on the mount command but I keep getting mount: wrong fs type, bad option, bad superblock on /dev/sda7, missing codepage or helper program, or other error In some cases useful info is found in syslog - try dmesg | tail or so Another thing, I want avoid using udisks for now as it doesn't let me mount to my specified mount point name.

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  • Was I wrong about JavaScript?

    - by jboyer
    Yes, I was. Recently, I’ve taken a good hard look at JavaScript. I’ve used it before but mostly in the capacity of web design. Using JQuery to make your web page do cool stuff is different than really creating a JavaScript application using all of the language constructs. What I’m finding as I use it more is that I may have been wrong about my assumptions about it. Let me explain.   I enjoyed doing cool stuff with JQuery but the limited experience with JavaScript as a language coupled with the bad things that I heard about it led me to not have any real interest in it. However, JavaScript is ubiquitous on the web and if I want to do any web development, which I do, I need to learn it. So here I am, diving deep into the language with the help of the JavaScript Fundamentals training course at Pluralsight (great training for a low price) and the JavaScript: The Good Parts book by Douglas Crockford.   Now, there are certainly parts of JavaScript that are bad. I think these are well known by any developer that uses it. The parts that I feel are especially egregious are the following: The global object null vs. undefined truthy and falsy limited (nearly nonexistent) scoping ‘==’ and ‘===’ (I just don’t get the reason for coercion)   However, what I am finding hiding under the covers of the bad things is a good language. I am finding that I am legitimately enjoying JavaScript. This I was not expecting. I’m not going to go into a huge dissertation on what I like about it, but some things include: Object literal notation dynamic typing functional style (JavaScript: The Good Parts describes it as LISP in C clothing) JSON (better than XML) There are parts of JavaScript that seem strange to OOP developers like myself. However, just because it is different or seems strange does not mean it is bad. Some differences are quite interesting and useful.   I feel that it is important for developers to challenge their assumptions and also to be able to admit when they are wrong on a topic. Many different situations can arise that lead to this, such as choosing the wrong technology for a problem’s solution, misunderstanding the requirements, etc. I decided to challenge my assumptions about JavaScript instead of moving straight into CoffeeScript or Dart. After exploring it, I find that I am beginning to enjoy it the more I use it. As long as there are those like Crockford to help guide me in the right way to code in JavaScript, I can create elegant and efficient solutions to problems and add another ‘arrow’ to the ‘quiver’, so to speak. I do still intend to learn CoffeeScript to see what the hub-bub is about, but now I no longer have to be afraid of JavaScript as a legitimate programming language.   Has something similar ever happened to you? Tell me about it in the comments below.

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  • The cost of Programmer Team Clustering

    - by MarkPearl
    I recently was involved in a conversation about the productivity of programmers and the seemingly wide range in abilities that different programmers have in this industry. Some of the comments made were reiterated a few days later when I came across a chapter in Code Complete (v2) where it says "In programming specifically, many studies have shown order-of-magnitude differences in the quality of the programs written, the sizes of the programs written, and the productivity of programmers". In line with this is another comment presented by Code Complete when discussing teams - "Good programmers tend to cluster, as do bad programmers". This is something I can personally relate to. I have come across some really good and bad programmers and 99% of the time it turns out the team they work in is the same - really good or really bad. When I have found a mismatch, it hasn't stayed that way for long - the person has moved on, or the team has ejected the individual. Keeping this in mind I would like to comment on the risks an organization faces when forcing teams to remain together regardless of the mix. When you have the situation where someone is not willing to be part of the team but still wants to get a pay check at the end of each month, it presents some interesting challenges and hard decisions to make. First of all, when this occurs you need to give them an opportunity to change - for someone to change, they need to know what the problem is and what is expected. It is unreasonable to expect someone to change but have not indicated what they need to change and the consequences of not changing. If after a reasonable time of an individual being aware of the problem and not making an effort to improve you need to do two things... Follow through with the consequences of not changing. Consider the impact that this behaviour will have on the rest of the team. What is the cost of not following through with the consequences? If there is no follow through, it is often an indication to the individual that they can continue their behaviour. Why should they change if you don't care enough to keep your end of the agreement? In many ways I think it is very similar to the "Broken Windows" principles – if you allow the windows to break and don’t fix them, more will get broken. What is the cost of keeping them on? When keeping a disruptive influence in a team you risk loosing the good in the team. As Code Complete says, good and bad programmers tend to cluster - they have a tendency to keep this balance - if you are not going to help keep the balance they will. The cost of not removing a disruptive influence is that the good in the team will eventually help you maintain the clustering themselves by leaving.

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  • WebCenter Customer Spotlight: Sberbank of Russia

    - by me
    Author: Peter Reiser - Social Business Evangelist, Oracle WebCenter  Solution SummarySberbank of Russia is the largest credit institution in Russia and the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS), accounting for 27% of Russian banking assets and 26% of Russian banking capital.Sberbank of Russia needed to increase business efficiency and employee productivity due to the growth in its corporate clientele from 1.2 million to an estimated 1.6 million.Sberbank of Russia deployed Oracle’s Siebel Customer Relationship Management (CRM) applications to create a single client view, optimize client communication, improve efficiency, and automate distressed asset processing. Based on Oracle WebCenter Content, they implemented an enterprise content management system for documents, unstructured content storage and search, which became an indispensable service across the organization and in the board room business results. Sberbank of Russia consolidated borrower information across the entire organization into a single repository to obtain, for the first time, a single view on the bank’s borrowers. With the implemented solution they reducing the amount of bad debt significantly. Company OverviewSberbank of Russia is the largest credit institution in Russia and the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS), accounting for 27% of Russian banking assets and 26% of Russian banking capital. In 2010, it ranked 43rd in the world for Tier 1 capital. Business ChallengesSberbank of Russia needed to increase business efficiency and employee productivity due to the growth in its corporate clientele from 1.2 million to an estimated 1.6 million. It also wanted to automate distressed asset management to reduce the number of corporate clients’ bad debts. As part of their business strategy they wanted to drive high-quality, competitive customer services by simplifying client communication processes and enabling personnel to quickly access client information Solution deployedSberbank of Russia deployed Oracle’s Siebel Customer Relationship Management (CRM) applications to create a single client view, optimize client communication, improve efficiency, and automate distressed asset processing. Based on Oracle WebCenter Content, they implemented an enterprise content management system for documents, unstructured content storage and search which became an indispensable service across the organization and in the board room business results. Business ResultsSberbank of Russia consolidated borrower information across the entire organization into a single repository to obtain, for the first time, a single view on the bank’s borrowers. They monitored 103,000 client transactions and 32,000 bank cards with credit collection issues (100% of Sberbank’s bad borrowers) reducing the amount of bad debt significantly. “Innovation and client service are the foundation of our business strategy. Oracle’s Siebel CRM applications helped advance our objectives by enabling us to deliver faster, more personalized service while managing and tracking distressed assets.” A.B. Sokolov, Head of Center of Business Administration and Customer Relationship Management, Sberbank of Russia Additional Information Sberbank of Russia Customer Snapshot Oracle WebCenter Content Siebel Customer Relationship Management 8.1 Oracle Business Intelligence, Enterprise Edition 11g

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  • Good SEO - Why is Good SEO Better Than Its Evil 'Black Hat' Brother?

    With the rise of today's technology, a number of bad and dodgy practices have come into play that can seriously put your website at risk from being banned in the search engines - no questions asked. The constant shift of techniques and 'state of flux' the search engines remain in makes it difficult to differentiate between good and bad SEO.

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