Search Results

Search found 162 results on 7 pages for 'precious tijesunimi'.

Page 7/7 | < Previous Page | 3 4 5 6 7 

• Effectiveness and Efficiency

  - by Daniel Moth

  In the professional environment, i.e. at work, I am always seeking personal growth and to be challenged. The result is that my assignments, my work list, my tasks, my goals, my commitments, my [insert whatever word resonates with you] keep growing (in scope and desired impact). Which in turn means I have to keep finding new ways to deliver more value, while not falling into the trap of working more hours. To do that I continuously evaluate both my effectiveness and my efficiency. EFFECTIVENESS The first thing I check is my effectiveness: Am I doing the right things? Am I focusing too much on unimportant things? Am I spending more time doing stuff that is important to my team/org/division/business/company, or am I spending it on stuff that is important to me and that I enjoy doing? Am I valuing activities that maybe I have outgrown and should be delegated to others who are at a stage I have surpassed (in Microsoft speak: is the work I am doing level appropriate or am I still operating at the previous level)? Notice how the answers to those questions change over time and due to certain events, so I have to remind myself to revisit them frequently. Events that force me to re-examine them are: change of role, change of team/org/etc, change of direction of team/org/etc, re-org, new hires on the team that take on some of the work I did, personal promotion, change of manager... and if none of those events has occurred since the last annual review, I ask myself those at each annual review anyway. If you think you are not being effective at work, make a list of the stuff that you do and start tracking where your time goes. In parallel, have a discussion with your manager about where they think your time should go. Ultimately your time is finite and hence it is your most precious investment, don't waste it. If your management doesn't value as highly what you spend your time on, then either convince your management, or stop spending your time on it, or find different management: Lead, Follow, or get out of the way! That's my view on effectiveness. You have to fix that before moving to being efficient, or you may end up being very efficient at stuff that nobody wants you to be doing in the first place. For example, you may be spending your time writing blog posts and becoming better and faster at it all the time. If your manager thinks that is not even part of your job description, you are wasting your time to satisfy your inner desires. Nobody can help you with your effectiveness other than your management chain and your management peers - they are the judges of it. EFFICIENCY The second thing I check is my efficiency: Am I doing things right? For me, doing things right means that I deliver the same quality of work faster [than what I used to, and than my peers, and than expected of me]. The result is that I can achieve more [than what I used to, and than my peers, and than expected of me]. Notice how the efficiency goal is a more portable one. If, by whatever criteria, you think you are the best at [insert your own skill here], this can change at two events: because you have new colleagues (who are potentially better than your older ones), and it can change with a change of manager (who has potentially higher expectations). That's about it. Once you are efficient at something, you carry that with you... All you need to really be doing here is, when taking on new kinds of work that you haven't done before, try a few approaches and devise a system so that you can become efficient at this new activity too... Just keep "collecting" stuff that you are efficient at. If you think you are not being efficient at something, break it down: What are the steps you take to complete that task? How long do you spend on each step? Talk to others about what steps they take, to see if you can optimize some steps away or trade them for better steps, or just learn how to complete a step faster. Have a system for every task you take so that you can have repeatable success. That's my view on efficiency. You have to fix it so that you can free up time to do more. When you plan a route from A to B - all else being equal - you try to get there as fast as possible so why would you not want to do that with your everyday work? For example, imagine you are inefficient at processing email: You spend more time than necessary dealing with email, and you still end up with dropped email threads and with slower response times than others. How can you improve? Talk to someone that you think is good at this, understand their system (e.g. here is my email processing system) and come up with one that works for you. Parting Thoughts Are you considered, by your colleagues and manager, an effective and efficient person at your workplace? If you are, what would you change if you were asked by your management to do the job of two people? Seriously, think about that! Your immediate reaction may be "that is not possible", but it actually is. You just have to re-assess what things that were previously important will now stop being important, by discussing them with your management and reaching agreement on relative priorities. For example, stuff that was previously on your plate may now have to be delegated or dropped. Where you thought you were efficient, maybe now you have to find an even faster path to completion, perhaps keeping in mind that Perfect is the Enemy of “Good Enough”. My personal experience (from both observing others and from my own reflection) is that when folks are struggling to keep up at work it is because of two reasons: They are investing energy in stuff that they enjoy doing which the business regards as having a lower priority than a lot of other things on their plate. They are completing tasks to a level of higher quality than what is required (due to personal pride) missing the big picture which almost always mandates completing three tasks at good enough quality than knocking only one of them out of the park while the other two come in late or not at all. There is a lot of content on the web, so I strongly encourage you to use your favorite search engine to read other views on effectiveness and efficiency (Bing, Google). Comments about this post by Daniel Moth welcome at the original blog.

  Read the article

• The UIManager Pattern

  - by Duncan Mills

  One of the most common mistakes that I see when reviewing ADF application code, is the sin of storing UI component references, most commonly things like table or tree components in Session or PageFlow scope. The reasons why this is bad are simple; firstly, these UI object references are not serializable so would not survive a session migration between servers and secondly there is no guarantee that the framework will re-use the same component tree from request to request, although in practice it generally does do so. So there danger here is, that at best you end up with an NPE after you session has migrated, and at worse, you end up pinning old generations of the component tree happily eating up your precious memory. So that's clear, we should never. ever, be storing references to components anywhere other than request scope (or maybe backing bean scope). So double check the scope of those binding attributes that map component references into a managed bean in your applications.  Why is it Such a Common Mistake?  At this point I want to examine why there is this urge to hold onto these references anyway? After all, JSF will obligingly populate your backing beans with the fresh and correct reference when needed.   In most cases, it seems that the rational is down to a lack of distinction within the application between what is data and what is presentation. I think perhaps, a cause of this is the logical separation between business data behind the ADF data binding (#{bindings}) façade and the UI components themselves. Developers tend to think, OK this is my data layer behind the bindings object and everything else is just UI.  Of course that's not the case.  The UI layer itself will have state which is intrinsically linked to the UI presentation rather than the business model, but at the same time should not be tighly bound to a specific instance of any single UI component. So here's the problem.  I think developers try and use the UI components as state-holders for this kind of data, rather than using them to represent that state. An example of this might be something like the selection state of a tabset (panelTabbed), you might be interested in knowing what the currently disclosed tab is. The temptation that leads to the component reference sin is to go and ask the tabset what the selection is.  That of course is fine in context - e.g. a handler within the same request scoped bean that's got the binding to the tabset. However, it leads to problems when you subsequently want the same information outside of the immediate scope.  The simple solution seems to be to chuck that component reference into session scope and then you can simply re-check in the same way, leading of course to this mistake. Turn it on its Head  So the correct solution to this is to turn the problem on its head. If you are going to be interested in the value or state of some component outside of the immediate request context then it becomes persistent state (persistent in the sense that it extends beyond the lifespan of a single request). So you need to externalize that state outside of the component and have the component reference and manipulate that state as needed rather than owning it. This is what I call the UIManager pattern.  Defining the Pattern The  UIManager pattern really is very simple. The premise is that every application should define a session scoped managed bean, appropriately named UIManger, which is specifically responsible for holding this persistent UI component related state.  The actual makeup of the UIManger class varies depending on a needs of the application and the amount of state that needs to be stored. Generally I'll start off with a Map in which individual flags can be created as required, although you could opt for a more formal set of typed member variables with getters and setters, or indeed a mix. This UIManager class is defined as a session scoped managed bean (#{uiManager}) in the faces-config.xml.  The pattern is to then inject this instance of the class into any other managed bean (usually request scope) that needs it using a managed property.  So typically you'll have something like this:   <managed-bean>     <managed-bean-name>uiManager</managed-bean-name>     <managed-bean-class>oracle.demo.view.state.UIManager</managed-bean-class>     <managed-bean-scope>session</managed-bean-scope>   </managed-bean>  When is then injected into any backing bean that needs it:    <managed-bean>     <managed-bean-name>mainPageBB</managed-bean-name>     <managed-bean-class>oracle.demo.view.MainBacking</managed-bean-class>     <managed-bean-scope>request</managed-bean-scope>     <managed-property>       <property-name>uiManager</property-name>       <property-class>oracle.demo.view.state.UIManager</property-class>       <value>#{uiManager}</value>     </managed-property>   </managed-bean> In this case the backing bean in question needs a member variable to hold and reference the UIManager: private UIManager _uiManager;  Which should be exposed via a getter and setter pair with names that match the managed property name (e.g. setUiManager(UIManager _uiManager), getUiManager()).  This will then give your code within the backing bean full access to the UI state. UI components in the page can, of course, directly reference the uiManager bean in their properties, for example, going back to the tab-set example you might have something like this: <af:paneltabbed>   <af:showDetailItem text="First"                disclosed="#{uiManager.settings['MAIN_TABSET_STATE'].['FIRST']}"> ...   </af:showDetailItem>   <af:showDetailItem text="Second"                      disclosed="#{uiManager.settings['MAIN_TABSET_STATE'].['SECOND']}">     ...   </af:showDetailItem>   ... </af:panelTabbed> Where in this case the settings member within the UI Manger is a Map which contains a Map of Booleans for each tab under the MAIN_TABSET_STATE key. (Just an example you could choose to store just an identifier for the selected tab or whatever, how you choose to store the state within UI Manger is up to you.) Get into the Habit So we can see that the UIManager pattern is not great strain to implement for an application and can even be retrofitted to an existing application with ease. The point is, however, that you should always take this approach rather than committing the sin of persistent component references which will bite you in the future or shotgun scattered UI flags on the session which are hard to maintain.  If you take the approach of always accessing all UI state via the uiManager, or perhaps a pageScope focused variant of it, you'll find your applications much easier to understand and maintain. Do it today!

  Read the article

• If 'Architect' is a dirty word - what's the alternative; when not everyone can actually design a goo

  - by Andras Zoltan

  Now - I'm a developer first and foremost; but whenever I sit down to work on a big project with lots of interlinking components and areas, I will forward-plan my interfaces, base classes etc as best I can - putting on my Architect hat. For a few weeks I've been doing this for a huge project - designing whole swathes of interfaces etc for a business-wide platform that we're developing. The basic structure is a couple of big projects that consists of service and data interfaces, with some basic implementations of all of these. On their own, these assemblies are useless though, as they are simply intended intended as a scaffold on which to build a business-specific implementation (we have a lot of businesses). Therefore, the design of the core platform is absolutely crucial, since consumers of the system are not intended to know which implementation they are actually using. In the past it's not worked so well, but after a few proof-of-concepts and R&D projects this new platform is now growing nicely and is already proving itself. Then somebody else gets involved in the project - he's a TDD man who sees code-level architecture as an irrelevance and is definitely from the camp that 'architect' is a dirty word - I should add that our working relationship is very good despite this :) He's open about the fact that he can't architect in advance and obviously TDD really helps him because it allows him to evolve his systems over time. That I get, and totally understand; but it means that his coding style, basically, doesn't seem to be able to honour the architecture that I've been putting in place. Now don't get me wrong - he's an awesome coder; but the other day he needed to extend one of his components (an implementation of a core interface) to bring in an extra implementation-specific dependency; and in doing so he extended the core interface as well as his implementation (he uses ReSharper), thus breaking the independence of the whole interface. When I pointed out his error to him, he was dismayed. Being test-first, all that mattered to him was that he'd made his tests pass, and just said 'well, I need that dependency, so can't we put it in?'. Of course we could put it in, but I was frustrated that he couldn't see that refactoring the generic interface to incorporate an implementation-specific feature was just wrong! But it is all very Charlie Brown to him (you know the sound the adults make when they're talking to the children) - as far as he's concerned we don't need to worry about it because we can always refactor. The problem is, the culture of test-write-refactor is all very well and good - but not when you're dealing with a platform that is going to be shared out among so many projects that you could never get them all in one place to make the refactorings work. In my opinion, sometimes you actually have to think about what you're doing, and not just let nature take its course. Am I simply fulfilling the role of Architect as a dirty word here? I believe that architecture is important and should be thought about before code gets written; unless it's a particularly small project. But when you're working in a team of people who don't think that way, or even can't think that way how can you actually get this across? Is it a case of simply making the architecture off-limits to changes by other people? I don't want to start having bloody committees just to be able to grow the system; but equally I don't want to be the only one responsible for it all. Do you think the architect role is a waste of time? Is it at odds with TDD and other practises? Can this mix of different practises be made to work, or should I just be a lot less precious (and in so doing allow a generic platform become useless!)? Or do I just lay down the law? Any ideas/experiences/views gratefully received.

  Read the article

• Writing a code example

  - by Stefano Borini

  I would like to have your feedback regarding code examples. One of the most frustrating experiences I sometimes have when learning a new technology is finding useless examples. I think an example as the most precious thing that comes with a new library, language, or technology. It must be a starting point, a wise and unadulterated explanation on how to achieve a given result. A perfect example must have the following characteristics: Self contained: it should be small enough to be compiled or executed as a single program, without dependencies or complex makefiles. An example is also a strong functional test if you correctly installed the new technology. The more issues could arise, the more likely is that something goes wrong, and the more difficult is to debug and solve the situation. Pertinent: it should demonstrate one, and only one, specific feature of your software/library, involving the minimal additional behavior from external libraries. Helpful: the code should bring you forward, step by step, using comments or self-documenting code. Extensible: the example code should be a small “framework” or blueprint for additional tinkering. A learner can start by adding features to this blueprint. Recyclable: it should be possible to extract parts of the example to use in your own code Easy: An example code is not the place to show your code-fu skillz. Keep it easy. helpful acronym: SPHERE. Prototypical examples of violations of those rules are the following: Violation of self-containedness: an example spanning multiple files without any real need for it. If your example is a python program, keep everything into a single module file. Don’t sub-modularize it. In Java, try to keep everything into a single class, unless you really must partition some entity into a meaningful object you need to pass around (and java mandates one class per file, if I remember correctly). Violation of Pertinency: When showing how many different shapes you can draw, adding radio buttons and complex controls with all the possible choices for point shapes is a bad idea. You de-focalize your example code, introducing code for event handling, controls initialization etc., and this is not part the feature you want to demonstrate, they are unnecessary noise in the understanding of the crucial mechanisms providing the feature. Violation of Helpfulness: code containing dubious naming, wrong comments, hacks, and functions longer than one page of code. Violation of Extensibility: badly factored code that have everything into a single function, with potentially swappable entities embedded within the code. Example: if an example reads data from a file and displays it, create a method getData() returning a useful entity, instead of opening the file raw and plotting the stuff. This way, if the user of the library needs to read data from a HTTP server instead, he just has to modify the getData() module and use the example almost as-is. Another violation of Extensibility comes if the example code is not under a fully liberal (e.g. MIT or BSD) license. Violation of Recyclability: when the code layout is so intermingled that is difficult to easily copy and paste parts of it and recycle them into another program. Again, licensing is also a factor. Violation of Easiness: Yes, you are a functional-programming nerd and want to show how cool you are by doing everything on a single line of map, filter and so on, but that could not be helpful to someone else, who is already under pressure to understand your library, and now has to understand your code as well. And in general, the final rule: if it takes more than 10 minutes to do the following: compile the code, run it, read the source, and understand it fully, it means that the example is not a good one. Please let me know your opinion, either positive or negative, or experience on this regard.

  Read the article

• Can a conforming C implementation #define NULL to be something wacky

  - by janks

  I'm asking because of the discussion that's been provoked in this thread: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/2597142/when-was-the-null-macro-not-0/2597232 Trying to have a serious back-and-forth discussion using comments under other people's replies is not easy or fun. So I'd like to hear what our C experts think without being restricted to 500 characters at a time. The C standard has precious few words to say about NULL and null pointer constants. There's only two relevant sections that I can find. First: 3.2.2.3 Pointers An integral constant expression with the value 0, or such an expression cast to type void * , is called a null pointer constant. If a null pointer constant is assigned to or compared for equality to a pointer, the constant is converted to a pointer of that type. Such a pointer, called a null pointer, is guaranteed to compare unequal to a pointer to any object or function. and second: 4.1.5 Common definitions <stddef.h> The macros are NULL which expands to an implementation-defined null pointer constant; The question is, can NULL expand to an implementation-defined null pointer constant that is different from the ones enumerated in 3.2.2.3? In particular, could it be defined as: #define NULL __builtin_magic_null_pointer Or even: #define NULL ((void*)-1) My reading of 3.2.2.3 is that it specifies that an integral constant expression of 0, and an integral constant expression of 0 cast to type void* must be among the forms of null pointer constant that the implementation recognizes, but that it isn't meant to be an exhaustive list. I believe that the implementation is free to recognize other source constructs as null pointer constants, so long as no other rules are broken. So for example, it is provable that #define NULL (-1) is not a legal definition, because in if (NULL) do_stuff(); do_stuff() must not be called, whereas with if (-1) do_stuff(); do_stuff() must be called; since they are equivalent, this cannot be a legal definition of NULL. But the standard says that integer-to-pointer conversions (and vice-versa) are implementation-defined, therefore it could define the conversion of -1 to a pointer as a conversion that produces a null pointer. In which case if ((void*)-1) would evaluate to false, and all would be well. So what do other people think? I'd ask for everybody to especially keep in mind the "as-if" rule described in 2.1.2.3 Program execution. It's huge and somewhat roundabout, so I won't paste it here, but it essentially says that an implementation merely has to produce the same observable side-effects as are required of the abstract machine described by the standard. It says that any optimizations, transformations, or whatever else the compiler wants to do to your program are perfectly legal so long as the observable side-effects of the program aren't changed by them. So if you are looking to prove that a particular definition of NULL cannot be legal, you'll need to come up with a program that can prove it. Either one like mine that blatantly breaks other clauses in the standard, or one that can legally detect whatever magic the compiler has to do to make the strange NULL definition work. Steve Jessop found an example of way for a program to detect that NULL isn't defined to be one of the two forms of null pointer constants in 3.2.2.3, which is to stringize the constant: #define stringize_helper(x) #x #define stringize(x) stringize_helper(x) Using this macro, one could puts(stringize(NULL)); and "detect" that NULL does not expand to one of the forms in 3.2.2.3. Is that enough to render other definitions illegal? I just don't know. Thanks!

  Read the article

• Rendering a Long Document on iPad

  - by benjismith

  I'm implementing a document viewer with highlighting/annotation capabilities for a custom document format on iPad. The documents are kind of long (100 to 200 pages, if printed on paper) and I've had a hard time finding the right approach. Here are the requirments: 1) Basic rich-text styling: control of left/right margins. Control of font name, size, foreground/background color, and line spacing. Bold, italics, underline, etc. 2) Selection and highlighting of arbitrary text regions (not limited to paragraph boundaries, like in Safari/UIWebView). 3) Customization of the Cut/Copy/Paste popup (what is that thing called anyhow? UIActionBar?) This is one of the essential requirements of the app. My first implementation was based on UIWebView. I just rendered the document as HTML with CSS for text styling. But I couldn't get the kind of text selection behavior I wanted (across paragraph boundaries) and the UIActionBar can't be customized from within UIWebView. So I started working on a javascript approach, faking the device text-selection behavior using JQuery to trap touch events and dynamically modifying the DOM to change the background color of selected regions of text. I built a fake UIActionBar control as a hidden DIV, positioning it and unhiding it whenever there was an active selection region. Not too shabby. The main problem is that it's SLOOOOOOOW. Scrolling through the document is nice and quick, but dynamically changing the DOM is not very snappy. Plus, I couldn't figure out how to recreate the magnifier loupe, so my fake text-selection GUI doesn't look quite the same as the native implementation. Also, I haven't yet implemented the communication bridge between the javascript layer and the objective-c layer (where the rest of the app lives), but it was shaping up to be a huge hassle. So I've been looking at CoreText, but there are precious few examples on the web. I spent a little time with this simple little demo: http://github.com/jonasschnelli/I7CoreTextExample/ It shows how to use CoreText to draw an NSAttributedText string into a UIView. But it has its own problems: It doesn't implement text-selection behavior, and it doesn't present a UIActionBar, so I don't have any idea how to make that happen. And, more importantly, it tries to draw the entire document all at once, with significant performance degradations for long documents. My documents can have thousands of paragraphs, and less than 1% of the document is ever on screen at a time. On the plus side, these documents already contain precise formatting information. I know the exact page-position of every line of text, so I don't need a layout engine. Does anyone know how to implement this sort of view using CoreText? I understand that a full-fledged implementation is overkill for a question like this, but I'm looking for a good CoreText example with a few basic requirements: 1) Precise layout & formatting control (using the formatting metrics and text styles I've already calculated). 2) Arbitrary selection of text. 3) Customization of the UIActionBar. 4) Efficient recycling of resources for off-screen objects. I'd be happy to implement my own recycling when text elements scroll off-screen, but wouldn't that require re-implementing UIScrollView? I'm brand-new to iPhone development, and still getting used to Objective-C, but I've been working in other languages (Java, C#, flex/actionscript, etc) for more than ten years, so I feel confident in my ability to get the work done, if only I had a better feel for the iPhone SDK and the common coding patterns for stuff like this. Is it just me, or does the SDK documentation really suck? Anyhow, thanks for your help!

  Read the article

• eBooks on iPad vs. Kindle: More Debate than Smackdown

  - by andrewbrust

  When the iPad was presented at its San Francisco launch event on January 28th, Steve Jobs spent a significant amount of time explaining how well the device would serve as an eBook reader. He showed the iBooks reader application and iBookstore and laid down the gauntlet before Amazon and its beloved Kindle device. Almost immediately afterwards, criticism came rushing forth that the iPad could never beat the Kindle for book reading. The curious part of that criticism is that virtually no one offering it had actually used the iPad yet. A few weeks later, on April 3rd, the iPad was released for sale in the United States. I bought one on that day and in the few additional weeks that have elapsed, I’ve given quite a workout to most of its capabilities, including its eBook features. I’ve also spent some time with the Kindle, albeit a first-generation model, to see how it actually compares to the iPad. I had some expectations going in, but I came away with conclusions about each device that were more scenario-based than absolute. I present my findings to you here.   Vital Statistics Let’s start with an inventory of each device’s underlying technology. The iPad has a color, backlit LCD screen and an on-screen keyboard. It has a battery which, on a full charge, lasts anywhere from 6-10 hours. The Kindle offers a monochrome, reflective E Ink display, a physical keyboard and a battery that on my first gen loaner unit can go up to a week between charges (Amazon claims the battery on the Kindle 2 can last up to 2 weeks on a single charge). The Kindle connects to Amazon’s Kindle Store using a 3G modem (the technology and network vary depending on the model) that incurs no airtime service charges whatsoever. The iPad units that are on-sale today work over WiFi only. 3G-equipped models will be on sale shortly and will command a $130 premium over their WiFi-only counterparts. 3G service on the iPad, in the U.S. from AT&T, will be fee-based, with a 250MB plan at $14.99 per month and an unlimited plan at $29.99. No contract is required for 3G service. All these tech specs aside, I think a more useful observation is that the iPad is a multi-purpose Internet-connected entertainment device, while the Kindle is a dedicated reading device. The question is whether those differences in design and intended use create a clear-cut winner for reading electronic publications. Let’s take a look at each device, in isolation, now.   Kindle To me, what’s most innovative about the Kindle is its E Ink display. E Ink really looks like ink on a sheet of paper. It requires no backlight, it’s fully visible in direct sunlight and it causes almost none of the eyestrain that LCD-based computer display technology (like that used on the iPad) does. It’s really versatile in an all-around way. Forgive me if this sounds precious, but reading on it is really a joy. In fact, it’s a genuinely relaxing experience. Through the Kindle Store, Amazon allows users to download books (including audio books), magazines, newspapers and blog feeds. Books and magazines can be purchased either on a single-issue basis or as an annual subscription. Books, of course, are purchased singly. Oddly, blogs are not free, but instead carry a monthly subscription fee, typically $1.99. To me this is ludicrous, but I suppose the free 3G service is partially to blame. Books and magazine issues download quickly. Magazine and blog subscriptions cause new issues or posts to be pushed to your device on an automated basis. Available blogs include 9000-odd feeds that Amazon offers on the Kindle Store; unless I missed something, arbitrary RSS feeds are not supported (though there are third party workarounds to this limitation). The shopping experience is integrated well, has an huge selection, and offers certain graphical perks. For example, magazine and newspaper logos are displayed in menus, and book cover thumbnails appear as well. A simple search mechanism is provided and text entry through the physical keyboard is relatively painless. It’s very easy and straightforward to enter the store, find something you like and start reading it quickly. If you know what you’re looking for, it’s even faster. Given Kindle’s high portability, very reliable battery, instant-on capability and highly integrated content acquisition, it makes reading on whim, and in random spurts of downtime, very attractive. The Kindle’s home screen lists all of your publications, and easily lets you select one, then start reading it. Once opened, publications display in crisp, attractive text that is adjustable in size. “Turning” pages is achieved through buttons dedicated to the task. Notes can be recorded, bookmarks can be saved and pages can be saved as clippings. I am not an avid book reader, and yet I found the Kindle made it really fun, convenient and soothing to read. There’s something about the easy access to the material and the simplicity of the display that makes the Kindle seduce you into chilling out and reading page after page. On the other hand, the Kindle has an awkward navigation interface. While menus are displayed clearly on the screen, the method of selecting menu items is tricky: alongside the right-hand edge of the main display is a thin column that acts as a second display. It has a white background, and a scrollable silver cursor that is moved up or down through the use of the device’s scrollwheel. Picking a menu item on the main display involves scrolling the silver cursor to a position parallel to that menu item and pushing the scrollwheel in. This navigation technique creates a disconnect, literally. You don’t really click on a selection so much as you gesture toward it. I got used to this technique quickly, but I didn’t love it. It definitely created a kind of anxiety in me, making me feel the need to speed through menus and get to my destination document quickly. Once there, I could calm down and relax. Books are great on the Kindle. Magazines and newspapers much less so. I found the rendering of photographs, and even illustrations, to be unacceptably crude. For this reason, I expect that reading textbooks on the Kindle may leave students wanting. I found that the original flow and layout of any publication was sacrificed on the Kindle. In effect, browsing a magazine or newspaper was almost impossible. Reading the text of individual articles was enjoyable, but having to read this way made the whole experience much more “a la carte” than cohesive and thematic between articles. I imagine that for academic journals this is ideal, but for consumer publications it imposes a stripped-down, low-fidelity experience that evokes a sense of deprivation. In general, the Kindle is great for reading text. For just about anything else, especially activity that involves exploratory browsing, meandering and short-attention-span reading, it presents a real barrier to entry and adoption. Avid book readers will enjoy the Kindle (if they’re not already). It’s a great device for losing oneself in a book over long sittings. Multitaskers who are more interested in periodicals, be they online or off, will like it much less, as they will find compromise, and even sacrifice, to be palpable.   iPad The iPad is a very different device from the Kindle. While the Kindle is oriented to pages of text, the iPad orbits around applications and their interfaces. Be it the pinch and zoom experience in the browser, the rich media features that augment content on news and weather sites, or the ability to interact with social networking services like Twitter, the iPad is versatile. While it shares a slate-like form factor with the Kindle, it’s effectively an elegant personal computer. One of its many features is the iBook application and integration of the iBookstore. But it’s a multi-purpose device. That turns out to be good and bad, depending on what you’re reading. The iBookstore is great for browsing. It’s color, rich animation-laden user interface make it possible to shop for books, rather than merely search and acquire them. Unfortunately, its selection is rather sparse at the moment. If you’re looking for a New York Times bestseller, or other popular titles, you should be OK. If you want to read something more specialized, it’s much harder. Unlike the awkward navigation interface of the Kindle, the iPad offers a nearly flawless touch-screen interface that seduces the user into tinkering and kibitzing every bit as much as the Kindle lulls you into a deep, concentrated read. It’s a dynamic and interactive device, whereas the Kindle is static and passive. The iBook reader is slick and fun. Use the iPad in landscape mode and you can read the book in 2-up (left/right 2-page) display; use it in portrait mode and you can read one page at a time. Rather than clicking a hardware button to turn pages, you simply drag and wipe from right-to-left to flip the single or right-hand page. The page actually travels through an animated path as it would in a physical book. The intuitiveness of the interface is uncanny. The reader also accommodates saving of bookmarks, searching of the text, and the ability to highlight a word and look it up in a dictionary. Pages display brightly and clearly. They’re easy to read. But the backlight and the glare made me less comfortable than I was with the Kindle. The knowledge that completely different applications (including the Web and email and Twitter) were just a few taps away made me antsy and very tempted to task-switch. The knowledge that battery life is an issue created subtle discomfort. If the Kindle makes you feel like you’re in a library reading room, then the iPad makes you feel, at best, like you’re under fluorescent lights at a Barnes and Noble or Borders store. If you’re lucky, you’d be on a couch or at a reading table in the store, but you might also be standing up, in the aisles. Clearly, I didn’t find this conducive to focused and sustained reading. But that may have more to do with my own tendency to read periodicals far more than books, and my neurotic . And, truth be known, the book reading experience, when not explicitly compared to Kindle’s, was still pleasant. It is also important to point out that Kindle Store-sourced books can be read on the iPad through a Kindle reader application, from Amazon, specific to the device. This offered a less rich experience than the iBooks reader, but it was completely adequate. Despite the Kindle brand of the reader, however, it offered little in terms of simulating the reading experience on its namesake device. When it comes to periodicals, the iPad wins hands down. Magazines, even if merely scanned images of their print editions, read on the iPad in a way that felt similar to reading hard copy. The full color display, touch navigation and even the ability to render advertisements in their full glory makes the iPad a great way to read through any piece of work that is measured in pages, rather than chapters. There are many ways to get magazines and newspapers onto the iPad, including the Zinio reader, and publication-specific applications like the Wall Street Journal’s and Popular Science’s. The New York Times’ free Editors’ Choice application offers a Times Reader-like interface to a subset of the Gray Lady’s daily content. The completely Web-based but iPad-optimized Times Skimmer site (at www.nytimes.com/timesskimmer) works well too. Even conventional Web sites themselves can be read much like magazines, given the iPad’s ability to zoom in on the text and crop out advertisements on the margins. While the Kindle does have an experimental Web browser, it reminded me a lot of early mobile phone browsers, only in a larger size. For text-heavy sites with simple layout, it works fine. For just about anything else, it becomes more trouble than it’s worth. And given the way magazine articles make me think of things I want to look up online, I think that’s a real liability for the Kindle.   Summing Up What I came to realize is that the Kindle isn’t so much a computer or even an Internet device as it is a printer. While it doesn’t use physical paper, it still renders its content a page at a time, just like a laser printer does, and its output appears strikingly similar. You can read the rendered text, but you can’t interact with it in any way. That’s why the navigation requires a separate cursor display area. And because of the page-oriented rendering behavior, turning pages causes a flash on the display and requires a sometimes long pause before the next page is rendered. The good side of this is that once the page is generated, no battery power is required to display it. That makes for great battery life, optimal viewing under most lighting conditions (as long as there is some light) and low-eyestrain text-centric display of content. The Kindle is highly portable, has an excellent selection in its store and is refreshingly distraction-free. All of this is ideal for reading books. And iPad doesn’t offer any of it. What iPad does offer is versatility, variety, richness and luxury. It’s flush with accoutrements even if it’s low on focused, sustained text display. That makes it inferior to the Kindle for book reading. But that also makes it better than the Kindle for almost everything else. As such, and given that its book reading experience is still decent (even if not superior), I think the iPad will give Kindle a run for its money. True book lovers, and people on a budget, will want the Kindle. People with a robust amount of discretionary income may want both devices. Everyone else who is interested in a slate form factor e-reading device, especially if they also wish to have leisure-friendly Internet access, will likely choose the iPad exclusively. One thing is for sure: iPad has reduced Kindle’s market, and may have shifted its mass market potential to a mere niche play. If Amazon is smart, it will improve its iPad-based Kindle reader app significantly. It can then leverage the iPad channel as a significant market for the Kindle Store. After all, selling the eBooks themselves is what Amazon should care most about.

  Read the article

• The Windows Store... why did I sign up with this mess again?

  - by FransBouma

  Yesterday, Microsoft revealed that the Windows Store is now open to all developers in a wide range of countries and locations. For the people who think "wtf is the 'Windows Store'?", it's the central place where Windows 8 users will be able to find, download and purchase applications (or as we now have to say to not look like a computer illiterate: <accent style="Kentucky">aaaaappss</accent>) for Windows 8. As this is the store which is integrated into Windows 8, it's an interesting place for ISVs, as potential customers might very well look there first. This of course isn't true for all kinds of software, and developer tools in general aren't the kind of applications most users will download from the Windows store, but a presence there can't hurt. Now, this Windows Store hosts two kinds of applications: 'Metro-style' applications and 'Desktop' applications. The 'Metro-style' applications are applications created for the new 'Metro' UI which is present on Windows 8 desktop and Windows RT (the single color/big font fingerpaint-oriented UI). 'Desktop' applications are the applications we all run and use on Windows today. Our software are desktop applications. The Windows Store hosts all Metro-style applications locally in the store and handles the payment for these applications. This means you upload your application (sorry, 'app') to the store, jump through a lot of hoops, Microsoft verifies that your application is not violating a tremendous long list of rules and after everything is OK, it's published and hopefully you get customers and thus earn money. Money which Microsoft will pay you on a regular basis after customers buy your application. Desktop applications are not following this path however. Desktop applications aren't hosted by the Windows Store. Instead, the Windows Store more or less hosts a page with the application's information and where to get the goods. I.o.w.: it's nothing more than a product's Facebook page. Microsoft will simply redirect a visitor of the Windows Store to your website and the visitor will then use your site's system to purchase and download the application. This last bit of information is very important. So, this morning I started with fresh energy to register our company 'Solutions Design bv' at the Windows Store and our two applications, LLBLGen Pro and ORM Profiler. First I went to the Windows Store dashboard page. If you don't have an account, you have to log in or sign up if you don't have a live account. I signed in with my live account. After that, it greeted me with a page where I had to fill in a code which was mailed to me. My local mail server polls every several minutes for email so I had to kick it to get it immediately. I grabbed the code from the email and I was presented with a multi-step process to register myself as a company or as an individual. In red I was warned that this choice was permanent and not changeable. I chuckled: Microsoft apparently stores its data on paper, not in digital form. I chose 'company' and was presented with a lengthy form to fill out. On the form there were two strange remarks: Per company there can just be 1 (one, uno, not zero, not two or more) registered developer, and only that developer is able to upload stuff to the store. I have no idea how this works with large companies, oh the overhead nightmares... "Sorry, but John, our registered developer with the Windows Store is on holiday for 3 months, backpacking through Australia, no, he's not reachable at this point. M'yeah, sorry bud. Hey, did you fill in those TPS reports yesterday?" A separate Approver has to be specified, which has to be a different person than the registered developer. Apparently to Microsoft a company with just 1 person is not a company. Luckily we're with two people! *pfew*, dodged that one, otherwise I would be stuck forever: the choice I already made was not reversible! After I had filled out the form and it was all well and good and accepted by the Microsoft lackey who had to write it all down in some paper notebook ("Hey, be warned! It's a permanent choice! Written down in ink, can't be changed!"), I was presented with the question how I wanted to pay for all this. "Pay for what?" I wondered. Must be the paper they were scribbling the information on, I concluded. After all, there's a financial crisis going on! How could I forget! Silly me. "Ok fair enough". The price was 75 Euros, not the end of the world. I could only pay by credit card, so it was accepted quickly. Or so I thought. You see, Microsoft has a different idea about CC payments. In the normal world, you type in your CC number, some date, a name and a security code and that's it. But Microsoft wants to verify this even more. They want to make a verification purchase of a very small amount and are doing that with a special code in the description. You then have to type in that code in a special form in the Windows Store dashboard and after that you're verified. Of course they'll refund the small amount they pull from your card. Sounds simple, right? Well... no. The problem starts with the fact that I can't see the CC activity on some website: I have a bank issued CC card. I get the CC activity once a month on a piece of paper sent to me. The bank's online website doesn't show them. So it's possible I have to wait for this code till October 12th. One month. "So what, I'm not going to use it anyway, Desktop applications don't use the payment system", I thought. "Haha, you're so naive, dear developer!" Microsoft won't allow you to publish any applications till this verification is done. So no application publishing for a month. Wouldn't it be nice if things were, you know, digital, so things got done instantly? But of course, that lackey who scribbled everything in the Big Windows Store Registration Book isn't that quick. Can't blame him though. He's just doing his job. Now, after the payment was done, I was presented with a page which tells me Microsoft is going to use a third party company called 'Symantec', which will verify my identity again. The page explains to me that this could be done through email or phone and that they'll contact the Approver to verify my identity. "Phone?", I thought... that's a little drastic for a developer account to publish a single page of information about an external hosted software product, isn't it? On Facebook I just added a page, done. And paying you, Microsoft, took less information: you were happy to take my money before my identity was even 'verified' by this 3rd party's minions! "Double standards!", I roared. No-one cared. But it's the thought of getting it off your chest, you know. Luckily for me, everyone at Symantec was asleep when I was registering so they went for the fallback option in case phone calls were not possible: my Approver received an email. Imagine you have to explain the idiot web of security theater I was caught in to someone else who then has to reply a random person over the internet that I indeed was who I said I was. As she's a true sweetheart, she gave me the benefit of the doubt and assured that for now, I was who I said I was. Remember, this is for a desktop application, which is only a link to a website, some pictures and a piece of text. No file hosting, no payment processing, nothing, just a single page. Yeah, I also thought I was crazy. But we're not at the end of this quest yet. I clicked around in the confusing menus of the Windows Store dashboard and found the 'Desktop' section. I get a helpful screen with a warning in red that it can't find any certified 'apps'. True, I'm just getting started, buddy. I see a link: "Check the Windows apps you submitted for certification". Well, I haven't submitted anything, but let's see where it brings me. Oh the thrill of adventure! I click the link and I end up on this site: the hardware/desktop dashboard account registration. "Erm... but I just registered...", I mumbled to no-one in particular. Apparently for desktop registration / verification I have to register again, it tells me. But not only that, the desktop application has to be signed with a certificate. And not just some random el-cheapo certificate you can get at any mall's discount store. No, this certificate is special. It's precious. This certificate, the 'Microsoft Authenticode' Digital Certificate, is the only certificate that's acceptable, and jolly, it can be purchased from VeriSign for the price of only ... $99.-, but be quick, because this is a limited time offer! After that it's, I kid you not, $499.-. 500 dollars for a certificate to sign an executable. But, I do feel special, I got a special price. Only for me! I'm glowing. Not for long though. Here I started to wonder, what the benefit of it all was. I now again had to pay money for a shiny certificate which will add 'Solutions Design bv' to our installer as the publisher instead of 'unknown', while our customers download the file from our website. Not only that, but this was all about a Desktop application, which wasn't hosted by Microsoft. They only link to it. And make no mistake. These prices aren't single payments. Every year these have to be renewed. Like a membership of an exclusive club: you're special and privileged, but only if you cough up the dough. To give you an example how silly this all is: I added LLBLGen Pro and ORM Profiler to the Visual Studio Gallery some time ago. It's the same thing: it's a central place where one can find software which adds to / extends / works with Visual Studio. I could simply create the pages, add the information and they show up inside Visual Studio. No files are hosted at Microsoft, they're downloaded from our website. Exactly the same system. As I have to wait for the CC transcripts to arrive anyway, I can't proceed with publishing in this new shiny store. After the verification is complete I have to wait for verification of my software by Microsoft. Even Desktop applications need to be verified using a long list of rules which are mainly focused on Metro-style applications. Even while they're not hosted by Microsoft. I wonder what they'll find. "Your application wasn't approved. It violates rule 14 X sub D: it provides more value than our own competing framework". While I was writing this post, I tried to check something in the Windows Store Dashboard, to see whether I remembered it correctly. I was presented again with the question, after logging in with my live account, to enter the code that was just mailed to me. Not the previous code, a brand new one. Again I had to kick my mail server to pull the email to proceed. This was it. This 'experience' is so beyond miserable, I'm afraid I have to say goodbye for now to the 'Windows Store'. It's simply not worth my time. Now, about live accounts. You might know this: live accounts are tied to everything you do with Microsoft. So if you have an MSDN subscription, e.g. the one which costs over $5000.-, it's tied to this same live account. But the fun thing is, you can login with your live account to the MSDN subscriptions with just the account id and password. No additional code is mailed to you. While it gives you access to all Microsoft software available, including your licenses. Why the draconian security theater with this Windows Store, while all I want is to publish some desktop applications while on other Microsoft sites it's OK to simply sign in with your live account: no codes needed, no verification and no certificates? Microsoft, one thing you need with this store and that's: apps. Apps, apps, apps, apps, aaaaaaaaapps. Sorry, my bad, got carried away. I just can't stand the word 'app'. This store's shelves have to be filled to the brim with goods. But instead of being welcomed into the store with open arms, I have to fight an uphill battle with an endless list of rules and bullshit to earn the privilege to publish in this shiny store. As if I have to be thrilled to be one of the exclusive club called 'Windows Store Publishers'. As if Microsoft doesn't want it to succeed. Craig Stuntz sent me a link to an old blog post of his regarding code signing and uploading to Microsoft's old mobile store from back in the WinMo5 days: http://blogs.teamb.com/craigstuntz/2006/10/11/28357/. Good read and good background info about how little things changed over the years. I hope this helps Microsoft make things more clearer and smoother and also helps ISVs with their decision whether to go with the Windows Store scheme or ignore it. For now, I don't see the advantage of publishing there, especially not with the nonsense rules Microsoft cooked up. Perhaps it changes in the future, who knows.

  Read the article

• CodePlex Daily Summary for Friday, June 03, 2011

  CodePlex Daily Summary for Friday, June 03, 2011Popular ReleasesMedia Companion: MC 3.404b Weekly: Extract the entire archive to a folder which has user access rights, eg desktop, documents etc. Refer to the documentation on this site for the Installation & Setup Guide Important! *** Due to an issue where the date added & the full genre information was not being read into the Movie cache, it is highly recommended that you perform a Rebuild Movies when first running this latest version. This will read in the information from the nfo's & repopulate the cache used by MC during operation. Fi...Terraria Map Generator: TerrariaMapTool 1.0.0.4 Beta: 1) Fixed the generated map.html file so that the file:/// is included in the base path. 2) Added the ability to use parallelization during generation. This will cause the program to use as many threads as there are physical cores. 3) Fixed some background overdraw.DotRas: DotRas v1.2 (Version 1.2.4168): This release includes compiled (and signed) versions of the binaries, PDBs, CHM help documentation, along with both C# and VB.NET examples. Please don't forget to rate the release! If you find a bug, please open a work item and give as much description as possible. Stack traces, which operating system(s) you're targeting, and build type is also very helpful for bug hunting. If you find something you believe to be a bug but are not sure, create a new discussion on the discussions board. Thank...Ajax Minifier: Microsoft Ajax Minifier 4.21: Fixed issues #15949 and #15868. Tweaked output in multi-line (pretty-print) mode so that var-statements in the initializer of for-statements break multiple variables onto multiple lines. Added TreeModification flag (and can now therefore turn off) the behavior of removing quotes around object literal property names if the names can be valid identifiers. Convert true literals to !0 and false literals to !1. Added a Visitor class approach to iterating over a generated abstract syntax tree to he...Caliburn Micro: WPF, Silverlight and WP7 made easy.: Caliburn.Micro v1.1 RTW: Download ContentsDebug and Release Assemblies Samples Changes.txt License.txt Release Highlights For WP7A new Tombstoning API based on ideas from Fluent NHibernate A new Launcher/Chooser API Strongly typed Navigation SimpleContainer included The full phone lifecycle is made easy to work with ie. we figure out whether your app is actually Resurrecting or just Continuing for you For WPFSupport for the Client Profile Better support for WinForms integration All PlatformsA power...VidCoder: 0.9.1: Added color coding to the Log window. Errors are highlighted in red, HandBrake logs are in black and VidCoder logs are in dark blue. Moved enqueue button to the right with the other control buttons. Added logic to report failures when errors are logged during the encode or when the encode finishes prematurely. Added Copy button to Log window. Adjusted audio track selection box to always show the full track name. Changed encode job progress bar to also be colored yellow when the enco...AutoLoL: AutoLoL v2.0.1: - Fixed a small bug in Auto Login - Fixed the updaterEPPlus-Create advanced Excel 2007 spreadsheets on the server: EPPlus 2.9.0.1: EPPlus-Create advanced Excel 2007 spreadsheets on the server This version has been updated to .Net Framework 3.5 New Features Data Validation. PivotTables (Basic functionalliy...) Support for worksheet data sources. Column, Row, Page and Data fields. Date and Numeric grouping Build in styles. ...and more And some minor new features... Ranges Text-Property|Get the formated value AutofitColumns-method to set the column width from the content of the range LoadFromCollection-metho...jQuery ASP.Net MVC Controls: Version 1.4.0.0: Version 1.4.0.0 contains the following additions: Upgraded to MVC 3.0 Upgraded to jQuery 1.6.1 (Though the project supports all jQuery version from 1.4.x onwards) Upgraded to jqGrid 3.8 Better Razor View-Engine support Better Pager support, includes support for custom pagers Added jqGrid toolbar buttons support Search module refactored, with full suport for multiple filters and ordering And Code cleanup, bug-fixes and better controller configuration support.Nearforums - ASP.NET MVC forum engine: Nearforums v6.0: Version 6.0 of Nearforums, the ASP.NET MVC Forum Engine, containing new features: Authentication using Membership Provider for SQL Server and MySql Spam prevention: Flood Control Moderation: Flag messages Content management: Pages: Create pages (about us/contact/texts) through web administration Allow nearforums to run as an IIS subapp Migrated Facebook Connect to OAuth 2.0 Visit the project Roadmap for more details.NetOffice - The easiest way to use Office in .NET: NetOffice Release 0.8b: Changes: - fix critical issue 15922(AccessViolationException) once and for all ...update is strongly recommended Known Issues: - some addin ribbon examples has a COM Register function with missing codebase entry(win32 registry) ...the problem is only affected to c# examples. fixed in latest source code. NetOffice\ReleaseTags\NetOffice Release 0.8.rar Includes: - Runtime Binaries and Source Code for .NET Framework:......v2.0, v3.0, v3.5, v4.0 - Tutorials in C# and VB.Net:...................Facebook Graph Toolkit: Facebook Graph Toolkit 1.5.4186: Updates the API in response to Facebook's recent change of policy: All Graph Api accessing feeds or posts must provide a AccessToken.Serviio for Windows Home Server: Beta Release 0.5.2.0: Ready for widespread beta. Synchronized build number to Serviio version to avoid confusion.AcDown????? - Anime&Comic Downloader: AcDown????? v3.0 Beta4: ??AcDown?????????????，??????????????，????、????。?????Acfun????? ????32??64? Windows XP/Vista/7 ????????????? ??：????????Windows XP???,?????????.NET Framework 2.0???(x86)?.NET Framework 2.0???(x64)，?????"?????????"??? ??v3.0 Beta4 2011-5-31?? ???Bilibili.us????? ???? ?? ???"????" ???Bilibili.us??? ??????? ?? ??????? ?? ???????? ?? ?? ???Bilibili.us?????(??????????????????) ??????(6.cn)?????(????) ?? ?????Acfun?????????? ?????????????? ???QQ???????? ????????????Discussion...CodeCopy Auto Code Converter: Code Copy v0.1: Full add-in, setup project source code and setup fileWordpress Theme 'Windows Metro': v1.00.0017: v1.00.0017 Dies ist eine Vorab-Version aus der Entwickler-Phase. This is a preview version from the development phase.TerrariViewer: TerrariViewer v2.4.1: Added Piggy Bank editor and fixed some minor bugs.Kooboo CMS: Kooboo CMS 3.02: Updated the Kooboo_CMS.zip at 2011-06-02 11:44 GMT 1.Fixed: Adding data rule issue on page. 2.Fixed: Caching issue for higher performance. Updated the Kooboo_CMS.zip at 2011-06-01 10:00 GMT 1. Fixed the published package throwed a compile error under WebSite mode. 2. Fixed the ContentHelper.NewMediaFolderObject return TextFolder issue. 3. Shorten the name of ContentHelper API. NewMediaFolderObject=>MediaFolder, NewTextFolderObject=> TextFolder, NewSchemaObject=>Schema. Also update the C...mojoPortal: 2.3.6.6: see release notes on mojoportal.com http://www.mojoportal.com/mojoportal-2366-released Note that we have separate deployment packages for .NET 3.5 and .NET 4.0 The deployment package downloads on this page are pre-compiled and ready for production deployment, they contain no C# source code. To download the source code see the Source Code Tab I recommend getting the latest source code using TortoiseHG, you can get the source code corresponding to this release here.Terraria World Creator: Terraria World Creator: Version 1.01 Fixed a bug that would cause the application to crash. Re-named the Application.New Projects"Background Transfer Service Sample" From WP7 Sample: This project is an extension to existing Windows Phone7 sample available from MS sight ("Background Transfer Service Sample"). This project extends functionality to display the background downloaded item to verify download conten. Agile project and development management dashboard - Meter Console: Agile project and development management dashboard application. The focus of this application to bridge the gap between the management, clients and developer and chive best possible transparency. Ajax Multi-ListBox: Ajax Multi-ListBox is .NET C# written user control with a dual listbox that uses ajax to move items from left to right and vice versa.aLOG : Asynchronous logging (Logging Library): aLog is an asynchronous logging component built on Microsoft Enterprise Exception handling and Logging Component block. It allows application to asynchronously log the data in multiple data sources such as file system, database , XML. Application Base Component Library: Application Base Component LibraryConcise Service Bus: A compact but comprehensive WCF service bus framework.Contour provider for Umbraco Courier: Transfer Umbraco Contour forms between Umbraco instances with Courier.CoveyNet MidWest: CoveyNet MidWestCSharp Samples: This contain C#- wpf, wcf, linqtosql, some basic oops stuff etc.DotNet1: DotNet1FireWeb: fefaesfrafasGeoCoder: Basic server side GeoCoder which accesses Google, YAHOO etc. This is developed in C# and is a mix of language styles, just depended what I was doing that week. All the libraries include tests which can be used to check if the libraries still work, it's worth doing this as the consumed webservices may change from time to time. GrandReward: GrandReward is designed to help young and old people to learn by answer questions. It is easy to use and the community can design own topic files for own questions to learn. The project is develop in C# and contains some WPF views. The project homepage is: http://grand-reward.com/helferlein: The helferlein library contains some web controls and tools I used in other projects.helferlein_BabelFish: helferlein_BabelFish is a DNN module to support multilingual features for other helferlein modules. It is developed in C#.helferlein_Form: helferlein_Form is an easy-to-use module for DotNetNuke that allows creating forms. The submissions can be sent by e-mail and/or stored in a database. It's developed in C#.ILSpy/Silverlight — Proof Of Concept: ILSpy refactoring (dire hacking) to make it work in Silverlight.ISGProject: ISGProjectMarcelo Rocha: Trabalhos acadêmicos, Apresentações, Projetos e outras Invencionices de Marcelo Rocha.MosquitoOnline: MosquitoOnline ProjectNET.Studio: Ein kleines Visual Studio für die SchuleOmegle Desktop Client: A desktop client for the anonymous chat site, Omegle. Designed to combat some of the shortcomings of the webpage, the desktop client will have no adverts, and be able to flash the taskbar window, and play a sound on message received. Online PHP IDE: Free Open Source online editor for working with files on FTP. Free and easy deployment.Open JGL: A utillity library using OpenGL, which focus' on graphics and vertex control.Open Tokenization Server: Open Tokenization Server is a simplistic implementation of a tokenization data security service. It allows users to create and retrieve tokens that represent sensitive information.OurCodeNights: Just some small projects we "work" on at our codenights. A good excuse to meet and have a good time ;)Raple: Raple is simple programming languageSea: Set of C# Extension libraries that make life easier.Shai Chi: Shai ChiSharePoint Sandbox Logging: SharePoint Sandbox Logging enables developers and solution designers to easily log events to logging list in your site collection, allowing you to easily trace errors on custom solutions within your site collection, with no need for server access. Perfect for sandbox / Office365. This project contains one sandbox solution with a site collection logging feature. When feature is active - it creates the list and logs. If it is not active - it does not log. Simple. It also contains a sampl...SharePoint Stock Ticker: SharePoint Stock Ticker is a SharePoint 2010 project which consists of a SharePoint Stock Ticker Web Part driven off of Google's Stock API. The width of this Web Part was developed to fit within the default SharePoint 2010 Quick Launch navigation. This has also been tested to run over http and https SharePoint 2010 farms and will not throw a mixed content warning with Internet Explorer.SharpLinx: SharpLinx is an open source social networking application on ASP.Net.Single.Net - less Copy & Paste,less code lines,more easier: make your code life easierSqlMyAdmin: A projecto to create a PHPMyAdmin clone app that access Sql Server.TDB: TDB is a NOSQL Key-value store entirely designed to run in windows environment. It's directly inspired by Redis project and use Redis' command sematincs and Redis' communication protocol to maintain a base compatibility with it.Tomasulo: A simulator of Tomasulo CDB dynamic instruction scheduling algorithm in Java. Authors: Mengyu Zhou @J85 Zhenyao Zhu @J85 Jun Li @J81 @Tsinghua UniversityTransport Broker Management System: Transport Management system will serve the small freight brokers manage the carriers and orders. It has features like manage truck owners, carriers, source, destination, orders. Verification system for MCBS: Verification system for mobile communication base station.VietCard: VietCardVkontakte File converter: ????????? ?????? ??? ???????? ?? ? "?????????" vkontakte.ru. VSGesture for Visual Studio: VSGesture can execute command via mouse gestures within Visual Studio2010. If you have any feedback, please send me an email to powerumc at gmail.com.WCF-Silverlight Helper: Class library to generate WCF DataContractSerializer-serializable and Silverlight (SL) -compatible classes. Useful, for example, if you have an assembly with classes that fail to serialize with DataContractSerializer. T4 Templates are used to auto-generate code.Windows Phone eBook Samples: Windows Phone eBook Samples is a collection of samples associated with the Windows Phone eBoom community initiative.WinPreciousMetal: WinPreciousMetal helps people know the precious metal's states. Because I am a Chinese, my soft mainly focus at the price of metal in RMB.

  Read the article

• CodePlex Daily Summary for Sunday, June 24, 2012

  CodePlex Daily Summary for Sunday, June 24, 2012Popular ReleasesXDA ROM HUB: XDA ROM HUB v0.9: Kernel listing added -- Thanks to iONEx Added scripts installer button. Added "Nandroid On The Go" -- Perform a Nandroid backup without a PC! Added official Android app!ExtAspNet: ExtAspNet v3.1.8: +2012-06-24 v3.1.8 +????Grid???????（???????ExpandUnusedSpace????????）（??）。 -????MinColumnWidth（??????）。 -????AutoExpandColumn，???????????????（ColumnID）（?????ForceFitFirstTime??ForceFitAllTime，??????）。 -????AutoExpandColumnMax?AutoExpandColumnMin。 -????ForceFitFirstTime，????????????，??????????（????????????）。 -????ForceFitAllTime，????????????，??????????（??????????????????）。 -????VerticalScrollWidth，????????（??????????，0?????????????）。 -????grid/grid_forcefit.aspx。 -???????????En...AJAX Control Toolkit: June 2012 Release: AJAX Control Toolkit Release Notes - June 2012 Release Version 60623June 2012 release of the AJAX Control Toolkit. AJAX Control Toolkit .NET 4 – AJAX Control Toolkit for .NET 4 and sample site (Recommended). AJAX Control Toolkit .NET 3.5 – AJAX Control Toolkit for .NET 3.5 and sample site (Recommended). Notes: - The current version of the AJAX Control Toolkit is not compatible with ASP.NET 2.0. The latest version that is compatible with ASP.NET 2.0 can be found here: 11121. - Pages using ...WPF Application Framework (WAF): WPF Application Framework (WAF) 2.5.0.5: Version: 2.5.0.5 (Milestone 5): This release contains the source code of the WPF Application Framework (WAF) and the sample applications. Requirements .NET Framework 4.0 (The package contains a solution file for Visual Studio 2010) The unit test projects require Visual Studio 2010 Professional Changelog Legend: [B] Breaking change; [O] Marked member as obsolete WAF: Add IsInDesignMode property to the WafConfiguration class. WAF: Introduce the IModuleController interface. WAF: Add ...Windows 8 Metro RSS Reader: Metro RSS Reader.v7: Updated for Windows 8 Release Preview Changed background and foreground colors Used VariableSizeGrid layout to wrap blog posts with images Sort items with Images first, text-only last Enabled Caching to improve navigation between frames This is the release package of the source code The package includes x64, x86 releases. Installation Instructions http://dl.dropbox.com/u/23484650/RssReaderMetro/Screenshots/AppPackage.JPG Select x64 or x86 folder from the package http://dl.dropbox.com...Confuser: Confuser 1.9: Change log: * Stable output (i.e. given the same seed & input assemblies, you'll get the same output assemblies) + Generate debug symbols, now it is possible to debug the output under a debugger! (Of course without enabling anti debug) + Generating obfuscation database, most of the obfuscation data in stored in it. + Two tools utilizing the obfuscation database (Database viewer & Stack trace decoder) * Change the protection scheme -----Please read Bug Report before you report a bug-----...XDesigner.Development: First release: First releaseBlackJumboDog: Ver5.6.5: 2012.06.22 Ver5.6.5 　(1) FTP??????? EPSV ??　EPRT　???????DotNetNuke® Form and List: 06.00.01: DotNetNuke Form and List 06.00.01 Changes in 06.00.01 Icons are shown in module action buttons (workaraound to core issue with IconAPI) Fix to Token2XSL Editor, changing List type raised exception MakeTumbnail and ShowXml handlers had been missing in install package Updated help texts for better understanding of filter statement, token support in email subject and css style Major changes for fnL 6.0: DNN 6 Form Patterns including modal PopUps and Tabs http://www.dotnetnuke.com/Po...MVVM Light Toolkit: V4RTM (binaries only) including Windows 8 RP: This package contains all the latest DLLs for MVVM Light V4 RTM. It includes the DLLs for Windows 8 Release Preview. An updated Nuget package is also available at http://nuget.org/packages/MvvmLightLibs An installer with binaries, snippets and templates will follow ASAP.Weapsy - ASP.NET MVC CMS: 1.0.0: - Some changes to Layout and CSS - Changed version number to 1.0.0.0 - Solved Cache and Session items handler error in IIS 7 - Created the Modules, Plugins and Widgets Areas - Replaced CKEditor with TinyMCE - Created the System Info page - Minor changesAcDown????? - AcDown Downloader Framework: AcDown????? v3.11.7: ?? ●AcDown??????????、??、??????。????，????，?????????????????????????。???????????Acfun、????(Bilibili)、??、??、YouTube、??、???、??????、SF????、????????????。 ●??????AcPlay?????，??????、????????????????。 ● AcDown??????????????????，????????????????????????????。 ● AcDown???????C#??，????.NET Framework 2.0??。?????"Acfun?????"。 ????32??64? Windows XP/Vista/7/8 ??：????????Windows XP???,?????????.NET Framework 2.0???(x86)，?????"?????????"??? ??????????????，??????????： ??"AcDown?????"????????? ...NShader - HLSL - GLSL - CG - Shader Syntax Highlighter AddIn for Visual Studio: NShader 1.3 - VS2010 + VS2012: This is a small maintenance release to support new VS2012 as well as VS2010. This release is also fixing the issue The "Comment Selection" include the first line after the selection If the new NShader version doesn't highlight your shader, you can try to: Remove the registry entry: HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\VisualStudio\11.0\FontAndColors\Cache Remove all lines using "fx" or "hlsl" in file C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio 11.0\Common7\IDE\CommonExtensions\Micr...3D Landmark Recognition: Landmark3D Dataset V1.0 (7z 1 of 3): Landmark3D Dataset Version 1.0Xenta Framework - extensible enterprise n-tier application framework: Xenta Framework 1.8.0: System Requirements OS Windows 7 Windows Vista Windows Server 2008 Windows Server 2008 R2 Web Server Internet Information Service 7.0 or above .NET Framework .NET Framework 4.0 WCF Activation feature HTTP Activation Non-HTTP Activation for net.pipe/net.tcp WCF bindings ASP.NET MVC ASP.NET MVC 3.0 Database Microsoft SQL Server 2005 Microsoft SQL Server 2008 Microsoft SQL Server 2008 R2 Additional Deployment Configuration Started Windows Process Activation service Start...MFCMAPI: June 2012 Release: Build: 15.0.0.1034 Full release notes at SGriffin's blog. If you just want to run the MFCMAPI or MrMAPI, get the executables. If you want to debug them, get the symbol files and the source. The 64 bit builds will only work on a machine with Outlook 2010 64 bit installed. All other machines should use the 32 bit builds, regardless of the operating system. Facebook BadgeMonoGame - Write Once, Play Everywhere: MonoGame 2.5.1: Release Notes The MonoGame team are pleased to announce that MonoGame v2.5.1 has been released. This release contains important bug fixes and minor updates. Recent additions include project templates for iOS and MacOS. The MonoDevelop.MonoGame AddIn also works on Linux. We have removed the dependency on the thirdparty GamePad library to allow MonoGame to be included in the debian/ubuntu repositories. There have been a major bug fix to ensure textures are disposed of correctly as well as some ...Sense/Net CMS - Enterprise Content Management: SenseNet 6.1 Community Edition: Sense/Net 6.1 Community EditionMain new features:major performance optimizations Office 2010 and Basic authentication support new main page and enhanced demo experience The new 6.1 release is a true milestone in the history of Sense/Net ECMS. In the past few months we mostly concentrated on performance optimizations and implemented low-level features for improved scalability and robustness. We have tested the system in high availability setup under high load by conducting a benchmark duri...????: ????2.0.2: 1、???????????。 2、DJ???????10?，?????????10?。 3、??.NET 4.5(Windows 8)????????????。 4、???????????。 5、??????????????。 6、???Windows 8????。 7、?????2.0.1???????????????。 8、??DJ?????????。Azure Storage Explorer: Azure Storage Explorer 5 Preview 1 (6.17.2012): Azure Storage Explorer verison 5 is in development, and Preview 1 provides an early look at the new user interface and some of the new features. Here's what's new in v5 Preview 1: New UI, similar to the new Windows Azure HTML5 portal Support for configuring and viewing storage account logging Support for configuring and viewing storage account monitoring Uses the Windows Azure 1.7 SDK libraries Bug fixesNew ProjectsAdvanced Wars By Snowstar: ????.....??join!Bible Mobile: The purpose of this project is to create a C#, ASP.NET, Microsoft SQL 2008 server Bible for mobile devices.Bitresolve: A simple CRUD based DB interaction - POC.blueChart: yet another android chart widgetsBulletProof In-App Youtube Video Playback for WP7 using SMF : POC: Want In-App Youtube video playback in your WP7 application? Want a bulletproof parsing solution? Check out this POC for In-App playback and peace of mind!CodeGenerate: The Project can auto generate C# code. Include BLL Layer、Domain Layer、IDAL Layer、DAL Layer. Support SqlServer And Oracle This is a alpha program,but which can contactus_pumpouts: contact us handler for pumpouts unlimitedCSV Serializer: The CsvSerializer provides functionality to define objects which can be (de)serialized to/from a CSV file. Parsing is per RFC4180.From the Farm to the Sandbox for SharePoint 2010: From the Farm to the Sandbox project focuses on unraveling the mysteries when converting a SharePoint 2010 farm solution to a sandbox with source and demos.Furtivue (providing a furtive view over your messages): Could be used for sending confidential/secret information (such as passwords), or any other data you don't want the receiver to keep permanently in their e-mailGPS Tracker System: GPS summary IIS Express Manager: IIS Express Manager (IISEM) will liberate you from visual studio/web matrix just to open your precious IIS Express hosted applications.Imagicus : A Simple Picture Gallery: This is a simple image viewer, which permits encrypted images. One cannot tell whether there are any hidden images, unless the special key is obtained. (Imaginem Porticus => Imagicus)Jason: Jason is an infrastructure framework to easly put the "Command" part of CQRS on top of WCFKartRanking - Sistema de controle de pontuação web de campeonato: Projeto com objetivo de desenvolver um sistema de controle de pontuação de um ou vários campeonato de kart online. KryschenApp: A Playstation Mobile App for the PS Vita. This app is for showing the german kryschen eMag on the ps vita.Ludos: Ludos is a collection several games written in java. It is a conglomeration of a variety of types of games, mostly non-graphic intensive.MSHelpMe: MS help me application in WP7MyTesting: trailNRuby: NRuby is a fork of IronRuby with the goal of kicking the project alive again and make Ruby on .NET a viable alternative for the masses.RandomRat: RandomRat is a program for generating random sets that meet specific criteriaResistance - Defender of Earth: sumShopping-Mail plugin for nopCommerce: This nopCommerce plugin integrates Shopping-Mail solution to share customers between merchant.Simple CMS: CMSes are often really a tease to integrate, and often offer more than needed. SimpleCMS is just simple.TestProject: auauTrading Terminal Suite: The Main purpose of project is to make programmatical interfaces for trading. The project uses Stock# framework and extends it in different ways. ünye fevzi çakmak: ilk denemeVS2012 ???????: VS2012 ???????

  Read the article

• sudo apt-get install mysql-server fails

  - by danwoods

  Hi all, I'm coming from a fresh install of Ubuntu server 9.10 and trying to install mysql-server by using 'sudo apt-get mysql-server' I get the following errors: dan@dev:~$ sudo apt-get install mysql-server [sudo] password for dan: Reading package lists... Done Building dependency tree Reading state information... Done The following extra packages will be installed: libdbd-mysql-perl libdbi-perl libhtml-template-perl libnet-daemon-perl libplrpc-perl mysql-client-5.1 mysql-server-5.1 Suggested packages: dbishell libipc-sharedcache-perl tinyca The following NEW packages will be installed: libdbd-mysql-perl libdbi-perl libhtml-template-perl libnet-daemon-perl libplrpc-perl mysql-client-5.1 mysql-server mysql-server-5.1 0 upgraded, 8 newly installed, 0 to remove and 0 not upgraded. Need to get 16.5MB of archives. After this operation, 39.0MB of additional disk space will be used. Do you want to continue [Y/n]? y Get:1 http://us.archive.ubuntu.com karmic/main libnet-daemon-perl 0.43-1 [46.9kB] Get:2 http://us.archive.ubuntu.com karmic/main libplrpc-perl 0.2020-2 [36.0kB] Get:3 http://us.archive.ubuntu.com karmic/main libdbi-perl 1.609-1 [800kB] Get:4 http://us.archive.ubuntu.com karmic/main libdbd-mysql-perl 4.011-1ubuntu1 [136kB] Get:5 http://us.archive.ubuntu.com karmic-updates/main mysql-client-5.1 5.1.37- 1ubuntu5.1 [8,202kB] Get:6 http://us.archive.ubuntu.com karmic-updates/main mysql-server-5.1 5.1.37-1ubuntu5.1 [7,186kB] Get:7 http://us.archive.ubuntu.com karmic/main libhtml-template-perl 2.9-1 [65.8kB] Get:8 http://us.archive.ubuntu.com karmic-updates/main mysql-server 5.1.37-1ubuntu5.1 [64.3kB] Fetched 16.5MB in 1min 34s (175kB/s) Preconfiguring packages ... Selecting previously deselected package libnet-daemon-perl. (Reading database ... 123083 files and directories currently installed.) Unpacking libnet-daemon-perl (from .../libnet-daemon-perl_0.43-1_all.deb) ... Selecting previously deselected package libplrpc-perl. Unpacking libplrpc-perl (from .../libplrpc-perl_0.2020-2_all.deb) ... Selecting previously deselected package libdbi-perl. Unpacking libdbi-perl (from .../libdbi-perl_1.609-1_i386.deb) ... Selecting previously deselected package libdbd-mysql-perl. Unpacking libdbd-mysql-perl (from .../libdbd-mysql-perl_4.011-1ubuntu1_i386.deb) ... Selecting previously deselected package mysql-client-5.1. Unpacking mysql-client-5.1 (from .../mysql-client-5.1_5.1.37-1ubuntu5.1_i386.deb) ... Selecting previously deselected package mysql-server-5.1. Unpacking mysql-server-5.1 (from .../mysql-server-5.1_5.1.37-1ubuntu5.1_i386.deb) ... Selecting previously deselected package libhtml-template-perl. Unpacking libhtml-template-perl (from .../libhtml-template-perl_2.9-1_all.deb) ... Selecting previously deselected package mysql-server. Unpacking mysql-server (from .../mysql-server_5.1.37-1ubuntu5.1_all.deb) ... Processing triggers for man-db ... Processing triggers for ureadahead ... ureadahead will be reprofiled on next reboot Setting up libnet-daemon-perl (0.43-1) ... Setting up libplrpc-perl (0.2020-2) ... Setting up libdbi-perl (1.609-1) ... Setting up libdbd-mysql-perl (4.011-1ubuntu1) ... Setting up mysql-client-5.1 (5.1.37-1ubuntu5.1) ... Setting up mysql-server-5.1 (5.1.37-1ubuntu5.1) ... * Stopping MySQL database server mysqld [ OK ] * Starting MySQL database server mysqld [fail] invoke-rc.d: initscript mysql, action "start" failed. dpkg: error processing mysql-server-5.1 (--configure): subprocess installed post-installation script returned error exit status 1 Setting up libhtml-template-perl (2.9-1) ... dpkg: dependency problems prevent configuration of mysql-server: mysql-server depends on mysql-server-5.1; however: Package mysql-server-5.1 is not configured yet. dpkg: error processing mysql-server (--configure): dependency problems - leaving unconfigured No apport report written because the error message indicates its a followup error from a previous failure. Errors were encountered while processing: mysql-server-5.1 mysql-server E: Sub-process /usr/bin/dpkg returned an error code (1) What am I missing? [update] mysqld returns: dan@dev:~$ sudo mysqld [sudo] password for dan: 100220 12:18:17 [Note] Plugin 'FEDERATED' is disabled. InnoDB: Unable to lock ./ibdata1, error: 11 InnoDB: Check that you do not already have another mysqld process InnoDB: using the same InnoDB data or log files. 100220 12:18:17 InnoDB: Retrying to lock the first data file InnoDB: Unable to lock ./ibdata1, error: 11 InnoDB: Check that you do not already have another mysqld process This goes on for a while... InnoDB: Unable to lock ./ibdata1, error: 11 InnoDB: Check that you do not already have another mysqld process InnoDB: using the same InnoDB data or log files. ^[[BInnoDB: Unable to lock ./ibdata1, error: 11 InnoDB: Check that you do not already have another mysqld process InnoDB: using the same InnoDB data or log files. 100220 12:19:57 InnoDB: Unable to open the first data file InnoDB: Error in opening ./ibdata1 100220 12:19:57 InnoDB: Operating system error number 11 in a file operation. InnoDB: Error number 11 means 'Resource temporarily unavailable'. InnoDB: Some operating system error numbers are described at InnoDB: http://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/5.1/en/operating-system-error-codes.html InnoDB: Could not open or create data files. InnoDB: If you tried to add new data files, and it failed here, InnoDB: you should now edit innodb_data_file_path in my.cnf back InnoDB: to what it was, and remove the new ibdata files InnoDB created InnoDB: in this failed attempt. InnoDB only wrote those files full of InnoDB: zeros, but did not yet use them in any way. But be careful: do not InnoDB: remove old data files which contain your precious data! 100220 12:19:57 [ERROR] Plugin 'InnoDB' init function returned error. 100220 12:19:57 [ERROR] Plugin 'InnoDB' registration as a STORAGE ENGINE failed. 100220 12:19:57 [ERROR] Can't start server: Bind on TCP/IP port: Address already in use 100220 12:19:57 [ERROR] Do you already have another mysqld server running on port: 3306 ? 100220 12:19:57 [ERROR] Aborting 100220 12:19:57 [Warning] Forcing shutdown of 1 plugins 100220 12:19:57 [Note] mysqld: Shutdown complete How can I check what process is using port: 3306? [Update]: sudo netstat -anp | grep LISTEN returns dan@dev:~$ sudo netstat -anp | grep LISTEN [sudo] password for dan: tcp 0 0 0.0.0.0:25 0.0.0.0:* LISTEN 1372/master tcp 0 0 127.0.0.1:3306 0.0.0.0:* LISTEN 4391/mysqld tcp 0 0 127.0.0.1:631 0.0.0.0:* LISTEN 1409/cupsd tcp6 0 0 ::1:631 :::* LISTEN 1409/cupsd [More Updates]: I can log into mysql if that makes a difference

  Read the article

• Hard to append a table with many records into another without generating duplicates

  - by Bill Mudry

  I may seem to be a bit wordy at first but for the hope it will be easier for all of you to understand what I am doing in the first place. I have an uncommon but enjoyable activity of collecting as many species of wood from around the world as I can (over 2,900 so far). Ok, that is the real world. Meanwhile I have spent over 8 years compiling over 5.8 meg of text data on all the woods of the world. That got so large that learning some basic PHP and MySQL was most welcome so I could build a new database driven home for all this research. I am still slow at it but getting there. The original premise was to find evidence of as many species of woods in the world I can. The more names identified, the more successful the project. I have named the project TAXA for ease of conversation (short for Taxonomy). You are most welcome to take a look at what I have so far at www.prowebcanada.com/taxa. It is 95% dynamically driven. So far I am reporting about 6,500 botanical wood names and, as said above, the more I can report, the more successful is the project. I have a file of all the woods in the second largest wood collection in the world, the Tervuren wood collection in the Netherlands with over 11,300 wood names even after cleaning out all duplicates. That is almost twice the number I am reporting now so porting all the new wood names from Tervuren to the 'species' table where I keep the reported data would be a major desirable advancement in the project. At one point I was able to add all the Tervuren records to the species table but over 3,000 duplicates also formed. They were not in the Tervuren file in the first place but represent the same wood names common to both files. It is common sense that there would be woods common to both that when merged would create new duplicates. At one point and with the help of others from another forum, I may very well have finally got the proper SQL statement. When I ran it, though, the system said (semi-amusingly at first) ----- that it had gone away! After looking up on the Net what could have have done this, one reason is that the MySQL timeout lapses and probably because of the large size of files I am running. I am running this on a rented account on Godaddy so I cannot go about trying to adjust any config file. For safety, I copied the tervuren.sql file as tervuren_target.sql and the species.sql file as species_master.sql tp use as working files just to make sure I protect the original files from destruction or damage. Later I can name the species_master back to just species.sql once I am happy all worked well. The species file has about 18 columns in it but only 5 columns match the columns in the Tervuren file (name for name and collation also). The rest of the columns are just along for the ride, so to speak. The common key in both is the 'species_name" columns in both. I am not sure it is at all proper to call one a primary key and the other a foreign key since there really is no relational connection to them. One is just more data for the other and can disappear after, never to be referred to the working code in the application. I have been very surprised and flabbergasted on how hard it can be to append records from one large table into another (with same column names plus others) without generating NEW duplicates in the first place. Watch out thinking that a SELECT DISTINCT statement may do the job because absolutely NO records in the species table must get destroyed in the process and there is no way (well, that I know of) to tell the 'DISTINCT" command this. Yes, the original 'species' table has duplicates in it even before all this but, trust me ---- they have to be removed the long hard way manually record by record or I will lose precious information. It is more important to just make sure no NEW duplicates form through bringing in new names in the tervuren_target.species_name into species.species_name. I am hoping and thinking that a straight SQL solution should work --- except for that nasty timeout. How do I get past that? Could it mean that I may have to turn to a PHP plus SQL method?? Or ..... would I have to break up the Tervuren files into a few smaller ones and run them independently (hope not....)" So far, what seems should be easy has proven to be unexpectedly tricky. I appreciate any help you can give but start from the assumption that this may be harder to do right than it may seem on the surface. By the way --- I am running a quad 64 bit system with Windows 7, so at least I have some fairly hefty power on the client end. I have a direct ethernet cable feeding a cable connection to the Internet. Once I get an algorithm and code working for this, I also have many other lists to process that could make the 'species' table grow even more. It could be equivalent to (ahem) lighting a rocket under my project (especially compared to do this record by record manually)! This is my first time in this forum, so I do not know how I can receive any replies. Do I have to to come back here periodically or are replies emailed out also? It would be great if you CC'd copies to me at billmudry at rogers.com :-) Much thanks for your patience and help, Bill Mudry Mississauga, Ontario Canada (next to Toronto).

  Read the article

< Previous Page | 3 4 5 6 7