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  • Back home :-)

    - by Mike Dietrich
    Wrote this entry last night in the ICE from Stuttgart to Munich but the conncetion broke: 28.5 hour journey - and close by now. Actually I would have been even closer if our TGV wouldn't have had break problems as soon as we had entered German territory. And you don't want a train which goes up to a speed of 200 mph having issues with its breaks, right? So we missed the connection in Stuttgart but I've catched the last train this night towards Munich. Distance approx 1900 km all together. Usually it takes 2.5 hours with a direct flight with Air Lingus from Munich or a bit more when you'll go through Zurich or Frankfurt. But at least you meet more people and see a bit more from the landscapes passing by :-) Except for the break problem everything worked out well so far (I'm no there finally!). I had 4 hours to change in Paris from Gare de Nord to Gare de l'Est and one thing I really have to point out: the people working for SNCF, the French National Railways, were so organized and helpful, purely amazing. I asked the man at the counter where I had to pick up my prepaid tickets for directions to Gare de l'Est - and after we had a chat about Marlene Dietrich he just grabbed his iPhone, started Google Earth and showed me the way to walk. I pretty sure it's a stupid stereotype that people in Paris or France are so unfriendly to foreigners if they don't speak French. In my past 3 stays or travels to Paris in the past 2 years I had only great experiences. And another thing I really enjoy when being in France: the food!!! The sandwich I had at the train station was packed with yummy goat cheese. And there's always Paul. You might ask yourself: Who the heck is Paul? That's Paul - or actually their website. And at Paul's they serve usually excellent fruit tartes - and this time a nice Gateau Au Chocolate. And very good Cafe Cremé as well :-) That's actually the positive part traveling this way: the food you'll get is much better than the airline food - if your airline still serves something called food ...

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  • Should I be wary of signing a non-disclosure agreement with someone I just met?

    - by Thomas Levine
    tl;dr: Some guy I just met says he wants me to join his company. Before he shows me what they do, he wants me to sign a non-disclosure agreement. Is this weird? I'm traveling right now. Someone who saw me coding seemed to think I was smart or something and started talking with me. He explained that he owns a software company, told me a bit about what it does and told me that he was looking for a programmer who would work for a stake in the company. He explained that the company's product is being developed rather secretly, so he couldn't tell me much. But he did tell enough about the product to convince me that he's not completely making this up, which is a decent baseline. He suggested that he show me more of what he's been working on and, after seeing that, I decide whether I want to join. Because of the secrecy behind the product, he wants me to sign a non-disclosure agreement before we talk. I'm obviously somewhat skeptical because of the random nature by which we met. In the short term, I'm wondering if I should be wary of signing such an agreement. He said it would be easier to show me the product in person rather than over the internet, and I'm leaving town tomorrow, so I'd have to figure this out by tomorrow. If I decide to talk with him, I could decide later whether I trust that it's worth spending any time on this company. The concept of being able to avoid telling a secret seems strange to me for the same reason that things like certain aspects of copyright seem strange. Should I be wary of signing a non-disclosure agreement? Is this common practice? I don't know the details of the agreement of which he was thinking, (If I end up meeting with him, I'll of course read over the agreement before I decide whether to sign it.) so I could consider alternatives according to the aspects of the agreement. Or I could just consider the case of an especially harsh agreement. This question seems vaguely related. Do we need a non-disclosure agreement (NDA)? Thanks

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  • Finally home - and something fully off topic

    - by Mike Dietrich
    Arrived at Munich Pasing last night at 0:50am ... finally :-) On Sunday I've left the Dylan Hotel in Dublin (thanks to the staff there as well: you were REALLY helpful!!) around 7:30pm to go to the port - and came home on Tuesday morning 1:15am. So all together 29:45hrs door-to-door - not bad for nearly 2000km just relying on public transport. And could have been faster if there were seats in ealier TGV's left. But I don't complain at all ;-) Just checked the website of Dublin Airport - it says currently: 17.00pm: Latest on flight disruptions at Dublin Airport The IAA have advised us that based on the latest Volcanic Ash Advisory Centre London Dublin Airport will remain closed for all inbound and outbound commercial flights until 20.00hours. This effectively means that no flights will land or take off at Dublin Airport until then. A further update will be posted this afternoon. When traveling I have always my iPod with me. It has gotten a bit old now (I think I've bought it 3 years ago in November 2007) but it has a 160GB hard disk in it so it fits most of my music collection (not the entire collection anymore as I'm currently re-riping everything to Apple Lossless because at least for my ears it makes a big difference - but I listen to good ol' vinyl as well ...and I don't download compressed music ;-) ). The battery of my little travel companion is still good for more than 20 hours consistent music playback - and there was a band from Texas being in my ears most of the whole journey called Midlake. I haven't heard of them before until I asked a lady at a Munich store some few weeks ago what she's playing on the speakers in the shop. She was amazed and came back with the CD cover but I hesitated to buy it as I always want to listen the tunes before - and at this day I had no time left to do so. But in Dublin I had a bit of spare time on Saturday and I always enter record stores - and the Tower Records was the sort of store I really enjoy and so I've spent there nearly two hours - leaving with 3 Midlake CDs in my bag. So if you are interested just listen those tunes which may remind some people on Fleetwood Mac: As I said in the title, fully off topic ;-)

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  • Book Review (Book 10) - The Information: A History, a Theory, a Flood

    - by BuckWoody
    This is a continuation of the books I challenged myself to read to help my career - one a month, for year. You can read my first book review here, and the entire list is here. The book I chose for March 2012 was: The Information: A History, a Theory, a Flood by James Gleick. I was traveling at the end of last month so I’m a bit late posting this review here. Why I chose this book: My personal belief about computing is this: All computing technology is simply re-arranging data. We take data in, we manipulate it, and we send it back out. That’s computing. I had heard from some folks about this book and it’s treatment of data. I heard that it dealt with the basics of data - and the semantics of data, information and so on. It also deals with the earliest forms of history of information, which fascinates me. It’s similar I was told, to GEB which a favorite book of mine as well, so that was a bonus. Some folks I talked to liked it, some didn’t - so I thought I would check it out. What I learned: I liked the book. It was longer than I thought - took quite a while to read, even though I tend to read quickly. This is the kind of book you take your time with. It does in fact deal with the earliest forms of human interaction and the basics of data. I learned, for instance, that the genesis of the binary communication system is based in the invention of telegraph (far-writing) codes, and that the earliest forms of communication were expensive. In fact, many ciphers were invented not to hide military secrets, but to compress information. A sort of early “lol-speak” to keep the cost of transmitting data low! I think the comparison with GEB is a bit over-reaching. GEB is far more specific, fanciful and so on. In fact, this book felt more like something fro Richard Dawkins, and tended to wander around the subject quite a bit. I imagine the author doing his research and writing each chapter as a book that followed on from the last one. This is what possibly bothered those who tended not to like it, I think. Towards the middle of the book, I think the author tended to be a bit too fragmented even for me. He began to delve into memes, biology and more - I think he might have been better off breaking that off into another work. The existentialism just seemed jarring. All in all, I liked the book. I recommend it to any technical professional, specifically ones involved with data technology in specific. And isn’t that all of us? :)

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  • I still think Twitter is dead &hellip; but

    - by Randy Walker
    Twitter finally hit the mainstream about 8 months ago, but I’ve been saying for a couple of years now, without a real way for the company to earn money, what’s the future fate of Twitter?  On the personal side, where is the real value for the users?  For the most part, Twitter has replaced most people’s IM (instant messaging), at least in the technology circles I run in.  It still has value for users as a communication tool.  But I see it more as a fad.  My prediction is over the next 6 months we’ll start seeing a usage drop (if we haven’t already started to see it). On the business side, how does Twitter make money?  It doesn’t.  If you use the text messaging capabilities, you see a few ads.  But most smart phone and PC users, won’t ever see them.  I still think Twitter has the best chance to make money by forcing the “collectors” to pay money.  You know what I mean by “collector”, those people that collect tons of followers or friends.  If Twitter caps the number of followers and makes you pay to have more, would you?  The normal twitter user doesn’t have that many followers, and this is where my title comes in … BUT The financial value for Twitter is really seen through businesses connecting with their customers.  I’ve seen 3 effective ways this has been accomplished. 1. Giving your customers a coupon or announcing a sale My favorite is @amazonmp3, Being a huge music lover, I get notified when they put music on sale. Various restaurants like @ruthschris_ARK will let their favorite customers know about certain specials @BluefinMemphis I was traveling through Memphis once looking for a sushi restaurant when they had %50 off if we mentioned we saw them on Twitter.  It was their first attempt at trying to encourage customers in the door, and after talking with the management, it was a huge success 2. Giveaways @namecheap Several companies have started huge marketing campaigns, but my favorite is watching companies post trivia questions, and the first person to respond wins a prize. 3. Responding to Customer Complaints I once posted a complaint about American Express (a company that I have slowly come to really dislike) but they actually had someone contact me to try and resolve the issue.  I give them credit for paying attention, but still dislike them for their horrible credit practices.

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  • Book Review (Book 11) - Applied Architecture Patterns on the Microsoft Platform

    - by BuckWoody
    This is a continuation of the books I challenged myself to read to help my career - one a month, for year. You can read my first book review here, and the entire list is here. The book I chose for April 2012 was: Applied Architecture Patterns on the Microsoft Platform. I was traveling at the end of last month so I’m a bit late posting this review here. Why I chose this book: I actually know a few of the authors on this book, so when they told me about it I wanted to check it out. The premise of the book is exactly as it states in the title - to learn how to solve a problem using products from Microsoft. What I learned: I liked the book - a lot. They've arranged the content in a "Solution Decision Framework", that presents a few elements to help you identify a need and then propose alternate solutions to solve them, and then the rationale for the choice. But the payoff is that the authors then walk through the solution they implement and what they ran into doing it. I really liked this approach. It's not a huge book, but one I've referred to again since I've read it. It's fairly comprehensive, and includes server-oriented products, not things like Microsoft Office or other client-side tools. In fact, I would LOVE to have a work like this for Open Source and other vendors as well - would make for a great library for a Systems Architect. This one is unashamedly aimed at the Microsoft products, and even if I didn't work here, I'd be fine with that. As I said, it would be interesting to see some books on other platforms like this, but I haven't run across something that presents other systems in quite this way. And that brings up an interesting point - This book is aimed at folks who create solutions within an organization. It's not aimed at Administrators, DBA's, Developers or the like, although I think all of those audiences could benefit from reading it. The solutions are made up, and not to a huge level of depth - nor should they be. It's a great exercise in thinking these kinds of things through in a structured way. The information is a bit dated, especially for Windows and SQL Azure. While the general concepts hold, the cloud platform from Microsoft is evolving so quickly that any printed book finds it hard to keep up with the improvements. I do have one quibble with the text - the chapters are a bit uneven. This is always a danger with multiple authors, but it shows up in a couple of chapters. I winced at one of the chapters that tried to take a more conversational, humorous style. This kind of academic work doesn't lend itself to that style. I recommend you get the book - and use it. I hope they keep it updated - I'll be a frequent customer. :)  

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  • SSAS Tabular Workshop online and other upcoming dates (and updates!) #ssas #tabular

    - by Marco Russo (SQLBI)
    After many conferences and travels, this summer I had some time to write and prepare new sessions for the next wave of conferences. In reality I am just doing that, even if I already restarted traveling for consulting and training. So expect new content about DAX and Tabular coming in the next months! Starting to see real customer adopting Tabular is showing many new challenges and there is still a lot to learn and to create. If you still didn’t started working on Tabular, well, you should. As I always say, as a BI developer you should be able to choose between Tabular and Multidimensional, and in order to do that you should know both of them! One thing that I don’t like very much about marketing is that “Tabular is simpler”, because it’s often translated in “Tabular is for simple projects” when this last statement is not true. Actually, I see a lot of good reasons to adopt Tabular in complex data models, especially in non-traditional scenarios. I know, this is because I love to understand what are the actual limits of a technology, and I’m learning that there is simple a lot of space of improvement also for Tabular. It’s already fast, but it could be faster! How can you start? Well, first of all, by reading our book. Then, by attending to our SSAS Tabular workshop. There is an online edition of the workshop on September 3-4, 2012 (hurry up if you want to register), and there are already several dates planned for the next months (and others will be added soon!). And, of course, by installing SQL Server 2012 and trying to create models over your databases. If you are too lazy, just start with PowerPivot. As soon as you start working with Tabular or PowerPivot, you will see that there is one important skill you need: learning DAX. In the next few days I should publish an article that I’m finishing these days about best practices using SUMMARIZE and ADDCOLUMNS. If only someone published this article one year ago, I would have saved many hours of my life. But, you know, flight manuals are written in blood… and someone has to write! Stay tuned.

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  • Hello From South Florida

    - by Sam Abraham
    Fellow Blog Readers: I figured I use my first blog post on GeeksWithBlogs to introduce myself.   I recently relocated from Long Island, NY to South Florida where I joined a local company as Software Engineer specializing in technologies such as C#, ASP.Net 3.5, WCF, Silverlight, SQL Server 2008 and LINQ, to name a few. I am an MCP and MCTS ASP.Net 3.5, looking to get my .Net 4.0 certification soon.   Having been in industry for a few years so far, I figured I would share with you my take on the importance of being involved(at least attending) in local user groups.   I am a firm believer that besides using a certain technology, the best way to expand one’s knowledge is by sharing it with others and being equally open to learn from others just as much as you are willing to share what you know.   In my opinion, an important factor that makes a good developer stand-out is his/her ability to keep abreast with the latest and greatest even in areas outside his/her direct expertise.   Additionally, having spoken to various recruiters, technical user group attendees are always favorably looked upon as genuinely interested in their field and willing to take the initiative to expand their knowledge which offers job candidates good leverage when competing for jobs.   I believe I am very blessed to be in an area with a very strong and vibrant developer community. I found in the local .Net community leadership a genuine interest in constantly extending the opportunity to all developers to get more involved and encouraging those who are willing to take that initiative achieve their goal: Speak in meetings, volunteer at events or write and publish articles/blogs about latest and greatest technologies.   With Vishal Shukla (Site director for the West Palm Beach .Net User Group) traveling overseas, I have been extended the opportunity to come on board as site coordinator for FladotNet's WPB .Net User Group along with Venkata Subramanian, an opportunity which I gratefully accepted.   Being involved in running a .Net User Group will surely help me personally and professionally, but my real hope is to use this opportunity to assist in delivering the ultimate common-goal: spread the word about new .Net Technologies, help everybody get more involved and simply have fun learning new things.   With my introduction out of the way, in the next few days I will be posting some notes on an upcoming talk I will be giving about MVC2 and VS2010 in mid-April.   Environment.Exit(0); --Sam

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  • ray collision with rectangle and floating point accuracy

    - by phq
    I'm trying to solve a problem with a ray bouncing on a box. Actually it is a sphere but for simplicity the box dimensions are expanded by the sphere radius when doing the collision test making the sphere a single ray. It is done by projecting the ray onto all faces of the box and pick the one that is closest. However because I'm using floating point variables I fear that the projected point onto the surface might be interpreted as being below in the next iteration, also I will later allow the sphere to move which might make that scenario more likely. Also the bounce coefficient might be as low as zero, making the sphere continue along the surface. So my naive solution is to project not only forwards but backwards to catch those cases. That is where I got into problems shown in the figure: In the first iteration the first black arrow is calculated and we end up at a point on the surface of the box. In the second iteration the "back projection" hits the other surface making the second black arrow bounce on the wrong surface. If there are several boxes close to each other this has further consequences making the sphere fall through them all. So my main question is how to handle possible floating point accuracy when placing the sphere on the box surface so it does not fall through. In writing this question I got the idea to have a threshold to only accept back projections a certain amount much smaller than the box but larger than the possible accuracy limitation, this would only cause the "false" back projection when the sphere hit the box on an edge which would appear naturally. To clarify my original approach, the arrows shown in the image is not only the path the sphere travels but is also representing a single time step in the simulation. In reality the time step is much smaller about 0.05 of the box size. The path traveled is projected onto possible sides to avoid traveling past a thinner object at higher speeds. In normal situations the floating point accuracy is not an issue but there are two situations where I have the concern. When the new position at the end of the time step is located very close to the surface, very unlikely though. When using a bounce factor of 0, here it happens every time the sphere hit a box. To add some loss of accuracy, the motivation for my concern, is that the sphere and box are in different coordinate systems and thus the sphere location is transformed for every test. This last one is why I'm not willing to stand on luck that one floating point value lying on top of the box always will be interpreted the same. I did not know voronoi regions by name, but looking at it I'm not sure how it would be used in a projection scenario that I'm using here.

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  • Appointment & Booking Calendar for 2,500 Members

    - by D. K. Mason
    For this job I need a booking or appointment calendar for the WP website, so that each of the 2500+ members can manage his/her own appointments calendar. Members will set their schedules and available hours. Buyers can select one member, and book when they want to visit the member and reserve time online. Lets say our WP membership site has thousands of members each offering one service. We have 25 categories. On their profile page is his appointment or booking calendar, along with his personally created and uploaded (into S3) profile video. Website visitors should be able to easily book hours & days as desired. For now all members have a free membership. WE earn $ by bringing customers to the registered members and collecting one dollar for our service. Therefore, we need an affordable script and one that handles our members needs. We already have a paid copy of Jrox. What are those needs? Well, please register for a test account in the ENTERTAINMENT category at http://asianhighway26.com/?page_id=140 Next, pretend you are a buyer and start on the index page and select your ENTERTAINMENT category. Click on image #3 and you will receive a list of others in your traveling area. When you click VIEW DETAILS, there is where a potential customer will see the calendar and if you are available on the dates and times you are interested in doing business. We know that YOU the member will want to list your not available dates and hours. There may be other features desired but this is the most important, we believe. Our WP administrator (me) can install the main script, but each member must have some login or dashboard to manage his/her own calendar and work hours. Can you create or modify any appointment calendar software to do this? Can the jam.jrox.com software we own do this? As you can see here, we offer to pay for ideas you present that we use: asianhighway26.com/?page_id=126 D.K. Mason Chief Development Officer, Asian Highway Network, Tourism Division, Asia-Pacific Region (http://www.forums.doctormason.us/b-ah/)

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  • How should I land my next consulting gig? [closed]

    - by MrOodles
    For the last couple of years, I've been working on speculative projects, expanding my skillset with side work, and paying the bills while having a blast consulting for startups. However, for a number of personal reasons, I need to spend the next 6-9 months maximizing my cash income. I want to put this into effect starting in early August. So that means I have one month to put the necessary client list/portfolio/resume together to start making this happen. As a programmer, I am very proficient in building Django web apps. I can write the necessary SQL, python, javascript, and css to build every part of a Django app, and then do the system administration necessary to deploy on AWS using EC2. I can also rig up a CDN to work seemlessly with the app using S3 and Cloudfront. I have built GIS applications using GeoDjango and PostGIS, and I have constructed social video apps by implementing Encoding.com as a service to prepare raw video files for consumption on the web. I am also moderately proficient in programming PHP, Java, and C#. I have built web apps in PHP, and desktop apps in Java and C#. I have dabbled with Android applications and iPhone apps, but nothing I would show off. I have experience doing SEO, social media marketing, and content marketing. Many of my clients have needed their apps promoted after they were built, and I was always happy to oblige when I could. I have also worked with biometrics technology including fingerprints for government contractors. This was as much a business analyst role as it was a programming gig, as I had to help answer RFPs, make checklists, and work around reems and reems of regulations to build applications that met very large bureaucratic requirements. I only have two real requirements for my next gig(s): 1) Work remotely. I live in North East Ohio, and I don't plan on leaving, but I wouldn't mind traveling one or two weeks out of every month to service clients who need on-site help. 2) $60.00hr-$∞ USD contracting rate. So what should I do for the next 30 days to achieve this? Should I target some large company and learn the requisite buzzwords to impress them? Should I learn some new language or technology? Polish some skill that I already have? Should I build something using my current skillset, or with some new technology? Should I put a website for my consultancy together to market myself? Should I do that using latest technology x, y, and z? Or should I just slap something up on Tumblr? I'm willing to do anything (moral) over the next 4 weeks to put myself into a position to maximize my income, and I'm open to all and every idea Programmers users may have. Let me hear them.

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  • Why does Windows 7 always automatically change the input or keyboard language?

    - by B-Ball
    I am wondering why Windows 7 always automatically changes my input or keyboard language. I've a notebook with an integrated QWERTY keyboard English (United States). Traveling, I use that one but, additionally, I've my own as well as a much better keyboard at home which is a QWERTZ keyboard German (Germany). Thus, being at home, I'd like to use my QWERTZ keyboard. Unfortunately, Windows 7 does not play along at this one. Every time, I start up my notebook, it is usually set to English (United States) but that's not the problem. In case, I'd use my notebook QWERTY keyboard English (United States), that's fine. However, if I start up my notebook and I'd like to use my QWERTZ keyboard German (Germany), I usually press ALT + Left Shift in order to switch from English (United States) to German (Germany) and Windows 7 switches the input language but only for the program that is currently open. If my input language is set to German (Germany) and I, e.g., open NotePad, Windows 7 automatically switches my input language to English (United States). This is very annoying since I've to change the input or keyboard language to German (Germany) every time I open up a new program. Why doesn't Windows 7 stay with one input language if I changed it manually by pressing ALT + Left Shift? Why doesn't the manual change of the input or keyboard language apply for the whole Windows 7? Why does it only affect the currently opened program? Since I've two keyboards with two different layouts, I seriously need to have both of the keyboards languages installed. I tried both of the below settings in order to find a solution for my problem. Currently, I am using the first option, two input languages. First option: Two input language - www.abload.de/img/19aie.jpg Second option: Two keyboard languages - www.abload.de/img/2nb4x.jpg Thank you very much in advance.

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  • Mac Management and Security

    - by Bart Silverstrim
    I was going through some literature on managing OS X laptops and asked someone some questions about usage scenarios when using the MacBooks. I asked someone more knowledgeable than I about whether it was possible for my Mac to be taken over if I were visiting another site for a conference or if I went on a wifi network at a local coffee house with policies from an OS X Server with workgroup manager (either legit for the site or someone running a version of OS X Server on hardware they have hidden somewhere on the network), which apparently could be set up to do things like limit my access to Finder or impose other neat whiz-bang management features. He said that it is indeed possible for it to happen as it would be assigned via the DHCP server and the OS X server would assume my Mac is a guest and could hand out restrictions and apparently my Mac will happily accept them without notifying me or giving me an option, unlike Windows which I believe would need to be joined to a domain before it becomes "managed" by Active Directory. So my question is as network admins and sysadmins with users traveling with MacBooks, is there a way to reasonably protect your users from having their machines hijacked without resorting to just turning off networking all the time? Or isn't this much of a security hazard? What threat does this pose to the road warriors in your businesses?

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  • Are there any Microsoft Exchange Clients for iOS and Android that store their local data in an encrypted manner?

    - by Zac B
    I don't feel like this is a product recommendation question, more of a "does this tech even exist and is it feasible" question, but if I'm wrong, feel free to give this question the boot. Context: Our company has a bunch of traveling employees who access the company's Exchange server via thier iDevices or android phones, but because of the data protection laws in the state where our company is based (and the nature of the data our company works with), a recent security audit found that all mobile devices (laptops, phones, etc) operated by our company need to have all company correspondence and related data encrypted all the time. For laptops, that was easy: BitLocker or TrueCrypt, problem solved. For phones and tablets, however, I'm stumped. Sure, you can put lock screens/passwords on the phones, but the data is still accessible via external extraction, as law enforcement authorities already know. Question: Are there any clients for Microsoft Exchange that run on iOS or Android which store local data encrypted? The people using our mobile devices do a lot of their work while offline, so just giving them OWA access with SSL connection security isn't enough. Are there apps/technologies that present an additional login credential prompt to decrypt locally stored data in the app's storage area on the phone? My gut reaction when I started looking into this was "that doesn't sound like something Apple would allow into the App Store", but I've been wrong before...

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  • Mac Management Without Permission and Security

    - by Bart Silverstrim
    I was going through some literature on managing OS X laptops and asked someone some questions about usage scenarios when using the MacBooks. I asked someone more knowledgeable than I about whether it was possible for my Mac to be taken over if I were visiting another site for a conference or if I went on a wifi network at a local coffee house with policies from an OS X Server with workgroup manager (either legit for the site or someone running a version of OS X Server on hardware they have hidden somewhere on the network), which apparently could be set up to do things like limit my access to Finder or impose other neat whiz-bang management features. He said that it is indeed possible for it to happen as it would be assigned via the DHCP server and the OS X server would assume my Mac is a guest and could hand out restrictions and apparently my Mac will happily accept them without notifying me or giving me an option, unlike Windows which I believe would need to be joined to a domain before it becomes "managed" by Active Directory. So my question is as network admins and sysadmins with users traveling with MacBooks, is there a way to reasonably protect your users from having their machines hijacked without resorting to just turning off networking all the time? Or isn't this much of a security hazard? What threat does this pose to the road warriors in your businesses?

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  • Why does Windows 7 always automatically change the input or keyboard language?

    - by B-Ball
    I am wondering why Windows 7 always automatically changes my input or keyboard language. I've a notebook with an integrated QWERTY keyboard English (United States). Traveling, I use that one but, additionally, I've my own as well as a much better keyboard at home which is a QWERTZ keyboard German (Germany). Thus, being at home, I'd like to use my QWERTZ keyboard. Unfortunately, Windows 7 does not play along at this one. Every time, I start up my notebook, it is usually set to English (United States) but that's not the problem. In case, I'd use my notebook QWERTY keyboard English (United States), that's fine. However, if I start up my notebook and I'd like to use my QWERTZ keyboard German (Germany), I usually press ALT + Left Shift in order to switch from English (United States) to German (Germany) and Windows 7 switches the input language but only for the program that is currently open. If my input language is set to German (Germany) and I, e.g., open NotePad, Windows 7 automatically switches my input language to English (United States). This is very annoying since I've to change the input or keyboard language to German (Germany) every time I open up a new program. Why doesn't Windows 7 stay with one input language if I changed it manually by pressing ALT + Left Shift? Why doesn't the manual change of the input or keyboard language apply for the whole Windows 7? Why does it only affect the currently opened program? Since I've two keyboards with two different layouts, I seriously need to have both of the keyboards languages installed. I tried both of the below settings in order to find a solution for my problem. Currently, I am using the first option, two input languages. First option: two input languages: Second option: two keyboard languages:

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  • Hard Drive that was used before not detected or accessible in Windows 7

    - by Anders
    Hello SU: My PC crashed for some unknown reason, and I am still working on what caused that. However, I pulled my main (windows) drive from my computer and hooked it up to my roommate's machine and was able to pull the data I needed off of it (i.e. the drive is good). I hook up his drives as they were, I had to turn off his machine and unplug his secondary drive to hook mine up, boot his machine and there is no second drive available in windows explorer. I opened Device Manager to see if for some reason it's drive letter got un-assigned, but there is nothing listed in there except his primary hard drive, his optical drive and one other optical drive which I believe is the virtual drive Daemon Tools made. The drive shows up in the BIOS, however after I restarted his machine again it sits on the "Entering setup....." screen at the load window. The only thing I can think of is that may have messed with stuff is I used this tutorial to create a bootable XP install on a USB drive to install XP on my machine (I am 99% certain that the optical drive in my PC is broken) and maybe it used the other hard drive's letter for the USB drive for some reason, which doesn't make much sense since it was recognized it as a different drive letter before I started the process. It is possible that it used the secondary hard drive's letter for it's work, but once again I am uncertain. Where should I go from here? He his bound to wake up within the next several hours and will probably flip a lid if I cannot get some sort of handle on this. Any and all help is greatly appreciated. PS: Anyone who helps me get this situated has a beer or two on me, as long as you are in the greater metro Detroit area, or don't mind traveling a bit!

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  • Windows 7 Automatically Connecting To Unsecured Wireless Networks On Startup

    - by Xtend
    Most of the questions on this topic related to folks connecting to somebody else's wireless network when their own was available and could remedy the situation by going to their connections and unchecking the "connect automatically" box. See this: " Avoid automatically connecting to wireless network on windows 7 " as an example. In my situation, I've noticed that Win 7 will automatically connect to any unsecured wifi network - even if I have never connected to it in the past. If I am traveling and boot Win 7, it will start and connect to what appears to be the best signaled unsecured network without prompting me for confirmation (note: in the above link, "Naveen" seems to have same problem). Obviously, that is a security concern to me. Further, when I open "Network and Sharing" and "Manage wireless networks" the network is not displayed (probably because I labelled it a public network). Again, these are new, never connected with before, wireless networks. I always promptly disconnect from them but don't want to have to be on constant guard for an auto connection to a malicious network. This began about a month ago, as I recall, Win 7 did not behave like this in the past, I didn't monkey with wifi settings, and don't use a 3rd party connection manager. I did have to download some internet security certificates for army website access but I don't think that should mess with network settings. Any ideas how I can tell Win7 cease automatically connecting to networks or, at least, to prompt me for a confirmation before connecting?

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  • Power Outage Interrupted Upgrade from Windows Vista Ultimate to 7 Ultimate, Reverted to Vista, Now Vista is failing... What Next?

    - by tednewk
    I was in the midst of what seemed to be a successful upgrade from Vista Ultimate to 7 Ultimate when there was a brief blackout. The upgrade failed and Windows reverted back to Vista. Now Vista is very slow to boot, has problems waking back-up from inactivity and quickly loses it's wireless connection. The wake-up problem manifests itself as the mouse is clearly shown on a black screen but I have no access to the Desktop or Taskbar or Explorer. Even Alt-Ctrl-Delete doesn't seem to work. No task menu, no reboot. Hitting the reset button reboots the machine with the usual Black Screen warnings offering Safe Mode. I tried to do a system restore to a point before the upgrade. That didn't seem to work. My guess is that my system is a mutant with parts of Vista and parts of 7 crashing each other. I would like avoid a clean install if at all possible to avoid reinstalling other software. What should I try now? My thoughts are: My a system back-up to lock the computer in place Trying a second 7 upgrade If that appears to be working make another back-up If not reload back-up and try a repairing Vista from DVD. If that appears to work make another back-up, let system stablize about a week then try 7 install again If that doesn't work are there any other options to try before settling for a clean install? Another complication, I am doing this by "remote control". I'm traveling with my job and I'll be talking my son through it over the phone. (Kind of like the landing the 747 cliche from all the 70's adventure shows!) So is there a way of simplifying the steps? Thanks Ted

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  • Building applications with WPF, MVVM and Prism(aka CAG)

    - by skjagini
    In this article I am going to walk through an application using WPF and Prism (aka composite application guidance, CAG) which simulates engaging a taxi (cab).  The rules are simple, the app would have3 screens A login screen to authenticate the user An information screen. A screen to engage the cab and roam around and calculating the total fare Metered Rate of Fare The meter is required to be engaged when a cab is occupied by anyone $3.00 upon entry $0.35 for each additional unit The unit fare is: one-fifth of a mile, when the cab is traveling at 6 miles an hour or more; or 60 seconds when not in motion or traveling at less than 12 miles per hour. Night surcharge of $.50 after 8:00 PM & before 6:00 AM Peak hour Weekday Surcharge of $1.00 Monday - Friday after 4:00 PM & before 8:00 PM New York State Tax Surcharge of $.50 per ride. Example: Friday (2010-10-08) 5:30pm Start at Lexington Ave & E 57th St End at Irving Pl & E 15th St Start = $3.00 Travels 2 miles at less than 6 mph for 15 minutes = $3.50 Travels at more than 12 mph for 5 minutes = $1.75 Peak hour Weekday Surcharge = $1.00 (ride started at 5:30 pm) New York State Tax Surcharge = $0.50 Before we dive into the app, I would like to give brief description about the framework.  If you want to jump on to the source code, scroll all the way to the end of the post. MVVM MVVM pattern is in no way related to the usage of PRISM in your application and should be considered if you are using WPF irrespective of PRISM or not. Lets say you are not familiar with MVVM, your typical UI would involve adding some UI controls like text boxes, a button, double clicking on the button,  generating event handler, calling a method from business layer and updating the user interface, it works most of the time for developing small scale applications. The problem with this approach is that there is some amount of code specific to business logic wrapped in UI specific code which is hard to unit test it, mock it and MVVM helps to solve the exact problem. MVVM stands for Model(M) – View(V) – ViewModel(VM),  based on the interactions with in the three parties it should be called VVMM,  MVVM sounds more like MVC (Model-View-Controller) so the name. Why it should be called VVMM: View – View Model - Model WPF allows to create user interfaces using XAML and MVVM takes it to the next level by allowing complete separation of user interface and business logic. In WPF each view will have a property, DataContext when set to an instance of a class (which happens to be your view model) provides the data the view is interested in, i.e., view interacts with view model and at the same time view model interacts with view through DataContext. Sujith, if view and view model are interacting directly with each other how does MVVM is helping me separation of concerns? Well, the catch is DataContext is of type Object, since it is of type object view doesn’t know exact type of view model allowing views and views models to be loosely coupled. View models aggregate data from models (data access layer, services, etc) and make it available for views through properties, methods etc, i.e., View Models interact with Models. PRISM Prism is provided by Microsoft Patterns and Practices team and it can be downloaded from codeplex for source code,  samples and documentation on msdn.  The name composite implies, to compose user interface from different modules (views) without direct dependencies on each other, again allowing  loosely coupled development. Well Sujith, I can already do that with user controls, why shall I learn another framework?  That’s correct, you can decouple using user controls, but you still have to manage some amount of coupling, like how to do you communicate between the controls, how do you subscribe/unsubscribe, loading/unloading views dynamically. Prism is not a replacement for user controls, provides the following features which greatly help in designing the composite applications. Dependency Injection (DI)/ Inversion of Control (IoC) Modules Regions Event Aggregator  Commands Simply put, MVVM helps building a single view and Prism helps building an application using the views There are other open source alternatives to Prism, like MVVMLight, Cinch, take a look at them as well. Lets dig into the source code.  1. Solution The solution is made of the following projects Framework: Holds the common functionality in building applications using WPF and Prism TaxiClient: Start up project, boot strapping and app styling TaxiCommon: Helps with the business logic TaxiModules: Holds the meat of the application with views and view models TaxiTests: To test the application 2. DI / IoC Dependency Injection (DI) as the name implies refers to injecting dependencies and Inversion of Control (IoC) means the calling code has no direct control on the dependencies, opposite of normal way of programming where dependencies are passed by caller, i.e inversion; aside from some differences in terminology the concept is same in both the cases. The idea behind DI/IoC pattern is to reduce the amount of direct coupling between different components of the application, the higher the dependency the more tightly coupled the application resulting in code which is hard to modify, unit test and mock.  Initializing Dependency Injection through BootStrapper TaxiClient is the starting project of the solution and App (App.xaml)  is the starting class that gets called when you run the application. From the App’s OnStartup method we will invoke BootStrapper.   namespace TaxiClient { /// <summary> /// Interaction logic for App.xaml /// </summary> public partial class App : Application { protected override void OnStartup(StartupEventArgs e) { base.OnStartup(e);   (new BootStrapper()).Run(); } } } BootStrapper is your contact point for initializing the application including dependency injection, creating Shell and other frameworks. We are going to use Unity for DI and there are lot of open source DI frameworks like Spring.Net, StructureMap etc with different feature set  and you can choose a framework based on your preferences. Note that Prism comes with in built support for Unity, for example we are deriving from UnityBootStrapper in our case and for any other DI framework you have to extend the Prism appropriately   namespace TaxiClient { public class BootStrapper: UnityBootstrapper { protected override IModuleCatalog CreateModuleCatalog() { return new ConfigurationModuleCatalog(); } protected override DependencyObject CreateShell() { Framework.FrameworkBootStrapper.Run(Container, Application.Current.Dispatcher);   Shell shell = new Shell(); shell.ResizeMode = ResizeMode.NoResize; shell.Show();   return shell; } } } Lets take a look into  FrameworkBootStrapper to check out how to register with unity container. namespace Framework { public class FrameworkBootStrapper { public static void Run(IUnityContainer container, Dispatcher dispatcher) { UIDispatcher uiDispatcher = new UIDispatcher(dispatcher); container.RegisterInstance<IDispatcherService>(uiDispatcher);   container.RegisterType<IInjectSingleViewService, InjectSingleViewService>( new ContainerControlledLifetimeManager());   . . . } } } In the above code we are registering two components with unity container. You shall observe that we are following two different approaches, RegisterInstance and RegisterType.  With RegisterInstance we are registering an existing instance and the same instance will be returned for every request made for IDispatcherService   and with RegisterType we are requesting unity container to create an instance for us when required, i.e., when I request for an instance for IInjectSingleViewService, unity will create/return an instance of InjectSingleViewService class and with RegisterType we can configure the life time of the instance being created. With ContaienrControllerLifetimeManager, the unity container caches the instance and reuses for any subsequent requests, without recreating a new instance. Lets take a look into FareViewModel.cs and it’s constructor. The constructor takes one parameter IEventAggregator and if you try to find all references in your solution for IEventAggregator, you will not find a single location where an instance of EventAggregator is passed directly to the constructor. The compiler still finds an instance and works fine because Prism is already configured when used with Unity container to return an instance of EventAggregator when requested for IEventAggregator and in this particular case it is called constructor injection. public class FareViewModel:ObservableBase, IDataErrorInfo { ... private IEventAggregator _eventAggregator;   public FareViewModel(IEventAggregator eventAggregator) { _eventAggregator = eventAggregator; InitializePropertyNames(); InitializeModel(); PropertyChanged += OnPropertyChanged; } ... 3. Shell Shells are very similar in operation to Master Pages in asp.net or MDI in Windows Forms. And shells contain regions which display the views, you can have as many regions as you wish in a given view. You can also nest regions. i.e, one region can load a view which in itself may contain other regions. We have to create a shell at the start of the application and are doing it by overriding CreateShell method from BootStrapper From the following Shell.xaml you shall notice that we have two content controls with Region names as ‘MenuRegion’ and ‘MainRegion’.  The idea here is that you can inject any user controls into the regions dynamically, i.e., a Menu User Control for MenuRegion and based on the user action you can load appropriate view into MainRegion.    <Window x:Class="TaxiClient.Shell" xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2006/xaml/presentation" xmlns:x="http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2006/xaml" xmlns:Regions="clr-namespace:Microsoft.Practices.Prism.Regions;assembly=Microsoft.Practices.Prism" Title="Taxi" Height="370" Width="800"> <Grid Margin="2"> <ContentControl Regions:RegionManager.RegionName="MenuRegion" HorizontalAlignment="Stretch" VerticalAlignment="Stretch" HorizontalContentAlignment="Stretch" VerticalContentAlignment="Stretch" />   <ContentControl Grid.Row="1" Regions:RegionManager.RegionName="MainRegion" HorizontalAlignment="Stretch" VerticalAlignment="Stretch" HorizontalContentAlignment="Stretch" VerticalContentAlignment="Stretch" /> <!--<Border Grid.ColumnSpan="2" BorderThickness="2" CornerRadius="3" BorderBrush="LightBlue" />-->   </Grid> </Window> 4. Modules Prism provides the ability to build composite applications and modules play an important role in it. For example if you are building a Mortgage Loan Processor application with 3 components, i.e. customer’s credit history,  existing mortgages, new home/loan information; and consider that the customer’s credit history component involves gathering data about his/her address, background information, job details etc. The idea here using Prism modules is to separate the implementation of these 3 components into their own visual studio projects allowing to build components with no dependency on each other and independently. If we need to add another component to the application, the component can be developed by in house team or some other team in the organization by starting with a new Visual Studio project and adding to the solution at the run time with very little knowledge about the application. Prism modules are defined by implementing the IModule interface and each visual studio project to be considered as a module should implement the IModule interface.  From the BootStrapper.cs you shall observe that we are overriding the method by returning a ConfiguratingModuleCatalog which returns the modules that are registered for the application using the app.config file  and you can also add module using code. Lets take a look into configuration file.   <?xml version="1.0"?> <configuration> <configSections> <section name="modules" type="Microsoft.Practices.Prism.Modularity.ModulesConfigurationSection, Microsoft.Practices.Prism"/> </configSections> <modules> <module assemblyFile="TaxiModules.dll" moduleType="TaxiModules.ModuleInitializer, TaxiModules" moduleName="TaxiModules"/> </modules> </configuration> Here we are adding TaxiModules project to our solution and TaxiModules.ModuleInitializer implements IModule interface   5. Module Mapper With Prism modules you can dynamically add or remove modules from the regions, apart from that Prism also provides API to control adding/removing the views from a region within the same module. Taxi Information Screen: Engage the Taxi Screen: The sample application has two screens, ‘Taxi Information’ and ‘Engage the Taxi’ and they both reside in same module, TaxiModules. ‘Engage the Taxi’ is again made of two user controls, FareView on the left and TotalView on the right. We have created a Shell with two regions, MenuRegion and MainRegion with menu loaded into MenuRegion. We can create a wrapper user control called EngageTheTaxi made of FareView and TotalView and load either TaxiInfo or EngageTheTaxi into MainRegion based on the user action. Though it will work it tightly binds the user controls and for every combination of user controls, we need to create a dummy wrapper control to contain them. Instead we can apply the principles we learned so far from Shell/regions and introduce another template (LeftAndRightRegionView.xaml) made of two regions Region1 (left) and Region2 (right) and load  FareView and TotalView dynamically.  To help with loading of the views dynamically I have introduce an helper an interface, IInjectSingleViewService,  idea suggested by Mike Taulty, a must read blog for .Net developers. using System; using System.Collections.Generic; using System.ComponentModel;   namespace Framework.PresentationUtility.Navigation {   public interface IInjectSingleViewService : INotifyPropertyChanged { IEnumerable<CommandViewDefinition> Commands { get; } IEnumerable<ModuleViewDefinition> Modules { get; }   void RegisterViewForRegion(string commandName, string viewName, string regionName, Type viewType); void ClearViewFromRegion(string viewName, string regionName); void RegisterModule(string moduleName, IList<ModuleMapper> moduleMappers); } } The Interface declares three methods to work with views: RegisterViewForRegion: Registers a view with a particular region. You can register multiple views and their regions under one command.  When this particular command is invoked all the views registered under it will be loaded into their regions. ClearViewFromRegion: To unload a specific view from a region. RegisterModule: The idea is when a command is invoked you can load the UI with set of controls in their default position and based on the user interaction, you can load different contols in to different regions on the fly.  And it is supported ModuleViewDefinition and ModuleMappers as shown below. namespace Framework.PresentationUtility.Navigation { public class ModuleViewDefinition { public string ModuleName { get; set; } public IList<ModuleMapper> ModuleMappers; public ICommand Command { get; set; } }   public class ModuleMapper { public string ViewName { get; set; } public string RegionName { get; set; } public Type ViewType { get; set; } } } 6. Event Aggregator Prism event aggregator enables messaging between components as in Observable pattern, Notifier notifies the Observer which receives notification it is interested in. When it comes to Observable pattern, Observer has to unsubscribes for notifications when it no longer interested in notifications, which allows the Notifier to remove the Observer’s reference from it’s local cache. Though .Net has managed garbage collection it cannot remove inactive the instances referenced by an active instance resulting in memory leak, keeping the Observers in memory as long as Notifier stays in memory.  Developers have to be very careful to unsubscribe when necessary and it often gets overlooked, to overcome these problems Prism Event Aggregator uses weak references to cache the reference (Observer in this case)  and releases the reference (memory) once the instance goes out of scope. Using event aggregator is very simple, declare a generic type of CompositePresenationEvent by inheriting from it. using Microsoft.Practices.Prism.Events; using TaxiCommon.BAO;   namespace TaxiCommon.CompositeEvents { public class TaxiOnMoveEvent:CompositePresentationEvent<TaxiOnMove> { } }   TaxiOnMove.cs includes the properties which we want to exchange between the parties, FareView and TotalView. using System;   namespace TaxiCommon.BAO { public class TaxiOnMove { public TimeSpan MinutesAtTweleveMPH { get; set; } public double MilesAtSixMPH { get; set; } } }   Lets take a look into FareViewodel (Notifier) and how it raises the event.  Here we are raising the event by getting the event through GetEvent<..>() and publishing it with the payload private void OnAddMinutes(object obj) { TaxiOnMove payload = new TaxiOnMove(); if(MilesAtSixMPH != null) payload.MilesAtSixMPH = MilesAtSixMPH.Value; if(MinutesAtTweleveMPH != null) payload.MinutesAtTweleveMPH = new TimeSpan(0,0,MinutesAtTweleveMPH.Value,0);   _eventAggregator.GetEvent<TaxiOnMoveEvent>().Publish(payload); ResetMinutesAndMiles(); } And TotalViewModel(Observer) subscribes to notifications by getting the event through GetEvent<..>() namespace TaxiModules.ViewModels { public class TotalViewModel:ObservableBase { .... private IEventAggregator _eventAggregator;   public TotalViewModel(IEventAggregator eventAggregator) { _eventAggregator = eventAggregator; ... }   private void SubscribeToEvents() { _eventAggregator.GetEvent<TaxiStartedEvent>() .Subscribe(OnTaxiStarted, ThreadOption.UIThread,false,(filter) => true); _eventAggregator.GetEvent<TaxiOnMoveEvent>() .Subscribe(OnTaxiMove, ThreadOption.UIThread, false, (filter) => true); _eventAggregator.GetEvent<TaxiResetEvent>() .Subscribe(OnTaxiReset, ThreadOption.UIThread, false, (filter) => true); }   ... private void OnTaxiMove(TaxiOnMove taxiOnMove) { OnMoveFare fare = new OnMoveFare(taxiOnMove); Fares.Add(fare); SetTotalFare(new []{fare}); }   .... 7. MVVM through example In this section we are going to look into MVVM implementation through example.  I have all the modules declared in a single project, TaxiModules, again it is not necessary to have them into one project. Once the user logs into the application, will be greeted with the ‘Engage the Taxi’ screen which is made of two user controls, FareView.xaml and TotalView.Xaml. As you can see from the solution explorer, each of them have their own code behind files and  ViewModel classes, FareViewMode.cs, TotalViewModel.cs Lets take a look in to the FareView and how it interacts with FareViewModel using MVVM implementation. FareView.xaml acts as a view and FareViewMode.cs is it’s view model. The FareView code behind class   namespace TaxiModules.Views { /// <summary> /// Interaction logic for FareView.xaml /// </summary> public partial class FareView : UserControl { public FareView(FareViewModel viewModel) { InitializeComponent(); this.Loaded += (s, e) => { this.DataContext = viewModel; }; } } } The FareView is bound to FareViewModel through the data context  and you shall observe that DataContext is of type Object, i.e. the FareView doesn’t really know the type of ViewModel (FareViewModel). This helps separation of View and ViewModel as View and ViewModel are independent of each other, you can bind FareView to FareViewModel2 as well and the application compiles just fine. Lets take a look into FareView xaml file  <UserControl x:Class="TaxiModules.Views.FareView" xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2006/xaml/presentation" xmlns:x="http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2006/xaml" xmlns:Toolkit="clr-namespace:Microsoft.Windows.Controls;assembly=WPFToolkit" xmlns:Commands="clr-namespace:Microsoft.Practices.Prism.Commands;assembly=Microsoft.Practices.Prism"> <Grid Margin="10" > ....   <Border Style="{DynamicResource innerBorder}" Grid.Row="0" Grid.Column="0" Grid.RowSpan="11" Grid.ColumnSpan="2" Panel.ZIndex="1"/>   <Label Grid.Row="0" Content="Engage the Taxi" Style="{DynamicResource innerHeader}"/> <Label Grid.Row="1" Content="Select the State"/> <ComboBox Grid.Row="1" Grid.Column="1" ItemsSource="{Binding States}" Height="auto"> <ComboBox.ItemTemplate> <DataTemplate> <TextBlock Text="{Binding Name}"/> </DataTemplate> </ComboBox.ItemTemplate> <ComboBox.SelectedItem> <Binding Path="SelectedState" Mode="TwoWay"/> </ComboBox.SelectedItem> </ComboBox> <Label Grid.Row="2" Content="Select the Date of Entry"/> <Toolkit:DatePicker Grid.Row="2" Grid.Column="1" SelectedDate="{Binding DateOfEntry, ValidatesOnDataErrors=true}" /> <Label Grid.Row="3" Content="Enter time 24hr format"/> <TextBox Grid.Row="3" Grid.Column="1" Text="{Binding TimeOfEntry, TargetNullValue=''}"/> <Button Grid.Row="4" Grid.Column="1" Content="Start the Meter" Commands:Click.Command="{Binding StartMeterCommand}" />   <Label Grid.Row="5" Content="Run the Taxi" Style="{DynamicResource innerHeader}"/> <Label Grid.Row="6" Content="Number of Miles &lt;@6mph"/> <TextBox Grid.Row="6" Grid.Column="1" Text="{Binding MilesAtSixMPH, TargetNullValue='', ValidatesOnDataErrors=true}"/> <Label Grid.Row="7" Content="Number of Minutes @12mph"/> <TextBox Grid.Row="7" Grid.Column="1" Text="{Binding MinutesAtTweleveMPH, TargetNullValue=''}"/> <Button Grid.Row="8" Grid.Column="1" Content="Add Minutes and Miles " Commands:Click.Command="{Binding AddMinutesCommand}"/> <Label Grid.Row="9" Content="Other Operations" Style="{DynamicResource innerHeader}"/> <Button Grid.Row="10" Grid.Column="1" Content="Reset the Meter" Commands:Click.Command="{Binding ResetCommand}"/>   </Grid> </UserControl> The highlighted code from the above code shows data binding, for example ComboBox which displays list of states has it’s ItemsSource bound to States property, with DataTemplate bound to Name and SelectedItem  to SelectedState. You might be wondering what are all these properties and how it is able to bind to them.  The answer lies in data context, i.e., when you bound a control, WPF looks for data context on the root object (Grid in this case) and if it can’t find data context it will look into root’s root, i.e. FareView UserControl and it is bound to FareViewModel.  Each of those properties have be declared on the ViewModel for the View to bind correctly. To put simply, View is bound to ViewModel through data context of type object and every control that is bound on the View actually binds to the public property on the ViewModel. Lets look into the ViewModel code (the following code is not an exact copy of FareViewMode.cs, pasted relevant code for this section)   namespace TaxiModules.ViewModels { public class FareViewModel:ObservableBase, IDataErrorInfo { public List<USState> States { get { return USStates.StateList; } }   public USState SelectedState { get { return _selectedState; } set { _selectedState = value; RaisePropertyChanged(_selectedStatePropertyName); } }   public DateTime? DateOfEntry { get { return _dateOfEntry; } set { _dateOfEntry = value; RaisePropertyChanged(_dateOfEntryPropertyName); } }   public TimeSpan? TimeOfEntry { get { return _timeOfEntry; } set { _timeOfEntry = value; RaisePropertyChanged(_timeOfEntryPropertyName); } }   public double? MilesAtSixMPH { get { return _milesAtSixMPH; } set { _milesAtSixMPH = value; RaisePropertyChanged(_distanceAtSixMPHPropertyName); } }   public int? MinutesAtTweleveMPH { get { return _minutesAtTweleveMPH; } set { _minutesAtTweleveMPH = value; RaisePropertyChanged(_minutesAtTweleveMPHPropertyName); } }   public ICommand StartMeterCommand { get { if(_startMeterCommand == null) { _startMeterCommand = new DelegateCommand<object>(OnStartMeter, CanStartMeter); } return _startMeterCommand; } }   public ICommand AddMinutesCommand { get { if(_addMinutesCommand == null) { _addMinutesCommand = new DelegateCommand<object>(OnAddMinutes, CanAddMinutes); } return _addMinutesCommand; } }   public ICommand ResetCommand { get { if(_resetCommand == null) { _resetCommand = new DelegateCommand<object>(OnResetCommand); } return _resetCommand; } }   } private void OnStartMeter(object obj) { _eventAggregator.GetEvent<TaxiStartedEvent>().Publish( new TaxiStarted() { EngagedOn = DateOfEntry.Value.Date + TimeOfEntry.Value, EngagedState = SelectedState.Value });   _isMeterStarted = true; OnPropertyChanged(this,null); } And views communicate user actions like button clicks, tree view item selections, etc using commands. When user clicks on ‘Start the Meter’ button it invokes the method StartMeterCommand, which calls the method OnStartMeter which publishes the event to TotalViewModel using event aggregator  and TaxiStartedEvent. namespace TaxiModules.ViewModels { public class TotalViewModel:ObservableBase { ... private IEventAggregator _eventAggregator;   public TotalViewModel(IEventAggregator eventAggregator) { _eventAggregator = eventAggregator;   InitializePropertyNames(); InitializeModel(); SubscribeToEvents(); }   public decimal? TotalFare { get { return _totalFare; } set { _totalFare = value; RaisePropertyChanged(_totalFarePropertyName); } } .... private void SubscribeToEvents() { _eventAggregator.GetEvent<TaxiStartedEvent>().Subscribe(OnTaxiStarted, ThreadOption.UIThread,false,(filter) => true); _eventAggregator.GetEvent<TaxiOnMoveEvent>().Subscribe(OnTaxiMove, ThreadOption.UIThread, false, (filter) => true); _eventAggregator.GetEvent<TaxiResetEvent>().Subscribe(OnTaxiReset, ThreadOption.UIThread, false, (filter) => true); }   private void OnTaxiStarted(TaxiStarted taxiStarted) { Fares.Add(new EntryFare()); Fares.Add(new StateTaxFare(taxiStarted)); Fares.Add(new NightSurchargeFare(taxiStarted)); Fares.Add(new PeakHourWeekdayFare(taxiStarted));   SetTotalFare(Fares); }   private void SetTotalFare(IEnumerable<IFare> fares) { TotalFare = (_totalFare ?? 0) + TaxiFareHelper.GetTotalFare(fares); } ....   } }   TotalViewModel subscribes to events, TaxiStartedEvent and rest. When TaxiStartedEvent gets invoked it calls the OnTaxiStarted method which sets the total fare which includes entry fee, state tax, nightly surcharge, peak hour weekday fare.   Note that TotalViewModel derives from ObservableBase which implements the method RaisePropertyChanged which we are invoking in Set of TotalFare property, i.e, once we update the TotalFare property it raises an the event that  allows the TotalFare text box to fetch the new value through the data context. ViewModel is communicating with View through data context and it has no knowledge about View, helping in loose coupling of ViewModel and View.   I have attached the source code (.Net 4.0, Prism 4.0, VS 2010) , download and play with it and don’t forget to leave your comments.  

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  • Generic Adjacency List Graph implementation

    - by DmainEvent
    I am trying to come up with a decent Adjacency List graph implementation so I can start tooling around with all kinds of graph problems and algorithms like traveling salesman and other problems... But I can't seem to come up with a decent implementation. This is probably because I am trying to dust the cobwebs off my data structures class. But what I have so far... and this is implemented in Java... is basically an edgeNode class that has a generic type and a weight-in the event the graph is indeed weighted. public class edgeNode<E> { private E y; private int weight; //... getters and setters as well as constructors... } I have a graph class that has a list of edges a value for the number of Vertices and and an int value for edges as well as a boolean value for whether or not it is directed. The brings up my first question, if the graph is indeed directed, shouldn't I have a value in my edgeNode class? Or would I just need to add another vertices to my LinkedList? That would imply that a directed graph is 2X as big as an undirected graph wouldn't it? public class graph { private List<edgeNode<?>> edges; private int nVertices; private int nEdges; private boolean directed; //... getters and setters as well as constructors... } Finally does anybody have a standard way of initializing there graph? I was thinking of reading in a pipe-delimited file but that is so 1997. public graph GenereateGraph(boolean directed, String file){ List<edgeNode<?>> edges; graph g; try{ int count = 0; String line; FileReader input = new FileReader("C:\\Users\\derekww\\Documents\\JavaEE Projects\\graphFile"); BufferedReader bufRead = new BufferedReader(input); line = bufRead.readLine(); count++; edges = new ArrayList<edgeNode<?>>(); while(line != null){ line = bufRead.readLine(); Object edgeInfo = line.split("|")[0]; int weight = Integer.parseInt(line.split("|")[1]); edgeNode<String> e = new edgeNode<String>((String) edges.add(e); } return g; } catch(Exception e){ return null; } } I guess when I am adding edges if boolean is true I would be adding a second edge. So far, this all depends on the file I write. So if I wrote a file with the following Vertices and weights... Buffalo | 18 br Pittsburgh | 20 br New York | 15 br D.C | 45 br I would obviously load them into my list of edges, but how can I represent one vertices connected to the other... so on... I would need the opposite vertices? Say I was representing Highways connected to each city weighted and un-directed (each edge is bi-directional with weights in some fictional distance unit)... Would my implementation be the best way to do that? I found this tutorial online Graph Tutorial that has a connector object. This appears to me be a collection of vertices pointing to each other. So you would have A and B each with there weights and so on, and you would add this to a list and this list of connectors to your graph... That strikes me as somewhat cumbersome and a little dismissive of the adjacency list concept? Am I wrong and that is a novel solution? This is all inspired by steve skiena's Algorithm Design Manual. Which I have to say is pretty good so far. Thanks for any help you can provide.

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  • NHibernate: Mapping different dynamic components based on a discriminator

    - by George Mauer
    My domain entities each have a set of "fixed" properties and a set of "dynamic" properties which can be added at runtime. I handle this by using NHibernate's dynamic-component functionality. public class Product { public virtual Guid Id { get; } public virtual string Name { get; set;} public virtual IDictionary DynamicComponents { get; } } Now I have the following situation public class Customer { public virtual Guid Id { get; } public virtual string Type { get; set;} public virtual IDictionary DynamicProperties { get; } } Where a CustomerType is something like "Online" or "InPerson". Furthermore an Online customer has dynamic properties "Name" and "IPAddress" and an InPerson Customer has dynamic properties "Name" and "Salesman". Which customer types are available and the extra properties on them are configured in meta-data which is used to generate hbm files on application start. I could figure out some way to knock this together using an intermediate DTO layer, but is there any support in NHibernate for this scenario? The only difficulty seems to be that all the different "types" of customer map to the same Customer class.

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  • Simulated Annealing and Yahtzee!

    - by Jasie
    I've picked up Programming Challenges and found a Yahtzee! problem which I will simplify: There are 13 scoring categories There are 13 rolls by a player (comprising a play) Each roll must fit in a distinct category The goal is to find the maximum score for a play (the optimal placement of rolls in categories); score(play) returns the score for a play Brute-forcing to find the maximum play score requires 13! (= 6,227,020,800) score() calls. I choose simulated annealing to find something close to the highest score, faster. Though not deterministic, it's good enough. I have a list of 13 rolls of 5 die, like: ((1,2,3,4,5) #1 (1,2,6,3,4),#2 ... (1,4,3,2,2) #13 ) And a play (1,5,6,7,2,3,4,8,9,10,13,12,11) passed into score() returns a score for that play's permutation. How do I choose a good "neighboring state"? For random-restart, I can simply choose a random permutation of nos. 1-13, put them in a vector, and score them. In the traveling salesman problem, here's an example of a good neighboring state: "The neighbours of some particular permutation are the permutations that are produced for example by interchanging a pair of adjacent cities." I have a bad feeling about simply swapping two random vector positions, like so: (1,5,6,7, 2 , 3,4,8,9,10, 13, 12,11) # switch 2 and 13 (1,5,6,7, 13, 3,4,8,9,10, 2 , 12,11) # now score this one But I have no evidence and don't know how to select a good neighboring state. Anyone have any ideas on how to pick good neighboring states?

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  • Lucene setboost doesn't work

    - by Keven
    Hi all, OUr team just upgrade lucene from 2.3 to 3.0 and we are confused about the setboost and getboost of document. What we want is just set a boost for each document when add them into index, then when search it the documents in the response should have different order according to the boost I set. But it seems the order is not changed at all, even the boost of each document in the search response is still 1.0. Could some one give me some hit? Following is our code: String[] a = new String[] { "schindler", "spielberg", "shawshank", "solace", "sorcerer", "stone", "soap", "salesman", "save" }; List strings = Arrays.asList(a); AutoCompleteIndex index = new Index(); IndexWriter writer = new IndexWriter(index.getDirectory(), AnalyzerFactory.createAnalyzer("en_US"), true, MaxFieldLength.LIMITED); float i = 1f; for (String string : strings) { Document doc = new Document(); Field f = new Field(AutoCompleteIndexFactory.QUERYTEXTFIELD, string, Field.Store.YES, Field.Index.NOT_ANALYZED); doc.setBoost(i); doc.add(f); writer.addDocument(doc); i += 2f; } writer.close(); IndexReader reader2 = IndexReader.open(index.getDirectory()); for (int j = 0; j < reader2.maxDoc(); j++) { if (reader2.isDeleted(j)) { continue; } Document doc = reader2.document(j); Field f = doc.getField(AutoCompleteIndexFactory.QUERYTEXTFIELD); System.out.println(f.stringValue() + ":" + f.getBoost() + ", docBoost:" + doc.getBoost()); doc.setBoost(j); }

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  • Planning and coping with deadlines in SCRUM

    - by John
    From wikipedia: During each “sprint”, typically a two to four week period (with the length being decided by the team), the team creates a potentially shippable product increment (for example, working and tested software). The set of features that go into a sprint come from the product “backlog,” which is a prioritized set of high level requirements of work to be done. Which backlog items go into the sprint is determined during the sprint planning meeting. During this meeting, the Product Owner informs the team of the items in the product backlog that he or she wants completed. The team then determines how much of this they can commit to complete during the next sprint. During a sprint, no one is allowed to change the sprint backlog, which means that the requirements are frozen for that sprint. After a sprint is completed, the team demonstrates the use of the software. I was reading this and two questions immediately popped into my head: 1)If a sprint is only a couple of weeks, decided in a single meeting, how can you accurately plan what can be achieved? High-level tasks can't be estimated accurately in my experience, and can easily double what seems reasonable. As a developer, I hate being pushed into committing what I can deliver in the next month based on a set of customer requirements, this goes against everything I know about generating reliable estimates rather than having to roughly estimate and then double it! 2)Since the requirements are supposed to be locked and a deliverable product available at the end, what happens when something does take twice as long? What if this feature is only 1/2 done at the end of the sprint? The wiki article goes on to talk about Sprint planning, where things are broken down into much smaller tasks for estimation (<1 day) but this is after the Sprint features are already planned and the release agreed, isn't it? kind of like a salesman promising something without consulting the developers.

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