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

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

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  • Links from UK TechDays 2010 sessions on Entity Framework, Parallel Programming and Azure

    - by Eric Nelson
    [I will do some longer posts around my sessions when I get back from holiday next week] Big thanks to all those who attended my 3 sessions at TechDays this week (April 13th and 14th, 2010). I really enjoyed both days and watched some great session – my personal fave being the Silverlight/Expression session by my friend and colleague Mike Taulty. The following links should help get you up and running on each of the technologies. Entity Framework 4 Entity Framework 4 Resources http://bit.ly/ef4resources Entity Framework Team Blog http://blogs.msdn.com/adonet Entity Framework Design Blog http://blogs.msdn.com/efdesign/ Parallel Programming Parallel Computing Developer Center http://msdn.com/concurrency Code samples http://code.msdn.microsoft.com/ParExtSamples Managed Team Blog http://blogs.msdn.com/pfxteam Tools Team Blog http://blogs.msdn.com/visualizeparallel My code samples http://gist.github.com/364522  And PDC 2009 session recordings to watch: Windows Azure Platform UK Site http://bit.ly/landazure UK Community http://bit.ly/ukazure (http://ukazure.ning.com ) Feedback www.mygreatwindowsazureidea.com Azure Diagnostics Manager - A client for Windows Azure Diagnostics Cloud Storage Studio - A client for Windows Azure Storage SQL Azure Migration Wizard http://sqlazuremw.codeplex.com

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  • Announcement Oracle Solaris Cluster 4.1 Availability!

    - by uwes
    On 26th of October Oracle announced the availability of Oracle Solaris Cluster 4.1. Highlights include: New Oracle Solaris 10 Zone Clusters: customers can now consolidate mission critical Oracle Solaris 10 applications on Oracle Solaris 11 virtualized systems in a virtual cluster Expanded disaster recovery operations: Oracle Solaris Cluster now offers managed switchover and disaster-recovery takeover of applications and data using ZFS Storage Appliance replication services in a multi-site, multi-custer configuration Faster application recovery with improved storage failure detection and resource dependencies management New labeled security environment for mission-critical deployments in Oracle Solaris Zone Clusters with Oracle Solaris 11 Trusted Extensions Learn more about Oracle Solaris Cluster 4.1: What's New in Oracle Solaris 4.1 Oracle Solaris Cluster 4.1 FAQ Oracle.com Oracle Solaris Cluster page Oracle Technology Network Oracle Solaris Cluster page Resouces for downloading: Oracle Solaris Cluster 4.1 download or order a media kit Existing Oracle Solaris Cluster 4.0 customers can quickly and simply update by using the network based repository.   Note: This repository requires keys and certificates which can be obtained here.

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  • SQLBits - Fusion IO and Attunity confirmed as exhibitors

    - by simonsabin
    We are very excited that Attunity are going to be exhibiting at SQLBits VI, they must have a great product because any client I see that is integrating SQL with other stores such as DB2 and Oracle seem to be using Attunity's providers. On top of that we have a new exhibitor. Fusion IO will be coming along and I hope will be bringing some amazing demos of their kit. SSD storage is the future and Fusion IO are at the top of the game. Many in the SQL community have said that SSD for tempdb is just awesome, come and have a chat with the guys to talk about your high performance storage needs.

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  • SQLBits - Fusion IO and Attunity confirmed as exhibitors

    - by simonsabin
    We are very excited that Attunity are going to be exhibiting at SQLBits VI, they must have a great product because any client I see that is integrating SQL with other stores such as DB2 and Oracle seem to be using Attunity's providers. On top of that we have a new exhibitor. Fusion IO will be coming along and I hope will be bringing some amazing demos of their kit. SSD storage is the future and Fusion IO are at the top of the game. Many in the SQL community have said that SSD for tempdb is just awesome, come and have a chat with the guys to talk about your high performance storage needs.

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  • SPARC T4-4 Delivers World Record First Result on PeopleSoft Combined Benchmark

    - by Brian
    Oracle's SPARC T4-4 servers running Oracle's PeopleSoft HCM 9.1 combined online and batch benchmark achieved World Record 18,000 concurrent users while executing a PeopleSoft Payroll batch job of 500,000 employees in 43.32 minutes and maintaining online users response time at < 2 seconds. This world record is the first to run online and batch workloads concurrently. This result was obtained with a SPARC T4-4 server running Oracle Database 11g Release 2, a SPARC T4-4 server running PeopleSoft HCM 9.1 application server and a SPARC T4-2 server running Oracle WebLogic Server in the web tier. The SPARC T4-4 server running the application tier used Oracle Solaris Zones which provide a flexible, scalable and manageable virtualization environment. The average CPU utilization on the SPARC T4-2 server in the web tier was 17%, on the SPARC T4-4 server in the application tier it was 59%, and on the SPARC T4-4 server in the database tier was 35% (online and batch) leaving significant headroom for additional processing across the three tiers. The SPARC T4-4 server used for the database tier hosted Oracle Database 11g Release 2 using Oracle Automatic Storage Management (ASM) for database files management with I/O performance equivalent to raw devices. This is the first three tier mixed workload (online and batch) PeopleSoft benchmark also processing PeopleSoft payroll batch workload. Performance Landscape PeopleSoft HR Self-Service and Payroll Benchmark Systems Users Ave Response Search (sec) Ave Response Save (sec) Batch Time (min) Streams SPARC T4-2 (web) SPARC T4-4 (app) SPARC T4-2 (db) 18,000 0.944 0.503 43.32 64 Configuration Summary Application Configuration: 1 x SPARC T4-4 server with 4 x SPARC T4 processors, 3.0 GHz 512 GB memory 5 x 300 GB SAS internal disks 1 x 100 GB and 2 x 300 GB internal SSDs 2 x 10 Gbe HBA Oracle Solaris 11 11/11 PeopleTools 8.52 PeopleSoft HCM 9.1 Oracle Tuxedo, Version 10.3.0.0, 64-bit, Patch Level 031 Java Platform, Standard Edition Development Kit 6 Update 32 Database Configuration: 1 x SPARC T4-4 server with 4 x SPARC T4 processors, 3.0 GHz 256 GB memory 3 x 300 GB SAS internal disks Oracle Solaris 11 11/11 Oracle Database 11g Release 2 Web Tier Configuration: 1 x SPARC T4-2 server with 2 x SPARC T4 processors, 2.85 GHz 256 GB memory 2 x 300 GB SAS internal disks 1 x 100 GB internal SSD Oracle Solaris 11 11/11 PeopleTools 8.52 Oracle WebLogic Server 10.3.4 Java Platform, Standard Edition Development Kit 6 Update 32 Storage Configuration: 1 x Sun Server X2-4 as a COMSTAR head for data 4 x Intel Xeon X7550, 2.0 GHz 128 GB memory 1 x Sun Storage F5100 Flash Array (80 flash modules) 1 x Sun Storage F5100 Flash Array (40 flash modules) 1 x Sun Fire X4275 as a COMSTAR head for redo logs 12 x 2 TB SAS disks with Niwot Raid controller Benchmark Description This benchmark combines PeopleSoft HCM 9.1 HR Self Service online and PeopleSoft Payroll batch workloads to run on a unified database deployed on Oracle Database 11g Release 2. The PeopleSoft HRSS benchmark kit is a Oracle standard benchmark kit run by all platform vendors to measure the performance. It's an OLTP benchmark where DB SQLs are moderately complex. The results are certified by Oracle and a white paper is published. PeopleSoft HR SS defines a business transaction as a series of HTML pages that guide a user through a particular scenario. Users are defined as corporate Employees, Managers and HR administrators. The benchmark consist of 14 scenarios which emulate users performing typical HCM transactions such as viewing paycheck, promoting and hiring employees, updating employee profile and other typical HCM application transactions. All these transactions are well-defined in the PeopleSoft HR Self-Service 9.1 benchmark kit. This benchmark metric is the weighted average response search/save time for all the transactions. The PeopleSoft 9.1 Payroll (North America) benchmark demonstrates system performance for a range of processing volumes in a specific configuration. This workload represents large batch runs typical of a ERP environment during a mass update. The benchmark measures five application business process run times for a database representing large organization. They are Paysheet Creation, Payroll Calculation, Payroll Confirmation, Print Advice forms, and Create Direct Deposit File. The benchmark metric is the cumulative elapsed time taken to complete the Paysheet Creation, Payroll Calculation and Payroll Confirmation business application processes. The benchmark metrics are taken for each respective benchmark while running simultaneously on the same database back-end. Specifically, the payroll batch processes are started when the online workload reaches steady state (the maximum number of online users) and overlap with online transactions for the duration of the steady state. Key Points and Best Practices Two Oracle PeopleSoft Domain sets with 200 application servers each on a SPARC T4-4 server were hosted in 2 separate Oracle Solaris Zones to demonstrate consolidation of multiple application servers, ease of administration and performance tuning. Each Oracle Solaris Zone was bound to a separate processor set, each containing 15 cores (total 120 threads). The default set (1 core from first and third processor socket, total 16 threads) was used for network and disk interrupt handling. This was done to improve performance by reducing memory access latency by using the physical memory closest to the processors and offload I/O interrupt handling to default set threads, freeing up cpu resources for Application Servers threads and balancing application workload across 240 threads. See Also Oracle PeopleSoft Benchmark White Papers oracle.com SPARC T4-2 Server oracle.com OTN SPARC T4-4 Server oracle.com OTN PeopleSoft Enterprise Human Capital Management oracle.com OTN PeopleSoft Enterprise Human Capital Management (Payroll) oracle.com OTN Oracle Solaris oracle.com OTN Oracle Database 11g Release 2 Enterprise Edition oracle.com OTN Disclosure Statement Oracle's PeopleSoft HR and Payroll combined benchmark, www.oracle.com/us/solutions/benchmark/apps-benchmark/peoplesoft-167486.html, results 09/30/2012.

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  • Using heavyweight ORM implementation for light based games

    - by Holland
    I'm just about to engulf myself in an MVC-based/Component architecture in C#, using MySQL's connector/Net for the data storage, and probably some NHibernate/FluentNHibernate Object-relational-mapping to map out the data structure. The goal is to build a scalable 2D RPG. Then I think about it...and I can't help but think this seems a little "heavy weight" for a 2D RPG, especially one which, while I plan to incorporate a lot of functionality and entertaining gameplay, may be ported to something like Windows Phone or Android in the future. Yet, on the other hand even a 2-Dimensional RPG can become very complicated, and therefore must incorporate a lot of functionality. While this can be accomplished with text/XML/JSON for data storage, is there a better way? Is something such as Object-Relational-Mapping useful in such an application? So, what do you think? Would you say that there is a place for such technologies? I don't know what to think...

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  • YouSendIt Alternative?

    - by WuckaChucka
    Looking for a reasonably priced alternative to YouSendIt's exorbitant pricing for an embedded, unbranded (i.e. no "Uploads by SomeCompany" or at the very least, discrete, subtle co-branding) file upload solution for my client's print shop Website. To do what we want to do with YouSendIt, we're looking at a corporate account of $995 USD plus $29.99 USD monthly fee, that is only sold pro-rated, so you have to buy the entire year's worth. To me, this is just unacceptable considering the commodity pricing of storage and bandwidth nowadays. For data, we're looking at roughly 10MB per upload, with perhaps 250-1000 uploads per month, with transient data storage of no more than 30 days (and more than likely 1-2 business days) for a total of 10 GB transfer (upload) and 10 GB transfer (download, to the print shop) at the very max each month. Any ideas? Everything I've found through searching seems to be geared more towards personal file sharing and not for embedding into Websites. Thanks

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  • In the Cloud, Everything Costs Money

    - by BuckWoody
    I’ve been teaching my daughter about budgeting. I’ve explained that most of the time the money coming in is from only one or two sources – and you can only change that from time to time. The money going out, however, is to many locations, and it changes all the time. She’s made a simple debits and credits spreadsheet, and I’m having her research each part of the budget. Her eyes grow wide when she finds out everything has a cost – the house, gas for the lawnmower, dishes, water for showers, food, electricity to run the fridge, a new fridge when that one breaks, everything has a cost. She asked me “how do you pay for all this?” It’s a sentiment many adults have looking at their own budgets – and one reason that some folks don’t even make a budget. It’s hard to face up to the realities of how much it costs to do what we want to do. When we design a computing solution, it’s interesting to set up a similar budget, because we don’t always consider all of the costs associated with it. I’ve seen design sessions where the new software or servers are considered, but the “sunk” costs of personnel, networking, maintenance, increased storage, new sizes for backups and offsite storage and so on are not added in. They are already on premises, so they are assumed to be paid for already. When you move to a distributed architecture, you'll see more costs directly reflected. Store something, pay for that storage. If the system is deployed and no one is using it, you’re still paying for it. As you watch those costs rise, you might be tempted to think that a distributed architecture costs more than an on-premises one. And you might be right – for some solutions. I’ve worked with a few clients where moving to a distributed architecture doesn’t make financial sense – so we didn’t implement it. I still designed the system in a distributed fashion, however, so that when it does make sense there isn’t much re-architecting to do. In other cases, however, if you consider all of the on-premises costs and compare those accurately to operating a system in the cloud, the distributed system is much cheaper. Again, I never recommend that you take a “here-or-there-only” mentality – I think a hybrid distributed system is usually best – but each solution is different. There simply is no “one size fits all” to architecting a solution. As you design your solution, cost out each element. You might find that using a hybrid approach saves you money in one design and not in another. It’s a brave new world indeed. So yes, in the cloud, everything costs money. But an on-premises solution also costs money – it’s just that “dad” (the company) is paying for it and we don’t always see it. When we go out on our own in the cloud, we need to ensure that we consider all of the costs.

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  • 4 Alternatives to Google Drive for Linux

    - by Chris Hoffman
    We’ve covered using Google Drive on Linux with third-party software, but why bother jumping through those hoops? You can use a cloud storage service that officially supports Linux instead – several of Google Drive’s competitors do. Google may be leaving Linux users out, but other services like Dropbox, Ubuntu One, SpiderOak, and Wuala don’t ignore Linux users. They even offer more storage and other useful features, such as local encryption of your files. Our Geek Trivia App for Windows 8 is Now Available Everywhere How To Boot Your Android Phone or Tablet Into Safe Mode HTG Explains: Does Your Android Phone Need an Antivirus?

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  • VirtualBox 4.2.14 is now available

    - by user12611829
    The VirtualBox development team has just released version 4.2.14, and it is now available for download. This is a maintenance release for version 4.2 and contains quite a few fixes. Here is the list from the official Changelog. VMM: another TLB invalidation fix for non-present pages VMM: fixed a performance regression (4.2.8 regression; bug #11674) GUI: fixed a crash on shutdown GUI: prevent stuck keys under certain conditions on Windows hosts (bugs #2613, #6171) VRDP: fixed a rare crash on the guest screen resize VRDP: allow to change VRDP parameters (including enabling/disabling the server) if the VM is paused USB: fixed passing through devices on Mac OS X host to a VM with 2 or more virtual CPUs (bug #7462) USB: fixed hang during isochronous transfer with certain devices (4.1 regression; Windows hosts only; bug #11839) USB: properly handle orphaned URBs (bug #11207) BIOS: fixed function for returning the PCI interrupt routing table (fixes NetWare 6.x guests) BIOS: don't use the ENTER / LEAVE instructions in the BIOS as these don't work in the real mode as set up by certain guests (e.g. Plan 9 and QNX 4) DMI: allow to configure DmiChassisType (bug #11832) Storage: fixed lost writes if iSCSI is used with snapshots and asynchronous I/O (bug #11479) Storage: fixed accessing certain VHDX images created by Windows 8 (bug #11502) Storage: fixed hang when creating a snapshot using Parallels disk images (bug #9617) 3D: seamless + 3D fixes (bug #11723) 3D: version 4.2.12 was not able to read saved states of older versions under certain conditions (bug #11718) Main/Properties: don't create a guest property for non-running VMs if the property does not exist and is about to be removed (bug #11765) Main/Properties: don't forget to make new guest properties persistent after the VM was terminated (bug #11719) Main/Display: don't lose seamless regions during screen resize Main/OVF: don't crash during import if the client forgot to call Appliance::interpret() (bug #10845) Main/OVF: don't create invalid appliances by stripping the file name if the VM name is very long (bug #11814) Main/OVF: don't fail if the appliance contains multiple file references (bug #10689) Main/Metrics: fixed Solaris file descriptor leak Settings: limit depth of snapshot tree to 250 levels, as more will lead to decreased performance and may trigger crashes VBoxManage: fixed setting the parent UUID on diff images using sethdparentuuid Linux hosts: work around for not crashing as a result of automatic NUMA balancing which was introduced in Linux 3.8 (bug #11610) Windows installer: force the installation of the public certificate in background (i.e. completely prevent user interaction) if the --silent command line option is specified Windows Additions: fixed problems with partial install in the unattended case Windows Additions: fixed display glitch with the Start button in seamless mode for some themes Windows Additions: Seamless mode and auto-resize fixes Windows Additions: fixed trying to to retrieve new auto-logon credentials if current ones were not processed yet Windows Additions installer: added the /with_wddm switch to select the experimental WDDM driver by default Linux Additions: fixed setting own timed out and aborted texts in information label of the lightdm greeter Linux Additions: fixed compilation against Linux 3.2.0 Ubuntu kernels (4.2.12 regression as a side effect of the Debian kernel build fix; bug #11709) X11 Additions: reduced the CPU load of VBoxClient in drag'and'drop mode OS/2 Additions: made the mouse wheel work (bug #6793) Guest Additions: fixed problems copying and pasting between two guests on an X11 host (bug #11792) The full changelog can be found here. You can download binaries for Solaris, Linux, Windows and MacOS hosts at http://www.virtualbox.org/wiki/Downloads Technocrati Tags: Oracle Virtualization VirtualBox

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  • CodePlex Daily Summary for Thursday, June 21, 2012

    CodePlex Daily Summary for Thursday, June 21, 2012Popular ReleasesuComponents: uComponents v3.1.1: Continuing on from 84817, we are proud to announce our 3.1.1 release! The following issues have been resolved: 14640 14696 14704 14724 Please note: This release is not to be confused with the upcoming 80410 (which will support .NET 4.0)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 changesAuto Proxy Configuration: Windows Proxy Setup V1.2: Bug FixesXDA ROM Hub: XDA ROM HUB v0.5: Added XRH Backup -- Backup & restore data, system and cache USE AT YOUR OWN RISK! - USE ONLY IN RECOVERY!AcDown????? - 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?????"????????? ...Apex: Apex 1.4: Apex 1.4Apex 1.4 provides a framework for rapid MVVM development. Download Apex 1.4 to get the core binaries, Visual Studio Extensions, Project Templates, Samples and Documentation. The 1.4 Release provides a vast number of enhancements via the Apex Broker. The Apex Broker is an object that can be used to retrieve models, get the view for a view model and more, much like an IoC container. The new Zune Style application templates for WPF and Silverlight give a great starting point for makin...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...JSON Toolkit: JSON Toolkit 4.0: Up to 2.5x performance improvement in stringify operations Up to 1.7x performance improvement in parse operations Improved error messages when parsing invalid JSON strings Extended support to .Net 2.0, .Net 3.5, .Net 4.0, Silverlight 4, Windows Phone, Windows 8 metro apps and Xbox JSON namespace changed to ComputerBeacon.Json namespaceXenta 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...ASP.NET REST Services Framework: Release 1.3 - Standard version: The REST-services Framework v1.3 has important functional changes allowing to use complex data types as service call parameters. Such can be mapped to form or query string variables or the HTTP Message Body. This is especially useful when REST-style service URLs with POST or PUT HTTP method is used. Beginning from v1.1 the REST-services Framework is compatible with ASP.NET Routing model as well with CRUD (Create, Read, Update, and Delete) principle. These two are often important when buildin...NanoMVVM: a lightweight wpf MVVM framework: v0.10 stable beta: v0.10 Minor fixes to ui and code, added error example to async commands, separated project into various releases (mainly into logical wholes), removed expression blend satellite assembliesMFCMAPI: 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 ...????: ????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 fixesCodename 'Chrometro': Developer Preview: Welcome to the Codename 'Chrometro' Developer Preview! This is the very first public preview of the app. Please note that this is a highly primitive build and the app is not even half of what it is meant to be. The Developer Preview sports the following: 1) An easy to use application setup. 2) The Assistant which simplifies your task of customization. 3) The partially complete Metro UI. 4) A variety of settings 5) A partially complete web browsing experience To get started, download the Ins...KangaModeling: Kanga Modeling 1.0: This is the public release 1.0 of Kanga Modeling. -Cosmos (C# Open Source Managed Operating System): Release 92560: Prerequisites Visual Studio 2010 - Any version including Express. Express users must also install Visual Studio 2010 Integrated Shell runtime VMWare - Cosmos can run on real hardware as well as other virtualization environments but our default debug setup is configured for VMWare. VMWare Player (Free). or Workstation VMWare VIX API 1.11AutoUpdaterdotNET : Autoupdate for VB.NET and C# Developer: AutoUpdater.NET 1.1: Release Notes New feature added that allows user to select remind later interval.New Projects.NET Heatmap: This is a simple project using C#, JQuery, and heatmap.js that allows you to create a heatmap for a web page using static data from a SQL database.Advanced Data Server: Advanced Data Server (ADS) is a library that enables you to create powerful server applications with little code.ARPAMISproject: This is an ambitious project that aims to provide an extensive business solution to schools, universities or any academic institutions alike. ArraySegments (by Stephen Cleary): Lightweight extension methods for ArraySegment<T>, particularly useful for byte arrays.Auto Proxy Configuration: This Tool sets proxy server automatically according to the DNSDomain.Bongiozzo Photosite: Simple photo site written using ASP.NET MVC 4.0 over Flickr API and Galleria image gallery framework. Cloud Media SharePoint Extension: With this extensions you can easily add media from the cloud like YouTube or Vimeo. Metadata from Vimeo or YouTube are also .and will be added tooContent Organizer Rule Manager SharePoint 2010: Create and manage content organizer rules faster for SharePoint 2010.Crm Customization Manager: Crm Customization Manager (CCM) by N.JL helps Dynamics CRM System Adiminstrators to easly Import Customisations and Treanslations with scheduling possibilitydemoHello: asp.net Ghost Puzzle: Protect your files with Ghost Puzzle.IonoWumpus: A simple Hunt the Wumpus implementation.LargeSky Personal Project: This a personal project, just for code place.Maze Game: Maze Game is a game for children/ computer beginners to practice the mouse movement with fun.NASM Develop IDE (The Open Source NASM Development Environment For Windows): A simple, light weight, all one in application that can help developers develop NASM applications in Windows without the need of remember fancy commands.Navigational: Gator brings navigation to projects built around life situations.Real Folders for Visual Studio: Real Folders for Visual Studio is a free plugin which makes Solution Folders map to real file system folders. With Real Folders you have the opportunity to organize your files in a simpler way than standard Visual Studio Solution Folders behave (completely uncommited to any folder on your file system). SaltFx: SaltFx is an N-Layered Domain Driven Design (DDD) framework for .NET development.SharePoint Location-Based Weather Webpart: Uses UPS information to display local weather for the user via the Yahoo Weather service.SharePoint Publishing: The Project is aimed at supplying Publishers with tools & design elements to provide a means of publishing through SharePoint.SpellLight - Lightweight Silverlight Spell Checker Library: SpellLight is a lightweight Silverlight Spell Check librarySUDOKU APP: NoneTrainer: This is an application used for logging runs, nutrition, weight, and other goals.weibospace: An ios projecct

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  • Verification of UML Class Diagram

    - by Jean Carlos Suárez Marranzini
    This is my UML Class Diagram made in Astah Community, for a tennis scoreboard game. Here's a link to the image (I don't have enough rep to post images): http://i47.tinypic.com/2lsxx90.png Points are calculated based on moves. Moves can be either points (for the player's advantage) or errors (for the opponent's advantage). The Time Machine allows you to travel to previous game states (expressed as scoreboards). The storage component should be able to store matches independently of the serialization format. The serializers and deserializers should be able to do their job regardless of where the storage lies. The GameEngine should be able to apply the rules of the game regardless of the particularities of the game (hence, dependency injection through the Settings class). The outcomes of games, sets and matches should be deducible based on the points and the rules to apply (the logic implementations are there to provide the rules). Could you please verify my design and tell me if there's anything wrong with it? Thanks in advance.

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  • Why, on iOS, is glRenderbufferStorage appearing to fail?

    - by dugla
    On an iOS device (iPad) I decided to change the storage for my renderbuffer from the CAEAGLLayer that backs the view to explicit storage via glRenderbufferStorage. Sadly, the following code fails to result in a valid FBO. Can someone please tell me what I missed?: glGenFramebuffers(1, &m_framebuffer); glBindFramebuffer(GL_FRAMEBUFFER, m_framebuffer); glGenRenderbuffers(1, &m_colorbuffer); glBindRenderbuffer(GL_RENDERBUFFER, m_colorbuffer); GLsizei width = (GLsizei)layer.bounds.size.width; GLsizei height = (GLsizei)layer.bounds.size.height; glRenderbufferStorage(m_colorbuffer, GL_RGBA8_OES, width, height); glFramebufferRenderbuffer(GL_FRAMEBUFFER, GL_COLOR_ATTACHMENT0, GL_RENDERBUFFER, m_colorbuffer); Note: The layer size is valid and correct. This is solid production working rendering code. The only change I am making is the line glRenderbufferStorage(...) previously I did: [m_context renderbufferStorage:GL_RENDERBUFFER fromDrawable:layer] Thanks, Doug

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  • The August '14 Oracle Virtualization Newsletter is Now Available

    - by Chris Kawalek
    The August 2014 edition of the Oracle Virtualization Newsletter is now available! You can catch up on what's been going on with Oracle VM, Oracle Secure Global Desktop, and Oracle VM VirtualBox by reading the latest issue. Here are some highlights: Oracle Announces Oracle VM 3.3 Release Technology Preview of OpenStack Icehouse with Oracle Linux and Oracle VM Now Available Getting Started with Oracle VM, Oracle Linux, and OpenStack Oracle VM Test Drive Workshop on Cisco UCS Updated Oracle VM Storage Connect Plug-in for Oracle ZFS Storage Appliance Now Available Controlled Remote Access with Oracle Secure Global Desktop and amitego VISULOX And much more! You can read the latest edition online right now or sign up to get it automatically delivered to your inbox.

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  • CodePlex Daily Summary for Tuesday, June 19, 2012

    CodePlex Daily Summary for Tuesday, June 19, 2012Popular ReleasesXenta 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...ASP.NET REST Services Framework: Release 1.3 - Standard version: The REST-services Framework v1.3 has important functional changes allowing to use complex data types as service call parameters. Such can be mapped to form or query string variables or the HTTP Message Body. This is especially useful when REST-style service URLs with POST or PUT HTTP method is used. Beginning from v1.1 the REST-services Framework is compatible with ASP.NET Routing model as well with CRUD (Create, Read, Update, and Delete) principle. These two are often important when buildin...NanoMVVM: a lightweight wpf MVVM framework: v0.10 stable beta: v0.10 Minor fixes to ui and code, added error example to async commands, separated project into various releases (mainly into logical wholes), removed expression blend satellite assembliesCrashReporter.NET : Exception reporting library for C# and VB.NET: CrashReporter.NET 1.1: Added screenshot support that takes screenshot of user's desktop on application crash and provides option to include screenshot with crash report. Added Windows version in crash reports. Added email field and exception type field in crash report dialog. Added exception type in crash reports. Added screenshot tab that shows crash screenshot.RULI Chain Code Image Generator: RULI Chain Code BW Image Generator v. 0.5: bugfix: corrected wrong height/width 2 pixel too much in each directionMFCMAPI: 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 ...JayData - The cross-platform HTML5 data-management library for JavaScript: JayData 1.1.0: JayData is a unified data access library for JavaScript developers to query and update data from different sources like WebSQL, IndexedDB, OData, Facebook or YQL. The library can be integrated with Knockout.js or Sencha Touch 2. See it in action in this 6 minutes video Sencha Touch 2 example app using JayData: Netflix browser. New features in JayData 1.1.0http://jaydata.org/blog/release-notes OData provider improvements We worked out the support of OData v1 and v3 (beyond v2). Visit http://...XDA ROM Hub: XDA ROM Hub v0.36: Fixed typo's :D Added simple guide.JaySvcUtil - generate JavaScript context from OData metadata: JaySvcUtil 1.1: JaySvcUtil 1.1 You will need the JayData library to use contexts generated with JaySvcUtil! Get it from here: http://jaydata.codeplex.com.????: ????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 fixesCodename 'Chrometro': Developer Preview: Welcome to the Codename 'Chrometro' Developer Preview! This is the very first public preview of the app. Please note that this is a highly primitive build and the app is not even half of what it is meant to be. The Developer Preview sports the following: 1) An easy to use application setup. 2) The Assistant which simplifies your task of customization. 3) The partially complete Metro UI. 4) A variety of settings 5) A partially complete web browsing experience To get started, download the Ins...????????API for .Net SDK: SDK for .Net ??? Release 2: 6?19????? ?? - ???????????????，???????0?????????。 ?? - ???Entity?????Suggestion??????????????JSON????????。 ?? - ???OAuth?Request??????AccessToken???SourceKey????QueryString?????????。 6?17????? ??? - .net 4.0 SDK??Dynamic??????????????????API?? ??? - ?Utility?????????API??????DateTime???ParseUTCDate ?? - ?????????????Json.net???，???SDK????Json.net?????。 ?? - ???Client??????API???GetCommand?PostCommand，?????????????????API??。 ?? - ???????，??????API?，??????API???，???string???，??Enti...Cosmos (C# Open Source Managed Operating System): Release 92560: Prerequisites Visual Studio 2010 - Any version including Express. Express users must also install Visual Studio 2010 Integrated Shell runtime VMWare - Cosmos can run on real hardware as well as other virtualization environments but our default debug setup is configured for VMWare. VMWare Player (Free). or Workstation VMWare VIX API 1.11AutoUpdaterdotNET : Autoupdate for VB.NET and C# Developer: AutoUpdater.NET 1.1: Release Notes New feature added that allows user to select remind later interval.Microsoft SQL Server Product Samples: Database: AdventureWorks 2008 OLTP Script: Install AdventureWorks2008 OLTP database from script The AdventureWorks database can be created by running the instawdb.sql DDL script contained in the AdventureWorks 2008 OLTP Script.zip file. The instawdb.sql script depends on two path environment variables: SqlSamplesDatabasePath and SqlSamplesSourceDataPath. The SqlSamplesDatabasePath environment variable is set to the default Microsoft ® SQL Server 2008 path. You will need to change the SqlSamplesSourceDataPath environment variable to th...WipeTouch, a jQuery touch plugin: 1.2.0: Changes since 1.1.0: New: wipeMove event, triggered while moving the mouse/finger. New: added "source" to the result object. Bug fix: sometimes vertical wipe events would not trigger correctly. Bug fix: improved tapToClick handler. General code refactoring. Windows Phone 7 is not supported, yet! Its behaviour is completely broken and would require some special tricks to make it work. Maybe in the future...Phalanger - The PHP Language Compiler for the .NET Framework: 3.0.0.3026 (June 2012): Fixes: round( 0.0 ) local TimeZone name TimeZone search compiling multi-script-assemblies PhpString serialization DocDocument::loadHTMLFile() token_get_all() parse_url()BlackJumboDog: Ver5.6.4: 2012.06.13 Ver5.6.4 　(1) Web???????、???POST??????????????????New Projectsasp.net membership: A basic membership project for the use of various learning issues like MVC, Entity Framework, ASP.NET membership, Ajax, IOC Container, Application architectureCRM 2011 Visual Studio Tools: CRM 2011 Visual Studio Tools is a VSPackage for Visual Studio 2010. It contains at the beginning the CRM 2011 Script Injector, which is using the FiddlerCore. This will allow the JavaScript developer to test his scripts without the need to upload and publish the files in CRM. The tool will exchange the needed scripts on the fly with the version on your local machine, while you navigate through the CRM in your Browser. It is supporting right now Visual Studio 2010 and Microsoft CRM 2011 On-...Crop Circle Maze: This project is for our team to educate ourselves on developing 3D programming skills.DarkLight Engine: Le DarkLight engine est un moteur 3D basé programmé en C# et utilisant les API DirectX10 et WPF.DirectX Tool Kit: DirectXTK is a shared source library of helpers for Direct3D 11 C++ applications.DirectXTex texture processing library: DirectXTex is a shared source library for doing Direct3D texture processing and image I/O.FluentHtmlWriter: Extensions to HtmlTextWriter to enable a fluent coding interfaceHarrier: A multithreaded TCP/IP server with Lua scripting, designed as a base for your own server projects.Hide "Limited Access" in SharePoint interface: Hides "Limited Access" entries unitl user decides to show them in user.aspxiPark: iParkogeditor.net: ogeditor.net is web based WYSIWYG HTML editor with built-in File Manager. ogEditor has some unique features never seen before.Pi# - Raspberry Pi GPIO Library for .NET: A .NET GPIO Library for the Raspberry PiProLaunch: ProLaunch is an Application Launcher for Windows w/ Twitter Integration and URL shortening capabilities.SharePoint 2010 Photo Gallery Spotlight: This sandboxed webpart displays images from a Picture Gallery and presents it in a visual representation modeled after jQuery Tools Scrollable projectSharp Tables: A hierarchical database package designed to efficiently manage very large amounts of data, in C#.simple is facebook: This is an android application that connect to Facebook Survival Engine: Small ActionScript-based game. Monsters, explosions, big guns (now small, but soon...) and very bad graphics mixed in this project. Join us and have fun :)Synthetic Transaction Monitoring Framework: provides infrastructure and tools for scheduling and executing synthetic user scenarios via Windows Azure. The World Around: Personal project to create a catalog of the most beautiful and popular places of the world.Vokabeltrainer App für Windows Phone 7.5: Der Link zur App kommt sobald die veröffentlicht ist.WillowTree# CKY: graohix updateded to reflect the main game images

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  • Windows Azure Diagnostics: Next to Useless?

    - by Your DisplayName here!
    To quote my good friend Christian: “Tracing is probably one of the most discussed topics in the Windows Azure world. Not because it is freaking cool – but because it can be very tedious and partly massively counter-intuitive.” <rant> The .NET Framework has this wonderful facility called TraceSource. You define a named trace and route that to a configurable listener. This gives you a lot of flexibility – you can create a single trace file – or multiple ones. There is even nice tooling around that. SvcTraceViewer from the SDK let’s you open the XML trace files – you can filter and sort by trace source and event type, aggreate multiple files…blablabla. Just what you would expect from a decent tracing infrastructure. Now comes Windows Azure. I was already were grateful that starting with the SDK 1.2 we finally had a way to do tracing and diagnostics in the cloud (kudos!). But the way the Azure DiagnosticMonitor is currently implemented – could be called flawed. The Azure SDK provides a DiagnosticsMonitorTraceListener – which is the right way to go. The only problem is, that way this works is, that all traces (from all sources) get written to an ETW trace. Then the DiagMon listens to these traces and copies them periodically to your storage account. So far so good. But guess what happens to your nice trace files: the trace source names get “lost”. They appear in your message text at the end. So much for filtering and sorting and aggregating (regex #fail or #win??). Every trace line becomes an entry in a Azure Storage Table – the svclog format is gone. So much for the existing tooling. To solve that problem, one workaround was to write your own trace listener (!) that creates svclog files inside of local storage and use the DiagMon to copy those. Christian has a blog post about that. OK done that. Now it turns out that this mechanism does not work anymore in 1.3 with FullIIS (see here). Quoting: “Some IIS 7.0 logs not collected due to permissions issues...The root cause to both of these issues is the permissions on the log files.” And the workaround: “To read the files yourself, log on to the instance with a remote desktop connection.” Now then have fun with your multi-instance deployments…. </rant>

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  • How to install Visual Python?

    - by user214152
    I'm a Linux newbie but I'm determined to get my favorite applications on my laptop running Ubuntu 12.04. I just installed Cinnamon. I'm trying to install Visual Python and it requires Python 2.7. I followed the instructions on the VPython site but the Wine application isn't extracting anything from the Python .msi file. From the first line wine start /i python-2.7.5.amd64.msi /qn TARGETDIR=~/Python27 ALLUSERS=1 it says fixme:storage:create_storagefile Storage share mode not implemented. I created that Python27 directory so I know it exists and it's empty. I know Ubuntu already has Python 2.7 so I just tried running the VPython.exe file but it says "This program can only be installed on versions of Windows designed for the following processor architectures: x64." My Toshiba satellite has a 64-bit processor. Could anybody help?

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  • SharePoint 2010, Cloud, and the Constitution

    - by Michael Van Cleave
    The other evening an article on the Red Tap Chronicles caught my eye. The article written by Bob Sullivan titled "The Constitutional Issues of Cloud Computing" was very interesting in regards to the direction most of the technical world is going. We all have been inundated about utilizing cloud computing for reasons of price, availability, or even scalability; but what Bob brings up is a whole separate view of why a business might not want to move toward the cloud for services or applications. The overall point to the article was pretty simple. It all boiled down to the summation that hosting "Things" in the cloud (Email, Documents, etc…) are interpreted differently under the law regarding constitutional search and seizure than say a document or item that is kept in physical form at a business or home. Where if you physically have it stored someone would have to get a warrant to search for it or seize it, but if it is stored off in the cloud and the ISV or provider is subpoenaed for the item then they will usually give access to the information. Obviously this is a big difference in interpretation of the law and the constitution due to technology. So you might ask "Where does this fit in with SharePoint? Well the overall push for this next version of SharePoint is one that gives a business ultimate flexibility to utilize the Cloud. In one example this upcoming version gracefully lends itself to Multi Tenancy so that online or "Cloud" hosting would be possible by Service Providers. Another aspect to the upcoming version is that it has updated its ability to store content outside of the database and in a cheaper commoditized storage facility. This is called Remote Blob Storage (or RBS) which is the next evolution of External Blob Storage (or EBS). With this new functionality that business might look forward to it is extremely important for them to understand that they might be opening themselves up to laws that do not need a warrant to search or seize their information that is stored in the cloud. It will be interesting to see how this all plays out in the next few months. Usually the laws change slowly in comparison to technology so it might be a while until we see if it is actually constitutional to treat someone's content on the cloud differently as it would be in their possession, however until there is some type of parity that happens or more concrete laws regarding the differences be very careful about what you put in the cloud. Michael

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  • Making profit from a social network

    - by James P.
    This follows similar questions but I'd like to see if anything particular comes out of it due to the nature of site. In short, I've taken up the role of webmaster for a small social network site and wish to make it profitable to at least cover the running costs. The site is linked to a commerce and presents are offered to members according to the number of points they've accumulated through various actions. The site is running on shared hosting so it's probably dirt cheap but the presents can be expensive as a whole and some money has already been invested into the project. One idea I have is to seek some sponsors that would be willing to offer presents or special offers in return for publicity. I don't know if this will be easy or not. I'm also looking into adapting hosting to perhaps move static files to a cheaper online storage medium (see Ideas for reducing storage needs and/or costs (lots of images)). Other suggestions are welcome.

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  • The Linux powered LAN Gaming House

    - by sachinghalot
    LAN parties offer the enjoyment of head to head gaming in a real-life social environment. In general, they are experiencing decline thanks to the convenience of Internet gaming, but Kenton Varda is a man who takes his LAN gaming very seriously. His LAN gaming house is a fascinating project, and best of all, Linux plays a part in making it all work.Varda has done his own write ups (short, long), so I'm only going to give an overview here. The setup is a large house with 12 gaming stations and a single server computer.The client computers themselves are rack mounted in a server room, and they are linked to the gaming stations on the floor above via extension cables (HDMI for video and audio and USB for mouse and keyboard). Each client computer, built into a 3U rack mount case, is a well specced gaming rig in its own right, sporting an Intel Core i5 processor, 4GB of RAM and an Nvidia GeForce 560 along with a 60GB SSD drive.Originally, the client computers ran Ubuntu Linux rather than Windows and the games executed under WINE, but Varda had to abandon this scheme. As he explains on his site:"Amazingly, a majority of games worked fine, although many had minor bugs (e.g. flickering mouse cursor, minor rendering artifacts, etc.). Some games, however, did not work, or had bad bugs that made them annoying to play."Subsequently, the gaming computers have been moved onto a more conventional gaming choice, Windows 7. It's a shame that WINE couldn't be made to work, but I can sympathize as it's rare to find modern games that work perfectly and at full native speed. Another problem with WINE is that it tends to suffer from regressions, which is hardly surprising when considering the difficulty of constantly improving the emulation of the Windows API. Varda points out that he preferred working with Linux clients as they were easier to modify and came with less licensing baggage.Linux still runs the server and all of the tools used are open source software. The hardware here is a Intel Xeon E3-1230 with 4GB of RAM. The storage hanging off this machine is a bit more complex than the clients. In addition to the 60GB SSD, it also has 2x1TB drives and a 240GB SDD.When the clients were running Linux, they booted over PXE using a toolchain that will be familiar to anyone who has setup Linux network booting. DHCP pointed the clients to the server which then supplied PXELINUX using TFTP. When booted, file access was accomplished through network block device (NBD). This is a very easy to use system that allows you to serve the contents of a file as a block device over the network. The client computer runs a user mode device driver and the device can be mounted within the file system using the mount command.One snag with offering file access via NBD is that it's difficult to impose any security restrictions on different areas of the file system as the server only sees a single file. The advantage is perfomance as the client operating system simply sees a block device, and besides, these security issues aren't relevant in this setup.Unfortunately, Windows 7 can't use NBD, so, Varda had to switch to iSCSI (which works in both server and client mode under Linux). His network cards are not compliant with this standard when doing a netboot, but fortunately, gPXE came to the rescue, and he boostraps it over PXE. gPXE is also available as an ISO image and is worth knowing about if you encounter an awkward machine that can't manage a network boot. It can also optionally boot from a HTTP server rather than the more traditional TFTP server.According to Varda, booting all 12 machines over the Gigabit Ethernet network is surprisingly fast, and once booted, the machines don't seem noticeably slower than if they were using local storage. Once loaded, most games attempt to load in as much data as possible, filling the RAM, and the the disk and network bandwidth required is small. It's worth noting that these are aspects of this project that might differ from some other thin client scenarios.At time of writing, it doesn't seem as though the local storage of the client machines is being utilized. Instead, the clients boot into Windows from an image on the server that contains the operating system and the games themselves. It uses the copy on write feature of LVM so that any writes from a client are added to a differencing image allocated to that client. As the administrator, Varda can log into the Linux server and authorize changes to the master image for updates etc.SummaryOverall, Varda estimates the total cost of the project at about $40,000, and of course, he needed a property that offered a large physical space in order to house the computers and the gaming workstations. Obviously, this project has stark differences to most thin client projects. The balance between storage, network usage, GPU power and security would not be typical of an office installation, for example. The only letdown is that WINE proved to be insufficiently compatible to run a wide variety of modern games, but that is, perhaps, asking too much of it, and hats off to Varda for trying to make it work.

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