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• ListView exception for Images + Text

  - by drozzy

  I am trying to create a simple Icon+Text ListView but it does not work. I am using 2.1 Android SDK. My main class is very small slightly modified from the tutorial: public class Stuffs extends ListActivity { static final String[] COUNTRIES = new String[] {"A", "B","C"}; /** Called when the activity is first created. */ @Override public void onCreate(Bundle savedInstanceState) { super.onCreate(savedInstanceState); setListAdapter(new ArrayAdapter<String>(this, R.layout.list_item, R.id.title, COUNTRIES)); } } and my list_item.xml file is this: <?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?> <LinearLayout xmlns:android="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res/android" android:layout_width="fill_parent" android:layout_height="wrap_content" android:orientation = "horizontal"> <ImageView android:id = "@+id/icon" android:src="@drawable/icon" /> <TextView android:id = "@+id/title" android:padding="10dp" android:textSize="16sp" > </TextView> </LinearLayout> I have also created a "drawable" directory in my res directory and copied a "icon.png" into it. But any time I try to run this the application hangs up unexpected in my android emulator. Am I missing something?

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• A question of style/readability regarding the C# "using" statement

  - by Charles

  I'd like to know your opinion on a matter of coding style that I'm on the fence about. I realize there probably isn't a definitive answer, but I'd like to see if there is a strong preference in one direction or the other. I'm going through a solution adding using statements in quite a few places. Often I will come across something like so: { log = new log(); log.SomeProperty = something; // several of these log.Connection = new OracleConnection("..."); log.InsertData(); // this is where log.Connection will be used ... // do other stuff with log, but connection won't be used again } where log.Connection is an OracleConnection, which implements IDisposable. The neatnik in me wants to change it to: { log = new log(); using (OracleConnection connection = new OracleConnection("...")) { log.SomeProperty = something; log.Connection = conn; log.InsertData(); ... } } But the lover of brevity and getting-the-job-done-slightly-faster wants to do: { log = new log(); log.SomeProperty = something; using (log.Connection = new OracleConnection("...")) log.InsertData(); ... } For some reason I feel a bit dirty doing this. Do you consider this bad or not? If you think this is bad, why? If it's good, why?

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• On counting pairs of words that differ by one letter

  - by Quintofron

  Let us consider n words, each of length k. Those words consist of letters over an alphabet (whose cardinality is n) with defined order. The task is to derive an O(nk) algorithm to count the number of pairs of words that differ by one position (no matter which one exactly, as long as it's only a single position). For instance, in the following set of words (n = 5, k = 4): abcd, abdd, adcb, adcd, aecd there are 5 such pairs: (abcd, abdd), (abcd, adcd), (abcd, aecd), (adcb, adcd), (adcd, aecd). So far I've managed to find an algorithm that solves a slightly easier problem: counting the number of pairs of words that differ by one GIVEN position (i-th). In order to do this I swap the letter at the ith position with the last letter within each word, perform a Radix sort (ignoring the last position in each word - formerly the ith position), linearly detect words whose letters at the first 1 to k-1 positions are the same, eventually count the number of occurrences of each letter at the last (originally ith) position within each set of duplicates and calculate the desired pairs (the last part is simple). However, the algorithm above doesn't seem to be applicable to the main problem (under the O(nk) constraint) - at least not without some modifications. Any idea how to solve this?

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• Deserialization of a DataSet... deal with column name changes? how to migrate data from one column to another?

  - by Brian Kennedy

  So, we wanted to slightly generalize a couple columns in our typed dataset... basically dropped a foreign key constraint and then wanted to change a couple column names to better reflect their new state. All that is easy. The problem is that our users may have serialized out the old version of the DataSet as XML. We want to be able to read those old XML files and deserialize them into the revised DataSet. It seems that would be a fairly common desire... but I haven't yet figured out the right thing to search the internet for. One possible solution would seem to be some way to give a DataColumn an alias or alternate name such that when it reads the old column name, it knows that data can be read into the column with the new column name. I can find no support for any such thing. Another approach would seem to be an "after deserialization" method of some sort... so, I would let it read in the old column values into a normal DataColumn with that name, and then in the "after deserialization" method I would just move the data from the obsolete column into the new column, and then delete the old columns. That would seem to generalize to many other situations... and having such events or hooks is pretty common in ADO.NET. But I have looked for such a hook and haven't yet found it. If no "after deserialization" hook, it would seem I ought to be able to override ReadXml or ReadXmlSerializable methods to call the base and then do my "after" stuff to fix up old data into new. But it does not appear that is possible. Soooo, I have to think backward compatibility with old serialized DataSets and simple data migration would be a well-solved problem... so, trying to reinvent that wheel seems silly. But so far, I haven't seemed to find any documentation on doing those things. Suggestions? What is best practice for this?

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• Twitter Bootstrap: how to put unknown number of span* within a row-fluid?

  - by StackOverflowNewbie

  Assume I have the following nesting: <div class="cointainer-fluid"> <div class="row-fluid"> <div class="span3"> <!-- left sidebar here --> </div> <div class="span9"> <!-- main content here --> </div> </div> </div> I'd like to put an unknown number of <div class="span3"></div> in the main content area. (Each of the span3 is suppose to contain a product photo, name, price, etc.) Of course, my aim is that be responsive. So, I might display 20 products, which I'd like to possibly display 5 products per "row" on a wide screen, then 4 products per "row" on a slightly less wide screen, then 3, then 2, then 1. For example (each X represents a product): Wide Screen row 1: X X X X X row 2: X X X X X row 3: X X X X X row 4: X X X X X Less Wide Screen row 1: X X X X row 2: X X X X row 3: X X X X row 4: X X X X row 5: X X X X Even Less Wide Screen row 1: X X X row 2: X X X row 3: X X X row 4: X X X row 5: X X X row 6: X X X row 7: X X It seems like I need to do nested rows. However, if I do that, then I'll only be able to fit a certain amount of products in each nested row. That'll cause problems as the screen width decreases, for example (each X represents a product): Wide Screen row 1: X X X X X row 2: X X X X X row 3: X X X X X Less Wide Screen row 1: X X X X X row 2: X X X X X row 3: X X X X X How do I do what I want to do in Twitter Bootstrap?

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• jQuery: How to use modifier keys on form submit?

  - by Svish

  Say I have a form that looks like this: [ Animal name input field ] Add button If I type a name and hit enter, an animal with the given name is added to a table. Works fine. What I would like now is to call the current way of working "quick add" and add a new feature called "slow add", which I am not quite sure how to do. Basically what I want is that if for example the shift key is held down when enter or the button is clicked, I want the form submit method to do something slightly different. In my case I want it to open up a form where more details on the animal can be added before it is added to the table. Problem is I'm not quite sure how to do this. I have tried add a FireBug console.info(eventData) in my current submit function and I have found that the eventData contains an altKey, shiftKey and controlKey property, but they are always undefined even when I hold those keys down. So, does anyone know how I can do something special in my submit handler when certain modifier keys were pressed when the form was submitted?

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• Permuting output of a tree of closures

  - by yan

  This a conceptual question on how one would implement the following in Lisp (assuming Common Lisp in my case, but any dialect would work). Assume you have a function that creates closures that sequentially iterate over an arbitrary collection (or otherwise return different values) of data and returns nil when exhausted, i.e. (defun make-counter (up-to) (let ((cnt 0)) (lambda () (if (< cnt up-to) (incf cnt) nil)))) CL-USER> (defvar gen (make-counter 3)) GEN CL-USER> (funcall gen) 1 CL-USER> (funcall gen) 2 CL-USER> (funcall gen) 3 CL-USER> (funcall gen) NIL CL-USER> (funcall gen) NIL Now, assume you are trying to permute a combinations of one or more of these closures. How would you implement a function that returns a new closure that subsequently creates a permutation of all closures contained within it? i.e.: (defun permute-closures (counters) ......) such that the following holds true: CL-USER> (defvar collection (permute-closures (list (make-counter 3) (make-counter 3)))) CL-USER> (funcall collection) (1 1) CL-USER> (funcall collection) (1 2) CL-USER> (funcall collection) (1 3) CL-USER> (funcall collection) (2 1) ... and so on. The way I had it designed originally was to add a 'pause' parameter to the initial counting lambda such that when iterating you can still call it and receive the old cached value if passed ":pause t", in hopes of making the permutation slightly cleaner. Also, while the example above is a simple list of two identical closures, the list can be an arbitrarily-complicated tree (which can be permuted in depth-first order, and the resulting permutation set would have the shape of the tree.). I had this implemented, but my solution wasn't very clean and am trying to poll how others would approach the problem. Thanks in advance.

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• [RAILS] Why is ssl_requirement clearing the Flash? (Chrome Mac)

  - by aaronrussell

  I am using ssl_requirement and since setting it up, my application's Flash messages are disappearing. I've modified the plugin slightly as accounts can optionally have a domain mapped to their account. In that case the non-ssl areas of the site should use the mapped domain, whereas the ssl areas should use the subdomain: def ensure_proper_protocol return true if ssl_allowed? if ssl_required? && !request.ssl? redirect_to "https://#{@account.subdomain}." + APP_CONF[:domain] + request.request_uri flash.keep return false elsif request.ssl? && !ssl_required? redirect_to "http://#{@account.sub_or_mapped_domain}" + request.request_uri flash.keep return false end end The application is broadly split into a website (front end) and an admin (back end). ALL of the admin area uses SSL so in the AdminController I have overwritten ssl_required? with: protected def ssl_required? return false if RAILS_ENV == "test" || RAILS_ENV == "development" true end Interestingly, Flash messages work fine in the development environment, where I am bypassing requiring SSL, but in my production environment where SSL is required, all Flash are gone. Any ideas? EDIT I've done some further testing and can add that this problem is ONLY occurring in Chrome on the Mac. Other Mac browsers and Chrome on windows are displaying the Flash messages as expected. This may be a bug with Chrome on the Mac then...?

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• How to speed up drawing of scaled image? Audio playback chokes during window resize.

  - by Paperflyer

  I am writing an audio player for OSX. One view is a custom view that displays a waveform. The waveform is stored as a instance variable of type NSImage with an NSBitmapImageRep. The view also displays a progress indicator (a thick red line). Therefore, it is updated/redrawn every 30 milliseconds. Since it takes a rather long time to recalculate the image, I do that in a background thread after every window resize and update the displayed image once the new image is ready. In the meantime, the original image is scaled to fit the view like this: // The drawing rectangle is slightly smaller than the view, defined by // the two margins. NSRect drawingRect; drawingRect.origin = NSMakePoint(sideEdgeMarginWidth, topEdgeMarginHeight); drawingRect.size = NSMakeSize([self bounds].size.width-2*sideEdgeMarginWidth, [self bounds].size.height-2*topEdgeMarginHeight); [waveform drawInRect:drawingRect fromRect:NSZeroRect operation:NSCompositeSourceOver fraction:1]; The view makes up the biggest part of the window. During live resize, audio starts choking. Selecting the "big" graphic card on my Macbook Pro makes it less bad, but not by much. CPU utilization is somewhere around 20-40% during live resizes. Instruments suggests that rescaling/redrawing of the image is the problem. Once I stop resizing the window, CPU utilization goes down and audio stops glitching. I already tried to disable image interpolation to speed up the drawing like this: [[NSGraphicsContext currentContext] setImageInterpolation:NSImageInterpolationNone]; That helps, but audio still chokes during live resizes. Do you have an idea how to improve this? The main thing is to prevent the audio from choking.

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• Generate Spring bean definition from a Java object

  - by joeslice

  Let's suggest that I have a bean defined in Spring: <bean id="neatBean" class="com..." abstract="true">...</bean> Then we have many clients, each of which have slightly different configuration for their 'neatBean'. The old way we would do it was to have a new file for each client (e.g., clientX_NeatFeature.xml) that contained a bunch of beans for this client (these are hand-edited and part of the code base): <bean id="clientXNeatBean" parent="neatBean"> <property id="whatever" value="something"/> </bean> Now, I want to have a UI where we can edit and redefine a client's neatBean on the fly. My question is: given a neatBean, and a UI that can 'override' properties of this bean, what would be a straightforward way to serialize this to an XML file as we do [manually] today? For example, if the user set property whatever to be "17" for client Y, I'd want to generate: <bean id="clientYNeatBean" parent="neatBean"> <property id="whatever" value="17"/> </bean> Note that moving this configuration to a different format (e.g., database, other-schema'd-xml) is an option, but not really an answer to the question at hand.

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• Quantifying the Performance of Garbage Collection vs. Explicit Memory Management

  - by EmbeddedProg

  I found this article here: Quantifying the Performance of Garbage Collection vs. Explicit Memory Management http://www.cs.umass.edu/~emery/pubs/gcvsmalloc.pdf In the conclusion section, it reads: Comparing runtime, space consumption, and virtual memory footprints over a range of benchmarks, we show that the runtime performance of the best-performing garbage collector is competitive with explicit memory management when given enough memory. In particular, when garbage collection has five times as much memory as required, its runtime performance matches or slightly exceeds that of explicit memory management. However, garbage collection’s performance degrades substantially when it must use smaller heaps. With three times as much memory, it runs 17% slower on average, and with twice as much memory, it runs 70% slower. Garbage collection also is more susceptible to paging when physical memory is scarce. In such conditions, all of the garbage collectors we examine here suffer order-of-magnitude performance penalties relative to explicit memory management. So, if my understanding is correct: if I have an app written in native C++ requiring 100 MB of memory, to achieve the same performance with a "managed" (i.e. garbage collector based) language (e.g. Java, C#), the app should require 5*100 MB = 500 MB? (And with 2*100 MB = 200 MB, the managed app would run 70% slower than the native app?) Do you know if current (i.e. latest Java VM's and .NET 4.0's) garbage collectors suffer the same problems described in the aforementioned article? Has the performance of modern garbage collectors improved? Thanks.

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• Strange behaviour of DataTable with DataGridView

  - by Paul

  Please explain me what is happening. I have created a WinForms .NET application which has DataGridView on a form and should update database when DataGridView inline editing is used. Form has SqlDataAdapter _da with four SqlCommands bound to it. DataGridView is bound directly to DataTable _names. Such a CellValueChanged handler: private void dataGridView1_CellValueChanged(object sender, DataGridViewCellEventArgs e) { _da.Update(_names); } does not update database state although _names DataTable is updated. All the rows of _names have RowState == DataRowState.Unchanged Ok, I modified the handler: private void dataGridView1_CellValueChanged(object sender, DataGridViewCellEventArgs e) { DataRow row = _names.Rows[e.RowIndex]; row.BeginEdit(); row.EndEdit(); _da.Update(_names); } this variant really writes modified cell to database, but when I attempt to insert new row into grid, I get an error about an absence of row with index e.RowIndex So, I decided to improve the handler further: private void dataGridView1_CellValueChanged(object sender, DataGridViewCellEventArgs e) { if (_names.Rows.Count<e.RowIndex) { DataRow row = _names.Rows[e.RowIndex]; row.BeginEdit(); row.EndEdit(); } else { DataRow row = _names.NewRow(); row["NameText"] = dataGridView1["NameText", e.RowIndex].Value; _names.Rows.Add(row); } _da.Update(_names); } Now the really strange things happen when I insert new row to grid: the grid remains what it was until _names.Rows.Add(row); After this line THREE rows are inserted into table - two rows with the same value and one with Null value. The slightly modified code: DataRow row = _names.NewRow(); row["NameText"] = "--------------" _names.Rows.Add(row); inserts three rows with three different values: one as entered into the grid, the second with "--------------" value and third - with Null value. I really got stuck in guessing what is happening.

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• How to enforce that HTTP client uses conditional requests for updates?

  - by Day

  In a (proper RMM level 3) RESTful HTTP API, I want to enforce the fact that clients should make conditional requests when updating resources, in order to avoid the lost update problem. What would be an appropriate response to return to clients that incorrectly attempt unconditional PUT requests? I note that the (abandoned?) mod_atom returns a 405 Method Not Allowed with an Allow header set to GET, HEAD (view source) when an unconditional update is attempted. This seems slightly misleading - to me this implies that PUT is never a valid method to attempt on the resource. Perhaps the response just needs to have an entity body explaining that If-Match or If-Unmodified-Since must be used to make the PUT request conditional in which case it would be allowed? Or perhaps a 400 Bad Request with a suitable explanation in the entity body would be a better solution? But again, this doesn't feel quite right because it's using a 400 response for a violation of application specific semantics when RFC 2616 says (my emphasis): The request could not be understood by the server due to malformed syntax. But than again, I think that using 400 Bad Request for application specific semantics is becoming a widely accepted pragmatic solution (citation needed!), and I'm just being overly pedantic.

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• Manipulate method functionality call

  - by danrichardson

  Hello, is it possibly in c# to have some sort of base class functionality which is manipulated slightly based on the class. For instance say i have the following code (which will quite obviously not compile it's meant to only be for demonstrative purposes) class BaseFunctionality { public virtual bool adminCall public static string MethodName(int id, string parameter) { if (adminCall) return dbcall.Execute(); else return dbcall.ExecuteMe(); } } class Admin : BaseFunctionality { override bool adminCall = true; } class Front : BaseFunctionality { override bool adminCall = false; } Now what i would like to be able to do is; string AdminCall = Admin.MethodName(1, "foo"); string FrontCall = Front.MethodName(2, "bar"); Is their any way to do something like this? I'm trying to do everything with static methods so i do not have to instantiate classes all the time, and have nice clean code which is only being manipulated in one place. The idea behind this is so that there is minimal code repeating and makes things easier to expand on, so for instance another class could implement the BaseFunctionality later on. Thanks Dan

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• Additional information in ASP.Net MVC View

  - by Max Malmgren

  I am attempting to implement a custom locale service in an MVC 2 webpage. I have an interface IResourceDictionary that provides a couple of methods for accessing resources by culture. This is because I want to avoid the static classes of .Net resources. The problem is accessing the chosen IResourceDictionary from the views. I have contemplated using the ViewDataDictionary given, creating a base controller from which all my controllers inherits that adds my IResourceDictionary to the ViewData before each action executes. Then I could call my resource dictionary this way: (ViewData["Resources"] as IResourceDictionary).GetEntry(params); Admittedly, this is extremely verbose and ugly, especially in inline code as we are encouraged to use in MVC. Right now I am leaning towards static class access ResourceDictionary.GetEntry(params); because it is slightly more elegant. I also thought about adding it to my typed model for each page, which seems more robust than adding it to the ViewData.. What is the preferred way to access my ResourceDictionary from the views? All my views will be using this dictionary.

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• PHP site scheduling Java execution?

  - by obfuscation

  I'm trying to get started on combining my (slightly limited) PHP experience with my (better) Java experience, in a project where I need to allow uploads of Java source files to the server, which the server then executes Javac on to compile it. Then, at a set time (e.g. specified on upload) I need to run that once on the server, which will generate some database info for the PHP site to display. To describe my current programming abilities- I have made many desktop Java programs, and am confident in 'pure' Java, but so far have only undertaken a couple of PHP projects (including using the CodeIgniter framework). My motivation for using PHP as the frontend is because I know it is very fast, lightweight and I will be able to display the results I need very easily with it (simple DB readout). Ideally, the technology used should be able to be developed on a localhost (e.g. WAMP, Tomcat etc..) Is there any advice which you could give on what technology I should consider to use to bridge this gap, and what resources could help in using that technology? I have looked at a few, but have struggled to find documentation helping in achieving what I need.

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• multiple touches: touchend event fired only when a touchmove occurs

  - by dridri

  I would like to add some multitouch features to my javascript application when it is accessed from an ios device (and maybe android later). I want to provide a shiftkey-like functionality: the user may hold a button on the screen with one finger, and while this button is pressed, the behavior for a tap action on the rest of the screen is slightly different from the classic tap. The problem i'm running into is that i do not receive any touchend event for the tapping finger unless a touchmove is fired for the first finger holding the shiftkey button. Because the screen is very sensitive, touchmove events gets easily fired and in most cases everything works fine. But when the user's finger is a bit too still, the tapping is not detected until the user moves his finger a bit. This induces a variable 'delay' between the tapping and the action that occurs on the screen (the delay may vary and last a few seconds if the user is very calm). My guess is that this delay will cause the user to tap again and thus fire the action a second time, which is something that i don't want ! You can test it here with your ipad/iphone : http://jsfiddle.net/jdeXH/8/ Try to make the body remain green for a few seconds by holding your finger very still on the cyan div while tapping on the red div. Is this behavior to be expected ? Is there some known workaround for the problem ? I would have expected the touchend event to be fired right away when the finger is removed from the screen. i tested this with iOS 5.1.1 (ipad1 and iphone4s) edit: found a similar question Multitouch touchEvents not triggered as they should on Safari Mobile

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• SQL Server 05, which is optimal, LIKE %<term>% or CONTAINS() for searching large column

  - by Spud1

  I've got a function written by another developer which I am trying to modify for a slightly different use. It is used by a SP to check if a certain phrase exists in a text document stored in the DB, and returns 1 if the value is found or 0 if its not. This is the query: SELECT @mres=1 from documents where id=@DocumentID and contains(text, @search_term) The document contains mostly XML, and the search_term is a GUID formatted as an nvarchar(40). This seems to run quite slowly to me (taking 5-6 seconds to execute this part of the process), but in the same script file there is also this version of the above, commented out. SELECT @mres=1 from documents where id=@DocumentID and textlike '%' + @search_term + '%' This version runs MUCH quicker, taking 4ms compared to 15ms for the first example. So, my question is why use the first over the second? I assume this developer (who is no longer working with me) had a good reason, but at the moment I am struggling to find it.. Is it possibly something to do with the full text indexing? (this is a dev DB I am working with, so the production version may have better indexing..) I am not that clued up on FTI really so not quite sure at the moment. Thoughts/ideas?

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• Feedback on IE9 developer tool

  - by anirudha

  if you already love IE9 this post really not for you. but still you need something more this post for you and want to know about IE9 why not use product guide they give you IE9 product guide well i already put the bad experience into many post here but a little practice more to show what IE9 actually is or what they show. well i believe that their is no one on MSDN can sure that IE9 is another thing for developer to struggle with. because they never thing about the thing they make. the thinking they have that we product windows who are best so everything we do are best and best. come to the point i means Web browsing we can divide them in two parts 1. someone who are developer and use browser mainly for development , debugging and testing what they produced and make better software. 2. user who are not know things more technically but use the web as their passion. so as a developer what developer want. are IE9 is really for developer now make a comparison. commonly every developer have a twitter account to follow the link of someone else to learn and read the best article on web and share to all follower of themselves. chrome and Firefox have many utilities for that but IE still have nothing. social networking is a good way to communicate with others. in IE their is no plug-in to make experience better as firefox and chrome have a list of plug-in to use browser with more comfort. their are a huge list of plug-in on Firefox and chrome is available for making experience better. but IE9 still have no plug-in for that. if you see http://ieaddons.com/ you still see that they are joking yeah white joke who believe on them. they still have no plug-in. are they fool or making other fool. on 2011 whenever Firefox and chrome claim many thing on the plug-in IE9 still have no plug-in. not for developer not for everyone else. yeah a list of useless stuff you can see their. IE9 developer tool maybe better if they copycat the firebug as they copycat Google’s search result for Bing. well it’ not sure but Google claim that. but what is in IE9 developer tool so great that MSDN developer talking about. i found nothing in IE9 developer tool still feel frustrated their is a big trouble to edit css. means you never can change the css without going to CSS tab. but i thing great many thing they make better their but they still produce not better option in IE9 developer tool. as a comparison firebug is great we all know but chrome is a good option if someone want to try their hands on new things. in firebug their is a list of plugin inside firebug available also to make task easier. like firepicker in firebug make colorpicking easier. firebug autocomplete make console script writing better and yslow show you the performance step you need to take for making site better. IE9 still have no plugin or that. IE9 maybe useful stuff whenever the interface they thing to make better. the problem with MSFT these days that they want to ship next version of every softare in WPF. yeah they make live 2011 in wpf. many of user go for someone else or downgrade their 2011 live. the problem they have that they never want to spent the time on learning to use a software again. IE9 not have the serius problem like live have but still IE9 is not so great as chrome. like in chrome their is smooth tabbing. IE9 ditto copycat the things for tabbing. but a little step more in IE have a problem that IE9 tab slip whenever you want to use them. in chrome never slip the tab without user want. well as user someone also want to paint their browser in the style they want or like. in firefox the sollution called personas or themes. same in chrome the things called themes but in IE they still believe that their is no need for them. means use same themes everytime no customization in 2011 yeah great joke. well i read a post [written in 2008] of developer who still claim that they never used Firefox because they have a license for visual studio and some other software and have IE in their system. i not what they want to show. means they always want or thing to show that firefox and chrome is pity and IE is great as all do. but what’s true we all know. when MSFT release IE9 RC they show the ads with comparison of IE9 RC with chrome6 but why not today with chrome 11 developer version. the many things on IE testdrive now work perfect on chrome. well what’s performance matter when a silly browser never give a better experience. yeah performance have matter in useful software. anyone can prove many things whenever they produce a featureless software. well IE9 is looking great in blogger’s post on many kind of website where developer not independently write. actually they are mentally forced to write for IE9 better and show blah blah even blah is very small as they show. i am not believe on some blogger when they write in a style who are easily known that the post in favor of IE9. if you thing of mine then i am not want to hide myself i am one of the lover of open source so i love Firefox and chrome both. but i am not wrong you find yourself that what is difference between IE9 and Firefox and chrome. so don’t believe on someone who are not mentally independent because most of them are write about IE9 because they want to show them better they are forced themselves to show IE9 as a tool and chrome and firefox as pity. well read everything but never believe on everyone without any confident of them. they actually all want to show the things they have as i have with chrome and firefox is better then IE9. so my feedback on IE9 is :- without any plugin , customization or many thing i described in the post make no sense of use of IE9. i still fall in love of firefox and chrome they both give a better support and things to make experience better on the web. so conclusion is that i not forced you to other not IE9. you need to use the tool who save your time. means if your IE9 save your time you should use them because time was more subjective then others. so use the software who save the time as i save my time in chrome and in firefox. i still found nothing inIE9 who save time of mine.

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• Windows 8 Launch&ndash;Why OEM and Retailers Should STFU

  - by D'Arcy Lussier

  Microsoft has gotten a lot of flack for the Surface from OEM/hardware partners who create Windows-based devices and I’m sure, to an extent, retailers who normally stock and sell Windows-based devices. I mean we all know how this is supposed to work – Microsoft makes the OS, partners make the hardware, retailers sell the hardware. Now Microsoft is breaking the rules by not only offering their own hardware but selling them via online and through their Microsoft branded stores! The thought has been that Microsoft is trying to set a standard for the other hardware companies to reach for. Maybe. I hope, at some level, Microsoft may be covertly responding to frustrations associated with trusting the OEMs and Retailers to deliver on their part of the supply chain. I know as a consumer, I’m very frustrated with the Windows 8 launch. Aside from the Surface sales, there’s nothing happening at the retail level. Let me back up and explain. Over the weekend I visited a number of stores in hopes of trying out various Windows 8 devices. Out of three retailers (Staples, Best Buy, and Future Shop), not *one* met my expectations. Let me be honest with you Staples, I never really have high expectations from your computer department. If I need paper or pens, whatever, but computers – you’re not the top of my list for price or selection. Still, considering you flaunted Win 8 devices in your flyer I expected *something* – some sign of effort that you took the Windows 8 launch seriously. As I entered the 1910 Pembina Highway location in Winnipeg, there was nothing – no signage, no banners – nothing that would suggest Windows 8 had even launched. I made my way to the laptops. I had to play with each machine to determine which ones were running Windows 8. There wasn’t anything on the placards that made it obvious which were Windows 8 machines and which ones were Windows 7. Likewise, there was no easy way to identify the touch screen laptop (the HP model) from the others without physically touching the screen to verify. Horrible experience. In the same mall as the Staples I mentioned above, there’s a Future Shop. Surely they would be more on the ball. I walked in to the 1910 Pembina Highway location and immediately realized I would not get a better experience. Except for the sign by the front door mentioning Windows 8, there was *nothing* in the computer department pointing you to the Windows 8 devices. Like in Staples, the Win 8 laptops were mixed in with the Win 7 ones and there was nothing notable calling out which ones were running Win 8. I happened to hit up the St. James Street location today, thinking since its a busier store they must have more options. To their credit, they did have two staff members decked out in Windows 8 shirts and who were helping a customer understand Windows 8. But otherwise, there was nothing highlighting the Windows 8 devices and they were again mixed in with the rest of the Win 7 machines. Finally, we have the St. James Street Best Buy location here in Winnipeg. I’m sure Best Buy will have their act together. Nope, not even close. Same story as the others: minimal signage (there was a sign as you walked in with a link to this schedule of demo days), Windows 8 hardware mixed with the rest of the PC offerings, and no visible call-outs identifying which were Win 8 based. This meant that, like Future Shop and Staples, if you wanted to know which machine had Windows 8 you had to go and scrutinize each machine. Also, there was nothing identifying which ones were touch based and which were not. Just Another Day… To these retailers, it seemed that the Windows 8 launch was just another day, with another product to add to the showroom floor. Meanwhile, Apple has their dedicated areas *in all three stores*. It was dead simple to find where the Apple products were compared to the Windows 8 products. No wonder Microsoft is starting to push their own retail stores. No wonder Microsoft is trying to funnel orders through them instead of relying on these bloated retail big box stores who obviously can’t manage a product launch. It’s Not Just The Retailers… Remember when the Acer CEO, Founder, and President of Computer Global Operations all weighed in on how Microsoft releasing the Surface would have a “huge negative impact for the ecosystem and other brands may take a negative reaction”? Also remember the CEO stating “[making hardware] is not something you are good at so please think twice”? Well the launch day has come and gone, and so far Microsoft is the only one that delivered on having hardware available on the October 26th date. Oh sure, there are laptops running Windows 8 – but all in one desktop PCs? I’ve only seen one or two! And tablets are *non existent*, with some showing an early to late November availability on Best Buy’s website! So while the retailers could be doing more to make it easier to find Windows 8 devices, the manufacturers could help by *getting devices into stores*! That’s supposedly something that these companies are good at, according to the Acer CEO. So Here’s What the Retailers and Manufacturers Need To Do… Get Product Out The pivotal timeframe will be now to the end of November. We need to start seeing all these fantastic pieces of hardware ship – including the Samsung ATIV Smart PC Pro, the Acer Iconia, the Asus TAICHI 21, and the sexy Samsung Series 7 27” desktop. It’s not enough to see product announcements, we need to see actual devices. Make It Easy For Customers To Find Win8 Devices You want to make it easy to sell these things? Make it easy for people to find them! Have staff on hand that really know how these devices run and what can be done with them. Don’t just have a single demo day, have people who can demo it every day! Make It Easy to See the Features There’s touch screen desktops, touch screen laptops, tablets, non-touch laptops, etc. People need to easily find the features for each machine. If I’m looking for a touch-laptop, I shouldn’t need to sift through all the non-touch laptops to find them – at the least, I need to quickly be able to see which ones are touch. I feel silly even typing this because this should be retail 101 and I have no retail background (but I do have an extensive background as a customer). In Summary… Microsoft launching the Surface and selling them through their own channels isn’t slapping its OEM and retail partners in the face; its slapping them to wake the hell up and stop coasting through Windows launch events like they don’t matter. Unless I see some improvements from vendors and retailers in November, I may just hold onto my money for a Surface Pro even if I have to wait until early 2013. Your move OEM/Retailers. *Update – While my experience has been in Winnipeg, similar experiences have been voiced from colleagues in Calgary and Edmonton.

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• Disaster, or Migration?

  - by Rob Farley

  This post is in two parts – technical and personal. And I should point out that it’s prompted in part by this month’s T-SQL Tuesday, hosted by Allen Kinsel. First, the technical: I’ve had a few conversations with people recently about migration – moving a SQL Server database from one box to another (sometimes, but not primarily, involving an upgrade). One question that tends to come up is that of downtime. Obviously there will be some period of time between the old server being available and the new one. The way that most people seem to think of migration is this: Build a new server. Stop people from using the old server. Take a backup of the old server Restore it on the new server. Reconfigure the client applications (or alternatively, configure the new server to use the same address as the old) Make the new server online. There are other things involved, such as testing, of course. But this is essentially the process that people tell me they’re planning to follow. The bit that I want to look at today (as you’ve probably guessed from my title) is the “backup and restore” section. If a SQL database is using the Simple Recovery Model, then the only restore option is the last database backup. This backup could be full or differential. The transaction log never gets backed up in the Simple Recovery Model. Instead, it truncates regularly to stay small. One that’s using the Full Recovery Model (or Bulk-Logged) won’t truncate its log – the log must be backed up regularly. This provides the benefit of having a lot more option available for restores. It’s a requirement for most systems of High Availability, because if you’re making sure that a spare box is up-and-running, ready to take over, then you have to be interested in the logs that are happening on the current box, rather than truncating them all the time. A High Availability system such as Mirroring, Replication or Log Shipping will initialise the spare machine by restoring a full database backup (and maybe a differential backup if available), and then any subsequent log backups. Once the secondary copy is close, transactions can be applied to keep the two in sync. The main aspect of any High Availability system is to have a redundant system that is ready to take over. So the similarity for migration should be obvious. If you need to move a database from one box to another, then introducing a High Availability mechanism can help. By turning on the Full Recovery Model and then taking a backup (so that the now-interesting logs have some context), logs start being kept, and are therefore available for getting the new box ready (even if it’s an upgraded version). When the migration is ready to occur, a failover can be done, letting the new server take over the responsibility of the old, just as if a disaster had happened. Except that this is a planned failover, not a disaster at all. There’s a fine line between a disaster and a migration. Failovers can be useful in patching, upgrading, maintenance, and more. Hopefully, even an unexpected disaster can be seen as just another failover, and there can be an opportunity there – perhaps to get some work done on the principal server to increase robustness. And if I’ve just set up a High Availability system for even the simplest of databases, it’s not necessarily a bad thing. :) So now the personal: It’s been an interesting time recently... June has been somewhat odd. A court case with which I was involved got resolved (through mediation). I can’t go into details, but my lawyers tell me that I’m allowed to say how I feel about it. The answer is ‘lousy’. I don’t regret pursuing it as long as I did – but in the end I had to make a decision regarding the commerciality of letting it continue, and I’m going to look forward to the days when the kind of money I spent on my lawyers is small change. Mind you, if I had a similar situation with an employer, I’d do the same again, but that doesn’t really stop me feeling frustrated about it. The following day I had to fly to country Victoria to see my grandmother, who wasn’t expected to last the weekend. She’s still around a week later as I write this, but her 92-year-old body has basically given up on her. She’s been a Christian all her life, and is looking forward to eternity. We’ll all miss her though, and it’s hard to see my family grieving. Then on Tuesday, I was driving back to the airport with my family to come home, when something really bizarre happened. We were travelling down the freeway, just pulled out to go past a truck (farm-truck sized, not a semi-trailer), when a car-sized mass of metal fell off it. It was something like an industrial air-conditioner, but from where I was sitting, it was just a mass of spinning metal, like something out of a movie (one friend described it as “holidays by Michael Bay”). Somehow, and I’m really don’t know how, the part of it nearest us bounced high enough to clear the car, and there wasn’t even a scratch. We pulled over the check, and I was just thanking God that we’d changed lanes when we had, and that we remained unharmed. I had all kinds of thoughts about what could’ve happened if we’d had something that size land on the windscreen... All this has drilled home that while I feel that I haven’t provided as well for the family as I could’ve done (like by pursuing an expensive legal case), I shouldn’t even consider that I have proper control over things. I get to live life, and make decisions based on what I feel is right at the time. But I’m not going to get everything right, and there will be things that feel like disasters, some which could’ve been in my control and some which are very much beyond my control. The case feels like something I could’ve pursued differently, a disaster that could’ve been avoided in some way. Gran dying is lousy of course. An accident on the freeway would have been awful. I need to recognise that the worst disasters are ones that I can’t affect, and that I need to look at things in context – perhaps seeing everything that happens as a migration instead. Life is never the same from one day to the next. Every event has a before and an after – sometimes it’s clearly positive, sometimes it’s not. I remember good events in my life (such as my wedding), and bad (such as the loss of my father when I was ten, or the back injury I had eight years ago). I’m not suggesting that I know how to view everything from the “God works all things for good” perspective, but I am trying to look at last week as a migration of sorts. Those things are behind me now, and the future is in God’s hands. Hopefully I’ve learned things, and will be able to live accordingly. I’ve come through this time now, and even though I’ll miss Gran, I’ll see her again one day, and the future is bright.

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• Per-pixel displacement mapping GLSL

  - by Chris

  Im trying to implement a per-pixel displacement shader in GLSL. I read through several papers and "tutorials" I found and ended up with trying to implement the approach NVIDIA used in their Cascade Demo (http://www.slideshare.net/icastano/cascades-demo-secrets) starting at Slide 82. At the moment I am completly stuck with following problem: When I am far away the displacement seems to work. But as more I move closer to my surface, the texture gets bent in x-axis and somehow it looks like there is a little bent in general in one direction. EDIT: I added a video: click I added some screen to illustrate the problem: Well I tried lots of things already and I am starting to get a bit frustrated as my ideas run out. I added my full VS and FS code: VS: #version 400 layout(location = 0) in vec3 IN_VS_Position; layout(location = 1) in vec3 IN_VS_Normal; layout(location = 2) in vec2 IN_VS_Texcoord; layout(location = 3) in vec3 IN_VS_Tangent; layout(location = 4) in vec3 IN_VS_BiTangent; uniform vec3 uLightPos; uniform vec3 uCameraDirection; uniform mat4 uViewProjection; uniform mat4 uModel; uniform mat4 uView; uniform mat3 uNormalMatrix; out vec2 IN_FS_Texcoord; out vec3 IN_FS_CameraDir_Tangent; out vec3 IN_FS_LightDir_Tangent; void main( void ) { IN_FS_Texcoord = IN_VS_Texcoord; vec4 posObject = uModel * vec4(IN_VS_Position, 1.0); vec3 normalObject = (uModel * vec4(IN_VS_Normal, 0.0)).xyz; vec3 tangentObject = (uModel * vec4(IN_VS_Tangent, 0.0)).xyz; //vec3 binormalObject = (uModel * vec4(IN_VS_BiTangent, 0.0)).xyz; vec3 binormalObject = normalize(cross(tangentObject, normalObject)); // uCameraDirection is the camera position, just bad named vec3 fvViewDirection = normalize( uCameraDirection - posObject.xyz); vec3 fvLightDirection = normalize( uLightPos.xyz - posObject.xyz ); IN_FS_CameraDir_Tangent.x = dot( tangentObject, fvViewDirection ); IN_FS_CameraDir_Tangent.y = dot( binormalObject, fvViewDirection ); IN_FS_CameraDir_Tangent.z = dot( normalObject, fvViewDirection ); IN_FS_LightDir_Tangent.x = dot( tangentObject, fvLightDirection ); IN_FS_LightDir_Tangent.y = dot( binormalObject, fvLightDirection ); IN_FS_LightDir_Tangent.z = dot( normalObject, fvLightDirection ); gl_Position = (uViewProjection*uModel) * vec4(IN_VS_Position, 1.0); } The VS just builds the TBN matrix, from incoming normal, tangent and binormal in world space. Calculates the light and eye direction in worldspace. And finally transforms the light and eye direction into tangent space. FS: #version 400 // uniforms uniform Light { vec4 fvDiffuse; vec4 fvAmbient; vec4 fvSpecular; }; uniform Material { vec4 diffuse; vec4 ambient; vec4 specular; vec4 emissive; float fSpecularPower; float shininessStrength; }; uniform sampler2D colorSampler; uniform sampler2D normalMapSampler; uniform sampler2D heightMapSampler; in vec2 IN_FS_Texcoord; in vec3 IN_FS_CameraDir_Tangent; in vec3 IN_FS_LightDir_Tangent; out vec4 color; vec2 TraceRay(in float height, in vec2 coords, in vec3 dir, in float mipmap){ vec2 NewCoords = coords; vec2 dUV = - dir.xy * height * 0.08; float SearchHeight = 1.0; float prev_hits = 0.0; float hit_h = 0.0; for(int i=0;i<10;i++){ SearchHeight -= 0.1; NewCoords += dUV; float CurrentHeight = textureLod(heightMapSampler,NewCoords.xy, mipmap).r; float first_hit = clamp((CurrentHeight - SearchHeight - prev_hits) * 499999.0,0.0,1.0); hit_h += first_hit * SearchHeight; prev_hits += first_hit; } NewCoords = coords + dUV * (1.0-hit_h) * 10.0f - dUV; vec2 Temp = NewCoords; SearchHeight = hit_h+0.1; float Start = SearchHeight; dUV *= 0.2; prev_hits = 0.0; hit_h = 0.0; for(int i=0;i<5;i++){ SearchHeight -= 0.02; NewCoords += dUV; float CurrentHeight = textureLod(heightMapSampler,NewCoords.xy, mipmap).r; float first_hit = clamp((CurrentHeight - SearchHeight - prev_hits) * 499999.0,0.0,1.0); hit_h += first_hit * SearchHeight; prev_hits += first_hit; } NewCoords = Temp + dUV * (Start - hit_h) * 50.0f; return NewCoords; } void main( void ) { vec3 fvLightDirection = normalize( IN_FS_LightDir_Tangent ); vec3 fvViewDirection = normalize( IN_FS_CameraDir_Tangent ); float mipmap = 0; vec2 NewCoord = TraceRay(0.1,IN_FS_Texcoord,fvViewDirection,mipmap); //vec2 ddx = dFdx(NewCoord); //vec2 ddy = dFdy(NewCoord); vec3 BumpMapNormal = textureLod(normalMapSampler, NewCoord.xy, mipmap).xyz; BumpMapNormal = normalize(2.0 * BumpMapNormal - vec3(1.0, 1.0, 1.0)); vec3 fvNormal = BumpMapNormal; float fNDotL = dot( fvNormal, fvLightDirection ); vec3 fvReflection = normalize( ( ( 2.0 * fvNormal ) * fNDotL ) - fvLightDirection ); float fRDotV = max( 0.0, dot( fvReflection, fvViewDirection ) ); vec4 fvBaseColor = textureLod( colorSampler, NewCoord.xy,mipmap); vec4 fvTotalAmbient = fvAmbient * fvBaseColor; vec4 fvTotalDiffuse = fvDiffuse * fNDotL * fvBaseColor; vec4 fvTotalSpecular = fvSpecular * ( pow( fRDotV, fSpecularPower ) ); color = ( fvTotalAmbient + (fvTotalDiffuse + fvTotalSpecular) ); } The FS implements the displacement technique in TraceRay method, while always using mipmap level 0. Most of the code is from NVIDIA sample and another paper I found on the web, so I guess there cannot be much wrong in here. At the end it uses the modified UV coords for getting the displaced normal from the normal map and the color from the color map. I looking forward for some ideas. Thanks in advance! Edit: Here is the code loading the heightmap: glTexImage2D(GL_TEXTURE_2D, 0, GL_RGBA, mWidth, mHeight, 0, GL_RGBA, GL_UNSIGNED_BYTE, mImageData); glGenerateMipmap(GL_TEXTURE_2D); //glTexParameteri(GL_TEXTURE_2D, GL_TEXTURE_MAG_FILTER, GL_LINEAR_MIPMAP_LINEAR); //glTexParameteri(GL_TEXTURE_2D, GL_TEXTURE_MIN_FILTER, GL_LINEAR_MIPMAP_LINEAR); //glTexParameteri(GL_TEXTURE_2D, GL_TEXTURE_WRAP_S, GL_REPEAT); //glTexParameteri(GL_TEXTURE_2D, GL_TEXTURE_WRAP_T, GL_REPEAT); Maybe something wrong in here?

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• Advice for a distracted, unhappy, recently graduated programmer? [closed]

  - by Re-Invent

  I graduated 4 months ago. I had offers from a few good places to work at. At the same time I wanted to stick to building a small software business of my own, still have some ideas with good potential, some half done projects frozen in my github. But due to social pressures, I chose a job, the pay is great, but I am half-passionate about it. A small team of smart folks building useful product, working out contracts across the world. I've started finding it extremely boring. Boring to the extent that I skip 2-3 days a week together not doing work. Neither do I spend that time progressing any of my own projects. Yes, I feel stupid at the way I'm wasting time, but I don't understand exactly why is it happening. It's as if all the excitement has been drained. What can I do about it? Long version: School - I was in third standard. Only students, 6th grade had access to computer labs. I once peeked into the lab from the little door opening. No hard-disks, MS DOS on 5 1/2 inch floppies. I asked a senior student to play some sound in BASIC. He used PLAY to compose a tune. Boy! I was so excited, I was jumping from within. Back home, asked my brother to teach me some programming. We bought a book "MODERN All About GW-BASIC for Schools & Colleges". The book had everything, right from printing, to taking input, file i/o, game programming, machine level support, etc. I was in 6th standard, wrote my first game - a wheel of fortune, rotated the wheel by manipulating 16 color palette's definition. Got internet soon, got hooked to QuickBasic programming community. Made some more games "007 in Danger", "Car Crush 2" for submission to allbasiccode archives. I was extremely excited about all this. My interests now swayed into "hacking" (computer security). Taught myself some perl, found it annoying, learnt PHP and a bit of SQL. Also taught myself Visual Basic one of the winters and wrote a pacman clone with Direct X. By the time I was in 10th standard, I created some evil tools using visual basic, php and mysql and eventually landed myself into an unpaid side-job at a government facility, building evil tools for them. It was a dream come true for crackers of that time. And so was I, still very excited. Things changed soon, last two years of school were not so great as I was balancing preps for college, work at govt. and studies for school at same time. College - College was opposite of all I had wished it to be. I imagined it to be a place where I'd spend my 4 years building something awesome. It was rather an epitome of rote learning, attendance, rules, busy schedules, ban on personal laptops, hardly any hackers surrounding you and shit like that. We had to take permissions to even introduce some cultural/creative activities in our annual schedule. The labs won't be open on weekends because the lab employees had to have their leaves. Yes, a horrible place for someone like me. I still managed to pull out a project with a friend over 2 months. Showed it to people high in the academia hierarchy. They were immensely impressed, we proposed to allow personal computers for students. They made up half-assed reasons and didn't agree. We felt frustrated. And so on, I still managed to teach myself new languages, do new projects of my own, do an intern at the same govt. facility, start a small business for sometime, give a talk at a conference I'm passionate about, win game-dev and hacking contest at most respected colleges, solve good deal of programming contest problems, etc. At the same time I was not content with all these restrictions, great emphasis on rote learning, and sheer wastage of time due to college. I never felt I was overdoing, but now I feel I burnt myself out. During my last days at college, I did an intern at a bigco. While I spent my time building prototypes for certain LBS, the other interns around me, even a good friend, was just skipping time. I thought maybe, in a few weeks he would put in some serious efforts at work assigned to him, but all he did was to find creative ways to skip work, hide his face from manager, engage people in talks if they try to question his progress, etc. I tried a few time to get him on track, but it seems all he wanted was to "not to work hard at all and still reap the fruits". I don't know how others take such people, but I find their vicinity very very poisonous to one's own motivation and productivity. Over that, the place where I come from, HRs don't give much value to what have you done past 4 years. So towards the end of out intern, we all were offered work at the bigco, but the slacker, even after not writing more than 200 lines of code was made a much better offer. I felt enraged instantly - "Is this how the corp world treats someone who does fruitful, if not extra-ordinary work form them for past 6 months?". Yes, I did try to negotiate and debate. The bigcos seem blind due to departmentalization of responsibilities and many layers of management. I decided not to be in touch with any characters of that depressing play. Probably the busy time I had at college, ignoring friends, ignoring fun and squeezing every bit of free time for myself is also responsible. Probably this is what has drained all my willingness to work for anyone. I find my day job boring, at the same time I with to maintain it for financial reasons. I feel a bit burnt out, unsatisfied and at the same time an urge to quit working for someone else and start finishing my frozen side-projects (which may be profitable). Though I haven't got much to support myself with food, office, internet bills, etc in savings. I still have my day job, but I don't find it very interesting, even though the pay is higher than the slacker, I don't find money to be a great motivator here. I keep comparing myself to my past version. I wonder how to get rid of this and reboot myself back to the way I was in school days - excited about it, tinkering, building, learning new things daily, and NOT BORED?

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• Big data: An evening in the life of an actual buyer

  - by Jean-Pierre Dijcks

  Here I am, and this is an actual story of one of my evenings, trying to spend money with a company and ultimately failing. I just gave up and bought a service from another vendor, not the incumbent. Here is that story and how I think big data could actually fix this (and potentially prevent some of this from happening). In the end this story should illustrate how big data can benefit me (get me what I want without causing grief) and the company I am trying to buy something from. Note: Lots of details left out, I have no intention of being the annoyed blogger moaning about a specific company. What did I want to get? We watch TV, we have internet and we do have a land line. The land line is from a different vendor then the TV and the internet. I have decided that this makes no sense and I was going to get a bundle (no need to infer who this is, I just picked the generic bundle word as this is what I want to get) of all three services as this seems to save me money. I also want to not talk to people, I just want to click on a website when I feel like it and get it all sorted. I do think that is reality. I want to just do my shopping at 9.30pm while watching silly reruns on TV. Problem 1 - Bad links So, I'm an existing customer of the company I want to buy my bundle from. I go to the website, I click on offers. Turns out they are offers for new customers. After grumbling about how good they are, I click on offers for existing customers. Bummer, it goes to offers for new customers, so I click again on the link for offers for existing customers. No cigar... it just does not work. Big data solutions: 1) Do not show an existing customer the offers for new customers unless they are the same => This is only partially doable without login, but if a customer logs in the application should always know that this is an existing customer. But in general, imagine I do this from my home going through the internet service of this vendor to their domain... an instant filter should move me into the "existing customer route". 2) Flag dead or incorrect links => I've clicked the link for "existing customer offers" at least 3 times in under 5 seconds... Identifying patterns like this is easy in Hadoop and can very quickly make a list of potentially incorrect links. No need for realtime fixing, just the fact that this link can be pro-actively fixed across my entire web domain is a good thing. Preventative maintenance! Problem 2 - Purchase cannot be completed Apart from the fact that the browsing pattern to actually get to what I want is poorly designed, my purchase never gets past a specific point. In other words, I put something into my shopping cart and when I want to move on the application either crashes (with me going to an error page) or hangs or goes into something like chat. So I try again, and again and again. I think I tried this entire path (while being logged in!!) at least 10 times over the course of 20 minutes. I also clicked on the feedback button and, frustrated as I was, tried to explain this did not work... Big Data Solutions: 1) This web site does shopping cart analysis. I got an email next day stating I have things in my shopping cart, just click here to complete my purchase. After the above experience, this just added insult to my pain... 2) What should have happened, is a Hadoop job going over all logged in customers that are on the buy flow. It should flag anyone who is trying (multiple attempts from the same user to do the same thing), analyze the shopping card, the clicks to identify what the customers wants, his feedback provided (note: always own your own website feedback, never just farm this out!!) and in a short turn around time (30 minutes to 2 hours or so) email me with a link to complete my purchase. Not with a link to my shopping cart 12 hours later, but a link to actually achieve what I wanted... Why should this company go through the big data effort? I do believe this is relatively easy to do using our Oracle Event Processing and Big Data Appliance solutions combined. It is almost so simple (to my mind) that it makes no sense that this is not in place? But, now I am ranting... Why is this interesting? It is because of $$$$. After trying really hard, I mean I did this all in the evening, and again in the morning before going to work. I kept on failing, But I really wanted this to work... so an email that said, sorry, we noticed you tried to get a bundle (the log knows what I wanted, where I failed, so easy to generate), here is the link to click and complete your purchase. And here is 2 movies on us as an apology would have kept me as a customer, and got the additional $$$$ per month for the next couple of years. It would also lead to upsell on my phone package etc. Instead, I went to a completely different company, bought service from them. Lost money for company A, negative sentiment for company A and me telling this story at the water cooler so I'm influencing more people to think negatively about company A. All in all, a loss of easy money, a ding in sentiment and image where a relatively simple solution exists and can be in place on the software I describe routinely in this blog... For those who are coming to Openworld and maybe see value in solving the above, or are thinking of how to solve this, come visit us in Moscone North - Oracle Red Lounge or in the Engineered Systems Showcase.

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• CentOS 5.5 : Postfix, Dovecot & MySQL

  - by GruffTech

  I'm hoping someone has seen this issue before because I'm at quite a loss. We're building a new outbound smtp server for our clients that features anti-spam scanning and virus scanning for outbound emails, something we had not previously done. So with CentOS 5.5 x64, Installed and patched completely. Postfix & Dovecot both installed via base repo. [grufftech@outgoing postfix]# rpm -qa | grep postfix postfix-2.3.3-2.1.el5_2 [grufftech@outgoing postfix]# rpm -qa | grep dovecot dovecot-1.0.7-7.el5 [grufftech@outgoing ~]# dovecot --build-options Build options: ioloop=poll notify=inotify ipv6 openssl SQL drivers: mysql postgresql Passdb: checkpassword ldap pam passwd passwd-file shadow sql Userdb: checkpassword ldap passwd prefetch passwd-file sql static /etc/dovecot.conf auth default { mechanisms = plain login digest-md5 cram-md5 passdb sql { args = /etc/dovecot-mysql.conf } userdb sql { args = /etc/dovecot-mysql.conf } userdb prefetch { } user = nobody socket listen { master { path = /var/run/dovecot/auth-master mode = 0660 user = postfix group = postfix } client { path = /var/spool/postfix/private/auth mode = 0660 user = postfix group = postfix } } } All the server is doing is auth for postfix, so no reason to have imap / pop / dict. /etc/dovecot-mysql.conf driver = mysql connect = host=10.0.32.159 dbname=mail user=****** password=******** default_pass_scheme = plain user_query = select 1 password_query = select password from users where username = '%n' and domain = '%d' So drop in my configuration, (which is working on another server identical to this one.) [grufftech@outgoing ~]# /etc/init.d/dovecot start Starting Dovecot Imap: [ OK ] Sweet. Booted up nicely, thats good.... (incoming problem in 3....2....1....) May 21 08:09:01 outgoing dovecot: Dovecot v1.0.7 starting up May 21 08:09:02 outgoing dovecot: auth-worker(default): mysql: Connect failed to 10.0.32.159 (mail): Can't connect to MySQL server on '10.0.32.159' (13) - waiting for 1 seconds before retry well what the crap. went and checked permissions on my MySQL database, and its fine. [grufftech@outgoing ~]# mysql vpopmail -h 10.0.32.159 -u ****** -p Enter password: Welcome to the MySQL monitor. Commands end with ; or \g. Your MySQL connection id is 127828558 Server version: 4.1.22 Type 'help;' or '\h' for help. Type '\c' to clear the buffer. mysql>\q So! My server can talk to my database server. but dovecot, for whatever reason, isn't able to. I've fiddled with it for the last six hours, grabbed slightly-older copies of the RPM (ones that matched our production server exactly) to test those, copied configs, searched google, searched server fault, chatted in IRC, banged my head against the table, I've done it all. Surely I'm doing something wrong or forgetting something, can anyone tell me what the elephant in the room is? This stuff is supposed to work.

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