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• Create and Backup Multiple Profiles in Google Chrome

  - by Asian Angel

  Other browsers such as Firefox and SeaMonkey allow you to have multiple profiles but not Chrome…at least not until now. If you want to use multiple profiles and create backups for them then join us as we look at Google Chrome Backup. Note: There is a paid version of this program available but we used the free version for our article. Google Chrome Backup in Action During the installation process you will run across this particular window. It will have a default user name filled in as shown here…you will not need to do anything except click on Next to continue installing the program. When you start the program for the first time this is what you will see. Your default Chrome Profile will already be visible in the window. A quick look at the Profile Menu… In the Tools Menu you can go ahead and disable the Start program at Windows Startup setting…the only time that you will need the program running is if you are creating or restoring a profile. When you create a new profile the process will start with this window. You can access an Advanced Options mode if desired but most likely you will not need it. Here is a look at the Advanced Options mode. It is mainly focused on adding Switches to the new Chrome Shortcut. The drop-down menu for the Switches available… To create your new profile you will need to choose: A profile location A profile name (as you type/create the profile name it will automatically be added to the Profile Path) Make certain that the Create a new shortcut to access new profile option is checked For our example we decided to try out the Disable plugins switch option… Click OK to create the new profile. Once you have created your new profile, you will find a new shortcut on the Desktop. Notice that the shortcut’s name will be Google Chrome + profile name that you chose. Note: On our system we were able to move the new shortcut to the “Start Menu” without problems. Clicking on our new profile’s shortcut opened up a fresh and clean looking instance of Chrome. Just out of curiosity we did decide to check the shortcut to see if the Switch set up correctly. Unfortunately it did not in this instance…so your mileage with the Switches may vary. This was just a minor quirk and nothing to get excited or upset over…especially considering that you can create multiple profiles so easily. After opening up our default profile of Chrome you can see the individual profile icons (New & Default in order) sitting in the Taskbar side-by-side. And our two profiles open at the same time on our Desktop… Backing Profiles Up For the next part of our tests we decided to create a backup for each of our profiles. Starting the wizard will allow you to choose between creating or restoring a profile. Note: To create or restore a backup click on Run Wizard. When you reach the second part of the process you can go with the Backup default profile option or choose a particular one from a drop-down list using the Select a profile to backup option. We chose to backup the Default Profile first… In the third part of the process you will need to select a location to save the profile to. Once you have selected the location you will see the Target Path as shown here. You can choose your own name for the backup file…we decided to go with the default name instead since it contained the backup’s calendar date. A very nice feature is the ability to have the cache cleared before creating the backup. We clicked on Yes…choose the option that best suits your needs. Once you have chosen either Yes or No the backup will then be created. Click Finish to complete the process. The backup file for our Default Profile at 14.0 MB in size. And the backup file for our Chrome Fresh Profile…2.81 MB. Restoring Profiles For the final part of our tests we decided to do a Restore. Select Restore and click Next to get the process started. In the second step you will need to browse for the Profile Backup File (and select the desired profile if you have created multiples). For our example we decided to overwrite the original Default Profile with the Chrome Fresh Profile. The third step lets you choose where to restore the chosen profile to…you can go with the Default Profile or choose one from the drop-down list using the Restore to a selected profile option. The final step will get you on your way to restoring the chosen profile. The program will conduct a check regarding the previous/old profile and ask if you would like to proceed with overwriting it. Definitely nice in case you change your mind at the last moment. Clicking Yes will finish the restoration. The only other odd quirk that we noticed while using the program was that the Next Button did not function after restoring the profile. You can easily get around the problem by clicking to close the window. Which one is which? After the restore process we had identical twins. Conclusion If you have been looking for a way to create multiple profiles in Google Chrome, then you might want to add this program to your system. Links Download Google Chrome Backup Similar Articles Productive Geek Tips Backup and Restore Firefox Profiles EasilyBackup Different Browsers Easily with FavBackupBackup Your Browser with the New FavBackupStupid Geek Tricks: Compare Your Browser’s Memory Usage with Google ChromeHow to Make Google Chrome Your Default Browser 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 Acronis Online Backup DVDFab 6 Revo Uninstaller Pro Registry Mechanic 9 for Windows Tech Fanboys Field Guide Check these Awesome Chrome Add-ons iFixit Offers Gadget Repair Manuals Online Vista style sidebar for Windows 7 Create Nice Charts With These Web Based Tools Track Daily Goals With 42Goals

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• Refactoring Part 1 : Intuitive Investments

  - by Wes McClure

  Fear, it’s what turns maintaining applications into a nightmare.  Technology moves on, teams move on, someone is left to operate the application, what was green is now perceived brown.  Eventually the business will evolve and changes will need to be made.  The approach to those changes often dictates the long term viability of the application.  Fear of change, lack of passion and a lack of interest in understanding the domain often leads to a paranoia to do anything that doesn’t involve duct tape and bailing twine.  Don’t get me wrong, those have a place in the short term viability of a project but they don’t have a place in the long term.  Add to it “us versus them” in regards to the original team and those that maintain it, internal politics and other factors and you have a recipe for disaster.  This results in code that quickly becomes unmanageable.  Even the most clever of designs will eventually become sub optimal and debt will amount that exponentially makes changes difficult.  This is where refactoring comes in, and it’s something I’m very passionate about.  Refactoring is about improving the process whereby we make change, it’s an exponential investment in the process of change. Without it we will incur exponential complexity that halts productivity. Investments, especially in the long term, require intuition and reflection.  How can we tackle new development effectively via evolving the original design and paying off debt that has been incurred? The longer we wait to ask and answer this question, the more it will cost us.  Small requests don’t warrant big changes, but realizing when changes now will pay off in the long term, and especially in the short term, is valuable. I have done my fair share of maintaining applications and continuously refactoring as needed, but recently I’ve begun work on a project that hasn’t had much debt, if any, paid down in years.  This is the first in a series of blog posts to try to capture the process which is largely driven by intuition of smaller refactorings from other projects. Signs that refactoring could help: Testability How can decreasing test time not pay dividends? One of the first things I found was that a very important piece often takes 30+ minutes to test.  I can only imagine how much time this has cost historically, but more importantly the time it might cost in the coming weeks: I estimate at least 10-20 hours per person!  This is simply unacceptable for almost any situation.  As it turns out, about 6 hours of working with this part of the application and I was able to cut the time down to under 30 seconds!  In less than the lost time of one week, I was able to fix the problem for all future weeks! If we can’t test fast then we can’t change fast, nor with confidence. Code is used by end users and it’s also used by developers, consider your own needs in terms of the code base.  Adding logic to enable/disable features during testing can help decouple parts of an application and lead to massive improvements.  What exactly is so wrong about test code in real code?  Often, these become features for operators and sometimes end users.  If you cannot run an integration test within a test runner in your IDE, it’s time to refactor. Readability Are variables named meaningfully via a ubiquitous language? Is the code segmented functionally or behaviorally so as to minimize the complexity of any one area? Are aspects properly segmented to avoid confusion (security, logging, transactions, translations, dependency management etc) Is the code declarative (what) or imperative (how)?  What matters, not how.  LINQ is a great abstraction of the what, not how, of collection manipulation.  The Reactive framework is a great example of the what, not how, of managing streams of data. Are constants abstracted and named, or are they just inline? Do people constantly bitch about the code/design? If the code is hard to understand, it will be hard to change with confidence.  It’s a large undertaking if the original designers didn’t pay much attention to readability and as such will never be done to “completion.”  Make sure not to go over board, instead use this as you change an application, not in lieu of changes (like with testability). Complexity Simplicity will never be achieved, it’s highly subjective.  That said, a lot of code can be significantly simplified, tidy it up as you go.  Refactoring will often converge upon a simplification step after enough time, keep an eye out for this. Understandability In the process of changing code, one often gains a better understanding of it.  Refactoring code is a good way to learn how it works.  However, it’s usually best in combination with other reasons, in effect killing two birds with one stone.  Often this is done when readability is poor, in which case understandability is usually poor as well.  In the large undertaking we are making with this legacy application, we will be replacing it.  Therefore, understanding all of its features is important and this refactoring technique will come in very handy. Unused code How can deleting things not help? This is a freebie in refactoring, it’s very easy to detect with modern tools, especially in statically typed languages.  We have VCS for a reason, if in doubt, delete it out (ok that was cheesy)! If you don’t know where to start when refactoring, this is an excellent starting point! Duplication Do not pray and sacrifice to the anti-duplication gods, there are excellent examples where consolidated code is a horrible idea, usually with divergent domains.  That said, mediocre developers live by copy/paste.  Other times features converge and aren’t combined.  Tools for finding similar code are great in the example of copy/paste problems.  Knowledge of the domain helps identify convergent concepts that often lead to convergent solutions and will give intuition for where to look for conceptual repetition. 80/20 and the Boy Scouts It’s often said that 80% of the time 20% of the application is used most.  These tend to be the parts that are changed.  There are also parts of the code where 80% of the time is spent changing 20% (probably for all the refactoring smells above).  I focus on these areas any time I make a change and follow the philosophy of the Boy Scout in cleaning up more than I messed up.  If I spend 2 hours changing an application, in the 20%, I’ll always spend at least 15 minutes cleaning it or nearby areas. This gives a huge productivity edge on developers that don’t. Ironically after a short period of time the 20% shrinks enough that we don’t have to spend 80% of our time there and can move on to other areas.   Refactoring is highly subjective, never attempt to refactor to completion!  Learn to be comfortable with leaving one part of the application in a better state than others.  It’s an evolution, not a revolution.  These are some simple areas to look into when making changes and can help get one started in the process.  I’ve often found that refactoring is a convergent process towards simplicity that sometimes spans a few hours but often can lead to massive simplifications over the timespan of weeks and months of regular development.

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• Windows 7 sometimes boots in VGA mode

  - by TuxRug

  I have an Asus G50VT-x5 laptop with nVidia GeForce9800M-GS graphics. Normally, Windows boots normally, but about 20% of the time (rough estimate), it will boot with the fallback VGA driver, maxing out at 800x600 with no Aero. I've checked the system logs and there is nothing indicating an error loading the nVidia driver. It even specifies in the logs that the Nvidia Display Driver service started successfully, even though it has booted in safe graphics mode. This has been happening for a while, but it's happening a little more often now than it was before. Since the first time my system exhibited this behavior, I have updated my graphics driver a handful of times. I used System Information for Windows to check for problems there, but the only thing that stood out was the following: Core Temperature 4486449 °C (8075639 °F) Shaders Temperature 1171513530 °C (2108724330 °F) I know this reading is incorrect, because my laptop is nowhere near the surface of the sun and my desk has not burst into flames. When it's opererating normally, I get a sane reading like [Core Temperature 58 °C (136 °F)] with no Shaders Temperature listed. All I have to do to resolve the issue is reboot. I have seen no stability issues with the graphics or anything else. A long time ago, I had an issue with this computer where my framerate would suddenly drop during a 3D game from 40fps to <1fps, but after looking at the temperature readout immediately after quitting a game, I removed the bottom panel and blew the dust out of the vent and heatsink. Since then I have no drops in framerate under any situation. I have uploaded a zip containing the SIW reports for when the problem is occurring and when the computer is operating normally. I don't have a paid account so it can only be downloaded 10 times, so please only download the reports if you think you can use them. If you try to download the reports and they are no longer available, please comment and I will re-upload them. If you want to look at the files, they are on Rapidshare. EDIT It happened again, and I looked a little deeper into the System logs. When this happens, there are a lot of errors about other device drivers unable to start. All of these errors are for PnP drivers. Also, my USB keyboard and mouse take a few moments before they actually start working, although this happens sometimes the first normal boot as well. I am quite sure this is related, so I am adding the pnp tag. Also, CHKDSK will not run on boot. Even if a check is scheduled or a volume is manually set as dirty, CHKDSK will be skipped entirely, not even leaving an entry in the System logs. I tried running CHKNTFS /D, which did not work. I then manually changed my HKLM\System\CurrentControlSet\Control\Session Manager BootExecute value to the default listed on Microsoft's website. That did not work either. I ended up booting to repair mode and running CHKDSK there, which found a number of minor inconsistencies on my system drive, but none on my data drive. I have no idea if this is related. Some more information for those who don't download my SIW report file: Antivirus and Firewall are ESET Smart Security I have three different virutalization programs installed: VMware Player, Windows Virtual PC, and VirtualBox. The network adapters for these show up in the log of failed device starts. EDIT 2 I tried running sfc /scannow, which reported that it found corrupted files that could not be fixed. The CBS log is extremely cryptic. I tried booting to my install disk, launching repair mode, and doing an offline sfc from there, which produced the same result.

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• first install for windows eight.....da beta

  - by raysmithequip

  The W8 preview is now installed and I am enjoying it.  I remember the learning curve of my first unix machine back in the eighties, this ain't that.It is normal for me to do the first os install with a keyboard and low end monitor...you never know what you'll encounter out in the field.  The OS took like a fish to water.  I used a low end INTEL motherboard dp55w I gathered on the cheap, an 1157 i5 from the used bin a pair of 6 gig ddr3 sticks, a rosewell 550 watt power supply a cheap used twenty buck sub 200g wd sata drive, a half working dvd burner and an asus fanless nvidia vid card, not a great one but Sub 50.00 on newey eggey...I did have to hunt the ms forums for a key and of course to activate the thing, if dos would of needed this outmoded ritual, we would still be on cpm and osborne would be a household name, of course little do people know that this ritual was common as far back as the seventies on att unix installs....not, but it was possible, I used to joke about when I ran a bbs, what hell would of been wrought had dos 3.2 machines been required to dial into my bbs to send fido mail to ms and wait for an acknowledgement.  All in all the thing was pushing a seven on the ms richter scale, not including the vid card, sadly it came in at just a tad over three....I wanted to evaluate it for a possible replacement on critical machines that in the past went down due to a vid card fan failure....you have no idea what a customer thinks when you show them a failed vid card fan..."you mean that little plastic piece of junk caused all this!!??!!!"...yea man.  Some production machines don't need any sort of vid, I will at least keep it on the maybe list for those, MTBF is a very important factor, some big box stores should put percentage of failure rate within 24 month estimates on the outside of the carton for sure.  And a warning that the power supplies are already at their limit.  Let's face it, today even 550w can be iffy.A few neat eye candy improvements over the earlier windows is nice, the metro screen is nice, anyone who has used a newer phone recently will intuitively drag their fingers across the screen....lot of good that was with no mouse or touch screen though.  Lucky me, I have been using windows since day one, I still have a copy of win 2.0 (and every other version) for no good reason.  Still the old ix collection of disks is much larger, recompiling any kernal is another silly ritual, same machine, different day, same recompile...argh. Rh is my all time fav, mandrake was always missing something, like it rewrote the init file or something, novell is ok as long as you stay on the beaten path and of course ubuntu normally recompiles with the same errors consistantly....makes life easy that way....no errors on windows eight, just a screen that did not match the installed hardware, natuarally I alt tabbed right out of it, then hit the flag key to find the start menu....no start button. I miss the start button already. Keyboard cowboy funnin and I was browsing the harddrive, nothing stunning there, I like that, means I can find stuff. Only I can't find what I want, the start button....the start menu is that first screen for touch tablets. No biggie for useruser, that is where they will want to be, I can see that. Admins won't want to be there, it is easy enough to get the control panel a bazzilion other ways though, just not the start button. (see a pattern here?). Personally, from the keyboard I find it fun to hit the carets along the location bar at the top of the explorer screen with tabs and arrows and choose SHOW ALL CONTROL PANEL ITEMS, or thereabouts. Bottom line, I love seven and I'll love eight even more!...very happy I did not have to follow the normal rule of thumb (a customer watching me build a system and asking questions said "oh I get it, so every piece you put in there is basically a hundred bucks, right?)...ok, sure, pretty much, more or less, well, ya dude.  It will be WAY past october till I get a real touch screen but I did pick up a pair of cheap tatungs so I can try the NEW main start screen, I parse a lot of folders and have a vision of how a pair of touch screens will be easier than landing a rover on mars.  Ok.  fine, they are way smallish, and I don't expect multitouch to work but we are talking a few percent of a new 21 inch viewsonic touch screen.  Will this OS be a game changer?  I don't know.  Bottom line with all the pads and droids in the world, it is more of a catch up move at first glance.  Not something ms is used to.  An app store?  I can see ms's motivation, the others have it.  I gather there will not be gadgets there, go ahead and see what ms did  to the once populated gadget page...go ahead, google gadgets and take a gander, used to hundreds of gadgets, they are already gone.  They replaced gadgets?  sort of, I'll drop that, it's a bit of a sore point for me.  More of interest was what happened when I downloaded stuff off codeplex and some other normal programs that I like, like orbitron, top o' my list!!...cardware it is...anyways, click on the exe, get a screen, normal for windows, this one indicated that I was not running a normal windows program and had a button for  exit the install, naw, I hit details, a hidden run program anyways came into view....great, my path to the normal windows has detected a program tha.....yea ok, acl is on, fine, moving along I got orbitron installed in record time and was tracking the iss on the newest Microsoft OS, beta of course, felt like the first time I setup bsd all those year ago...FUN!!...I suppose I gotta start to think about budgeting for the real os when it comes out in october, by then I should have a rasberry pi and be done with fedora remixed.  Of course that sounds like fun too!!  I would use this OS on a tablet or phone.  I don't like the idea of being hearded to an app store, don't like that on anything, we are americans and want real choices not marketed hype, lest you are younger with opm (other peoples money).   This os would be neat on a zune, but I suspect the zune is a gonner, I am rooting for microsoft, after all their default password is not admin anymore, nor alpine,  it's blank. Others force a password, my first fawn password was so long I could not even log into it with the password in front of me, who the heck uses %$# anyways, and if I was writing a brute force attack what the heck kinda impasse is that anyways at .00001 microseconds of a code execution cycle (just a non qualified number, not a real clock speed)....AI is where it will be before too long, MS is on that path, perhaps soon someone will sit down and write an app for the kinect that watches your eyes while you scan the new main start screen, clicking on the big E icon when you blink.....boy is that going to be fun!!!! sure. Blink,dammit,blink,dammit...... OPM no doubt.I like windows eight, we are moving forwards, better keep a close eye on ubuntu.  The real clinch comes when open source becomes paid source......don't blink, I already see plenty of very expensive 'ix apps, some even in app stores already.  more to come.......

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• Following my passion

  - by Maria Sandu

  Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0cm 5.4pt 0cm 5.4pt; mso-para-margin-top:0cm; mso-para-margin-right:0cm; mso-para-margin-bottom:10.0pt; mso-para-margin-left:0cm; line-height:115%; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-ascii- mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-hansi- mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi; mso-ansi-language:RO;} Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0cm 5.4pt 0cm 5.4pt; mso-para-margin-top:0cm; mso-para-margin-right:0cm; mso-para-margin-bottom:10.0pt; mso-para-margin-left:0cm; line-height:115%; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-ascii- mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-hansi- mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi; mso-ansi-language:RO;} Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0cm 5.4pt 0cm 5.4pt; mso-para-margin-top:0cm; mso-para-margin-right:0cm; mso-para-margin-bottom:10.0pt; mso-para-margin-left:0cm; line-height:115%; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-ascii- mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-hansi- mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi; mso-ansi-language:RO;} What makes you go the extra mile? What makes you move forward and be ambitious? My name is Alin Gheorghe and I am currently working as a Contracts Administrator in the Shared Service Centre in Bucharest, Romania. I have graduated from the Political Science Faculty of the National School of Political and Administrative Studies here in Bucharest and I am currently undergoing a Master Program on Security and Diplomacy at the same university. Although I have been working a full time job here at Oracle since January 2011 and also going to school after work, I am going to tell you how I spend my spare time and about my passion. I always thought that if one doesn’t have something that he would consider a passion it’s always just a matter of time until he would discover one. Looking back, I can tell you that I discovered mine when I was 14 years old and I remember watching a football game when suddenly I became fascinated by the “man in black” that all football players obeyed during the match. That year I attended and promoted a referee course within my local referee committee and about 6 months later I was delegated to my first official game at youth tournament. Almost 10 years have passed since then and I can tell you that I very much love and appreciate this activity that I have spent doing, each and every weekend, 9 months every year, acquiring more than 600 official games until now. And even if not having a real free weekend or holiday might be sound very consuming, I can say that having something I am passionate about helps me to keep myself balanced and happy while giving me an option to channel any stress or anxiety I may feel. I think it’s important to have something of your own besides work that you spend time and effort on. Whether it’s painting, writing or a sport, having a passion can only have a positive effect on your life. And as every extra thing, it’s not always easy to follow your passion, but is it worth it? Speaking from my own experience I am sure it is, and here are some tips and tricks I constantly use not to give up on my passion: Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE -"/ /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0cm 5.4pt 0cm 5.4pt; mso-para-margin-top:0cm; mso-para-margin-right:0cm; mso-para-margin-bottom:10.0pt; mso-para-margin-left:0cm; line-height:115%; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-ascii- mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-hansi- mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi; mso-ansi-language:RO;} No matter how much time you spend at work and how much credit you get for that, it will always be the passion related achievements that will comfort you more and boost your self esteem and nothing compares to that feeling you get. I always try to keep this in mind so that each time I think about giving up I get even more ambitious to move forward. Everybody can just do what they are paid to do or what they are requested to do at work but not everybody can go that extra mile when it comes to following their passion and putting in extra work for that. By exercising this constantly you get used to also applying this attitude on the work related tasks. It takes accurate planning, anticipation and forecasting in order to combine your work with your passion. Therefore having a full schedule and keeping up with it will only help develop and exercise such skills and also will prove to you that you are up to such a challenge. I always keep in mind as a final goal that if you get very good at your passion you can actually start earning from it. And I think that is the ultimate level when you can say that you make a living by doing exactly what you are passionate about. In conclusion, by taking the easy way not only do you miss out on something nice, but life’s priceless rewards are usually given by those things that you actually believe in and know how to stand up for over time.

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• Demantra 7.3.1.3 Controlling MDP_MATRIX Combinations Assigned to Forecasting Tasks Using TargetTaskSize

  - by user702295

  New 7.3.1.3 parameter: TargetTaskSize Old parameter: BranchID  Multiple, deprecated  7.3.1.3 onwards Parameter Location: Parameters > System Parameters > Engine > Proport   Default: 0   Engine Mode: Both   Details: Specifies how many MDP_MATRIX combinations the analytical engine attempts to assign to each forecasting task.  Allocation will be affected by forecsat tree branch size.  TaskTargetSize is automcatically calculated.  It holds the perferred branch size, in number of combinations in the lowest level. This parameter is adjusted to a lower value for smaller schemas, depending on the number of available engines.   - As the forecast is generated the engine goes up the tree using max_fore_level and not top_level -1.  Max_fore_level has     to be less than or equal to top_level -1.  Due to this requirement, combinations falling under the same top level -1     member must be in the same task.  A member of the top level -1 of the forecast tree is known as a branch.  An engine     task is therefore comprised of one or more branches.     - Reveal current task size       go to Engine Administrator --> View --> Branch Information and run the application on your Demantra schema.  This will be deprecated in 7.3.1.3 since there is no longer a means of adjusting the brach size directly.  The focus is now on proper hierarchy / forecast design.     - Control of tasks       The number of tasks created is the lowest of number of branches, as defined by top level -1 members in forecast       tree, and engine sessions and the value of TargetTaskSize.  You are used to using the branch multiplier in this       calculation.  As of 7.3.1.3, the branch ID multiple is deprecated.     - Discovery of current branch size       To resolve this you must review the 2nd highest level in the forecast tree (below highest/highest) as this is the       level which determines the size of the branches.  If a few resulting tasks are too large it is recommended that       the forecast tree level driving branches be revised or at times completely removed from the forecast tree.     - Control of foreacast tree branch size         - Run the following sql to determine how even the branches are being split by the engine:             select count(*),branch_id from mdp_matrix where prediction_status = 1 and do_fore = 1 group by branch_id;             This will give you an understanding if some of the individual branches have an unusually large number of           rows and thus might indicate that the engine is not efficiently dividing up the parallel tasks.         - Based on the results of this sql, we may want to adjust the branch id multiplier and/or the number of engines           (both of these settings are found in the Engine Administrator)           select count(*), level_id from mdp_matrix where prediction_status = 1 and do_fore = 1 group by level_id;           This will give us an understanding at which level of the Forecast tree where the forecast is being generated.            Having a majority of combinations higher on the forecast tree might indicate either a poorly designed forecast           tree and/or engine parameters that are too strict           Based on the results of this we would adjust the Forecast Tree to see if choosing a different hierarchy might           produce a forecast, with more combinations, at a lower level.           For example:             - Review the 2nd highest level in the forecast tree, below highest/highest, as this is the level which               determines the size of the branches.             - If a few resulting tasks are too large it is recommended that the forecast tree level driving branches               be revised or at times completely removed from the forecast tree.               - For example, if the highest level of the forecast tree is set to Brand/All Locations.             - You have 10 brands but 2 of the brands account for 67% and 29% of all combinations.             - There is a distinct possibility that the tasks resulting from these 2 branches will be too large for               a single engine to process.  Some possible solutions could be to remove the Brand level and instead               use a different product grouping which has a more even distribution, possibly Product Group.               - It is also possible to add a location dimension to this forecast tree level, for example Customer.                This will also reduce forecast tree branch size and will deliver a balanced task allocation.             - A correctly configured Forecast Tree is something that is done by the Implementation team and is               not the responsibility of Oracle Support.  Allocation will be affected by forecast tree branch size.  When TargetTaskSize is set to 0, the default value, the system automatically calculates a value for 'TargetTaskSize' depending on the number of engines.   - QUESTION:  Does this mean that if TargetTaskSize is 1, we use tree branch size to allocate branches to tasks instead                of automatically calculating the size?     ANSWER: DEV Strongly recommends that the setting of TargetTaskSize remain at the DEFAULT of ZERO (0).   - How to control the number of engines?     Determine how many CPUs are on the machine(s) that is (are) running the engine.  As mentioned earlier, the general     rule is that you should designate 2 engines per each CPU that is available.  So for example, if you are running the     engine on a machine that has 4 CPU then you can have up to 8 engines designated in the Engine Administrator.  In this     type of architecture then instead of having one 'localhost' in your Engine Settings Screen, you would have 'localhost'     repeated eight times in this field.     Where do I set the number of engines?                 To add multiples computers where engine will run, please do a back-up of Settings.xml file under         Analytical Engines\bin\ folder, then edit it and add there the selected machines.                 Example, this will allow 3 engines to start:         - <Entry>           <Key argument="ComputerNames" />           <Value type="string" argument="localhost,localhost,localhost" />           </Entry Otherwise, if there are no additional engines defined, the calculated value of 'TargetTaskSize' is used. (Oracle does not recommend changing the default value.) The TargetTaskSize holds the engines prefered branch size, in number of level 1 combinations.   - Level 1 combinations, known as group size The engine manager will use this parameter to attempt creating branches with similar size.   * The engine manager will not create engines that do not have a branch. The engine divider algorithm uses the value of 'TargetTaskSize' as a system-preferred branch size to create branches that are more equal in size which improves engine performance.  The engine divider will try to add as many tasks as possible to an existing branch, up to the limit of 'TargetTaskSize' level 1 combinations, before adding new branches. Coming up next: - The engine divider - Group size - Level 1 combinations - MAX_FORE_LEVEL - Engine Parameters  

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• The True Cost of a Solution

  - by D'Arcy Lussier

  I had a Twitter chat recently with someone suggesting Oracle and SQL Server were losing out to OSS (Open Source Software) in the enterprise due to their issues with scaling or being too generic (one size fits all). I challenged that a bit, as my experience with enterprise sized clients has been different – adverse to OSS but receptive to an established vendor. The response I got was: Found it easier to influence change by showing how X can’t solve our problems or X is extremely costly to scale. Money talks. I think this is definitely the right approach for anyone pitching an alternate or alien technology as part of a solution: identify the issue, identify the solution, then present pros and cons including a cost/benefit analysis. What can happen though is we get tunnel vision and don’t present a full view of the costs associated with a solution. An “Acura”te Example (I’m so clever…) This is my dream vehicle, a Crystal Black Pearl coloured Acura MDX with the SH-AWD package! We’re a family of 4 (5 if my daughters ever get their wish of adding a dog), and I’ve always wanted a luxury type of vehicle, so this is a perfect replacement in a few years when our Rav 4 has hit the 8 – 10 year mark. MSRP – $62,890 But as we all know, that’s not *really* the cost of the vehicle. There’s taxes and fees added on, there’s the extended warranty if I choose to purchase it, there’s the finance rate that needs to be factored in… MSRP –   $62,890 Taxes –      $7,546 Warranty - $2,500 SubTotal – $72,936 Finance Charge – $ 1094.04 Grand Total – $74,030 Well! Glad we did that exercise – we discovered an extra $11k added on to the MSRP! Well now we have our true price…or do we? Lifetime of the Vehicle I’m expecting to have this vehicle for 7 – 10 years. While the hard cost of the vehicle is known and dealt with, the costs to run and maintain the vehicle are on top of this. I did some research, and here’s what I’ve found: Fuel and Mileage Gas prices are high as it is for regular fuel, but getting into an MDX will require that I *only* purchase premium fuel, which comes at a premium price. I need to expect my bill at the pump to be higher. Comparing the MDX to my 2007 Rav4 also shows I’ll be gassing up more often. The Rav4 has a city MPG of 21, while the MDX plummets to 16! The MDX does have a bigger fuel tank though, so all in all the number of times I hit the pumps might even out. Still, I estimate I’ll be spending approximately $8000 – $10000 more on gas over a 10 year period than my current Rav4. Service Options Limited Although I have options with my Toyota here in Winnipeg (we have 4 Toyota dealerships), I do go to my original dealer for any service work. Still, I like the fact that I have options. However, there’s only one Acura dealership in all of Winnipeg! So if, for whatever reason, I’m not satisfied with the level of service I’m stuck. Non Warranty Service Work Also let’s not forget that there’s a bulk of work required every year that is *not* covered under warranty – oil changes, tire rotations, brake pads, etc. I expect I’ll need to get new tires at the 5 years mark as well, which can easily be $1200 – $1500 (I just paid $1000 for new tires for the Rav4 and we’re at the 5 year mark). Now these aren’t going to be *new* costs that I’m not used to from our existing vehicles, but they should still be factored in. I’d budget $500/year, or $5000 over the 10 years I’ll own the vehicle. Final Assessment So let’s re-assess the true cost of my dream MDX: MSRP                    $62,890 Taxes                       $7,546 Warranty                 $2,500 Finance Charge         $1094 Gas                        $10,000 Service Work            $5000 Grand Total           $89,030 So now I have a better idea of 10 year cost overall, and I’ve identified some concerns with local service availability. And there’s now much more to consider over the original $62,890 price tag. Tying This Back to Technology Solutions The process that we just went through is no different than what organizations do when considering implementing a new system, technology, or technology based solution, within their environments. It’s easy to tout the short term cost savings of particular product/platform/technology in a vacuum. But its when you consider the wider impact that the true cost comes into play. Let’s create a scenario: A company is not happy with its current data reporting suite. An employee suggests moving to an open source solution. The selling points are: - Because its open source its free - The organization would have access to the source code so they could alter it however they wished - It provided features not available with the current reporting suite At first this sounds great to the management and executive, but then they start asking some questions and uncover more information: - The OSS product is built on a technology not used anywhere within the organization - There are no vendors offering product support for the OSS product - The OSS product requires a specific server platform to operate on, one that’s not standard in the organization All of a sudden, the true cost of implementing this solution is starting to become clearer. The company might save money on licensing costs, but their training costs would increase significantly – developers would need to learn how to develop in the technology the OSS solution was built on, IT staff must learn how to set up and maintain a new server platform within their existing infrastructure, and if a problem was found there was no vendor to contact for support. The true cost of implementing a “free” OSS solution is actually spinning up a project to implement it within the organization – no small cost. And that’s just the short-term cost. Now the organization must ensure they maintain trained staff who can make changes to the OSS reporting solution and IT staff that will stay knowledgeable in the new server platform. If those skills are very niche, then higher labour costs could be incurred if those people are hard to find or if trained employees use that knowledge as leverage for higher pay. Maybe a vendor exists that will contract out support, but then there are those costs to consider as well. And let’s not forget end-user training – in our example, anyone that runs reports will need to be trained on how to use the new system. Here’s the Point We still tend to look at software in an “off the shelf” kind of way. It’s very easy to say “oh, this product is better than vendor x’s product – and its free because its OSS!” but the reality is that implementing any new technology within an organization has a cost regardless of the retail price of the product. Training, integration, support – these are real costs that impact an organization and span multiple departments. Whether you’re pitching an improved business process, a new system, or a new technology, you need to consider the bigger picture costs of implementation. What you define as success (in our example, having better reporting functionality) might not be what others define as success if implementing your solution causes them issues. A true enterprise solution needs to consider the entire enterprise.

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• Projected Results

  - by Sylvie MacKenzie, PMP

  Excerpt from PROFIT - ORACLE - by Monica Mehta Yasser Mahmud has seen a revolution in project management over the past decade. During that time, the former Primavera product strategist (who joined Oracle when his company was acquired in 2008) has not only observed a transformation in the way IT systems support corporate projects but the role project portfolio management (PPM) plays in the enterprise. “15 years ago project management was the domain of project management office (PMO),” Mahmud recalls of earlier days. “But over the course of the past decade, we've seen it transform into a mission critical enterprise discipline, that has made Primavera indispensable in the board room. Now, as a senior manager, a board member, or a C-level executive you have direct and complete visibility into what’s kind of going on in the organization—at a level of detail that you're going to consume that information.” Now serving as Oracle’s vice president of product strategy and industry marketing, Mahmud shares his thoughts on how Oracle’s Primavera solutions have evolved and how best-in-class project portfolio management systems can help businesses stay competitive. Profit: What do you feel are the market dynamics that are changing project management today? Mahmud: First, the data explosion. We're generating data at twice the rate at which we can actually store it. The same concept applies for project-intensive organizations. A lot of data is gathered, but what are we really doing with it? Are we turning data into insight? Are we using that insight and turning it into foresight with analytics tools? This is a key driver that will separate the very good companies—the very competitive companies—from those that are not as competitive. Another trend is centered on the explosion of mobile computing. By the year 2013, an estimated 35 percent of the world’s workforce is going to be mobile. That’s one billion people. So the question is not if you're going to go mobile, it’s how fast you are going to go mobile. What kind of impact does that have on how the workforce participates in projects? What worked ten to fifteen years ago is not going to work today. It requires a real rethink around the interfaces and how data is actually presented. Profit: What is the role of project management in this new landscape? Mahmud: We recently conducted a PPM study with the Economist Intelligence Unit centered to determine how important project management is considered within organizations. Our target was primarily CFOs, CIOs, and senior managers and we discovered that while 95 percent of participants believed it critical to their business, only six percent were confident that projects were delivered on time and on budget. That’s a huge gap. Most organizations are looking for efficiency, especially in these volatile financial times. But senior management can’t keep track of every project in a large organization. As a result, executives are attempting to inventory the work being conducted under their watch. What is often needed is a very high-level assessment conducted at the board level to say, “Here are the 50 initiatives that we have underway. How do they line up with our strategic drivers?” This line of questioning can provide early warning that work and strategy are out of alignment; finding the gap between what the business needs to do and the actual performance scorecard. That’s low-hanging fruit for any executive looking to increase efficiency and save money. But it can only be obtained through proper assessment of existing projects—and you need a project system of record to get that done. Over the next decade or so, project management is going to transform into holistic work management. Business leaders will want make sure key projects align with corporate strategy, but also the ability to drill down into daily activity and smaller projects to make sure they line up as well. Keeping employees from working on tasks—even for a few hours—that don’t line up with corporate goals will, in many ways, become a competitive differentiator. Profit: How do all of these market challenges and shifting trends impact Oracle’s Primavera solutions and meeting customers’ needs? Mahmud: For Primavera, it’s a transformation from being a project management application to a PPM system in the enterprise. Also making that system a mission-critical application by connecting to other key applications within the ecosystem, such as the enterprise resource planning (ERP), supply chain, and CRM systems. Analytics have also become a huge component. Business analytics have made Oracle’s Primavera applications pertinent in the boardroom. Now, as a senior manager, a board member, a CXO, CIO, or CEO, you have direct visibility into what’s going on in the organization at a level that you're able to consume that information. In addition, all of this information pairs up really well with your financials and other data. Certainly, when you're an Oracle shop, you have that visibility that you didn’t have before from a project execution perspective. Profit: What new strategies and tools are being implemented to create a more efficient workplace for users? Mahmud: We believe very strongly that just because you call something an enterprise project portfolio management system doesn’t make it so—you have to get people to want to participate in the system. This can’t be mandated down from the top. It simply doesn’t work that way. A truly adoptable solution is one that makes it super easy for all types users to participate, by providing them interfaces where they live. Keeping that in mind, a major area of development has been alternative user interfaces. This is increasingly resulting in the creation of lighter weight, targeted interfaces such as iOS applications, and smartphones interfaces such as for iPhone and Android platform. Profit: How does this translate into the development of Oracle’s Primavera solutions? Mahmud: Let me give you a few examples. We recently announced the launch of our Primavera P6 Team Member application, which is a native iOS application for the iPhone. This interface makes it easier for team members to do their jobs quickly and effectively. Similarly, we introduced the Primavera analytics application, which can be consumed via mobile devices, and when married with Oracle Spatial capabilities, users can get a geographical view of what’s going on and which projects are occurring in various locations around the world. Lastly, we introduced advanced email integration that allows project team members to status work via E-mail. This functionality leverages the fact that users are in E-mail system throughout the day and allows them to status their work without the need to launch the Primavera application. It comes back to a mantra: provide as many alternative user interfaces as possible, so you can give people the ability to work, to participate, to raise issues, to create projects, in the places where they live. Do it in such a way that it’s non-intrusive, do it in such a way that it’s easy and intuitive and they can get it done in a short amount of time. If you do that, workers can get back to doing what they're actually getting paid for.

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• Metrics - A little knowledge can be a dangerous thing (or 'Why you're not clever enough to interpret metrics data')

  - by Jason Crease

  At RedGate Software, I work on a .NET obfuscator  called SmartAssembly.  Various features of it use a database to store various things (exception reports, name-mappings, etc.) The user is given the option of using either a SQL-Server database (which requires them to have Microsoft SQL Server), or a Microsoft Access MDB file (which requires nothing). MDB is the default option, but power-users soon switch to using a SQL Server database because it offers better performance and data-sharing. In the fashionable spirit of optimization and metrics, an obvious product-management question is 'Which is the most popular? SQL Server or MDB?' We've collected data about this fact, using our 'Feature-Usage-Reporting' technology (available as part of SmartAssembly) and more recently our 'Application Metrics' technology: Parameter Number of users % of total users Number of sessions Number of usages SQL Server 28 19.0 8115 8115 MDB 114 77.6 1449 1449 (As a disclaimer, please note than SmartAssembly has far more than 132 users . This data is just a selection of one build) So, it would appear that SQL-Server is used by fewer users, but more often. Great. But here's why these numbers are useless to me: Only the original developers understand the data What does a single 'usage' of 'MDB' mean? Does this happen once per run? Once per option change? On clicking the 'Obfuscate Now' button? When running the command-line version or just from the UI version? Each question could skew the data 10-fold either way, and the answers only known by the developer that instrumented the application in the first place. In other words, only the original developer can interpret the data - product-managers cannot interpret the data unaided. Most of the data is from uninterested users About half of people who download and run a free-trial from the internet quit it almost immediately. Only a small fraction use it sufficiently to make informed choices. Since the MDB option is the default one, we don't know how many of those 114 were people CHOOSING to use the MDB, or how many were JUST HAPPENING to use this MDB default for their 20-second trial. This is a problem we see across all our metrics: Are people are using X because it's the default or are they using X because they want to use X? We need to segment the data further - asking what percentage of each percentage meet our criteria for an 'established user' or 'informed user'. You end up spending hours writing sophisticated and dubious SQL queries to segment the data further. Not fun. You can't find out why they used this feature Metrics can answer the when and what, but not the why. Why did people use feature X? If you're anything like me, you often click on random buttons in unfamiliar applications just to explore the feature-set. If we listened uncritically to metrics at RedGate, we would eliminate the most-important and more-complex features which people actually buy the software for, leaving just big buttons on the main page and the About-Box. "Ah, that's interesting!" rather than "Ah, that's actionable!" People do love data. Did you know you eat 1201 chickens in a lifetime? But just 4 cows? Interesting, but useless. Often metrics give you a nice number: '5.8% of users have 3 or more monitors' . But unless the statistic is both SUPRISING and ACTIONABLE, it's useless. Most metrics are collected, reviewed with lots of cooing. and then forgotten. Unless a piece-of-data could change things, it's useless collecting it. People get obsessed with significance levels The first things that lots of people do with this data is do a t-test to get a significance level ("Hey! We know with 99.64% confidence that people prefer SQL Server to MDBs!") Believe me: other causes of error/misinterpretation in your data are FAR more significant than your t-test could ever comprehend. Confirmation bias prevents objectivity If the data appears to match our instinct, we feel satisfied and move on. If it doesn't, we suspect the data and dig deeper, plummeting down a rabbit-hole of segmentation and filtering until we give-up and move-on. Data is only useful if it can change our preconceptions. Do you trust this dodgy data more than your own understanding, knowledge and intelligence?  I don't. There's always multiple plausible ways to interpret/action any data Let's say we segment the above data, and get this data: Post-trial users (i.e. those using a paid version after the 14-day free-trial is over): Parameter Number of users % of total users Number of sessions Number of usages SQL Server 13 9.0 1115 1115 MDB 5 4.2 449 449 Trial users: Parameter Number of users % of total users Number of sessions Number of usages SQL Server 15 10.0 7000 7000 MDB 114 77.6 1000 1000 How do you interpret this data? It's one of: Mostly SQL Server users buy our software. People who can't afford SQL Server tend to be unable to afford or unwilling to buy our software. Therefore, ditch MDB-support. Our MDB support is so poor and buggy that our massive MDB user-base doesn't buy it.  Therefore, spend loads of money improving it, and think about ditching SQL-Server support. People 'graduate' naturally from MDB to SQL Server as they use the software more. Things are fine the way they are. We're marketing the tool wrong. The large number of MDB users represent uninformed downloaders. Tell marketing to aggressively target SQL Server users. To choose an interpretation you need to segment again. And again. And again, and again. Opting-out is correlated with feature-usage Metrics tends to be opt-in. This skews the data even further. Between 5% and 30% of people choose to opt-in to metrics (often called 'customer improvement program' or something like that). Casual trial-users who are uninterested in your product or company are less likely to opt-in. This group is probably also likely to be MDB users. How much does this skew your data by? Who knows? It's not all doom and gloom. There are some things metrics can answer well. Environment facts. How many people have 3 monitors? Have Windows 7? Have .NET 4 installed? Have Japanese Windows? Minor optimizations.  Is the text-box big enough for average user-input? Performance data. How long does our app take to start? How many databases does the average user have on their server? As you can see, questions about who-the-user-is rather than what-the-user-does are easier to answer and action. Conclusion Use SmartAssembly. If not for the metrics (called 'Feature-Usage-Reporting'), then at least for the obfuscation/error-reporting. Data raises more questions than it answers. Questions about environment are the easiest to answer.

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• VNIC - New feature of AK8 - Working with VNICs

  - by Steve Tunstall

  One of the important new features of the AK8 code is the ability to use multiple IP addresses on the same physical network port. This feature is called VNICs, or Virtual NICs. This allows us to no longer "burn" a whole port in a cluster when one cluster peer owns a network port. Traditionally, we have had to leave Net0 empty on controller 2, because it was used for managing controller 1. Vise-versa for Net1 on Controller 1. Then, if you have data going over 10GigE ports, you probably only had half of your ports running at any given time, and the partner 10GigE port on the other controller just sat there, doing nothing, unless the first controller went down. What a waste. Those days are over.  I want to thank and give a big shout-out to our good partner, OnX Enterprise Solutions, for allowing me to come into their lab and play around with their 7320 to do this demo. They let me make a big mess of their lab for the day as I played around with VNICs. If you're looking for a partner who knows Oracle well and can also piece together a solution from multiple vendors to get you what you need, OnX is a good choice. If you would like to talk to your local OnX rep, you can contact Scott Gill at [email protected] and he can point you in the right direction for your area.  Here we go: Here is what your Datalinks window looks like BEFORE you upgrade to AK8. Here's what the same screen looks like after you upgrade. See the new box? So here is my current network setup. I have my 4 physical interfaces setup each with an IP address. If I ping them, no problems.  So I can ping 180, 181, 251, and 252. However, if I try to ping 240, it does not work, as the 240 address is not being used by any of these interfaces, right?Let's change that. Here, I'm going to make a new Datalink by clicking the Datalink "Plus sign" button. I will check the VNIC box and tell it to use igb2, even though another interface is already using it. Now, I will create a new Interface, and choose "v_dl2" for it's datalink. My new network screen looks like this. A few things to take note of here. First, when I click the "igb2" device, it only highlights dl2 and int2. It does not highlight v_dl2 or v_int2.I think it should, but OK, it looks like VNICs don't highlight when you click the device. Second, note how the underscore character in v_dl2 and v_int2 do not seem to show on this screen. You can see it plainly if you go in and edit them, but from here it looks like a space instead of an underscore. Just a cosmetic bug, but something to be aware of. Now, if I click the VNIC datalink "v_dl2", on the other hand, it DOES highlight the device it belongs to, as it should. Seen here: Note that it did not, however, highlight int2 with it, even though int2 is connected to igb2. That's because we clicked v_dl2, which int2 has nothing to do with. So I'm OK with that. So let's try pinging 240 now. Of course, it works great.  So I now make another VNIC, and call it v_dl3 using igb3, and v_int3 with an address of 241. I then setup three shares, using ports 251, 240, and 241.Remember that IP 251 and 240 both are using the same physical port of igb2, and IP 241 is using port igb3. Next, I copy a folder full of stuff over to all three shares at the same time. I have analytics going so I can see the traffic. My top chart is showing the logical interfaces, and the bottom chart is showing the physical ports.Sure enough, look at the igb2 and vnic1 interfaces. They equal the traffic going over the igb2 physical port on the second chart. VNIC2, on the other hand, gets igb3 all to itself. This would work the same way with 10Gig or Infiniband ports. You can now have multiple IP addresses and even completely different subnets sharing the same physical ports. You may need to make route table entries for that. This allows us to use all of the ports you paid for with no more waste.  Very, very cool.  One small "bug" I found when doing this. It's really not a bug, it was designed to do this when VNICs were not around. But now that we have NVIC capability, they should probably change this. I've alerted the engineering team about this and they're looking into it, so perhaps it will be fixed in a later code. Here it is. Remember when we made the new VNIC datalink, I specifically said to click on the "Plus Sign" button to create it? I don't always do that. I really like to use the drag-and-drop method to create my datalinks in the network screen.HOWEVER, if you were to do that for building a VNIC, it will mess you up a little. Watch this. Here, I'm dragging igb3 over to make a new datalink. igb3 is already being used by dl3, but I'm going to make this a VNIC, so who cares, right? Well, the ZFSSA does not KNOW you are going to make it a VNIC, now does it? So... it works as designed and REMOVES the igb3 device from the current dl3 datalink in the background. See how it's now missing? At the same time, the dl3 datalink choice is missing from my list of possible VNICs for me to choose from!!!! Hey!!! I wanted to pick dl3. Why isn't it on the list??? Well, it can't be on this list because dl3 no longer has a device associated with it. Bummer for you. When you click cancel, the device is still missing from dl3. The fix is easy. Just edit dl3 by clicking the pencil button, do absolutely nothing, and click "Apply". The device will magically come back. Now, make the VNIC datalink by clicking the "Plus Sign" button. Sure enough, once you check the VNIC box, dl3 is a valid choice. No problem.  That's it for now. Have fun with VNICs.

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• A failed disk (Pay for professional service or SpinRite?)(new edit)

  - by huggie

  EDIT: After much negotiating and begging and seeing through promotion smoke screen, thanks to the nice representative who took my case, I now know that the engineer has already fixed my NTFS partition (I guess it might be a bad block in the partition table?). She told me that the problem was considered minor, and I should be able to boot normally and just copy stuff out. Whew..I'm glad I didn't agree to the NTD $16,000 deal. New question (should this be in a new thread?): is it safer to use the linux "dd" command or is it better to boot normally into Windows XP and just copy stuff out? EDIT2: Thanks to all the help. I give the best answer to Console as it's most directed related to my question. But many suggestion are helpful and informational. ---- ORIGINAL POST BELOW --- Hi, in my previous post (You don't need to read but it's at http://superuser.com/questions/48838/windows-xp-a-disk-read-error-occurred), I said that my hard disk was not booting and is showing "a disk read error occurred". I took it to a recovery professional. A representative responded today told me that the NTFS partitions have a "NTFS partition system crash". I have no idea what that means. The engineer handling my drive will not be available for contact till tomorrow. Now the company charges me NTD (New Taiwan Dollar) $16,000 to recover lost data, that's kind of a lot considering that my graduate student monthly stipend is currently NTD $32,000 (max. allowed by regulation, may be lower, may change depend on funding). Now I'm weighting in between the options. Option A: let the professional recovers it with the half of my monthly stipend. If file/directories I designated are not recovered I don't pay a penny. (other than the initial examination fee of NTD $1000 which I've already paid.) Option B: let me try SpinRite, if failed, back to Option A. I spoke to the representative at the company they recommended me not to handle it on my own (yeah of course that's what they all want to say, right?), and at the price tag the disk error is probably relatively minor and data recoverable. But the representative really did not have detailed information of the disk failure so I didn't take her recommendation readily. Though one thing I heed was that she said that what they would do is to duplicate the disk before attempting discovery, so there would be no data loss (Is this true? can't duplicating invoke further data loss?). That sounds very good to me. Or maybe a third option: Option C: Negotiate with them to pay them to duplicate the disk hopefully for a much smaller price tag. Let me try SpinRite, if failed, back to Option A. This is a difficult decision. Ultimately I want my data back, but if a cheaper way is available to achieve the same thing... Can operating with SpinRite also corrupt data in someway? I've no idea what happened to my drive. I'll attempt to contact the engineer and hope to get it clarified and make an edit here.

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• Hard drive write speed - finding a lighter antivirus?

  - by Shingetsu

  I recently have been getting a lot of system lag here (for example, the mouse and the display in general take about 15 seconds to react in the worst cases). After a lot of monitoring the resources, I found that the problem mainly happens when too much Disk I/O is being done. Three culprits have been identified: My browser had the highest write I/O with 35,000,000 I/O Write Bytes. Steam had the highest read I/O (when IDLE!!!) with 106,000,000 I/O Read Bytes. My antivirus (in both cases I will soon mention) was the runner up in both cases with: 30,000,000ish write and 80,000,000ish read. The first AV I had was Avast! which I had liked on my previous system. After noticing it taking so much I/O I switched to Panda (supposing it wouldn't use TOO much during idle phase). However it only used a bit less I/O. Just a lot less memory and cpu and somewhat more network. My browser at the moment is Maxthon 3 (which I like a lot). Before this I was running chrome which had similar data and much higher cpu when running in the background was enabled. I'm not going to be running steam all the time and there aren't many alternatives to it. I like my browser very much, but I AM willing to switch if there's an obvious problem (I'm in programming, however I'm not a very good sysadmin, especially not when it comes to windows). Finally, my system almost stops lagging when I turn off the antivirus (and preferably steam) (some remains but once in every 5-6 hours for a few seconds so it isn't a big problem). My question (has a few parts): Is it possible to configure steam to lower it's I/O usage? (and maybe network while we're at it?) Which antivirus (very preferably free) uses lowest I/O while idle (I leave PC alone during active scans so that isn't a problem). Is there an obvious problem with my current browser and, if so, is there a way to fix it or should I switch and, if so, to what? (P.S. I've been on FFox for some time too). Info on system: Windows 7 (32 bit T_T, I am getting a new one in a few months but I want to keep using system during that time though). Hard Drive (main) is a Raid0. (Also have an external 1TB one which contains steam (and steam alone). As such it doesn't get used by much anything other than steam and isn't a very large problem. However steam still uses some I/O of registry) CPU: Intel(R) Core(TM)2 CPU [email protected] RAM: 6GB (3.25GB usable) (this and CPU have little effect as shown in next section) Additional info: Memory usage during problematic times: 44% CPU usage during problematic times: 35% Page File: main drive: system managed. 1TB drive: none. The current system I'm using is about 6 years old and is mainly a place holder while I await the new one in a few months. Final words: this is my 1st post on Super User (this question wouldn't feel right on Stack Overflow where I usually stay). If it doesn't have it's place here please tell me. If anything is wrong with it, same. Edit Technically I'm looking for a live thread detection program with minimal IO usage. I already have good active scan capability: Kaspersky (the free scanner uses the paid database) and MalwareBytes. Edit 2 Noticed another one, it seems that windows media player has been using stuff even when off! Turning it off and restarting now. If the problem is fixed I'll tell you guys. The reason I didn't notice it before was because I didn't have resource manager in front of me at the MOMENT of the problem. Now I did and it was at the very top of the list!

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• ADO.NET (WCF) Data Services Query Interceptor Hangs IIS

  - by PreMagination

  I have an ADO.NET Data Service that's supposed to provide read-only access to a somewhat complex database. Logically I have table-per-type (TPT) inheritance in my data model but the EDM doesn't implement inheritance. (Limitation of EF and navigation properties on derived types. STILL not fixed in EF4!) I can query my EDM directly (using a separate project) using a copy of the query I'm trying to run against the web service, results are returned within 10 seconds. Disabling the query interceptors I'm able to make the same query against the web service, results are returned similarly quickly. I can enable some of the query interceptors and the results are returned slowly, up to a minute or so later. Alternatively, I can enable all the query interceptors, expand less of the properties on the main object I'm querying, and results are returned in a similar period of time. (I've increased some of the timeout periods) Up til this point Sql Profiler indicates the slow-down is the database. (That's a post for a different day) But when I enable all my query interceptors and expand all the properties I'd like to have the IIS worker process pegs the CPU for 20 minutes and a query is never even made against the database. This implies to me that yes, my implementation probably sucks but regardless the Data Services "tier" is having an issue it shouldn't. WCF tracing didn't reveal anything interesting to my untrained eye. Details: Data model: Agent-Person-Student Student has a collection of referrals Students and referrals are private, queries against the web service should only return "your" students and referrals. This means Person and Agent need to be filtered too. Other entities (Agent-Organization-School) can be accessed by anyone who has authenticated. The existing security model is poorly suited to perform this type of filtering for this type of data access, the query interceptors are complicated and cause EF to generate some entertaining sql queries. Sample Interceptor [QueryInterceptor("Agents")] public Expression<Func<Agent, Boolean>> OnQueryAgents() { //Agent is a Person(1), Educator(2), Student(3), or Other Person(13); allow if scope permissions exist return ag => (ag.AgentType.AgentTypeId == 1 || ag.AgentType.AgentTypeId == 2 || ag.AgentType.AgentTypeId == 3 || ag.AgentType.AgentTypeId == 13) && ag.Person.OrganizationPersons.Count<OrganizationPerson>(op => op.Organization.ScopePermissions.Any<ScopePermission> (p => p.ApplicationRoleAccount.Account.UserName == HttpContext.Current.User.Identity.Name && p.ApplicationRoleAccount.Application.ApplicationId == 124) || op.Organization.HierarchyDescendents.Any<OrganizationsHierarchy>(oh => oh.AncestorOrganization.ScopePermissions.Any<ScopePermission> (p => p.ApplicationRoleAccount.Account.UserName == HttpContext.Current.User.Identity.Name && p.ApplicationRoleAccount.Application.ApplicationId == 124))) > 0; } The query interceptors for Person, Student, Referral are all very similar, ie they traverse multiple same/similar tables to look for ScopePermissions as above. Sample Query var referrals = (from r in service.Referrals .Expand("Organization/ParentOrganization") .Expand("Educator/Person/Agent") .Expand("Student/Person/Agent") .Expand("Student") .Expand("Grade") .Expand("ProblemBehavior") .Expand("Location") .Expand("Motivation") .Expand("AdminDecision") .Expand("OthersInvolved") where r.DateCreated >= coupledays && r.DateDeleted == null select r); Any suggestions or tips would be greatly associated, for fixing my current implementation or in developing a new one, with the caveat that the database can't be changed and that ultimately I need to expose a large portion of the database via a web service that limits data access to the data authorized for, for the purpose of data integration with multiple outside parties. THANK YOU!!!

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• non-static variable cannot be referenced from a static context (java)

  - by Greg

  I ask that you ignore all logic.. i was taught poorly at first and so i still dont understand everything about static crap and its killing me. My error is with every single variable that i declare then try to use later inside my methods... i get the non-static variable cannot~~ error I can simply put all the rough coding of my methods inside my cases, and it works but then i cannot use recursion... What i really need is someone to help on the syntax and point me on the right direction of how to have my methods recognize my variables at the top... like compareCount etc thanks public class MyProgram7 { public static void main (String[]args) throws IOException{ Scanner scan = new Scanner(System.in); int compareCount = 0; int low = 0; int high = 0; int mid = 0; int key = 0; Scanner temp; int[]list; String menu, outputString; int option = 1; boolean found = false; // Prompt the user to select an option menu = "\n\t1 Reads file" + "\n\t2 Finds a specific number in the list" + "\n\t3 Prints how many comparisons were needed" + "\n\t0 Quit\n\n\n"; System.out.println(menu); System.out.print("\tEnter your selection: "); option = scan.nextInt(); // Keep reading data until the user enters 0 while (option != 0) { switch (option) { case 1: readFile(); break; case 2: findKey(list,low,high,key); break; case 3: printCount(); break; default: outputString = "\nInvalid Selection\n"; System.out.println(outputString); break; }//end of switch System.out.println(menu); System.out.print("\tEnter your selection: "); option = scan.nextInt(); }//end of while }//end of main public static void readFile() { int i = 0; temp = new Scanner(new File("CS1302_Data7_2010.txt")); while(temp.hasNext()) { list[i]= temp.nextInt(); i++; }//end of while temp.close(); System.out.println("File Found..."); }//end of readFile() public static void findKey() { while(found!=true) { while(key < 100 || key > 999) { System.out.println("Please enter the number you would like to search for? ie 350: "); key = scan.nextInt(); }//end of inside while //base if (low <= high) { mid = ((low+high)/2); if (key == list[mid]) { found = true; compareCount++; }//end of inside if }//end of outside if else if (key < list[mid]) { compareCount++; high = mid-1; findKey(list,low,high,key); }//end of else if else { compareCount++; low = mid+1; findKey(list,low,high,key); }//end of else }//end of outside while }//end of findKey() public static void printCount() { System.out.println("Total number of comparisons is: " + compareCount); }//end of printCount }//end of class

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• Oracle performance problem

  - by jreid42

  We are using an Oracle 11G machine that is very powerful; has redundant storage etc. It's a beast from what I have been told. We just got this DB for a tool that when I first came on as a coop had like 20 people using, now its upwards of 150 people. I am the only one working on it :( We currently have a system in place that distributes PERL scripts across our entire data center essentially giving us a sort of "grid" computing power. The Perl scripts run a sort of simulation and report back the results to the database. They do selects / inserts. The load is not very high for each script but it could be happening across 20-50 systems at the same time. We then have multiple data centers and users all hitting the same database with this same approach. Our main problem with this is that our database is getting overloaded with connections and having to drop some. We sometimes have upwards of 500 connections. These are old perl scripts and they do not handle this well. Essentially they fail and the results are lost. I would rather avoid having to rewrite a lot of these as they are poorly written, and are a headache to even look at. The database itself is not overloaded, just the connection overhead is too high. We open a connection, make a quick query and then drop the connection. Very short connections but many of them. The database team has basically said we need to lower the number of connections or they are going to ignore us. Because this is distributed across our farm we cant implement persistent connections. I do this with our webserver; but its on a fixed system. The other ones are perl scripts that get opened and closed by the distribution tool and thus arent always running. What would be my best approach to resolving this issue? The scripts themselves can wait for a connection to be open. They do not need to act immediately. Some sort of queing system? I've been suggested to set up a few instances of a tool called "SQL Relay". Maybe one in each data center. How reliable is this tool? How good is this approach? Would it work for what we need? We could have one for each data center and relay requests through it to our main database, keeping a pipeline of open persistent connections? Does this make sense? Is there any other suggestions you can make? Any ideas? Any help would be greatly appreciated. Sadly I am just a coop student working for a very big company and somehow all of this has landed all on my shoulders (there is literally nobody to ask for help; its a hardware company, everybody is hardware engineers, and the database team is useless and in India) and I am quite lost as what the best approach would be? I am extremely overworked and this problem is interfering with on going progress and basically needs to be resolved as quickly as possible; preferably without rewriting the whole system, purchasing hardware (not gonna happen), or shooting myself in the foot. HELP LOL!

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• java runtime 6 with socks v5 proxy - Possible?

  - by rwired

  I have written an application that (amongst other things) runs a local service in windows that acts as a SOCKS v5 proxy for Firefox. I'm in the debugging phase right now and have found certain websites that don't work correctly. For example the Java Applet for Picture Uploading on Facebook.com fails because is is unable to lookup domains. My app overrides a hidden FF config setting network.proxy.socks__remote__dns setting it to true. The whole purpose of the app is to allow access to websites when behind a firewall (e.g. if the user is in China), so this setting is essential to ensure domains are resolved remotely also (and not just HTTP requests). In the JRE6 settings (documented here) there isn't an equivalent setting, and since remote DNS resolution is a feature of SOCKS v5 and not v4 as the documentation seems to imply I'm worried that it's just not possible. How can I programmatically make sure the JRE uses a SOCKS v5 proxy for all requests (including DNS)? UPDATE: Steps to reproduce this problem: Make sure you are behind a firewall that blocks (or redirects) internet access including DNS Install PuTTY and add a dynamic SSH tunnel on some port number of your choice (e.g. 9870). Then login to a remote server that has full access to the internet Launch Firefox and you will not be able to browse the web In FF network settings set the SOCKS v5 proxy to localhost:9870 In FF go to about:config, change network.proxy.socks__remote__dns to true You will now be able to browse the web. Go to facebook.com, login, go to your profile and attempt to use the picture uploader java applet to add some pictures It will fail with a series of class not found errors looking similar to: load: class com.facebook.facebookphotouploader5.FacebookPhotoUploader5.class not found. I believe this is failing because the JRE is unable to resolve the domain that the class resides on. I'm basing this belief on the fact that the documentation (http://java.sun.com/javase/6/docs/technotes/guides/deployment/deployment-guide/properties.html) talks only about SOCKS v4 (which as far as I know does not support remote DNS). My deployment.properties file is located in %APPDATA%\Sun\Java\Deployment. I can confirm that modifications I make in the Java Control Panel get written into that file. If instead of "Use browser setting" the network settings for Java I override and attempt to use the SOCKS proxy settings manually, I still have the issue. There does not seem to be an easy way to force the JRE to do DNS remotely through the Proxy. UPDATE 2: Without the SOCKS proxy, from my local client www.facebook.com resolves to 203.161.230.171 upload.facebook.com resolves to 64.33.88.161 Neither host is reachable (because of the firewall) If I login to the remote server, I get: www.facebook.com 69.63.187.17 upload.facebook.com 69.63.178.32 Both these IPs change after a few minutes, as it seems Facebook uses round-robin DNS and other load-balancing. With the Proxy settings set in Firefox, I can navigate to www.facebook.com without any difficulty (since DNS is being resolved remotely on the Proxy). Whey I go to the page with the Java applet it fails with the stacktrace messages I've already reported. However if I edit Windows\System32\drivers\etc\hosts, adding the correct IP for upload.facebook.com I can get the applet to load and work correctly (restart of FF is sometimes necessary). This evidence seems to support my theory that the Java Runtime is not resolving DNS on the Proxy, but instead just routing traffic though it. My application is for mass-deployment, and needs to work with java applets on other sites (not just facebook). I really need a work-around for this problem. UPDATE 3 Stacktrace dump a requested by ZZ Coder: load: class com.facebook.facebookphotouploader5.FacebookPhotoUploader5.class not found. java.lang.ClassNotFoundException: com.facebook.facebookphotouploader5.FacebookPhotoUploader5.class at sun.plugin2.applet.Applet2ClassLoader.findClass(Unknown Source) at java.lang.ClassLoader.loadClass(Unknown Source) at java.lang.ClassLoader.loadClass(Unknown Source) at sun.plugin2.applet.Plugin2ClassLoader.loadCode(Unknown Source) at sun.plugin2.applet.Plugin2Manager.createApplet(Unknown Source) at sun.plugin2.applet.Plugin2Manager$AppletExecutionRunnable.run(Unknown Source) at java.lang.Thread.run(Unknown Source) Caused by: java.net.SocketException: Connection reset at java.net.SocketInputStream.read(Unknown Source) at java.io.BufferedInputStream.fill(Unknown Source) at java.io.BufferedInputStream.read1(Unknown Source) at java.io.BufferedInputStream.read(Unknown Source) at sun.net.www.http.HttpClient.parseHTTPHeader(Unknown Source) at sun.net.www.http.HttpClient.parseHTTP(Unknown Source) at sun.net.www.http.HttpClient.parseHTTP(Unknown Source) at sun.net.www.protocol.http.HttpURLConnection.getInputStream(Unknown Source) at java.net.HttpURLConnection.getResponseCode(Unknown Source) at sun.plugin2.applet.Applet2ClassLoader.getBytes(Unknown Source) at sun.plugin2.applet.Applet2ClassLoader.access$000(Unknown Source) at sun.plugin2.applet.Applet2ClassLoader$1.run(Unknown Source) at java.security.AccessController.doPrivileged(Native Method) ... 7 more Exception: java.lang.ClassNotFoundException: com.facebook.facebookphotouploader5.FacebookPhotoUploader5.class Dumping class loader cache... Live entry: key=http://upload.facebook.com/controls/2008.10.10_v5.5.8/,FacebookPhotoUploader5.jar,FacebookPhotoUploader5.jar, refCount=1, threadGroup=sun.plugin2.applet.Applet2ThreadGroup[name=http://upload.facebook.com/controls/2008.10.10_v5.5.8/-threadGroup,maxpri=4] Done.

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• XNA: Load and read a XML file?

  - by Rosarch

  I'm having difficulty doing this seemingly simple task. I want to load XML files with the same ease of loading art assets: content = new ContentManager(Services); content.RootDirectory = "Content"; background = content.Load<Texture2D>("images\\ice"); I'm not sure how to do this. This tutorial seems helpful, but how do I get a StorageDevice instance? I do have something working now, but it feels pretty hacky: public IDictionary<string, string> Get(string typeName) { IDictionary<String, String> result = new Dictionary<String, String>(); xmlReader.Read(); // get past the XML declaration string element = null; string text = null; while (xmlReader.Read()) { switch (xmlReader.NodeType) { case XmlNodeType.Element: element = xmlReader.Name; break; case XmlNodeType.Text: text = xmlReader.Value; break; } if (text != null && element != null) { result[element] = text; text = null; element = null; } } return result; } I apply this to the following XML file: <?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8" ?> <zombies> <zombie> <health>100</health> <positionX>23</positionX> <positionY>12</positionY> <speed>2</speed> </zombie> </zombies> And it is able to pass this unit test: internal virtual IPersistentState CreateIPersistentState(string fullpath) { IPersistentState target = new ReadWriteXML(File.Open(fullpath, FileMode.Open)); return target; } /// <summary> ///A test for Get with one zombie. ///</summary> //[TestMethod()] public void SimpleGetTest() { string fullPath = "C:\\pathTo\\Data\\SavedZombies.xml"; IPersistentState target = CreateIPersistentState(fullPath); string typeName = "zombie"; IDictionary<string, string> expected = new Dictionary<string, string>(); expected["health"] = "100"; expected["positionX"] = "23"; expected["positionY"] = "12"; expected["speed"] = "2"; IDictionary<string, string> actual = target.Get(typeName); foreach (KeyValuePair<string, string> entry in expected) { Assert.AreEqual(entry.Value, expected[entry.Key]); } } Downsides to the current approach: file loading is done poorly, and matching keys to values seems like it's way more effort than necessary. Also, I suspect this approach would fall apart with more than one entry in the XML.

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• Why are there so many man-made edge cases in IT, and is there any hope for simplification / unificat

  - by Hamish Grubijan

  This question is meant to generate discussion and so it is marked as community wiki. My observation is that the field of information technology grows so rapidly and randomly, that for many it takes a lot of time to learn many intricacies of some tools that will be obsolete in just short 3 years. If you look at the questions asked on StackOverflow ... at least half of them stem from the fact that some language / tool / API / protocol was poorly designed, is backwards and has gotchas. There are so many things which distract developers from converting English into machine code; instead they spend their time configuring stuff and gluing together things that do not really fit. How many times do you pick up somebody else's project (or someone picks up yours :) ) and realize that this program does not need half of the dialogs that it has, and that the logic can be simplified a great deal? But, it had to be made and sold here before a better thing is made and sold elsewhere, and hence all this rush. I often wish that things would just slow down. I do not want Microsoft Windows to run on my car's computer, my watch, my table, my toaster oven, and my toilet seat. I'd rather have Windows that DOES NOT HAVE WINDOWS REGISTRY, I'd rather have Windows that allows two different programs to work on the same file at the same time, the way it works on Unix systems. Microsoft is just an example. I am looking forward to the day when I do not have to worry about Windows vs Unix new line break, when System32 actually means that this directory contains 32-bit binaries, and not 64-bit ones, the day when dll hell and manifest hell are no longer an issue, the day when it takes me a lot less than 3 months on a new job to learn the system. I do not mean learning the entire code base of a product (depending on the size of it, it can take a long time). I mean - remembering which build-assisting scripts are written in Perl and which version of it, and which ones are done through .bat files, when do I need to manually make every file in some directory writable before running a script, or else a critical step of a database maintenance home-grown tool will bomb, and it will take 2 days to clean that up. Makes me wonder if humans enslaved computers, or if it is the other way around. The key is that improving those things will not bring extra revenue, and hence those taking the time to fix crap like that are not "business focused". However, these imperfections irritate me immensely, particularly because my memory is limited - I can hold only a small portion of that useless knowledge of a system in my head at any given point in time. I must not be alone. Did you also happen to notice that a programmer can waste a lot of time on things that should have been a lot more straight-forward? Is there hope? Will things get better/simpler in the future, or will there be a lot more IT crap floating around? I suppose I see diversity of tools, protocols, etc. as a bad thing. Thank you for participation.

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• Faster method for Matrix vector product for large matrix in C or C++ for use in GMRES

  - by user35959

  I have a large, dense matrix A, and I aim to find the solution to the linear system Ax=b using an iterative method (in MATLAB was the plan using its built in GMRES). For more than 10,000 rows, this is too much for my computer to store in memory, but I know that the entries in A are constructed by two known vectors x and y of length N and the entries satisfy: A(i,j) = .5*(x[i]-x[j])^2+([y[i]-y[j])^2 * log(x[i]-x[j])^2+([y[i]-y[j]^2). MATLAB's GMRES command accepts as input a function call that can compute the matrix vector product A*x, which allows me to handle larger matrices than I can store in memory. To write the matrix-vecotr product function, I first tried this in matlab by going row by row and using some vectorization, but I avoid spawning the entire array A (since it would be too large). This was fairly slow unfortnately in my application for GMRES. My plan was to write a mex file for MATLAB to, which is in C, and ideally should be significantly faster than the matlab code. I'm rather new to C, so this went rather poorly and my naive attempt at writing the code in C was slower than my partially vectorized attempt in Matlab. #include <math.h> #include "mex.h" void Aproduct(double *x, double *ctrs_x, double *ctrs_y, double *b, mwSize n) { mwSize i; mwSize j; double val; for (i=0; i<n; i++) { for (j=0; j<i; j++) { val = pow(ctrs_x[i]-ctrs_x[j],2)+pow(ctrs_y[i]-ctrs_y[j],2); b[i] = b[i] + .5* val * log(val) * x[j]; } for (j=i+1; j<n; j++) { val = pow(ctrs_x[i]-ctrs_x[j],2)+pow(ctrs_y[i]-ctrs_y[j],2); b[i] = b[i] + .5* val * log(val) * x[j]; } } } The above is the computational portion of the code for the matlab mex file (which is slightly modified C, if I understand correctly). Please note that I skip the case i=j, since in that case the variable val will be a 0*log(0), which should be interpreted as 0 for me, so I just skip it. Is there a more efficient or faster way to write this? When I call this C function via the mex file in matlab, it is quite slow, slower even than the matlab method I used. This surprises me since I suspected that C code should be much faster than matlab. The alternative matlab method which is partially vectorized that I am comparing it with is function Ax = Aprod(x,ctrs) n = length(x); Ax = zeros(n,1); for j=1:(n-3) v = .5*((ctrs(j,1)-ctrs(:,1)).^2+(ctrs(j,2)-ctrs(:,2)).^2).*log((ctrs(j,1)-ctrs(:,1)).^2+(ctrs(j,2)-ctrs(:,2)).^2); v(j)=0; Ax(j) = dot(v,x(1:n-3); end (the n-3 is because there is actually 3 extra components, but they are dealt with separately,so I excluded that code). This is partly vectorized and only needs one for loop, so it makes some sense that it is faster. However, I was hoping I could go even faster with C+mex file. Any suggestions or help would be greatly appreciated! Thanks! EDIT: I should be more clear. I am open to any faster method that can help me use GMRES to invert this matrix that I am interested in, which requires a faster way of doing the matrix vector product without explicitly loading the array into memory. Thanks!

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• XNA: Best way to load and read a XML file?

  - by Rosarch

  I'm having difficulty doing this seemingly simple task. I want to load XML files with the same ease of loading art assets: content = new ContentManager(Services); content.RootDirectory = "Content"; Texture2d background = content.Load<Texture2D>("images\\ice"); I'm not sure how to do this. This tutorial seems helpful, but how do I get a StorageDevice instance? I do have something working now, but it feels pretty hacky: public IDictionary<string, string> Get(string typeName) { IDictionary<String, String> result = new Dictionary<String, String>(); xmlReader.Read(); // get past the XML declaration string element = null; string text = null; while (xmlReader.Read()) { switch (xmlReader.NodeType) { case XmlNodeType.Element: element = xmlReader.Name; break; case XmlNodeType.Text: text = xmlReader.Value; break; } if (text != null && element != null) { result[element] = text; text = null; element = null; } } return result; } I apply this to the following XML file: <?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8" ?> <zombies> <zombie> <health>100</health> <positionX>23</positionX> <positionY>12</positionY> <speed>2</speed> </zombie> </zombies> And it is able to pass this unit test: internal virtual IPersistentState CreateIPersistentState(string fullpath) { IPersistentState target = new ReadWriteXML(File.Open(fullpath, FileMode.Open)); return target; } /// <summary> ///A test for Get with one zombie. ///</summary> //[TestMethod()] public void SimpleGetTest() { string fullPath = "C:\\pathTo\\Data\\SavedZombies.xml"; IPersistentState target = CreateIPersistentState(fullPath); string typeName = "zombie"; IDictionary<string, string> expected = new Dictionary<string, string>(); expected["health"] = "100"; expected["positionX"] = "23"; expected["positionY"] = "12"; expected["speed"] = "2"; IDictionary<string, string> actual = target.Get(typeName); foreach (KeyValuePair<string, string> entry in expected) { Assert.AreEqual(entry.Value, expected[entry.Key]); } } Downsides to the current approach: file loading is done poorly, and matching keys to values seems like it's way more effort than necessary. Also, I suspect this approach would fall apart with more than one entry in the XML. I can't imagine that this is the optimal implementation.

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• Selecting and inserting text at cursor location in textfield with JS/jQuery

  - by IceCreamYou

  Hello. I have developed a system in PHP which processes #hashtags like on Twitter. Now I'm trying to build a system that will suggest tags as I type. When a user starts writing a tag, a drop-down list should appear beneath the textarea with other tags that begin with the same string. Right now, I have it working where if a user types the hash key (#) the list will show up with the most popular #hashtags. When a tag is clicked, it is inserted at the end of the text in the textarea. I need the tag to be inserted at the cursor location instead. Here's my code; it operates on a textarea with class "facebook_status_text" and a div with class "fbssts_floating_suggestions" that contains an unordered list of links. (Also note that the syntax [#my tag] is used to handle tags with spaces.) maxlength = 140; var dest = $('.facebook_status_text:first'); var fbssts_box = $('.fbssts_floating_suggestions'); var fbssts_box_orig = fbssts_box.html(); dest.keyup(function(fbss_key) { if (fbss_key.which == 51) { fbssts_box.html(fbssts_box_orig); $('.fbssts_floating_suggestions .fbssts_suggestions a').click(function() { var tag = $(this).html(); //This part is not well-optimized. if (tag.match(/W/)) { tag = '[#'+ tag +']'; } else { tag = '#'+ tag; } var orig = dest.val(); orig = orig.substring(0, orig.length - 1); var last = orig.substring(orig.length - 1); if (last == '[') { orig = orig.substring(0, orig.length - 1); } //End of particularly poorly optimized code. dest.val(orig + tag); fbssts_box.hide(); dest.focus(); return false; }); fbssts_box.show(); fbssts_box.css('left', dest.offset().left); fbssts_box.css('top', dest.offset().top + dest.outerHeight() + 1); } else if (fbss_key.which != 16) { fbssts_box.hide(); } }); dest.blur(function() { var t = setTimeout(function() { fbssts_box.hide(); }, 250); }); When the user types, I also need get the 100 characters in the textarea before the cursor, and pass it (presumably via POST) to /fbssts/load/tags. The PHP back-end will process this, figure out what tags to suggest, and print the relevant HTML. Then I need to load that HTML into the .fbssts_floating_suggestions div at the cursor location. Ideally, I'd like to be able to do this: var newSuggestions = load('/fbssts/load/tags', {text: dest.getTextBeforeCursor()}); fbssts_box.html(fbssts_box_orig); $('.fbssts_floating_suggestions .fbssts_suggestions a').click(function() { var tag = $(this).html(); if (tag.match(/W/)) { tag = tag +']'; } dest.insertAtCursor(tag); fbssts_box.hide(); dest.focus(); return false; }); And here's the regex I'm using to identify tags (and @mentions) in the PHP back-end, FWIW. %(\A(#|@)(\w|(\p{L}\p{M}?))+\b)|((?<=\s)(#|@)(\w|(\p{L}\p{M}?))+\b)|(\[(#|@).+?\])%u Right now, my main hold-up is dealing with the cursor location. I've researched for the last two hours, and just ended up more confused. I would prefer a jQuery solution, but beggars can't be choosers. Thanks!

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• Defend PHP; convince me it isn't horrible

  - by Jason L

  I made a tongue-in-cheek comment in another question thread calling PHP a terrible language and it got down-voted like crazy. Apparently there are lots of people here who love PHP. So I'm genuinely curious. What am I missing? What makes PHP a good language? Here are my reasons for disliking it: PHP has inconsistent naming of built-in and library functions. Predictable naming patterns are important in any design. PHP has inconsistent parameter ordering of built-in functions, eg array_map vs. array_filter which is annoying in the simple cases and raises all sorts of unexpected behaviour or worse. The PHP developers constantly deprecate built-in functions and lower-level functionality. A good example is when they deprecated pass-by-reference for functions. This created a nightmare for anyone doing, say, function callbacks. A lack of consideration in redesign. The above deprecation eliminated the ability to, in many cases, provide default keyword values for functions. They fixed this in PHP 5, but they deprecated the pass-by-reference in PHP 4! Poor execution of name spaces (formerly no name spaces at all). Now that name spaces exist, what do we use as the dereference character? Backslash! The character used universally for escaping, even in PHP! Overly-broad implicit type conversion leads to bugs. I have no problem with implicit conversions of, say, float to integer or back again. But PHP (last I checked) will happily attempt to magically convert an array to an integer. Poor recursion performance. Recursion is a fundamentally important tool for writing in any language; it can make complex algorithms far simpler. Poor support is inexcusable. Functions are case insensitive. I have no idea what they were thinking on this one. A programming language is a way to specify behavior to both a computer and a reader of the code without ambiguity. Case insensitivity introduces much ambiguity. PHP encourages (practically requires) a coupling of processing with presentation. Yes, you can write PHP that doesn't do so, but it's actually easier to write code in the incorrect (from a sound design perspective) manner. PHP performance is abysmal without caching. Does anyone sell a commercial caching product for PHP? Oh, look, the designers of PHP do. Worst of all, PHP convinces people that designing web applications is easy. And it does indeed make much of the effort involved much easier. But the fact is, designing a web application that is both secure and efficient is a very difficult task. By convincing so many to take up programming, PHP has taught an entire subgroup of programmers bad habits and bad design. It's given them access to capabilities that they lack the understanding to use safely. This has led to PHP's reputation as being insecure. (However, I will readily admit that PHP is no more or less secure than any other web programming language.) What is it that I'm missing about PHP? I'm seeing an organically-grown, poorly-managed mess of a language that's spawning poor programmers. So convince me otherwise!

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• FFMPEG Segfault Solutions

  - by Brentley_11

  I'm trying to convert a bunch of movies into h.264 mp4's using FFMPEG. These movies are sourced from various portable camcorders such as the Flip Mino HD and the Kodak ZI8. One issue I'm having with video from the ZI8 is it seems to be causing FFMPEG to segfault. Here is my command: ffmpeg -i 'XmasSailor720p60fps.MOV' -threads 2 -acodec libfaac -ab 96kb -vcodec libx264 -vpre hq -b 500kb -s 484x272 XmasSailor.mp4 Here is the output: FFmpeg version SVN-r20668, Copyright (c) 2000-2009 Fabrice Bellard, et al. built on Dec 2 2009 18:37:34 with gcc 4.2.4 (Ubuntu 4.2.4-1ubuntu4) configuration: --enable-libfaac --enable-libfaad --enable-libmp3lame --enable-libx264 --enable-gpl --enable-nonfree --enable-postproc --enable-pthreads --enable-shared libavutil 50. 5. 1 / 50. 5. 1 libavcodec 52.42. 0 / 52.42. 0 libavformat 52.39. 2 / 52.39. 2 libavdevice 52. 2. 0 / 52. 2. 0 libswscale 0. 7. 2 / 0. 7. 2 libpostproc 51. 2. 0 / 51. 2. 0 Seems stream 0 codec frame rate differs from container frame rate: 59.94 (60000/1001) -> 29.97 (30000/1001) Input #0, mov,mp4,m4a,3gp,3g2,mj2, from 'XmasSailor720p60fps.MOV': Duration: 00:00:05.37, start: 0.000000, bitrate: 12021 kb/s Stream #0.0(eng): Video: h264, yuv420p, 1280x720 [PAR 1:1 DAR 16:9], 11994 kb/s, 29.97 tbr, 90k tbn, 59.94 tbc Stream #0.1(eng): Audio: aac, 48000 Hz, stereo, s16, 128 kb/s Metadata major_brand : qt minor_version : 0 compatible_brands: qt comment : KODAK Zi8 Pocket Video Camera comment-eng : KODAK Zi8 Pocket Video Camera [libx264 @ 0x99e1020]using SAR=1/1 [libx264 @ 0x99e1020]using cpu capabilities: MMX2 SSE2Fast SSSE3 FastShuffle SSE4.1 Cache64 [libx264 @ 0x99e1020]profile High, level 2.1 Output #0, mp4, to 'XmasSailor.mp4': Stream #0.0(eng): Video: libx264, yuv420p, 484x272 [PAR 1:1 DAR 121:68], q=10-51, 500 kb/s, 30k tbn, 29.97 tbc Stream #0.1(eng): Audio: aac, 48000 Hz, stereo, s16, 96 kb/s Metadata comment : Encoded with the Statusfirm Video Transcoder Stream mapping: Stream #0.0 -> #0.0 Stream #0.1 -> #0.1 Press [q] to stop encoding [h264 @ 0x99de950]B picture before any references, skipping [h264 @ 0x99de950]decode_slice_header error [h264 @ 0x99de950]no frame! Error while decoding stream #0.0 [h264 @ 0x99de950]B picture before any references, skipping [h264 @ 0x99de950]decode_slice_header error [h264 @ 0x99de950]no frame! Error while decoding stream #0.0 frame= 20 fps= 0 q=13797729.0 size= 0kB time=0.66 bitrate= 0.6kbits/s frame= 39 fps= 37 q=13797729.0 size= 0kB time=1.30 bitrate= 0.3kbits/s frame= 48 fps= 30 q=33.0 size= 11kB time=0.10 bitrate= 903.0kbits/s frame= 58 fps= 27 q=31.0 size= 22kB time=0.43 bitrate= 421.0kbits/s frame= 67 fps= 25 q=29.0 size= 41kB time=0.73 bitrate= 462.6kbits/s frame= 75 fps= 23 q=29.0 size= 59kB time=1.00 bitrate= 486.7kbits/s frame= 83 fps= 22 q=29.0 size= 81kB time=1.27 bitrate= 521.9kbits/s frame= 90 fps= 21 q=29.0 size= 97kB time=1.50 bitrate= 530.1kbits/s frame= 98 fps= 20 q=29.0 size= 114kB time=1.77 bitrate= 526.9kbits/s frame= 106 fps= 20 q=29.0 size= 134kB time=2.04 bitrate= 537.7kbits/s frame= 114 fps= 19 q=29.0 size= 150kB time=2.30 bitrate= 533.7kbits/s frame= 122 fps= 19 q=29.0 size= 172kB time=2.57 bitrate= 547.8kbits/s frame= 130 fps= 19 q=29.0 size= 193kB time=2.84 bitrate= 557.5kbits/s frame= 136 fps= 18 q=29.0 size= 211kB time=3.04 bitrate= 570.0kbits/s frame= 144 fps= 18 q=29.0 size= 242kB time=3.30 bitrate= 599.5kbits/s frame= 152 fps= 17 q=30.0 size= 261kB time=3.57 bitrate= 598.6kbits/s frame= 157 fps= 15 q=-1.0 Lsize= 368kB time=5.21 bitrate= 579.3kbits/s video:302kB audio:61kB global headers:0kB muxing overhead 1.416371% [libx264 @ 0x99e1020]frame I:1 Avg QP:27.22 size: 8720 [libx264 @ 0x99e1020]frame P:48 Avg QP:25.15 size: 3759 [libx264 @ 0x99e1020]frame B:108 Avg QP:30.10 size: 1105 [libx264 @ 0x99e1020]consecutive B-frames: 0.6% 11.5% 28.8% 59.0% [libx264 @ 0x99e1020]mb I I16..4: 28.5% 47.6% 23.9% [libx264 @ 0x99e1020]mb P I16..4: 0.8% 1.3% 0.5% P16..4: 50.6% 17.7% 13.1% 0.0% 0.0% skip:15.9% [libx264 @ 0x99e1020]mb B I16..4: 0.2% 0.3% 0.1% B16..8: 44.0% 1.2% 2.6% direct: 5.1% skip:46.5% L0:45.5% L1:51.0% BI: 3.5% [libx264 @ 0x99e1020]final ratefactor: 23.51 [libx264 @ 0x99e1020]8x8 transform intra:49.9% inter:67.9% [libx264 @ 0x99e1020]direct mvs spatial:98.1% temporal:1.9% [libx264 @ 0x99e1020]coded y,uvDC,uvAC intra: 54.7% 76.1% 41.4% inter: 17.1% 24.4% 7.8% [libx264 @ 0x99e1020]i16 v,h,dc,p: 18% 52% 5% 25% [libx264 @ 0x99e1020]i8 v,h,dc,ddl,ddr,vr,hd,vl,hu: 12% 22% 9% 7% 10% 10% 9% 8% 13% [libx264 @ 0x99e1020]i4 v,h,dc,ddl,ddr,vr,hd,vl,hu: 13% 18% 8% 8% 10% 13% 10% 9% 12% [libx264 @ 0x99e1020]Weighted P-Frames: Y:10.4% [libx264 @ 0x99e1020]ref P L0: 60.2% 15.3% 11.0% 7.6% 5.2% 0.7% [libx264 @ 0x99e1020]ref B L0: 72.6% 15.6% 11.8% [libx264 @ 0x99e1020]kb/s:471.17 Segmentation fault I'm wondering if anyone else has ran into similar issues. I wasn't able to find anything helpful via Google. Another question I have is if anyone knows of a company that offers paid support for FFMPEG. Thank you for your time.

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• FFMPEG Segfault Solutions

  - by Brentley_11

  I'm trying to convert a bunch of movies into h.264 mp4's using FFMPEG. These movies are sourced from various portable camcorders such as the Flip Mino HD and the Kodak ZI8. One issue I'm having with video from the ZI8 is it seems to be causing FFMPEG to segfault. Here is my command: ffmpeg -i 'XmasSailor720p60fps.MOV' -threads 2 -acodec libfaac -ab 96kb -vcodec libx264 -vpre hq -b 500kb -s 484x272 XmasSailor.mp4 Here is the output: FFmpeg version SVN-r20668, Copyright (c) 2000-2009 Fabrice Bellard, et al. built on Dec 2 2009 18:37:34 with gcc 4.2.4 (Ubuntu 4.2.4-1ubuntu4) configuration: --enable-libfaac --enable-libfaad --enable-libmp3lame --enable-libx264 --enable-gpl --enable-nonfree --enable-postproc --enable-pthreads --enable-shared libavutil 50. 5. 1 / 50. 5. 1 libavcodec 52.42. 0 / 52.42. 0 libavformat 52.39. 2 / 52.39. 2 libavdevice 52. 2. 0 / 52. 2. 0 libswscale 0. 7. 2 / 0. 7. 2 libpostproc 51. 2. 0 / 51. 2. 0 Seems stream 0 codec frame rate differs from container frame rate: 59.94 (60000/1001) -> 29.97 (30000/1001) Input #0, mov,mp4,m4a,3gp,3g2,mj2, from 'XmasSailor720p60fps.MOV': Duration: 00:00:05.37, start: 0.000000, bitrate: 12021 kb/s Stream #0.0(eng): Video: h264, yuv420p, 1280x720 [PAR 1:1 DAR 16:9], 11994 kb/s, 29.97 tbr, 90k tbn, 59.94 tbc Stream #0.1(eng): Audio: aac, 48000 Hz, stereo, s16, 128 kb/s Metadata major_brand : qt minor_version : 0 compatible_brands: qt comment : KODAK Zi8 Pocket Video Camera comment-eng : KODAK Zi8 Pocket Video Camera [libx264 @ 0x99e1020]using SAR=1/1 [libx264 @ 0x99e1020]using cpu capabilities: MMX2 SSE2Fast SSSE3 FastShuffle SSE4.1 Cache64 [libx264 @ 0x99e1020]profile High, level 2.1 Output #0, mp4, to 'XmasSailor.mp4': Stream #0.0(eng): Video: libx264, yuv420p, 484x272 [PAR 1:1 DAR 121:68], q=10-51, 500 kb/s, 30k tbn, 29.97 tbc Stream #0.1(eng): Audio: aac, 48000 Hz, stereo, s16, 96 kb/s Metadata comment : Encoded with the Statusfirm Video Transcoder Stream mapping: Stream #0.0 -> #0.0 Stream #0.1 -> #0.1 Press [q] to stop encoding [h264 @ 0x99de950]B picture before any references, skipping [h264 @ 0x99de950]decode_slice_header error [h264 @ 0x99de950]no frame! Error while decoding stream #0.0 [h264 @ 0x99de950]B picture before any references, skipping [h264 @ 0x99de950]decode_slice_header error [h264 @ 0x99de950]no frame! Error while decoding stream #0.0 frame= 20 fps= 0 q=13797729.0 size= 0kB time=0.66 bitrate= 0.6kbits/s frame= 39 fps= 37 q=13797729.0 size= 0kB time=1.30 bitrate= 0.3kbits/s frame= 48 fps= 30 q=33.0 size= 11kB time=0.10 bitrate= 903.0kbits/s frame= 58 fps= 27 q=31.0 size= 22kB time=0.43 bitrate= 421.0kbits/s frame= 67 fps= 25 q=29.0 size= 41kB time=0.73 bitrate= 462.6kbits/s frame= 75 fps= 23 q=29.0 size= 59kB time=1.00 bitrate= 486.7kbits/s frame= 83 fps= 22 q=29.0 size= 81kB time=1.27 bitrate= 521.9kbits/s frame= 90 fps= 21 q=29.0 size= 97kB time=1.50 bitrate= 530.1kbits/s frame= 98 fps= 20 q=29.0 size= 114kB time=1.77 bitrate= 526.9kbits/s frame= 106 fps= 20 q=29.0 size= 134kB time=2.04 bitrate= 537.7kbits/s frame= 114 fps= 19 q=29.0 size= 150kB time=2.30 bitrate= 533.7kbits/s frame= 122 fps= 19 q=29.0 size= 172kB time=2.57 bitrate= 547.8kbits/s frame= 130 fps= 19 q=29.0 size= 193kB time=2.84 bitrate= 557.5kbits/s frame= 136 fps= 18 q=29.0 size= 211kB time=3.04 bitrate= 570.0kbits/s frame= 144 fps= 18 q=29.0 size= 242kB time=3.30 bitrate= 599.5kbits/s frame= 152 fps= 17 q=30.0 size= 261kB time=3.57 bitrate= 598.6kbits/s frame= 157 fps= 15 q=-1.0 Lsize= 368kB time=5.21 bitrate= 579.3kbits/s video:302kB audio:61kB global headers:0kB muxing overhead 1.416371% [libx264 @ 0x99e1020]frame I:1 Avg QP:27.22 size: 8720 [libx264 @ 0x99e1020]frame P:48 Avg QP:25.15 size: 3759 [libx264 @ 0x99e1020]frame B:108 Avg QP:30.10 size: 1105 [libx264 @ 0x99e1020]consecutive B-frames: 0.6% 11.5% 28.8% 59.0% [libx264 @ 0x99e1020]mb I I16..4: 28.5% 47.6% 23.9% [libx264 @ 0x99e1020]mb P I16..4: 0.8% 1.3% 0.5% P16..4: 50.6% 17.7% 13.1% 0.0% 0.0% skip:15.9% [libx264 @ 0x99e1020]mb B I16..4: 0.2% 0.3% 0.1% B16..8: 44.0% 1.2% 2.6% direct: 5.1% skip:46.5% L0:45.5% L1:51.0% BI: 3.5% [libx264 @ 0x99e1020]final ratefactor: 23.51 [libx264 @ 0x99e1020]8x8 transform intra:49.9% inter:67.9% [libx264 @ 0x99e1020]direct mvs spatial:98.1% temporal:1.9% [libx264 @ 0x99e1020]coded y,uvDC,uvAC intra: 54.7% 76.1% 41.4% inter: 17.1% 24.4% 7.8% [libx264 @ 0x99e1020]i16 v,h,dc,p: 18% 52% 5% 25% [libx264 @ 0x99e1020]i8 v,h,dc,ddl,ddr,vr,hd,vl,hu: 12% 22% 9% 7% 10% 10% 9% 8% 13% [libx264 @ 0x99e1020]i4 v,h,dc,ddl,ddr,vr,hd,vl,hu: 13% 18% 8% 8% 10% 13% 10% 9% 12% [libx264 @ 0x99e1020]Weighted P-Frames: Y:10.4% [libx264 @ 0x99e1020]ref P L0: 60.2% 15.3% 11.0% 7.6% 5.2% 0.7% [libx264 @ 0x99e1020]ref B L0: 72.6% 15.6% 11.8% [libx264 @ 0x99e1020]kb/s:471.17 Segmentation fault I'm wondering if anyone else has ran into similar issues. I wasn't able to find anything helpful via Google. Another question I have is if anyone knows of a company that offers paid support for FFMPEG. Thank you for your time.

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• Installing SharePoint 2010 and PowerPivot for SharePoint on Windows 7

  - by smisner

  Many people like me want (or need) to do their business intelligence development work on a laptop. As someone who frequently speaks at various events or teaches classes on all subjects related to the Microsoft business intelligence stack, I need a way to run multiple server products on my laptop with reasonable performance. Once upon a time, that requirement meant only that I had to load the current version of SQL Server and the client tools of choice. In today's post, I'll review my latest experience with trying to make the newly released Microsoft BI products work with a Windows 7 operating system.The entrance of Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 into the BI stack complicated matters and I started using Virtual Server to establish a "suitable" environment. As part of the team that delivered a lot of education as part of the Yukon pre-launch activities (that would be SQL Server 2005 for the uninitiated), I was working with four - yes, four - virtual servers. That was a pretty brutal workload for a 2GB laptop, which worked if I was very, very careful. It could also be a finicky and unreliable configuration as I learned to my dismay at one TechEd session several years ago when I had to reboot a very carefully cached set of servers just minutes before my session started. Although it worked, it came back to life very, very slowly much to the displeasure of the audience. They couldn't possibly have been less pleased than me.At that moment, I resolved to get the beefiest environment I could afford and consolidate to a single virtual server. Enter the 4GB 64-bit laptop to preserve my sanity and my livelihood. Likewise, for SQL Server 2008, I managed to keep everything within a single virtual server and I could function reasonably well with this approach.Now we have SQL Server 2008 R2 plus Office SharePoint Server 2010. That means a 64-bit operating system. Period. That means no more Virtual Server. That means I must use Hyper-V or another alternative. I've heard alternatives exist, but my few dabbles in this area did not yield positive results. It might have been just me having issues rather than any failure of those technologies to adequately support the requirements.My first run at working with the new BI stack configuration was to set up a 64-bit 4GB laptop with a dual-boot to run Windows Server 2008 R2 with Hyper-V. However, I was generally not happy with running Windows Server 2008 R2 on my laptop. For one, I couldn't put it into sleep mode, which is helpful if I want to prepare for a presentation beforehand and then walk to the podium without the need to hold my laptop in its open state along the way (my strategy at the TechEd session long, long ago). Secondly, it was finicky with projectors. I had issues from time to time and while I always eventually got it to work, I didn't appreciate those nerve-wracking moments wondering whether this would be the time that it wouldn't work.Somewhere along the way, I learned that it was possible to load SharePoint 2010 in a Windows 7 which piqued my interest. I had just acquired a new laptop running Windows 7 64-bit, and thought surely running the BI stack natively on my laptop must be better than running Hyper-V. (I have not tried booting to Hyper-V VHD yet, but that's on my list of things to try so the jury of one is still out on this approach.) Recently, I had to build up a server with the RTM versions of SQL Server 2008 R2 and Sharepoint Server 2010 and decided to follow suit on my Windows 7 Ultimate 64-bit laptop. The process is slightly different, but I'm happy to report that it IS possible, although I had some fits and starts along the way.DISCLAIMER: These products are NOT intended to be run in production mode on the Windows 7 operating system. The configuration described in this post is strictly for development or learning purposes and not supported by Microsoft. If you have trouble, you will NOT get help from them. I might be able to help, but I provide no guarantees of my ability or availablity to help. I won't provide the step-by-step instructions in this post as there are other resources that provide these details, but I will provide an overview of my approach, point you to the relevant resources, describe some of the problems I encountered, and explain how I addressed those problems to achieve my desired goal.Because my goal was not simply to set up SharePoint Server 2010 on my laptop, but specifically PowerPivot for SharePoint, I started out by referring to the installation instructions at the PowerPiovt-Info site, but mainly to confirm that I was performing steps in the proper sequence. I didn't perform the steps in Part 1 because those steps are applicable only to a server operating system which I am not running on my laptop. Then, the instructions in Part 2, won't work exactly as written for the same reason. Instead, I followed the instructions on MSDN, Setting Up the Development Environment for SharePoint 2010 on Windows Vista, Windows 7, and Windows Server 2008. In general, I found the following differences in installation steps from the steps at PowerPivot-Info:You must copy the SharePoint installation media to the local drive so that you can edit the config.xml to allow installation on a Windows client.You also have to manually install the prerequisites. The instructions provides links to each item that you must manually install and provides a command-line instruction to execute which enables required Windows features.I will digress for a moment to save you some grief in the sequence of steps to perform. I discovered later that a missing step in the MSDN instructions is to install the November CTP Reporting Services add-in for SharePoint. When I went to test my SharePoint site (I believe I tested after I had a successful PowerPivot installation), I ran into the following error: Could not load file or assembly 'RSSharePointSoapProxy, Version=10.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=89845dcd8080cc91' or one of its dependencies. The system cannot find the file specified. I was rather surprised that Reporting Services was required. Then I found an article by Alan le Marquand, Working Together: SQL Server 2008 R2 Reporting Services Integration in SharePoint 2010,that instructed readers to install the November add-in. My first reaction was, "Really?!?" But I confirmed it in another TechNet article on hardware and software requirements for SharePoint Server 2010. It doesn't refer explicitly to the November CTP but following the link took me there. (Interestingly, I retested today and there's no longer any reference to the November CTP. Here's the link to download the latest and greatest Reporting Services Add-in for SharePoint Technologies 2010.) You don't need to download the add-in anymore if you're doing a regular server-based installation of SharePoint because it installs as part of the prerequisites automatically.When it was time to start the installation of SharePoint, I deviated from the MSDN instructions and from the PowerPivot-Info instructions:On the Choose the installation you want page of the installation wizard, I chose Server Farm.On the Server Type page, I chose Complete.At the end of the installation, I did not run the configuration wizard.Returning to the PowerPivot-Info instructions, I tried to follow the instructions in Part 3 which describe installing SQL Server 2008 R2 with the PowerPivot option. These instructions tell you to choose the New Server option on the Setup Role page where you add PowerPivot for SharePoint. However, I ran into problems with this approach and got installation errors at the end.It wasn't until much later as I was investigating an error that I encountered Dave Wickert's post that installing PowerPivot for SharePoint on Windows 7 is unsupported. Uh oh. But he did want to hear about it if anyone succeeded, so I decided to take the plunge. Perseverance paid off, and I can happily inform Dave that it does work so far. I haven't tested absolutely everything with PowerPivot for SharePoint but have successfully deployed a workbook and viewed the PowerPivot Management Dashboard. I have not yet tested the data refresh feature, but I have installed. Continue reading to see how I accomplished my objective.I unintalled SQL Server 2008 R2 and started again. I had different problems which I don't recollect now. However, I uninstalled again and approached installation from a different angle and my next attempt succeeded. The downside of this approach is that you must do all of the things yourself that are done automatically when you install PowerPivot as a new server. Here are the steps that I followed:Install SQL Server 2008 R2 to get a database engine instance installed.Run the SharePoint configuration wizard to set up the SharePoint databases.In Central Administration, create a Web application using classic mode authentication as per a TechNet article on PowerPivot Authentication and Authorization.Then I followed the steps I found at How to: Install PowerPivot for SharePoint on an Existing SharePoint Server. Especially important to note - you must launch setup by using Run as administrator. I did not have to manually deploy the PowerPivot solution as the instructions specify, but it's good to know about this step because it tells you where to look in Central Administration to confirm a successful deployment.I did spot some incorrect steps in the instructions (at the time of this writing) in How To: Configure Stored Credentials for PowerPivot Data Refresh. Specifically, in the section entitled Step 1: Create a target application and set the credentials, both steps 10 and 12 are incorrect. They tell you to provide an actual Windows user name and password on the page where you are simply defining the prompts for your application in the Secure Store Service. To add the Windows user name and password that you want to associate with the application - after you have successfully created the target application - you select the target application and then click Set credentials in the ribbon.Lastly, I followed the instructions at How to: Install Office Data Connectivity Components on a PowerPivot server. However, I have yet to test this in my current environment.I did have several stops and starts throughout this process and edited those out to spare you from reading non-essential information. I believe the explanation I have provided here accurately reflect the steps I followed to produce a working configuration. If you follow these steps and get a different result, please let me know so that together we can work through the issue and correct these instructions. I'm sure there are many other folks in the Microsoft BI community that will appreciate the ability to set up the BI stack in a Windows 7 environment for development or learning purposes. Share this post: email it! | bookmark it! | digg it! | reddit! | kick it! | live it!

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