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• [GEEK SCHOOL] Network Security 2: Preventing Disaster with User Account Control

  - by Ciprian Rusen

  In this second lesson in our How-To Geek School about securing the Windows devices in your network, we will talk about User Account Control (UAC). Users encounter this feature each time they need to install desktop applications in Windows, when some applications need administrator permissions in order to work and when they have to change different system settings and files. UAC was introduced in Windows Vista as part of Microsoft’s “Trustworthy Computing” initiative. Basically, UAC is meant to act as a wedge between you and installing applications or making system changes. When you attempt to do either of these actions, UAC will pop up and interrupt you. You may either have to confirm you know what you’re doing, or even enter an administrator password if you don’t have those rights. Some users find UAC annoying and choose to disable it but this very important security feature of Windows (and we strongly caution against doing that). That’s why in this lesson, we will carefully explain what UAC is and everything it does. As you will see, this feature has an important role in keeping Windows safe from all kinds of security problems. In this lesson you will learn which activities may trigger a UAC prompt asking for permissions and how UAC can be set so that it strikes the best balance between usability and security. You will also learn what kind of information you can find in each UAC prompt. Last but not least, you will learn why you should never turn off this feature of Windows. By the time we’re done today, we think you will have a newly found appreciation for UAC, and will be able to find a happy medium between turning it off completely and letting it annoy you to distraction. What is UAC and How Does it Work? UAC or User Account Control is a security feature that helps prevent unauthorized system changes to your Windows computer or device. These changes can be made by users, applications, and sadly, malware (which is the biggest reason why UAC exists in the first place). When an important system change is initiated, Windows displays a UAC prompt asking for your permission to make the change. If you don’t give your approval, the change is not made. In Windows, you will encounter UAC prompts mostly when working with desktop applications that require administrative permissions. For example, in order to install an application, the installer (generally a setup.exe file) asks Windows for administrative permissions. UAC initiates an elevation prompt like the one shown earlier asking you whether it is okay to elevate permissions or not. If you say “Yes”, the installer starts as administrator and it is able to make the necessary system changes in order to install the application correctly. When the installer is closed, its administrator privileges are gone. If you run it again, the UAC prompt is shown again because your previous approval is not remembered. If you say “No”, the installer is not allowed to run and no system changes are made. If a system change is initiated from a user account that is not an administrator, e.g. the Guest account, the UAC prompt will also ask for the administrator password in order to give the necessary permissions. Without this password, the change won’t be made. Which Activities Trigger a UAC Prompt? There are many types of activities that may trigger a UAC prompt: Running a desktop application as an administrator Making changes to settings and files in the Windows and Program Files folders Installing or removing drivers and desktop applications Installing ActiveX controls Changing settings to Windows features like the Windows Firewall, UAC, Windows Update, Windows Defender, and others Adding, modifying, or removing user accounts Configuring Parental Controls in Windows 7 or Family Safety in Windows 8.x Running the Task Scheduler Restoring backed-up system files Viewing or changing the folders and files of another user account Changing the system date and time You will encounter UAC prompts during some or all of these activities, depending on how UAC is set on your Windows device. If this security feature is turned off, any user account or desktop application can make any of these changes without a prompt asking for permissions. In this scenario, the different forms of malware existing on the Internet will also have a higher chance of infecting and taking control of your system. In Windows 8.x operating systems you will never see a UAC prompt when working with apps from the Windows Store. That’s because these apps, by design, are not allowed to modify any system settings or files. You will encounter UAC prompts only when working with desktop programs. What You Can Learn from a UAC Prompt? When you see a UAC prompt on the screen, take time to read the information displayed so that you get a better understanding of what is going on. Each prompt first tells you the name of the program that wants to make system changes to your device, then you can see the verified publisher of that program. Dodgy software tends not to display this information and instead of a real company name, you will see an entry that says “Unknown”. If you have downloaded that program from a less than trustworthy source, then it might be better to select “No” in the UAC prompt. The prompt also shares the origin of the file that’s trying to make these changes. In most cases the file origin is “Hard drive on this computer”. You can learn more by pressing “Show details”. You will see an additional entry named “Program location” where you can see the physical location on your hard drive, for the file that’s trying to perform system changes. Make your choice based on the trust you have in the program you are trying to run and its publisher. If a less-known file from a suspicious location is requesting a UAC prompt, then you should seriously consider pressing “No”. What’s Different About Each UAC Level? Windows 7 and Windows 8.x have four UAC levels: Always notify – when this level is used, you are notified before desktop applications make changes that require administrator permissions or before you or another user account changes Windows settings like the ones mentioned earlier. When the UAC prompt is shown, the desktop is dimmed and you must choose “Yes” or “No” before you can do anything else. This is the most secure and also the most annoying way to set UAC because it triggers the most UAC prompts. Notify me only when programs/apps try to make changes to my computer (default) – Windows uses this as the default for UAC. When this level is used, you are notified before desktop applications make changes that require administrator permissions. If you are making system changes, UAC doesn’t show any prompts and it automatically gives you the necessary permissions for making the changes you desire. When a UAC prompt is shown, the desktop is dimmed and you must choose “Yes” or “No” before you can do anything else. This level is slightly less secure than the previous one because malicious programs can be created for simulating the keystrokes or mouse moves of a user and change system settings for you. If you have a good security solution in place, this scenario should never occur. Notify me only when programs/apps try to make changes to my computer (do not dim my desktop) – this level is different from the previous in in the fact that, when the UAC prompt is shown, the desktop is not dimmed. This decreases the security of your system because different kinds of desktop applications (including malware) might be able to interfere with the UAC prompt and approve changes that you might not want to be performed. Never notify – this level is the equivalent of turning off UAC. When using it, you have no protection against unauthorized system changes. Any desktop application and any user account can make system changes without your permission. How to Configure UAC If you would like to change the UAC level used by Windows, open the Control Panel, then go to “System and Security” and select “Action Center”. On the column on the left you will see an entry that says “Change User Account Control settings”. The “User Account Control Settings” window is now opened. Change the position of the UAC slider to the level you want applied then press “OK”. Depending on how UAC was initially set, you may receive a UAC prompt requiring you to confirm this change. Why You Should Never Turn Off UAC If you want to keep the security of your system at decent levels, you should never turn off UAC. When you disable it, everything and everyone can make system changes without your consent. This makes it easier for all kinds of malware to infect and take control of your system. It doesn’t matter whether you have a security suite or antivirus installed or third-party antivirus, basic common-sense measures like having UAC turned on make a big difference in keeping your devices safe from harm. We have noticed that some users disable UAC prior to setting up their Windows devices and installing third-party software on them. They keep it disabled while installing all the software they will use and enable it when done installing everything, so that they don’t have to deal with so many UAC prompts. Unfortunately this causes problems with some desktop applications. They may fail to work after you enable UAC. This happens because, when UAC is disabled, the virtualization techniques UAC uses for your applications are inactive. This means that certain user settings and files are installed in a different place and when you turn on UAC, applications stop working because they should be placed elsewhere. Therefore, whatever you do, do not turn off UAC completely! Coming up next … In the next lesson you will learn about Windows Defender, what this tool can do in Windows 7 and Windows 8.x, what’s different about it in these operating systems and how it can be used to increase the security of your system.

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• Understanding the value of Customer Experience & Loyalty for the Telecommunications Industry

  - by raul.goycoolea

  Worried by economic woes and market forces, especially in mature markets, communications service providers (CSPs) increasingly focus on improving customer experience. In fact, it seems difficult to find a major message by a C-level executive in the developed world that does not include something on "meeting and exceeding customers' needs". Frequently in customer satisfaction studies by prominent firms, CSPs fall short of the leadership demonstrated by other industries that take customer-centric approaches to their bottom-line strategies. Consider the following:Despite the continued impact of global economic crisis, in July 2010, Apple Computer posted record revenue and net quarterly profit. Those who attribute the results primarily to the iPhone 4 launch should note that Apple also shipped around 30% more Macintosh computers than the same period the previous year. Even sales of the iPod line increased by 8% in a highly commoditized, shrinking media player market. Finally, Apple began selling iPads during the quarter, with total sales of more than 3 million units. What does Apple have that the others lack? Well, some great products (and services) to be sure, but it also excels at customer service and support, marketing, and distribution, and has one of the strongest brands globally. Its products are useful, simple to use, easy to acquire and augment, high quality, and considered very cool. They also evoke such an emotional response from many of Apple's customers, which they turn up their noses at competitive products.In other words, Apple appears to have mastered virtually every aspect of customer experience and the resultant loyalty of its customer base - even in difficult financial times. Through that unwavering customer focus, Apple continues to drive its revenues and profits to new heights. Other customer loyalty leaders like Wal-Mart, Google, Toyota and Honda are also doing well by focusing on customer experience as an essential driver of profitability. Service providers should note this performance and ask themselves how they might leverage the same principles to increase their own profitability. After all, that is what customer experience and loyalty are all about: profitability.To successfully manage all the critical touch points of customer experience, CSPs must shun the one-size-fits-all approach. They can no longer afford to view customer service fundamentally as an act of altruism - which mentality dates back to the industry's civil service days, when CSPs were typically government organizations that were critical to economic development and public safety.As regulators and public officials have pushed, and continue to push, service providers to new heights of reliability - using incentives and punishments - most CSPs already have some of the fundamental building blocks of customer service in place. Yet despite that history and experience, service providers still lag other industries in providing what is seen as good customer service.As we observed in the TMF's 2009 Insights Research report, Customer Experience Management: Driving Loyalty & Profitability there has been resurgence in interest by CSPs. More and more of them have stated ambitions to catch up other industries, and they are realizing that good customer service is a powerful strategy for increasing business performance and profitability, not an act of good will.CSPs are recognizing the connection between customer experience and profitability, as demonstrated in many studies. For example, according to research by Bain & Company, a 5 percent improvement in customer retention rates can yield as much as a 75 percent increase in profits for companies across a range of industries.After decades of customer experience strategy formulation, Bain partner and business author, Frederick Reichheld, considers "would you recommend us to a friend?" as the ultimate question for a customer. How many times have you or your friends recommended an iPod, iPhone or a Mac? What do your children recommend to their peers? Their peers to them?There are certain steps service providers have to take to create more personalized relationships with their customers, as well as reduce churn and increase profitability, all while becoming leaner and more agile. First, they have to define customer experience, we define it as the result of the sum of observations, perceptions, thoughts and feelings arising from interactions and relationships between customers and their service provider(s). Virtually every customer touch point - whether directly or indirectly linked to service providers and their partners - contributes to customer perception, satisfaction, loyalty, and ultimately profitability. Gaining leadership in customer experience and satisfaction will not be a simple task, as it is affected by virtually every customer-facing aspect of the service provider, and in turn impacts the service provider deeply - especially on the all-important bottom line. The scope of issues affecting customer experience is complex and dynamic.With new services, devices and applications extending the basis of customer experience to domains beyond the direct control of the service provider, it is likely to increase in complexity and dynamism.Customer loyalty = increased profitsAs stated earlier, customer experience programs are not fundamentally altruistic exercises, but a strategic means of improving competitiveness and profitability in the short and long term. Loyalty is essential to deriving long term profits from customers.Some of the earliest loyalty programs date back to the 1930s, when packaged goods companies offered embedded coupons for rewards to buyers, and eventually retail chains began offering reward programs to frequent shoppers. These programs continued for decades but were leapfrogged in the 1980s by more aggressive programs from the airlines.This movement was led by American Airlines, which launched the first full-scale loyalty marketing program of the modern era with the AAdvantage frequent flyer scheme. It was the first to reward frequent fliers with notional air miles that could be accumulated and later redeemed for free travel. Figure 1: Opportunities example of Customer loyalty driven profitOther airlines and travel providers were quick to grasp the incredible value of providing customers with an incentive to use their company exclusively. Within a few years, dozens of travel industry companies launched similar initiatives and now loyalty programs are achieving near-ubiquity in many service industries, especially those in which it is difficult to differentiate offerings by product attributes.The belief is that increased profitability will result from customer retention efforts because:•    The cost of acquisition occurs only at the beginning of a relationship: the longer the relationship, the lower the amortized cost;•    Account maintenance costs decline as a percentage of total costs, or as a percentage of revenue, over the lifetime of the relationship;•    Long term customers tend to be less inclined to switch and less price sensitive which can result in stable unit sales volume and increases in dollar-sales volume;•    Long term customers may initiate word-of-mouth promotions and referrals, which cost the company nothing and arguably are the most effective form of advertising;•    Long-term customers are more likely to buy ancillary products and higher margin supplemental products;•    Long term customers tend to be satisfied with their relationship with the company and are less likely to switch to competitors, making market entry or competitors gaining market share difficult;•    Regular customers tend to be less expensive to service, as they are familiar with the processes involved, require less 'education', and are consistent in their order placement;•    Increased customer retention and loyalty makes the employees' jobs easier and more satisfying. In turn, happy employees feed back into higher customer satisfaction in a virtuous circle. Figure 2: The virtuous circle of customer loyaltyFigure 2 represents a high-level example of a virtuous cycle driven by customer satisfaction and loyalty, depicting how superiority in product and service offerings, as well as strong customer support by competent employees, lead to higher sales and ultimately profitability. As stated above, this is not a new concept, but succeeding with it is difficult. It has eluded many a company driven to achieve profitability goals. Of course, for this circle to be virtuous, the customer relationship(s) must be profitable.Trying to maintain the loyalty of unprofitable customers is not a viable business strategy. It is, therefore, important that marketers can assess the profitability of each customer (or customer segment), and either improve or terminate relationships that are not profitable. This means each customer's 'relationship costs' must be understood and compared to their 'relationship revenue'. Customer lifetime value (CLV) is the most commonly used metric here, as it is generally accepted as a representation of exactly how much each customer is worth in monetary terms, and therefore a determinant of exactly how much a service provider should be willing to spend to acquire or retain that customer.CLV models make several simplifying assumptions and often involve the following inputs:•    Churn rate represents the percentage of customers who end their relationship with a company in a given period;•    Retention rate is calculated by subtracting the churn rate percentage from 100;•    Period/horizon equates to the units of time into which a customer relationship can be divided for analysis. A year is the most commonly used period for this purpose. Customer lifetime value is a multi-period calculation, often projecting three to seven years into the future. In practice, analysis beyond this point is viewed as too speculative to be reliable. The model horizon is the number of periods used in the calculation;•    Periodic revenue is the amount of revenue collected from a customer in a given period (though this is often extended across multiple periods into the future to understand lifetime value), such as usage revenue, revenues anticipated from cross and upselling, and often some weighting for referrals by a loyal customer to others; •    Retention cost describes the amount of money the service provider must spend, in a given period, to retain an existing customer. Again, this is often forecast across multiple periods. Retention costs include customer support, billing, promotional incentives and so on;•    Discount rate means the cost of capital used to discount future revenue from a customer. Discounting is an advanced method used in more sophisticated CLV calculations;•    Profit margin is the projected profit as a percentage of revenue for the period. This may be reflected as a percentage of gross or net profit. Again, this is generally projected across the model horizon to understand lifetime value.A strong focus on managing these inputs can help service providers realize stronger customer relationships and profits, but there are some obstacles to overcome in achieving accurate calculations of CLV, such as the complexity of allocating costs across the customer base. There are many costs that serve all customers which must be properly allocated across the base, and often a simple proportional allocation across the whole base or a segment may not accurately reflect the true cost of serving that customer;  This is made worse by the fragmentation of customer information, which is likely to be across a variety of product or operations groups, and may be difficult to aggregate due to different representations.In addition, there is the complexity of account relationships and structures to take into consideration. Complex account structures may not be understood or properly represented. For example, a profitable customer may have a separate account for a second home or another family member, which may appear to be unprofitable. If the service provider cannot relate the two accounts, CLV is not properly represented and any resultant cancellation of the apparently unprofitable account may result in the customer churning from the profitable one.In summary, if service providers are to realize strong customer relationships and their attendant profits, there must be a very strong focus on data management. This needs to be coupled with analytics that help business managers and those who work in customer-facing functions offer highly personalized solutions to customers, while maintaining profitability for the service provider. It's clear that acquiring new customers is expensive. Advertising costs, campaign management expenses, promotional service pricing and discounting, and equipment subsidies make a serious dent in a new customer's profitability. That is especially true given the rising subsidies for Smartphone users, which service providers hope will result in greater profits from profits from data services profitability in future.  The situation is made worse by falling prices and greater competition in mature markets.Customer acquisition through industry consolidation isn't cheap either. A North American service provider spent about $2,000 per subscriber in its acquisition of a smaller company earlier this year. While this has allowed it to leapfrog to become the largest mobile service provider in the country, it required a total investment of more than $28 billion (including assumption of the acquiree's debt).While many operating cost synergies clearly made this deal more attractive to the acquiring company, this is certainly an expensive way to acquire customers: the cost per subscriber in this case is not out of line with the prices others have paid for acquisitions.While growth by acquisition certainly increases overall revenues, it often creates tremendous challenges for profitability. Organic growth through increased customer loyalty and retention is a more effective driver of profit, as well as a stronger predictor of future profitability. Service providers, especially those in mature markets, are increasingly recognizing this and taking steps toward a creating a more personalized, flexible and satisfying experience for their customers.In summary, the clearest path to profitability for companies in virtually all industries is through customer retention and maximization of lifetime value. Service providers would do well to recognize this and focus attention on profitable customer relationships.

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• Another Marketing Conference, part one – the best morning sessions.

  - by Roger Hart

  Yesterday I went to Another Marketing Conference. I honestly can’t tell if the title is just tipping over into smug, but in the balance of things that doesn’t matter, because it was a good conference. There was an enjoyable blend of theoretical and practical, and enough inter-disciplinary spread to keep my inner dilettante grinning from ear to ear. Sure, there was a bumpy bit in the middle, with two back-to-back sales pitches and a rather thin overview of the state of the web. But the signal:noise ratio at AMC2012 was impressively high. Here’s the first part of my write-up of the sessions. It’s a bit of a mammoth. It’s also a bit of a mash-up of what was said and what I thought about it. I’ll add links to the videos and slides from the sessions as they become available. Although it was in the morning session, I’ve not included Vanessa Northam’s session on the power of internal comms to build brand ambassadors. It’ll be in the next roundup, as this is already pushing 2.5k words. First, the important stuff. I was keeping a tally, and nobody said “synergy” or “leverage”. I did, however, hear the term “marketeers” six times. Shame on you – you know who you are. 1 – Branding in a post-digital world, Graham Hales This initially looked like being a sales presentation for Interbrand, but Graham pulled it out of the bag a few minutes in. He introduced a model for brand management that was essentially Plan >> Do >> Check >> Act, with Do and Check rolled up together, and went on to stress that this looks like on overall business management model for a reason. Brand has to be part of your overall business strategy and metrics if you’re going to care about it at all. This was the first iteration of what proved to be one of the event’s emergent themes: do it throughout the stack or don’t bother. Graham went on to remind us that brands, in so far as they are owned at all, are owned by and co-created with our customers. Advertising can offer a message to customers, but they provide the expression of a brand. This was a preface to talking about an increasingly chaotic marketplace, with increasingly hard-to-manage purchase processes. Services like Amazon reviews and TripAdvisor (four presenters would make this point) saturate customers with information, and give them a kind of vigilante power to comment on and define brands. Consequentially, they experience a number of “moments of deflection” in our sales funnels. Our control is lessened, and failure to engage can negatively-impact buying decisions increasingly poorly. The clearest example given was the failure of NatWest’s “caring bank” campaign, where staff in branches, customer support, and online presences didn’t align. A discontinuity of experience basically made the campaign worthless, and disgruntled customers talked about it loudly on social media. This in turn presented an opportunity to engage and show caring, but that wasn’t taken. What I took away was that brand (co)creation is ongoing and needs monitoring and metrics. But reciprocally, given you get what you measure, strategy and metrics must include brand if any kind of branding is to work at all. Campaigns and messages must permeate product and service design. What that doesn’t mean (and Graham didn’t say it did) is putting Marketing at the top of the pyramid, and having them bawl demands at Product Management, Support, and Development like an entitled toddler. It’s going to have to be collaborative, and session 6 on internal comms handled this really well. The main thing missing here was substantiating data, and the main question I found myself chewing on was: if we’re building brands collaboratively and in the open, what about the cultural politics of trolling? 2 – Challenging our core beliefs about human behaviour, Mark Earls This was definitely the best show of the day. It was also some of the best content. Mark talked us through nudging, behavioural economics, and some key misconceptions around decision making. Basically, people aren’t rational, they’re petty, reactive, emotional sacks of meat, and they’ll go where they’re led. Comforting stuff. Examples given were the spread of the London Riots and the “discovery” of the mountains of Kong, and the popularity of Susan Boyle, which, in turn made me think about Per Mollerup’s concept of “social wayshowing”. Mark boiled his thoughts down into four key points which I completely failed to write down word for word: People do, then think – Changing minds to change behaviour doesn’t work. Post-rationalization rules the day. See also: mere exposure effects. Spock < Kirk - Emotional/intuitive comes first, then we rationalize impulses. The non-thinking, emotive, reactive processes run much faster than the deliberative ones. People are not really rational decision makers, so  intervening with information may not be appropriate. Maximisers or satisficers? – Related to the last point. People do not consistently, rationally, maximise. When faced with an abundance of choice, they prefer to satisfice than evaluate, and will often follow social leads rather than think. Things tend to converge – Behaviour trends to a consensus normal. When faced with choices people overwhelmingly just do what they see others doing. Humans are extraordinarily good at mirroring behaviours and receiving influence. People “outsource the cognitive load” of choices to the crowd. Mark’s headline quote was probably “the real influence happens at the table next to you”. Reference examples, word of mouth, and social influence are tremendously important, and so talking about product experiences may be more important than talking about products. This reminded me of Kathy Sierra’s “creating bad-ass users” concept of designing to make people more awesome rather than products they like. If we can expose user-awesome, and make sharing easy, we can normalise the behaviours we want. If we normalize the behaviours we want, people should make and post-rationalize the buying decisions we want.  Where we need to be: “A bigger boy made me do it” Where we are: “a wizard did it and ran away” However, it’s worth bearing in mind that some purchasing decisions are personal and informed rather than social and reactive. There’s a quadrant diagram, in fact. What was really interesting, though, towards the end of the talk, was some advice for working out how social your products might be. The standard technology adoption lifecycle graph is essentially about social product diffusion. So this idea isn’t really new. Geoffrey Moore’s “chasm” idea may not strictly apply. However, his concepts of beachheads and reference segments are exactly what is required to normalize and thus enable purchase decisions (behaviour change). The final thing is that in only very few categories does a better product actually affect purchase decision. Where the choice is personal and informed, this is true. But where it’s personal and impulsive, or in any way social, “better” is trumped by popularity, endorsement, or “point of sale salience”. UX, UCD, and e-commerce know this to be true. A better (and easier) experience will always beat “more features”. Easy to use, and easy to observe being used will beat “what the user says they want”. This made me think about the astounding stickiness of rational fallacies, “common sense” and the pathological willful simplifications of the media. Rational fallacies seem like they’re basically the heuristics we use for post-rationalization. If I were profoundly grimy and cynical, I’d suggest deploying a boat-load in our messaging, to see if they’re really as sticky and appealing as they look. 4 – Changing behaviour through communication, Stephen Donajgrodzki This was a fantastic follow up to Mark’s session. Stephen basically talked us through some tactics used in public information/health comms that implement the kind of behavioural theory Mark introduced. The session was largely about how to get people to do (good) things they’re predisposed not to do, and how communication can (and can’t) make positive interventions. A couple of things stood out, in particular “implementation intentions” and how they can be linked to goals. For example, in order to get people to check and test their smoke alarms (a goal intention, rarely actualized  an information campaign will attempt to link this activity to the clocks going back or forward (a strong implementation intention, well-actualized). The talk reinforced the idea that making behaviour changes easy and visible normalizes them and makes them more likely to succeed. To do this, they have to be embodied throughout a product and service cycle. Experiential disconnects undermine the normalization. So campaigns, products, and customer interactions must be aligned. This is underscored by the second section of the presentation, which talked about interventions and pre-conditions for change. Taking the examples of drug addiction and stopping smoking, Stephen showed us a framework for attempting (and succeeding or failing in) behaviour change. He noted that when the change is something people fundamentally want to do, and that is easy, this gets a to simpler. Coordinated, easily-observed environmental pressures create preconditions for change and build motivation. (price, pub smoking ban, ad campaigns, friend quitting, declining social acceptability) A triggering even leads to a change attempt. (getting a cold and panicking about how bad the cough is) Interventions can be made to enable an attempt (NHS services, public information, nicotine patches) If it succeeds – yay. If it fails, there’s strong negative enforcement. Triggering events seem largely personal, but messaging can intervene in the creation of preconditions and in supporting decisions. Stephen talked more about systems of thinking and “bounded rationality”. The idea being that to enable change you need to break through “automatic” thinking into “reflective” thinking. Disruption and emotion are great tools for this, but that is only the start of the process. It occurs to me that a great deal of market research is focused on determining triggers rather than analysing necessary preconditions. Although they are presumably related. The final section talked about setting goals. Marketing goals are often seen as deriving directly from business goals. However, marketing may be unable to deliver on these directly where decision and behaviour-change processes are involved. In those cases, marketing and communication goals should be to create preconditions. They should also consider priming and norms. Content marketing and brand awareness are good first steps here, as brands can be heuristics in decision making for choice-saturated consumers, or those seeking education. 5 – The power of engaged communities and how to build them, Harriet Minter (the Guardian) The meat of this was that you need to let communities define and establish themselves, and be quick to react to their needs. Harriet had been in charge of building the Guardian’s community sites, and learned a lot about how they come together, stabilize  grow, and react. Crucially, they can’t be about sales or push messaging. A community is not just an audience. It’s essential to start with what this particular segment or tribe are interested in, then what they want to hear. Eventually you can consider – in light of this – what they might want to buy, but you can’t start with the product. A community won’t cohere around one you’re pushing. Her tips for community building were (again, sorry, not verbatim): Set goals Have some targets. Community building sounds vague and fluffy, but you can have (and adjust) concrete goals. Think like a start-up This is the “lean” stuff. Try things, fail quickly, respond. Don’t restrict platforms Let the audience choose them, and be aware of their differences. For example, LinkedIn is very different to Twitter. Track your stats Related to the first point. Keeping an eye on the numbers lets you respond. They should be qualified, however. If you want a community of enterprise decision makers, headcount alone may be a bad metric – have you got CIOs, or just people who want to get jobs by mingling with CIOs? Build brand advocates Do things to involve people and make them awesome, and they’ll cheer-lead for you. The last part really got my attention. Little bits of drive-by kindness go a long way. But more than that, genuinely helping people turns them into powerful advocates. Harriet gave an example of the Guardian engaging with an aspiring journalist on its Q&A forums. Through a series of serendipitous encounters he became a BBC producer, and now enthusiastically speaks up for the Guardian community sites. Cultivating many small, authentic, influential voices may have a better pay-off than schmoozing the big guys. This could be particularly important in the context of Mark and Stephen’s models of social, endorsement-led, and example-led decision making. There’s a lot here I haven’t covered, and it may be worth some follow-up on community building. Thoughts I was quite sceptical of nudge theory and behavioural economics. First off it sounds too good to be true, and second it sounds too sinister to permit. But I haven’t done the background reading. So I’m going to, and if it seems to hold real water, and if it’s possible to do it ethically (Stephen’s presentations suggests it may be) then it’s probably worth exploring. The message seemed to be: change what people do, and they’ll work out why afterwards. Moreover, the people around them will do it too. Make the things you want them to do extraordinarily easy and very, very visible. Normalize and support the decisions you want them to make, and they’ll make them. In practice this means not talking about the thing, but showing the user-awesome. Glib? Perhaps. But it feels worth considering. Also, if I ever run a marketing conference, I’m going to ban speakers from using examples from Apple. Quite apart from not being consistently generalizable, it’s becoming an irritating cliché.

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• obiee memory usage

  - by user554629

  Heap memory is a frequent customer topic. Here's the quick refresher, oriented towards AIX, but the principles apply to other unix implementations. 1. 32-bit processes have a maximum addressability of 4GB; usable application heap size of 2-3 GB.  On AIX it is controlled by an environment variable: export LDR_CNTRL=....=MAXDATA=0x080000000   # 2GB ( The leading zero is deliberate, not required )   1a. It is  possible to get 3.25GB  heap size for a 32-bit process using @DSA (Discontiguous Segment Allocation)     export LDR_CNTRL=MAXDATA=0xd0000000@DSA  # 3.25 GB 32-bit only        One side-effect of using AIX segments "c" and "d" is that shared libraries will be loaded privately, and not shared.        If you need the additional heap space, this is worth the trade-off.  This option is frequently used for 32-bit java.   1b. 64-bit processes have no need for the @DSA option. 2. 64-bit processes can double the 32-bit heap size to 4GB using: export LDR_CNTRL=....=MAXDATA=0x100000000  # 1 with 8-zeros    2a. But this setting would place the same memory limitations on obiee as a 32-bit process    2b. The major benefit of 64-bit is to break the binds of 32-bit addressing.  At a minimum, use 8GB export LDR_CNTRL=....=MAXDATA=0x200000000  # 2 with 8-zeros    2c.  Many large customers are providing extra safety to their servers by using 16GB: export LDR_CNTRL=....=MAXDATA=0x400000000  # 4 with 8-zeros There is no performance penalty for providing virtual memory allocations larger than required by the application.  - If the server only uses 2GB of space in 64-bit ... specifying 16GB just provides an upper bound cushion.    When an unexpected user query causes a sudden memory surge, the extra memory keeps the server running. 3.  The next benefit to 64-bit is that you can provide huge thread stack sizes for      strange queries that might otherwise crash the server.      nqsserver uses fast recursive algorithms to traverse complicated control structures.    This means lots of thread space to hold the stack frames.    3a. Stack frames mostly contain register values;  64-bit registers are twice as large as 32-bit          At a minimum you should  quadruple the size of the server stack threads in NQSConfig.INI          when migrating from 32- to 64-bit, to prevent a rogue query from crashing the server.           Allocate more than is normally necessary for safety.    3b. There is no penalty for allocating more stack size than you need ...           it is just virtual memory;   no real resources  are consumed until the extra space is needed.    3c. Increasing thread stack sizes may require the process heap size (MAXDATA) to be increased.          Heap space is used for dynamic memory requests, and for thread stacks.          No performance penalty to run with large heap and thread stack sizes.           In a 32-bit world, this safety would require careful planning to avoid exceeding 2GM usable storage.     3d. Increasing the number of threads also may require additional heap storage.          Most thread stack frames on obiee are allocated when the server is started,          and the real memory usage increases as threads run work. Does 2.8GB sound like a lot of memory for an AIX application server? - I guess it is what you are accustomed to seeing from "grandpa's applications". - One of the primary design goals of obiee is to trade memory for services ( db, query caches, etc) - 2.8GB is still well under the 4GB heap size allocated with MAXDATA=0x100000000 - 2.8GB process size is also possible even on 32-bit Windows applications - It is not unusual to receive a sudden request for 30MB of contiguous storage on obiee.- This is not a memory leak;  eventually the nqsserver storage will stabilize, but it may take days to do so. vmstat is the tool of choice to observe memory usage.  On AIX vmstat will show  something that may be  startling to some people ... that available free memory ( the 2nd column ) is always  trending toward zero ... no available free memory.  Some customers have concluded that "nearly zero memory free" means it is time to upgrade the server with more real memory.   After the upgrade, the server again shows very little free memory available. Should you be concerned about this?   Many customers are !!  Here is what is happening: - AIX filesystems are built on a paging model.   If you read/write a  filesystem block it is paged into memory ( no read/write system calls ) - This filesystem "page" has its own "backing store" on disk, the original filesystem block.   When the system needs the real memory page holding the file block, there is no need to "page out".    The page can be stolen immediately, because the original is still on disk in the filesystem. - The filesystem  pages tend to collect ... every filesystem block that was ever seen since    system boot is available in memory.  If another application needs the file block, it is retrieved with no physical I/O. What happens if the system does need the memory ... to satisfy a 30MB heap request by nqsserver, for example? - Since the filesystem blocks have their own backing store ( not on a paging device )   the kernel can just steal any filesystem block ... on a least-recently-used basis   to satisfy a new real memory request for "computation pages". No cause for alarm.   vmstat is accurately displaying whether all filesystem blocks have been touched, and now reside in memory.   Back to nqsserver:  when should you be worried about its memory footprint? Answer:  Almost never.   Stop monitoring it ... stop fussing over it ... stop trying to optimize it. This is a production application, and nqsserver uses the memory it requires to accomplish the job, based on demand. C'mon ... never worry?   I'm from New York ... worry is what we do best. Ok, here is the metric you should be watching, using vmstat: - Are you paging ... there are several columns of vmstat outputbash-2.04$ vmstat 3 3 System configuration: lcpu=4 mem=4096MB kthr    memory              page              faults        cpu    ----- ------------ ------------------------ ------------ -----------  r  b    avm   fre  re  pi  po  fr   sr  cy  in   sy  cs us sy id wa  0  0 208492  2600   0   0   0   0    0   0  13   45  73  0  0 99  0  0  0 208492  2600   0   0   0   0    0   0   9   12  77  0  0 99  0  0  0 208492  2600   0   0   0   0    0   0   9   40  86  0  0 99  0 avm is the "available free memory" indicator that trends toward zerore   is "re-page".  The kernel steals a real memory page for one process;  immediately repages back to original processpi  "page in".   A process memory page previously paged out, now paged back in because the process needs itpo "page out" A process memory block was paged out, because it was needed by some other process Light paging activity ( re, pi, po ) is not a concern for worry.   Processes get started, need some memory, go away. Sustained paging activity  is cause for concern.   obiee users are having a terrible day if these counters are always changing. Hang on ... if nqsserver needs that memory and I reduce MAXDATA to keep the process under control, won't the nqsserver process crash when the memory is needed? Yes it will.   It means that nqsserver is configured to require too much memory and there are  lots of options to reduce the real memory requirement.  - number of threads  - size of query cache  - size of sort But I need nqsserver to keep running. Real memory is over-committed.    Many things can cause this:- running all application processes on a single server    ... DB server, web servers, WebLogic/WebSphere, sawserver, nqsserver, etc.   You could move some of those to another host machine and communicate over the network  The need for real memory doesn't go away, it's just distributed to other host machines. - AIX LPAR is configured with too little memory.     The AIX admin needs to provide more real memory to the LPAR running obiee. - More memory to this LPAR affects other partitions. Then it's time to visit your friendly IBM rep and buy more memory.

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• 8 Reasons Why Even Microsoft Agrees the Windows Desktop is a Nightmare

  - by Chris Hoffman

  Let’s be honest: The Windows desktop is a mess. Sure, it’s extremely powerful and has a huge software library, but it’s not a good experience for average people. It’s not even a good experience for geeks, although we tolerate it. Even Microsoft agrees about this. Microsoft’s Surface tablets with Windows RT don’t support any third-party desktop apps. They consider this a feature — users can’t install malware and other desktop junk, so the system will always be speedy and secure. Malware is Still Common Malware may not affect geeks, but it certainly continues to affect average people. Securing Windows, keeping it secure, and avoiding unsafe programs is a complex process. There are over 50 different file extensions that can contain harmful code to keep track of. It’s easy to have theoretical discussions about how malware could infect Mac computers, Android devices, and other systems. But Mac malware is extremely rare, and has  generally been caused by problem with the terrible Java plug-in. Macs are configured to only run executables from identified developers by default, whereas Windows will run everything. Android malware is talked about a lot, but Android malware is rare in the real world and is generally confined to users who disable security protections and install pirated apps. Google has also taken action, rolling out built-in antivirus-like app checking to all Android devices, even old ones running Android 2.3, via Play Services. Whatever the reason, Windows malware is still common while malware for other systems isn’t. We all know it — anyone who does tech support for average users has dealt with infected Windows computers. Even users who can avoid malware are stuck dealing with complex and nagging antivirus programs, especially since it’s now so difficult to trust Microsoft’s antivirus products. Manufacturer-Installed Bloatware is Terrible Sit down with a new Mac, Chromebook, iPad, Android tablet, Linux laptop, or even a Surface running Windows RT and you can enjoy using your new device. The system is a clean slate for you to start exploring and installing your new software. Sit down with a new Windows PC and the system is a mess. Rather than be delighted, you’re stuck reinstalling Windows and then installing the necessary drivers or you’re forced to start uninstalling useless bloatware programs one-by-one, trying to figure out which ones are actually useful. After uninstalling the useless programs, you may end up with a system tray full of icons for ten different hardware utilities anyway. The first experience of using a new Windows PC is frustration, not delight. Yes, bloatware is still a problem on Windows 8 PCs. Manufacturers can customize the Refresh image, preventing bloatware rom easily being removed. Finding a Desktop Program is Dangerous Want to install a Windows desktop program? Well, you’ll have to head to your web browser and start searching. It’s up to you, the user, to know which programs are safe and which are dangerous. Even if you find a website for a reputable program, the advertisements on that page will often try to trick you into downloading fake installers full of adware. While it’s great to have the ability to leave the app store and get software that the platform’s owner hasn’t approved — as on Android — this is no excuse for not providing a good, secure software installation experience for typical users installing typical programs. Even Reputable Desktop Programs Try to Install Junk Even if you do find an entirely reputable program, you’ll have to keep your eyes open while installing it. It will likely try to install adware, add browse toolbars, change your default search engine, or change your web browser’s home page. Even Microsoft’s own programs do this — when you install Skype for Windows desktop, it will attempt to modify your browser settings t ouse Bing, even if you’re specially chosen another search engine and home page. With Microsoft setting such an example, it’s no surprise so many other software developers have followed suit. Geeks know how to avoid this stuff, but there’s a reason program installers continue to do this. It works and tricks many users, who end up with junk installed and settings changed. The Update Process is Confusing On iOS, Android, and Windows RT, software updates come from a single place — the app store. On Linux, software updates come from the package manager. On Mac OS X, typical users’ software updates likely come from the Mac App Store. On the Windows desktop, software updates come from… well, every program has to create its own update mechanism. Users have to keep track of all these updaters and make sure their software is up-to-date. Most programs now have their act together and automatically update by default, but users who have old versions of Flash and Adobe Reader installed are vulnerable until they realize their software isn’t automatically updating. Even if every program updates properly, the sheer mess of updaters is clunky, slow, and confusing in comparison to a centralized update process. Browser Plugins Open Security Holes It’s no surprise that other modern platforms like iOS, Android, Chrome OS, Windows RT, and Windows Phone don’t allow traditional browser plugins, or only allow Flash and build it into the system. Browser plugins provide a wealth of different ways for malicious web pages to exploit the browser and open the system to attack. Browser plugins are one of the most popular attack vectors because of how many users have out-of-date plugins and how many plugins, especially Java, seem to be designed without taking security seriously. Oracle’s Java plugin even tries to install the terrible Ask toolbar when installing security updates. That’s right — the security update process is also used to cram additional adware into users’ machines so unscrupulous companies like Oracle can make a quick buck. It’s no wonder that most Windows PCs have an out-of-date, vulnerable version of Java installed. Battery Life is Terrible Windows PCs have bad battery life compared to Macs, IOS devices, and Android tablets, all of which Windows now competes with. Even Microsoft’s own Surface Pro 2 has bad battery life. Apple’s 11-inch MacBook Air, which has very similar hardware to the Surface Pro 2, offers double its battery life when web browsing. Microsoft has been fond of blaming third-party hardware manufacturers for their poorly optimized drivers in the past, but there’s no longer any room to hide. The problem is clearly Windows. Why is this? No one really knows for sure. Perhaps Microsoft has kept on piling Windows component on top of Windows component and many older Windows components were never properly optimized. Windows Users Become Stuck on Old Windows Versions Apple’s new OS X 10.9 Mavericks upgrade is completely free to all Mac users and supports Macs going back to 2007. Apple has also announced their intention that all new releases of Mac OS X will be free. In 2007, Microsoft had just shipped Windows Vista. Macs from the Windows Vista era are being upgraded to the latest version of the Mac operating system for free, while Windows PCs from the same era are probably still using Windows Vista. There’s no easy upgrade path for these people. They’re stuck using Windows Vista and maybe even the outdated Internet Explorer 9 if they haven’t installed a third-party web browser. Microsoft’s upgrade path is for these people to pay $120 for a full copy of Windows 8.1 and go through a complicated process that’s actaully a clean install. Even users of Windows 8 devices will probably have to pay money to upgrade to Windows 9, while updates for other operating systems are completely free. If you’re a PC geek, a PC gamer, or someone who just requires specialized software that only runs on Windows, you probably use the Windows desktop and don’t want to switch. That’s fine, but it doesn’t mean the Windows desktop is actually a good experience. Much of the burden falls on average users, who have to struggle with malware, bloatware, adware bundled in installers, complex software installation processes, and out-of-date software. In return, all they get is the ability to use a web browser and some basic Office apps that they could use on almost any other platform without all the hassle. Microsoft would agree with this, touting Windows RT and their new “Windows 8-style” app platform as the solution. Why else would Microsoft, a “devices and services” company, position the Surface — a device without traditional Windows desktop programs — as their mass-market device recommended for average people? This isn’t necessarily an endorsement of Windows RT. If you’re tech support for your family members and it comes time for them to upgrade, you may want to get them off the Windows desktop and tell them to get a Mac or something else that’s simple. Better yet, if they get a Mac, you can tell them to visit the Apple Store for help instead of calling you. That’s another thing Windows PCs don’t offer — good manufacturer support. Image Credit: Blanca Stella Mejia on Flickr, Collin Andserson on Flickr, Luca Conti on Flickr     

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• CodePlex Daily Summary for Monday, August 13, 2012

  CodePlex Daily Summary for Monday, August 13, 2012Popular ReleasesDeForm: DeForm v1.0: Initial Version Support for: GaussianBlur effect ConvolveMatrix effect ColorMatrix effect Morphology effectLiteBlog (MVC): LiteBlog 1.31: Features of this release Windows8 styled UI Namespace and code refactoring Resolved the deployment issues in the previous release Added documentation Help file Help file is HTML based built using SandCastle Help file works in all browsers except IE10Self-Tracking Entity Generator for WPF and Silverlight: Self-Tracking Entity Generator v 2.0.0 for VS11: Self-Tracking Entity Generator for WPF and Silverlight v 2.0.0 for Entity Framework 5.0 and Visual Studio 2012Coding4Fun Tools: Coding4Fun.Phone.Toolkit v1.6.0: New Stuff ImageTile Control - think People Tile MicrophoneRecorder - Coding4Fun.Phone.Audio GzipWebClient - Coding4Fun.Phone.Net Serialize - Coding4Fun.Phone.Storage this is code I've written countless times. JSON.net is another alternative ChatBubbleTextBox - Added in Hint TimeSpan languages added: Pl Bug Fixes RoundToggleButton - Enable Visual State not being respected OpacityToggleButton - Enable Visual State not being respected Prompts VS Crash fix for IsPrompt=true More...AssaultCube Reloaded: 2.5.2 Unnamed: Linux has Ubuntu 11.10 32-bit precompiled binaries and Ubuntu 10.10 64-bit precompiled binaries, but you can compile your own as it also contains the source. If you are using Mac or other operating systems, please wait while we try to pack it. Try to compile it. If it fails, download a virtual machine. The server pack is ready for both Windows and Linux, but you might need to compile your own for Linux (source included) Added 3rd person Added mario jumps Fixed nextprimary code exploit ...NPOI: NPOI 2.0: New features a. Implement OpenXml4Net (same as System.Packaging from Microsoft). It supports both .NET 2.0 and .NET 4.0 b. Excel 2007 read/write library (NPOI.XSSF) c. Word 2007 read/write library(NPOI.XWPF) d. NPOI.SS namespace becomes the interface shared between XSSF and HSSF e. Load xlsx template and save as new xlsx file (partially supported) f. Diagonal line in cell both in xls and xlsx g. Support isRightToLeft and setRightToLeft on the common spreadsheet Sheet interface, as per existin...BugNET Issue Tracker: BugNET 1.1: This release includes bug fixes from the 1.0 release for email notifications, RSS feeds, and several other issues. Please see the change log for a full list of changes. http://support.bugnetproject.com/Projects/ReleaseNotes.aspx?pid=1&m=76 Upgrade Notes The following changes to the web.config in the profile section have occurred: Removed <add name="NotificationTypes" type="String" defaultValue="Email" customProviderData="NotificationTypes;nvarchar;255" />Added <add name="ReceiveEmailNotifi...ClosedXML - The easy way to OpenXML: ClosedXML 0.67.0: Conditional formats now accept formulas. Major performance improvement when opening files with merged ranges. Misc fixes.Virtual Keyboard: Virtual Keyboard v2.0 Source Code: This release has a few added keys that were missing in the earlier versions.Visual Rx: V 2.0.20622.9: help will be available at my blog http://blogs.microsoft.co.il/blogs/bnaya/archive/2012/08/12/visual-rx-toc.aspx the SDK is also available though NuGet (search for VisualRx) http://nuget.org/packages/VisualRx if you want to make sure that the Visual Rx Viewer can monitor on your machine, you can install the Visual Rx Tester and run it while the Viewer is running.????: ????2.0.5: 1、?????????????。RiP-Ripper & PG-Ripper: PG-Ripper 1.4.01: changes NEW: Added Support for Clipboard Function in Mono Version NEW: Added Support for "ImgBox.com" links FIXED: "PixHub.eu" links FIXED: "ImgChili.com" links FIXED: Kitty-Kats Forum loginPlayer Framework by Microsoft: Player Framework for Windows 8 (Preview 5): Support for Smooth Streaming SDK beta 2 Support for live playback New bitrate meter and SD/HD indicators Auto smooth streaming track restriction for snapped mode to conserve bandwidth New "Go Live" button and SeekToLive API Support for offset start times Support for Live position unique from end time Support for multiple audio streams (smooth and progressive content) Improved intellisense in JS version Support for Windows 8 RTM ADDITIONAL DOWNLOADSSmooth Streaming Client SD...Media Companion: Media Companion 3.506b: This release includes an update to the XBMC scrapers, for those who prefer to use this method. There were a number of behind-the-scene tweaks to make Media Companion compatible with the new TMDb-V3 API, so it was considered important to get it out to the users to try it out. Please report back any important issues you might find. For this reason, unless you use the XBMC scrapers, there probably isn't any real necessity to download this one! The only other minor change was one to allow the mc...NVorbis: NVorbis v0.3: Fix Ogg page reader to correctly handle "split" packets Fix "zero-energy" packet handling Fix packet reader to always merge packets when needed Add statistics properties to VorbisReader.Stats Add multi-stream API (for Ogg files containing multiple Vorbis streams)System.Net.FtpClient: System.Net.FtpClient 2012.08.08: 2012.08.08 Release. Several changes, see commit notes in source code section. CHM help as well as source for this release are included in the download. Remember that Windows 7 by default (and possibly older versions) will block you from opening the CHM by default due to trust settings. To get around the problem, right click on the CHM, choose properties and click the Un-block button. Please note that this will be the last release tested to compile with the .net 2.0 framework. I will be remov...Isis2 Cloud Computing Library: Isis2 Alpha V1.1.967: This is an alpha pre-release of the August 2012 version of the system. I've been testing and fixing many problems and have also added a new group "lock" API (g.Lock("lock name")/g.Unlock/g.Holder/g.SetLockPolicy); with this, Isis2 can mimic Chubby, Google's locking service. I wouldn't say that the system is entirely stable yet, and I haven't rechecked every single problem I had seen in May/June, but I think it might be good to get some additional use of this release. By now it does seem to...JSON C# Class Generator: JSON CSharp Class Generator 1.3: Support for native JSON.net serializer/deserializer (POCO) New classes layout option: nested classes Better handling of secondary classesAxiom 3D Rendering Engine: v0.8.3376.12322: Changes Since v0.8.3102.12095 ===================================================================== Updated ndoc3 binaries to fix bug Added uninstall.ps1 to nuspec packages fixed revision component in version numbering Fixed sln referencing VS 11 Updated OpenTK Assemblies Added CultureInvarient to numeric parsing Added First Visual Studio 2010 Project Template (DirectX9) Updated SharpInputSystem Assemblies Backported fix for OpenGL Auto-created window not responding to input Fixed freeInterna...DotSpatial: DotSpatial 1.3: This is a Minor Release. See the changes in the issue tracker. Minimal -- includes DotSpatial core and essential extensions Extended -- includes debugging symbols and additional extensions Tutorials are available. Just want to run the software? End user (non-programmer) version available branded as MapWindow Want to add your own feature? Develop a plugin, using the template and contribute to the extension feed (you can also write extensions that you distribute in other ways). Components ...New Projects.NET Weather Component: NET Weather is a component that will allow you to query various weather services for forcasts, current observations, etc..AxisProvider: Axis is a .NET reactive extensions based subscription and publication framework.Blawkay Hockey: Some xna testing i'm doing.Bolt Browser: Browse the web with ease. You'll never meet a browser more simple, friendly and easy to use. Blaze through the web the way it should be. Fast and beautiful.dotHTML: dotHTML provides a .NET-based DOM for HTML and CSS, facilitating code-driven creation of Web data.Fake DbConnection for Unit Testing EF Code: Unit test Entity Framework 4.3+ and confirm you have valid LINQ-to-Entities code without any need for a database connection.FNHMVC: FNHMVC is an architectural foundation for building maintainable web applications with ASP.NET, MVC, NHibernate & Autofac.FreeAgentMobile: FreeAgentMobile is a Windows Phone project intended to provide access to the FreeAgent Accounting application.Lexer: Generate a lexical analyzer (lexer) for a custom grammar by editing a T4 template.LibXmlSocket: XmlSocket LibraryMaxAlarm: This progect i create for my friend Igor.Minecraft Text Splitter: This tool was made to assist you in writing Minecraft books by splitting text into 255-byte pages and auto-copying it for later pasting into Minecraft.MxPlugin: MxPlugin is a project which demonstrates the calling of functions contained in DLLs both statically and dynamically. Parser: Generate a parser for a custom grammar by editing a T4 template.Sliding Boxes Windows Phone Game source code: .SmartSpider: ??????Http???????????，????????、??、???????。techsolittestpro: This project is testting project of codeplexThe Tiff Library - Fast & Simple .Net Tiff Library: The Tiff Library - Fast & Simple .Net Tiff LibraryVirtualizingWrapPanel: testVisual Rx: Visual Rx is a bundle of API and a Viewer which can monitor and visualize Rx datum stream (at run-time).we7T: testWebForms Transverse Library: This projet is aimed to compile best practices in ASP .NET WebForms development as generic tools working with UI components from various origins.

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• WinQual: Why would WER not accept code-signing certificates?

  - by Ian Boyd

  In 2005 i tried to establish a WinQual account with Microsoft, so i could pick up our (if any) crash dump files submitted automatically through Windows Error Reporting (WER). i was not allowed to have my crash dumps, because i don't have a Verisign certificate. Instead i have a cheaper one, generated by a Verisign subsidiary: Thawte. The method in which you join is: you digitally sign a sample exe they provide. This proves that you are the same signer that signed apps that they got crash dumps from in the wild. Cryptographically, the private key is needed to generate a digital signature on an executable. Only the holder of that private key can create a signature with for the matching public key. It doesn't matter who generated that private key. That includes certificates that are generated from: self-signing Wells Fargo DigiCert SecureTrust Trustware QuoVadis GoDaddy Entrust Cybertrust GeoTrust GlobalSign Comodo Thawte Verisign Yet Microsof's WinQual only accepts digital certificates generated by Verisign. Not even Verisign's subsidiaries are good enough (Thawte). Can anyone think of any technical, legal or ethical reason why Microsoft doesn't want to accept code-signing certificates? The WinQual site says: Why Is a Digital Certificate Required for Winqual Membership? A digital certificate helps protect your company from individuals who seek to impersonate members of your staff or who would otherwise commit acts of fraud against your company. Using a digital certificate enables proof of an identity for a user or an organization. Is somehow a Thawte digital certificate not secure? Two years later, i sent a reminder notice to WinQual that i've been waiting to be able to get at my crash dumps. The response from WinQual team was: Hello, Thanks for the reminder. We have notified the appropriate people that this is still a request. In 2008 i asked this question in a Microsoft support forum, and the response was: We are only setup to accept VeriSign Certificates at this point. We have not had an overwhelming demand to support other types of certificates. What can it possibly mean to not be "setup" to accept other kinds of certificates? If the thumbprint of the key that signed the WinQual.exe test app is the same as the thumbprint that signed the executable who's crash dump you got in the wild: it is proven - they are my crash dumps, give them to me. And it's not like there's a special API to check if a Verisign digital signature is valid, as opposed to all other digital signatures. A valid signature is valid no matter who generated the key. Microsoft is free to not trust the signer, but that's not the same as identity. So that is my question, can anyone think of any practical reason why WinQual isn't setup to support digital signatures? One person theorized that the answer is that they're just lazy: Not that I know but I would assume that the team running the winQual system is a live team and not a dev team - as in, personality and skillset geared towards maintenance of existing systems. I could be wrong though. They don't want to do work to change it. But can anyone think of anything that would need to be changed? It's the same logic no matter what generated the key: "does the thumbprint match". What am i missing?

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• Visitor and templated virtual methods

  - by Thomas Matthews

  In a typical implementation of the Visitor pattern, the class must account for all variations (descendants) of the base class. There are many instances where the same method content in the visitor is applied to the different methods. A templated virtual method would be ideal in this case, but for now, this is not allowed. So, can templated methods be used to resolve virtual methods of the parent class? Given (the foundation): struct Visitor_Base; // Forward declaration. struct Base { virtual accept_visitor(Visitor_Base& visitor) = 0; }; // More forward declarations struct Base_Int; struct Base_Long; struct Base_Short; struct Base_UInt; struct Base_ULong; struct Base_UShort; struct Visitor_Base { virtual void operator()(Base_Int& b) = 0; virtual void operator()(Base_Long& b) = 0; virtual void operator()(Base_Short& b) = 0; virtual void operator()(Base_UInt& b) = 0; virtual void operator()(Base_ULong& b) = 0; virtual void operator()(Base_UShort& b) = 0; }; struct Base_Int : public Base { void accept_visitor(Visitor_Base& visitor) { visitor(*this); } }; struct Base_Long : public Base { void accept_visitor(Visitor_Base& visitor) { visitor(*this); } }; struct Base_Short : public Base { void accept_visitor(Visitor_Base& visitor) { visitor(*this); } }; struct Base_UInt : public Base { void accept_visitor(Visitor_Base& visitor) { visitor(*this); } }; struct Base_ULong : public Base { void accept_visitor(Visitor_Base& visitor) { visitor(*this); } }; struct Base_UShort : public Base { void accept_visitor(Visitor_Base& visitor) { visitor(*this); } }; Now that the foundation is laid, here is where the kicker comes in (templated methods): struct Visitor_Cout : public Visitor { template <class Receiver> void operator() (Receiver& r) { std::cout << "Visitor_Cout method not implemented.\n"; } }; Intentionally, Visitor_Cout does not contain the keyword virtual in the method declaration. All the other attributes of the method signatures match the parent declaration (or perhaps specification). In the big picture, this design allows developers to implement common visitation functionality that differs only by the type of the target object (the object receiving the visit). The implementation above is my suggestion for alerts when the derived visitor implementation hasn't implement an optional method. Is this legal by the C++ specification? (I don't trust when some says that it works with compiler XXX. This is a question against the general language.)

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• Web API, JavaScript, Chrome &amp; Cross-Origin Resource Sharing

  - by Brian Lanham

  The team spent much of the week working through this issues related to Chrome running on Windows 8 consuming cross-origin resources using Web API.  We thought it was resolved on day 2 but it resurfaced the next day.  We definitely resolved it today though.  I believe I do not fully understand the situation but I am going to explain what I know in an effort to help you avoid and/or resolve a similar issue. References We referenced many sources during our trial-and-error troubleshooting.  These are the links we reference in order of applicability to the solution: Zoiner Tejada JavaScript and other material from -> http://www.devproconnections.com/content1/topic/microsoft-azure-cors-141869/catpath/windows-azure-platform2/page/3 WebDAV Where I learned about “Accept” –>  http://www-jo.se/f.pfleger/cors-and-iis? IT Hit Tells about NOT using ‘*’ –> http://www.webdavsystem.com/ajax/programming/cross_origin_requests Carlos Figueira Sample back-end code (newer) –> http://code.msdn.microsoft.com/windowsdesktop/Implementing-CORS-support-a677ab5d (older version) –> http://code.msdn.microsoft.com/CORS-support-in-ASPNET-Web-01e9980a   Background As a measure of protection, Web designers (W3C) and implementers (Google, Microsoft, Mozilla) made it so that a request, especially a JSON request (but really any URL), sent from one domain to another will only work if the requestee “knows” about the requester and allows requests from it. So, for example, if you write a ASP.NET MVC Web API service and try to consume it from multiple apps, the browsers used may (will?) indicate that you are not allowed by showing an “Access-Control-Allow-Origin” error indicating the requester is not allowed to make requests. Internet Explorer (big surprise) is the odd-hair-colored step-child in this mix. It seems that running locally at least IE allows this for development purposes.  Chrome and Firefox do not.  In fact, Chrome is quite restrictive.  Notice the images below. IE shows data (a tabular view with one row for each day of a week) while Chrome does not (trust me, neither does Firefox).  Further, the Chrome developer console shows an XmlHttpRequest (XHR) error. Screen captures from IE (left) and Chrome (right). Note that Chrome does not display data and the console shows an XHR error. Why does this happen? The Web browser submits these requests and processes the responses and each browser is different. Okay, so, IE is probably the only one that’s truly different.  However, Chrome has a specific process of performing a “pre-flight” check to make sure the service can respond to an “Access-Control-Allow-Origin” or Cross-Origin Resource Sharing (CORS) request.  So basically, the sequence is, if I understand correctly:  1)Page Loads –> 2)JavaScript Request Processed by Browser –> 3)Browsers Prepares to Submit Request –> 4)[Chrome] Browser Submits Pre-Flight Request –> 5)Server Responds with HTTP 200 –> 6)Browser Submits Request –> 7)Server Responds with Data –> 8)Page Shows Data This situation occurs for both GET and POST methods.  Typically, GET methods are called with query string parameters so there is no data posted.  Instead, the requesting domain needs to be permitted to request data but generally nothing more is required.  POSTs on the other hand send form data.  Therefore, more configuration is required (you’ll see the configuration below).  AJAX requests are not friendly with this (POSTs) either because they don’t post in a form. How to fix it. The team went through many iterations of self-hair removal and we think we finally have a working solution.  The trial-and-error approach eventually worked and we referenced many sources for the information.  I indicate those references above.  There are basically three (3) tasks needed to make this work. Assumptions: You are using Visual Studio, Web API, JavaScript, and have Cross-Origin Resource Sharing, and several browsers. 1. Configure the client Joel Cochran centralized our “cors-oriented” JavaScript (from here). There are two calls including one for GET and one for POST function(url, data, callback) {             console.log(data);             $.support.cors = true;             var jqxhr = $.post(url, data, callback, "json")                 .error(function(jqXhHR, status, errorThrown) {                     if ($.browser.msie && window.XDomainRequest) {                         var xdr = new XDomainRequest();                         xdr.open("post", url);                         xdr.onload = function () {                             if (callback) {                                 callback(JSON.parse(this.responseText), 'success');                             }                         };                         xdr.send(data);                     } else {                         console.log(">" + jqXhHR.status);                         alert("corsAjax.post error: " + status + ", " + errorThrown);                     }                 });         }; The GET CORS JavaScript function (credit to Zoiner Tejada) function(url, callback) {             $.support.cors = true;             var jqxhr = $.get(url, null, callback, "json")                 .error(function(jqXhHR, status, errorThrown) {                     if ($.browser.msie && window.XDomainRequest) {                         var xdr = new XDomainRequest();                         xdr.open("get", url);                         xdr.onload = function () {                             if (callback) {                                 callback(JSON.parse(this.responseText), 'success');                             }                         };                         xdr.send();                     } else {                         alert("CORS is not supported in this browser or from this origin.");                     }                 });         }; The POST CORS JavaScript function (credit to Zoiner Tejada) Now you need to call these functions to get and post your data (instead of, say, using $.Ajax). Here is a GET example: corsAjax.get(url, function(data) { if (data !== null && data.length !== undefined) { // do something with data } }); And here is a POST example: corsAjax.post(url, item); Simple…except…you’re not done yet. 2. Change Web API Controllers to Allow CORS There are actually two steps here.  Do you remember above when we mentioned the “pre-flight” check?  Chrome actually asks the server if it is allowed to ask it for cross-origin resource sharing access.  So you need to let the server know it’s okay.  This is a two-part activity.  a) Add the appropriate response header Access-Control-Allow-Origin, and b) permit the API functions to respond to various methods including GET, POST, and OPTIONS.  OPTIONS is the method that Chrome and other browsers use to ask the server if it can ask about permissions.  Here is an example of a Web API controller thus decorated: NOTE: You’ll see a lot of references to using “*” in the header value.  For security reasons, Chrome does NOT recognize this is valid. [HttpHeader("Access-Control-Allow-Origin", "http://localhost:51234")] [HttpHeader("Access-Control-Allow-Credentials", "true")] [HttpHeader("Access-Control-Allow-Methods", "ACCEPT, PROPFIND, PROPPATCH, COPY, MOVE, DELETE, MKCOL, LOCK, UNLOCK, PUT, GETLIB, VERSION-CONTROL, CHECKIN, CHECKOUT, UNCHECKOUT, REPORT, UPDATE, CANCELUPLOAD, HEAD, OPTIONS, GET, POST")] [HttpHeader("Access-Control-Allow-Headers", "Accept, Overwrite, Destination, Content-Type, Depth, User-Agent, X-File-Size, X-Requested-With, If-Modified-Since, X-File-Name, Cache-Control")] [HttpHeader("Access-Control-Max-Age", "3600")] public abstract class BaseApiController : ApiController {     [HttpGet]     [HttpOptions]     public IEnumerable<foo> GetFooItems(int id)     {         return foo.AsEnumerable();     }     [HttpPost]     [HttpOptions]     public void UpdateFooItem(FooItem fooItem)     {         // NOTE: The fooItem object may or may not         // (probably NOT) be set with actual data.         // If not, you need to extract the data from         // the posted form manually.         if (fooItem.Id == 0) // However you check for default...         {             // We use NewtonSoft.Json.             string jsonString = context.Request.Form.GetValues(0)[0].ToString();             Newtonsoft.Json.JsonSerializer js = new Newtonsoft.Json.JsonSerializer();             fooItem = js.Deserialize<FooItem>(new Newtonsoft.Json.JsonTextReader(new System.IO.StringReader(jsonString)));         }         // Update the set fooItem object.     } } Please note a few specific additions here: * The header attributes at the class level are required.  Note all of those methods and headers need to be specified but we find it works this way so we aren’t touching it. * Web API will actually deserialize the posted data into the object parameter of the called method on occasion but so far we don’t know why it does and doesn’t. * [HttpOptions] is, again, required for the pre-flight check. * The “Access-Control-Allow-Origin” response header should NOT NOT NOT contain an ‘*’. 3. Headers and Methods and Such We had most of this code in place but found that Chrome and Firefox still did not render the data.  Interestingly enough, Fiddler showed that the GET calls succeeded and the JSON data is returned properly.  We learned that among the headers set at the class level, we needed to add “ACCEPT”.  Note that I accidentally added it to methods and to headers.  Adding it to methods worked but I don’t know why.  We added it to headers also for good measure. [HttpHeader("Access-Control-Allow-Methods", "ACCEPT, PROPFIND, PROPPA... [HttpHeader("Access-Control-Allow-Headers", "Accept, Overwrite, Destin... Next Steps That should do it.  If it doesn’t let us know.  What to do next?  * Don’t hardcode the allowed domains.  Note that port numbers and other domain name specifics will cause problems and must be specified.  If this changes do you really want to deploy updated software?  Consider Miguel Figueira’s approach in the following link to writing a custom HttpHeaderAttribute class that allows you to specify the domain names and then you can do it dynamically.  There are, of course, other ways to do it dynamically but this is a clean approach. http://code.msdn.microsoft.com/windowsdesktop/Implementing-CORS-support-a677ab5d

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• Finding the Right Solution to Source and Manage Your Contractors

  - by mark.rosenberg(at)oracle.com

  Many of our PeopleSoft Enterprise applications customers operate in service-based industries, and all of our customers have at least some internal service units, such as IT, marketing, and facilities. Employing the services of contractors, often referred to as "contingent labor," to deliver either or both internal and external services is common practice. As we've transitioned from an industrial age to a knowledge age, talent has become a primary competitive advantage for most organizations. Contingent labor offers talent on flexible terms; it offers the ability to scale up operations, close skill gaps, and manage risk in the process of delivering services. Talent comes from many sources and the rise in the contingent worker (contractor, consultant, temporary, part time) has increased significantly in the past decade and is expected to reach 40 percent in the next decade. Managing the total pool of talent in a seamless integrated fashion not only saves organizations money and increases efficiency, but creates a better place for workers of all kinds to work. Although the term "contingent labor" is frequently used to describe both contractors and employees who have flexible schedules and relationships with an organization, the remainder of this discussion focuses on contractors. The term "contingent labor" is used interchangeably with "contractor." Recognizing the importance of contingent labor, our PeopleSoft customers often ask our team, "What Oracle vendor management system (VMS) applications should I evaluate for managing contractors?" In response, I thought it would be useful to describe and compare the three most common Oracle-based options available to our customers. They are:   The enterprise licensed software model in which you implement and utilize the PeopleSoft Services Procurement (sPro) application and potentially other PeopleSoft applications;  The software-as-a-service model in which you gain access to a derivative of PeopleSoft sPro from an Oracle Business Process Outsourcing Partner; and  The managed service provider (MSP) model in which staffing industry professionals utilize either your enterprise licensed software or the software-as-a-service application to administer your contingent labor program. At this point, you may be asking yourself, "Why three options?" The answer is that since there is no "one size fits all" in terms of talent, there is also no "one size fits all" for effectively sourcing and managing contingent workers. Various factors influence how an organization thinks about and relates to its contractors, and each of the three Oracle-based options addresses an organization's needs and preferences differently. For the purposes of this discussion, I will describe the options with respect to (A) pricing and software provisioning models; (B) control and flexibility; (C) level of engagement with contractors; and (D) approach to sourcing, employment law, and financial settlement. Option 1:  Enterprise Licensed Software In this model, you purchase from Oracle the license and support for the applications you need. Typically, you license PeopleSoft sPro as your VMS tool for sourcing, monitoring, and paying your contract labor. In conjunction with sPro, you can also utilize PeopleSoft Human Capital Management (HCM) applications (if you do not already) to configure more advanced business processes for recruiting, training, and tracking your contractors. Many customers choose this enterprise license software model because of the functionality and natural integration of the PeopleSoft applications and because the cost for the PeopleSoft software is explicit. There is no fee per transaction to source each contractor under this model. Our customers that employ contractors to augment their permanent staff on billable client engagements often find this model appealing because there are no fees to affect their profit margins. With this model, you decide whether to have your own IT organization run the software or have the software hosted and managed by either Oracle or another application services provider. Your organization, perhaps with the assistance of consultants, configures, deploys, and operates the software for managing your contingent workforce. This model offers you the highest level of control and flexibility since your organization can configure the contractor process flow exactly to your business and security requirements and can extend the functionality with PeopleTools. This option has proven very valuable and applicable to our customers engaged in government contracting because their contingent labor management practices are subject to complex standards and regulations. Customers find a great deal of value in the application functionality and configurability the enterprise licensed software offers for managing contingent labor. Some examples of that functionality are... The ability to create a tiered network of preferred suppliers including competencies, pricing agreements, and elaborate candidate management capabilities. Configurable alerts and online collaboration for bid, resource requisition, timesheet, and deliverable entry, routing, and approval for both resource and deliverable-based services. The ability to manage contractors with the same PeopleSoft HCM and Projects applications that are used to manage the permanent workforce. Because it allows you to utilize much of the same PeopleSoft HCM and Projects application functionality for contractors that you use for permanent employees, the enterprise licensed software model supports the deepest level of engagement with the contingent workforce. For example, you can: fill job openings with contingent labor; guide contingent workers through essential safety and compliance training with PeopleSoft Enterprise Learning Management; and source contingent workers directly to project-based assignments in PeopleSoft Resource Management and PeopleSoft Program Management. This option enables contingent workers to collaborate closely with your permanent staff on complex, knowledge-based efforts - R&D projects, billable client contracts, architecture and engineering projects spanning multiple years, and so on. With the enterprise licensed software model, your organization maintains responsibility for the sourcing, onboarding (including adherence to employment laws), and financial settlement processes. This means your organization maintains on staff or hires the expertise in these domains to utilize the software and interact with suppliers and contractors. Option 2:  Software as a Service (SaaS) The effort involved in setting up and operating VMS software to handle a contingent workforce leads many organizations to seek a system that can be activated and configured within a few days and for which they can pay based on usage. Oracle's Business Process Outsourcing partner, Provade, Inc., provides exactly this option to our customers. Provade offers its vendor management software as a service over the Internet and usually charges your organization a fee that is a percentage of your total contingent labor spending processed through the Provade software. (Percentage of spend is the predominant fee model, although not the only one.) In addition to lower implementation costs, the effort of configuring and maintaining the software is largely upon Provade, not your organization. This can be very appealing to IT organizations that are thinly stretched supporting other important information technology initiatives. Built upon PeopleSoft sPro, the Provade solution is tailored for simple and quick deployment and administration. Provade has added capabilities to clone users rapidly and has simplified business documents, like work orders and change orders, to facilitate enterprise-wide, self-service adoption with little to no training. Provade also leverages Oracle Business Intelligence Enterprise Edition (OBIEE) to provide integrated spend analytics and dashboards. Although pure customization is more limited than with the enterprise licensed software model, Provade offers a very effective option for organizations that are regularly on-boarding and off-boarding high volumes of contingent staff hired to perform discrete support tasks (for example, order fulfillment during the holiday season, hourly clerical work, desktop technology repairs, and so on) or project tasks. The software is very configurable and at the same time very intuitive to even the most computer-phobic users. The level of contingent worker engagement your organization can achieve with the Provade option is generally the same as with the enterprise licensed software model since Provade can automatically establish contingent labor resources in your PeopleSoft applications. Provade has pre-built integrations to Oracle's PeopleSoft and the Oracle E-Business Suite procurement, projects, payables, and HCM applications, so that you can evaluate, train, assign, and track contingent workers like your permanent employees. Similar to the enterprise licensed software model, your organization is responsible for the contingent worker sourcing, administration, and financial settlement processes. This means your organization needs to maintain the staff expertise in these domains. Option 3:  Managed Services Provider (MSP) Whether you are using the enterprise licensed model or the SaaS model, you may want to engage the services of sourcing, employment, payroll, and financial settlement professionals to administer your contingent workforce program. Firms that offer this expertise are often referred to as "MSPs," and they are typically staffing companies that also offer permanent and temporary hiring services. (In fact, many of the major MSPs are Oracle applications customers themselves, and they utilize the PeopleSoft Solution for the Staffing Industry to run their own business operations.) Usually, MSPs place their staff on-site at your facilities, and they can utilize either your enterprise licensed PeopleSoft sPro application or the Provade VMS SaaS software to administer the network of suppliers providing contingent workers. When you utilize an MSP, there is a separate fee for the MSP's service that is typically funded by the participating suppliers of the contingent labor. Also in this model, the suppliers of the contingent labor (not the MSP) usually pay the contingent labor force. With an MSP, you are intentionally turning over business process control for the advantages associated with having someone else manage the processes. The software option you choose will to a certain extent affect your process flexibility; however, the MSPs are often able to adapt their processes to the unique demands of your business. When you engage an MSP, you will want to give some thought to the level of engagement and "partnering" you need with your contingent workforce. Because the MSP acts as an intermediary, it can be very valuable in handling high volume, routine contracting for which there is a relatively low need for "partnering" with the contingent workforce. However, if your organization (or part of your organization) engages contingent workers for high-profile client projects that require diplomacy, intensive amounts of interaction, and personal trust, introducing an MSP into the process may prove less effective than handling the process with your own staff. In fact, in many organizations, it is common to enlist an MSP to handle contractors working on internal projects and to have permanent employees handle the contractor relationships that affect the portion of the services portfolio focused on customer-facing, billable projects. One of the key advantages of enlisting an MSP is that you do not have to maintain the expertise required for orchestrating the sourcing, hiring, and paying of contingent workers.  These are the domain of the MSPs. If your own staff members are not prepared to manage the essential "overhead" processes associated with contingent labor, working with an MSP can make solid business sense. Proper administration of a contingent workforce can make the difference between project success and failure, operating profit and loss, and legal compliance and fines. Concluding Thoughts There is little doubt that thoughtfully and purposefully constructing a service delivery strategy that leverages the strengths of contingent workers can lead to better projects, deliverables, and business results. What requires a bit more thinking is determining the platform (or platforms) that will enable each part of your organization to best deliver on its mission.

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• How to give ASP.NET access to a private key in a certificate in the certificate store?

  - by thames

  I have an ASP.NET application that accesses private key in a certificate in the certificates store. On Windows Server 2003 I was able to use winhttpcertcfg.exe to give private key access to the NETWORK SERVICE account. How do I give permissions to access a Private Key in a certificate in the certificate store (Local Computer\Personal) on a Windows Server 2008 R2 in an IIS 7.5 website? I've tried giving Full Trust access to "Everyone", "IIS AppPool\DefaultAppPool", "IIS_IUSRS", and everyother security account I could find using the Certificates MMC (Server 2008 R2). However the below code demonstrates that the code does not have access to the Private Key of a certificate that was imported with the private key. The code instead throws and error everytime the private key property is accessed. Default.aspx <%@ Page Language="C#" AutoEventWireup="true" CodeFile="Default.aspx.cs" Inherits="_Default" %> <%@ Import Namespace="System.Security.Cryptography.X509Certificates" %> <!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd"> <html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"> <head runat="server"> <title></title> </head> <body> <form id="form1" runat="server"> <div> <asp:Repeater ID="repeater1" runat="server"> <HeaderTemplate> <table> <tr> <td> Cert </td> <td> Public Key </td> <td> Private Key </td> </tr> </HeaderTemplate> <ItemTemplate> <tr> <td> <%#((X509Certificate2)Container.DataItem).GetNameInfo(X509NameType.SimpleName, false) %> </td> <td> <%#((X509Certificate2)Container.DataItem).HasPublicKeyAccess() %> </td> <td> <%#((X509Certificate2)Container.DataItem).HasPrivateKeyAccess() %> </td> </tr> </ItemTemplate> <FooterTemplate> </table></FooterTemplate> </asp:Repeater> </div> </form> </body> </html> Default.aspx.cs using System; using System.Security.Cryptography; using System.Security.Cryptography.X509Certificates; using System.Web.UI; public partial class _Default : Page { public X509Certificate2Collection Certificates; protected void Page_Load(object sender, EventArgs e) { // Local Computer\Personal var store = new X509Store(StoreLocation.LocalMachine); // create and open store for read-only access store.Open(OpenFlags.ReadOnly); Certificates = store.Certificates; repeater1.DataSource = Certificates; repeater1.DataBind(); } } public static class Extensions { public static string HasPublicKeyAccess(this X509Certificate2 cert) { try { AsymmetricAlgorithm algorithm = cert.PublicKey.Key; } catch (Exception ex) { return "No"; } return "Yes"; } public static string HasPrivateKeyAccess(this X509Certificate2 cert) { try { string algorithm = cert.PrivateKey.KeyExchangeAlgorithm; } catch (Exception ex) { return "No"; } return "Yes"; } }

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• Clickonce installation fails after addition of WCF service project

  - by Ant

  So I have a winform solution, deployed via clickonce. Eveything worked fine until i added a WCF project. (see error in parsing the manifest file at end of post) Now I notice that MSBuild compiles the service into a _PublishedWebsites dir. I don't know what the need for this is, but I am suspecting this is the cause of the problem. This wcf project references some other projects within the solution. I am actually hosting the wcf service within the application so I don't really need MSBuild to do all this for me. Any ideas? ===================================================================================== PLATFORM VERSION INFO Windows : 5.1.2600.131072 (Win32NT) Common Language Runtime : 2.0.50727.3603 System.Deployment.dll : 2.0.50727.3053 (netfxsp.050727-3000) mscorwks.dll : 2.0.50727.3603 (GDR.050727-3600) dfdll.dll : 2.0.50727.3053 (netfxsp.050727-3000) dfshim.dll : 2.0.50727.3053 (netfxsp.050727-3000) SOURCES Deployment url : file:///C:/applications/abc/dev/abc.Application.application IDENTITIES Deployment Identity : Flow Management System.app, Version=1.4.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=8453086392175e0f, processorArchitecture=msil APPLICATION SUMMARY * Installable application. * Trust url parameter is set. ERROR SUMMARY Below is a summary of the errors, details of these errors are listed later in the log. * Activation of C:\applications\abc\dev\abc.Application.application resulted in exception. Following failure messages were detected: + Exception reading manifest from file:///C:/applications/abc/dev/1.4.0.0/abc.Application.exe.manifest: the manifest may not be valid or the file could not be opened. + Parsing and DOM creation of the manifest resulted in error. Following parsing errors were noticed: -HRESULT: 0x80070c81 Start line: 0 Start column: 0 Host file: + Exception from HRESULT: 0x80070C81 COMPONENT STORE TRANSACTION FAILURE SUMMARY No transaction error was detected. WARNINGS There were no warnings during this operation. OPERATION PROGRESS STATUS * [12/03/2010 6:33:53 PM] : Activation of C:\applications\abc\dev\abc.Application.application has started. * [12/03/2010 6:33:53 PM] : Processing of deployment manifest has successfully completed. * [12/03/2010 6:33:53 PM] : Installation of the application has started. ERROR DETAILS Following errors were detected during this operation. * [12/03/2010 6:33:53 PM] System.Deployment.Application.InvalidDeploymentException (ManifestParse) - Exception reading manifest from file:///C:/applications/abc/dev/1.4.0.0/abc.Application.exe.manifest: the manifest may not be valid or the file could not be opened. - Source: System.Deployment - Stack trace: at System.Deployment.Application.ManifestReader.FromDocument(String localPath, ManifestType manifestType, Uri sourceUri) at System.Deployment.Application.DownloadManager.DownloadManifest(Uri& sourceUri, String targetPath, IDownloadNotification notification, DownloadOptions options, ManifestType manifestType, ServerInformation& serverInformation) at System.Deployment.Application.DownloadManager.DownloadApplicationManifest(AssemblyManifest deploymentManifest, String targetDir, Uri deploymentUri, IDownloadNotification notification, DownloadOptions options, Uri& appSourceUri, String& appManifestPath) at System.Deployment.Application.ApplicationActivator.DownloadApplication(SubscriptionState subState, ActivationDescription actDesc, Int64 transactionId, TempDirectory& downloadTemp) at System.Deployment.Application.ApplicationActivator.InstallApplication(SubscriptionState& subState, ActivationDescription actDesc) at System.Deployment.Application.ApplicationActivator.PerformDeploymentActivation(Uri activationUri, Boolean isShortcut, String textualSubId, String deploymentProviderUrlFromExtension, BrowserSettings browserSettings, String& errorPageUrl) at System.Deployment.Application.ApplicationActivator.ActivateDeploymentWorker(Object state) --- Inner Exception --- System.Deployment.Application.InvalidDeploymentException (ManifestParse) - Parsing and DOM creation of the manifest resulted in error. Following parsing errors were noticed: -HRESULT: 0x80070c81 Start line: 0 Start column: 0 Host file: - Source: System.Deployment - Stack trace: at System.Deployment.Application.Manifest.AssemblyManifest.LoadCMSFromStream(Stream stream) at System.Deployment.Application.Manifest.AssemblyManifest..ctor(FileStream fileStream) at System.Deployment.Application.ManifestReader.FromDocument(String localPath, ManifestType manifestType, Uri sourceUri) --- Inner Exception --- System.Runtime.InteropServices.COMException - Exception from HRESULT: 0x80070C81 - Source: System.Deployment - Stack trace: at System.Deployment.Internal.Isolation.IsolationInterop.CreateCMSFromXml(Byte[] buffer, UInt32 bufferSize, IManifestParseErrorCallback Callback, Guid& riid) at System.Deployment.Application.Manifest.AssemblyManifest.LoadCMSFromStream(Stream stream) COMPONENT STORE TRANSACTION DETAILS No transaction information is available.

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• curl_init undefined?

  - by udaya

  Hi I am importing the contacts from gmail to my page ..... The process doesnot work due to this error 'curl_init' is not defined The suggestion i got is to 1.uncomment destination curl.dll 2.copy the following libraries to the windows/system32 dir. ssleay32.dll libeay32.dll 3.copy php_curl.dll to windows/system32 After trying all these i refreshed my xampp Even then error occurs This is my page where i am trying to import the gmail contacts ` // set URL and other appropriate options curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_URL, "http://www.example.com/"); curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_HEADER, 0); // grab URL and pass it to the browser curl_exec($ch); // close cURL resource, and free up system resources curl_close($ch); ? "HOSTED_OR_GOOGLE", "Email" = $_POST['Email'], echo "Passwd" = $_POST['Passwd'], "service" = "cp", "source" = "tutsmore/1.2" ); //Now we are going to post these datas to the clientLogin url. // Initialize the curl object with the $curl = curl_init($clientlogin_url); //Make the post true curl_setopt($curl, CURLOPT_POST, true); //Passing the above array of parameters. curl_setopt($curl, CURLOPT_POSTFIELDS, $clientlogin_post); //Set this for authentication and ssl communication. curl_setopt($curl, CURLOPT_HTTPAUTH, CURLAUTH_ANY); //provide false to not to check the server for the certificate. curl_setopt($curl, CURLOPT_SSL_VERIFYPEER, false); //Tell curl to just don't echo the data but return it to a variable. curl_setopt($curl, CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER, 1); //The variable containing response $response = curl_exec($curl); //Check whether the user is successfully login using the preg_match and save the auth key if the user //is successfully logged in preg_match("/Auth=([a-z0-9_-]+)/i", $response, $matches); $auth = $matches[1]; // Include the Auth string in the headers $headers = array("Authorization: GoogleLogin auth=" . $auth); // Make the request to the google contacts feed with the auth key $curl = curl_init('http://www.google.com/m8/feeds/contacts/default/full?max-results=10000'); //passing the headers of auth key. curl_setopt($curl, CURLOPT_HTTPHEADER, $headers); //Return the result in a variable curl_setopt($curl, CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER, 1); //the variable with the response. $feed = curl_exec($curl); //Create empty array of contacts echo "contacts".$contacts=array(); //Initialize the DOMDocument object $doc=new DOMDocument(); //Check whether the feed is empty //If not empty then load that feed. if (!empty($feed)) $doc-loadHTML($feed); //Initialize the domxpath object and provide the loaded feed $xpath=new DOMXPath($doc); //Get every entry tags from the feed. $query="//entry"; $data=$xpath-query($query); //Process each entry tag foreach ($data as $node) { //children of each entry tag. $entry_nodes=$node-childNodes; //Create a temproray array. $tempArray=array(); //Process the child node of the entry tag. foreach($entry_nodes as $child) { //get the tagname of the child node. $domNodesName=$child-nodeName; switch($domNodesName) { case 'title' : { $tempArray['fullName']=$child-nodeValue; } break; case 'email' : { if (strpos($child-getAttribute('rel'),'home')!==false) $tempArray['email_1']=$child-getAttribute('address'); elseif(strpos($child-getAttribute('rel'),'work')!=false) $tempArray['email_2']=$child-getAttribute('address'); elseif(strpos($child-getAttribute('rel'),'other')!==false) $tempArray['email_3']=$child-getAttribute('address'); } break; } } if (!empty($tempArray['email_1']))$contacts[$tempArray['email_1']]=$tempArray; if(!empty($tempArray['email_2'])) $contacts[$tempArray['email_2']]=$tempArray; if(!empty($tempArray['email_3'])) $contacts[$tempArray['email_3']]=$tempArray; } foreach($contacts as $key=$val) { //Echo the email echo $key.""; } } else { //The form ? " method="POST" Email: Password: tutsmore don't save your email and password trust us. ` code is completely provided for debugging if any optimization is needed i will try to optimize the code

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• Using the OAM Mobile & Social SDK to secure native mobile apps - Part 2 : OAM Mobile & Social Server configuration

  - by kanishkmahajan

  Objective  In the second part of this blog post I'll now cover configuration of OAM to secure our sample native apps developed using the iOS SDK. First, here are some key server side concepts: Application Profiles: An application profile is a logical representation of your application within OAM server. It could be a web (html/javascript) or native (iOS or Android) application. Applications may have different requirements for AuthN/AuthZ, and therefore each application that interacts with OAM Mobile & Social REST services must be uniquely defined. Service Providers: Service providers represent the back end services that are accessed by applications. With OAM Mobile & Social these services are in the areas of authentication, authorization and user profile access. A Service Provider then defines a type or class of service for authentication, authorization or user profiles. For example, the JWTAuthentication provider performs authentication and returns JWT (JSON Web Tokens) to the application. In contrast, the OAMAuthentication also provides authentication but uses OAM SSO tokens Service Profiles:  A Service Profile is a logical envelope that defines a service endpoint URL for a service provider for the OAM Mobile & Social Service. You can create multiple service profiles for a service provider to define token capabilities and service endpoints. Each service provider instance requires atleast one corresponding service profile.The  OAM Mobile & Social Service includes a pre-configured service profile for each pre-configured service provider. Service Domains: Service domains bind together application profiles and service profiles with an optional security handler. So now let's configure the OAM server. Additional details are in the OAM Documentation and this post simply provides an outline of configuration tasks required to configure OAM for securing native apps.  Configuration  Create The Application Profile Log on to the Oracle Access Management console and from System Configuration -> Mobile and Social -> Mobile Services, select "Create" under Application Profiles. You would do this  step twice - once for each of the native apps - AvitekInventory and AvitekScheduler. Enter the parameters for the new Application profile: Name:  The application name. In this example we use 'InventoryApp' for the AvitekInventory app and 'SchedulerApp' for the AvitekScheduler app. The application name configured here must match the application name in the settings for the deployed iOS application. BaseSecret: Enter a password here. This does not need to match any existing password. It is used as an encryption key between the client and the OAM server.  Mobile Configuration: Enable this checkbox for any mobile applications. This enables the SDK to collect and send Mobile specific attributes to the OAM server.  Webview: Controls the type of browser that the iOS application will use. The embedded browser (default) will render the browser within the application. External will use the system standalone browser. External can sometimes be preferable for debugging URLScheme: The URL scheme associated with the iOS apps that is also used as a custom URL scheme to register O/S handlers that will take control when OAM transfers control to device. For the AvitekInventory and the AvitekScheduler apps I used osa:// and client:// respectively. You set this scheme in Xcode while developing your iOS Apps under Info->URL Types.  Bundle Identifier : The fully qualified name of your iOS application. You typically set this when you create a new Xcode project or under General->Identity in Xcode. For the AvitekInventory and AvitekScheduler apps these were com.us.oracle.AvitekInventory and com.us.oracle.AvitekScheduler respectively.  Create The Service Domain Select create under Service domains. Create a name for your domain (AvitekDomain is what I've used). The name configured must match the service domain set in the iOS application settings. Under "Application Profile Selection" click the browse button. Choose the application profiles that you created in the previous step one by one. Set the InventoryApp as the SSO agent (with an automatic priority of 1) and the SchedulerApp as the SSO client. This associates these applications with this service domain and configures them in a 'circle of trust'.  Advance to the next page of the wizard to configure the services for this domain. For this example we will use the following services:  Authentication:   This will use the JWT (JSON Web Token) format authentication provider. The iOS application upon successful authentication will receive a signed JWT token from OAM Mobile & Social service. This token will be used in subsequent calls to OAM. Use 'MobileOAMAuthentication' here. Authorization:  The authorization provider. The SDK makes calls to this provider endpoint to obtain authorization decisions on resource requests. Use 'OAMAuthorization' here. User Profile Service:  This is the service that provides user profile services (attribute lookup, attribute modification). It can be any directory configured as a data source in OAM.  And that's it! We're done configuring our native apps. In the next section, let's look at some additional features that were mentioned in the earlier post that are automated by the SDK for the app developer i.e. these are areas that require no additional coding by the app developer when developing with the SDK as they only require server side configuration: Additional Configuration  Offline Authentication Select this option in the service domain configuration to allow users to log in and authenticate to the application locally. Clear the box to block users from authenticating locally. Strong Authentication By simply selecting the OAAMSecurityHandlerPlugin while configuring mobile related Service Domains, the OAM Mobile&Social service allows sophisticated device and client application registration logic as well as the advanced risk and fraud analysis logic found in OAAM to be applied to mobile authentication. Let's look at some scenarios where the OAAMSecurityHandlerPlugin gets used. First, when we configure OAM and OAAM to integrate together using the TAP scheme, then that integration kicks off by selecting the OAAMSecurityHandlerPlugin in the mobile service domain. This is how the mobile device is now prompted for KBA,OTP etc depending on the TAP scheme integration and the OAM users registered in the OAAM database. Second, when we configured the service domain, there were claim attributes there that are already pre-configured in OAM Mobile&Social service and we simply accepted the default values- these are the set of attributes that will be fetched from the device and passed to the server during registration/authentication as device profile attributes. When a mobile application requests a token through the Mobile Client SDK, the SDK logic will send the Device Profile attributes as a part of an HTTP request. This set of Device Profile attributes enhances security by creating an audit trail for devices that assists device identification. When the OAAM Security Plug-in is used, a particular combination of Device Profile attribute values is treated as a device finger print, known as the Digital Finger Print in the OAAM Administration Console. Each finger print is assigned a unique fingerprint number. Each OAAM session is associated with a finger print and the finger print makes it possible to log (and audit) the devices that are performing authentication and token acquisition. Finally, if the jail broken option is selected while configuring an application profile, the SDK detects a device is jail broken based on configured policy and if the OAAM handler is configured the plug-in can allow or block access to client device depending on the OAAM policy as well as detect blacklisted, lost or stolen devices and send a wipeout command that deletes all the mobile &social relevant data and blocks the device from future access. 1024x768 Social Logins Finally, let's complete this post by adding configuration to configure social logins for mobile applications. Although the Avitek sample apps do not demonstrate social logins this would be an ideal exercise for you based on the sample code provided in the earlier post. I'll cover the server side configuration here (with Facebook as an example) and you can retrofit the code to accommodate social logins by following the steps outlined in "Invoking Authentication Services" and add code in LoginViewController and maybe create a new delegate - AvitekRPDelegate based on the description in the previous post. So, here all you will need to do is configure an application profile for social login, configure a new service domain that uses the social login application profile, register the app on Facebook and finally configure the Facebook OAuth provider in OAM with those settings. Navigate to Mobile and Social, click on "Internet Identity Services" and create a new application profile. Here are the relevant parameters for the new application profile (-also we're not registering the social user in OAM with this configuration below, however that is a key feature as well): Name:  The application name. This must match the name of the of mobile application profile created for your application under Mobile Services. We used InventoryApp for this example. SharedSecret: Enter a password here. This does not need to match any existing password. It is used as an encryption key between the client and the OAM Mobile and Social service.  Mobile Application Return URL: After the Relying Party (social) login, the OAM Mobile & Social service will redirect to the iOS application using this URI. This is defined under Info->URL type and we used 'osa', so we define this here as 'osa://' Login Type: Choose to allow only internet identity authentication for this exercise. Authentication Service Endpoint : Make sure that /internetidentityauthentication is selected. Login to http://developers.facebook.com using your Facebook account and click on Apps and register the app as InventoryApp. Note that the consumer key and API secret gets generated automatically by the Facebook OAuth server. Navigate back to OAM and under Mobile and Social, click on "Internet Identity Services" and edit the Facebook OAuth Provider. Add the consumer key and API secret from the Facebook developers site to the Facebook OAuth Provider: Navigate to Mobile Services. Click on New to create a new service domain. In this example we call the domain "AvitekDomainRP". The type should be 'Mobile Application' and the application credential type 'User Token'. Add the application "InventoryApp" to the domain. Advance the next page of the wizard. Select the  default service profiles but ensure that the Authentication Service is set to 'InternetIdentityAuthentication'. Finish the creation of the service domain.

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• Our winners- and some BBQ for everyone

  - by Steve Tunstall

  Congrats to our two winners for the first two comments on my last entry. Steve from Australia and John Lemon. Steve won since he was the first person over the International Date Line to see the post I made so late after a workday on Friday. So not only does he get to live in a country with the 2nd most beautiful women in the world, but now he gets some cool Oracle Swag, too. (Yes, I live on the beach in southern California, so you can guess where 1st place is for that other contest…Now if Steve happens to live in Manly, we may actually have a tie going…) OK, ok, for everyone else, you can be winners, too. How you ask? I will make you the envy of every guy and gal in your neighborhood or campsite. What follows is the way to smoke the best ribs you or anyone you know have ever tasted. Follow my instructions and give it a try. People at your party/cookout/campsite will tell you that they’re the best ribs they’ve ever had, and I will let you take all the credit. Yes, I fully realize this post is going to be longer than any post I’ve done yet. But let’s get serious here. Smoking meat is much more important, agreed? J In all honesty, this is a repeat of another blog I did, so I’m just copying and pasting. Step 1. Get some ribs. I actually really like Costco’s pack. They have both St. Louis and Baby Back. (They are the same ribs, but cut in half down the sides. St. Louis style is the ‘front’ of the ribs closest to the stomach, and ‘Baby back’ is the part of the ribs where is connects to the backbone). I like them both, so here you see I got one pack of each. About 4 racks to a pack. So these two packs for $25 each will feed about 16-20 of my guests. So around 3 bucks a person is a pretty good deal for the best ribs you’ll ever have. Step 2. Prep the ribs the night before you’re going to smoke. You need to trim them to fit your smoker racks, and also take off the membrane and add your rub. Then cover and set in fridge overnight. Here’s how to take off the membrane, which will not break down with heat and smoke like the rest of the meat, so must be removed. Use a butter knife to work in a ways between the membrane and the white bone. Just enough to make room for your finger. Try really hard not to poke through the membrane, you want to keep it whole. See how my gloved fingers can now start to lift up and pull off the membrane? This is what you are trying to do. It’s awesome when the whole thing can come off at once. This one is going great, maybe the best one I’ve ever done. Sometime, it falls apart and doesn't come off in one nice piece. I hate when that happens. Now, add your rub and pat it down once into the meat with your other hand. My rub is not secret. I got it from my mentor, a BBQ competitive chef who is currently ranked #1 in California and #3 in the nation on the BBQ circuit. He does full-day classes in southern California if anyone is interested in taking his class. Go to www.slapyodaddybbq.com to check him out. I tweaked his run recipe a tad and made my own. It’s one part Lawry’s, one part sugar, one part Montreal Steak Seasoning, one part garlic powder, one-half part red chili powder, one-half part paprika, and then 1/20th part cayenne. You can adjust that last ingredient, or leave it out. Real cheap stuff you can get at Costco. This lets you make enough rub to last about a year or two. Don’t make it all at once, make a shaker’s worth and use it up before you make more. Place it all in a bowl, mix well, and then add to a shaker like you see here. You can get a shaker with medium sized holes on it at any restaurant supply store or Smart & Final. The kind you see at pizza places for their red pepper flakes works best. Now cover and place in fridge overnight. Step 3. The next day. Ok, I’m ready to go. Get your stuff together. You will need your smoker, some good foil, a can of peach nectar, a bottle of Agave syrup, and a package of brown sugar. You will need this stuff later. I also use a clean spray bottle, and apple juice. Step 4. Make your fire, or turn on your electric smoker. In this example I’m using my portable charcoal smoker. I got this for only $40. I then modified it to be useful. Once modified, these guys actually work very well. Trust me, your food DOES NOT KNOW how expensive your smoker is. Someone who tells you that you need to spend a bunch of money on a smoker is an idiot. I also have an electric smoker that stays in my backyard. It’s cleaner and larger so I can smoke more food. But this little $40 one works great for going camping. Here is what my fire-bowl looks like. I leave a space in the middle open, and place cold charcoal and wood chucks in a circle going outwards. This makes it so when I dump the hot coals down the middle, they will slowly burn outwards, hitting different wood chucks at different times, allowing me to go 4-5 hours without having to even touch my fire. For ribs, I use apple and pecan wood. Pecan works for anything. Apple or any fruit wood is excellent for pork. So now I make my hot charcoal with a chimney only about half-full. I found a great use for that side-burner on my grill that I never use. It makes a fantastic chimney starter. You never use fluids of any kind, nor ever use that stupid charcoal that has lighter fluid built into it. Never, ever, ever. Step 5. Smoke. Add your ribs in the racks and stack them up in your smoker. I have a digital thermometer on a probe that I use to keep track of the temp in the smoker. I just lay the probe on the top rack and shut the lid. This cheap guy is a little harder to maintain the right temperature of around 225 F, so I do have to keep my eye on it more than my electric one or a more expensive charcoal one with the cool gadgets that regulate your temp for you. Every hour, spray apple juice all over your ribs using that spray bottle. After about 3 hours, you should have a very good crust (called the Bark) on your ribs. Once you have the Bark where you want it, carefully remove your ribs and place them in a tray. We are now ready for a very important part to make the flavor. Get a large piece of foil and place one rib section on it. Splash some of the peach nectar on it, and then a drizzle of the Agave syrup. Then, use your gloved hand to pack on some brown sugar. Do this on BOTH sides, and then completely wrap it up TIGHT in the foil. Do this for each rib section, and then place all the wrapped sections back into the smoker for another 4 to 6 hours. This is where the meat will get tender and flavorful. The first three hours is only to make the smoke bark. You don’t need smoke anymore, since the ribs are wrapped, you only need to keep the heat around 225 for the next 4-6 hours. Obviously you don’t spray anymore. Just time and slow heat. Be patient. It’s actually really hard to overdo it. You can let them go longer, and all that will happen is they will get even MORE tender!!! If you take them out too soon, they will be tough. How do you know? Take out one package (use long tongs) and open it up. If you grab a bone with your tongs and it just falls apart and breaks away from the rest of the meat, you are done!!! Enjoy!!! Step 6. Eat. It pulls apart like this when it’s done. By the way, smoking tri-tip is way easier. Just rub it with the same rub, and put in your smoker for about 2.5 hours at 250 F. That’s it. Low-maintenance. It comes out like this, with a fantastic smoke ring and amazing flavor. Thanks, and I will put up another good tip, about the ZFSSA, around the end of November. Steve 

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• What's the most unsound program you've had to maintain?

  - by Robert Rossney

  I periodically am called upon to do maintenance work on a system that was built by a real rocket surgeon. There's so much wrong with it that it's hard to know where to start. No, wait, I'll start at the beginning: in the early days of the project, the designer was told that the system would need to scale, and he'd read that a source of scalability problems was traffic between the application and database servers, so he made sure to minimize this traffic. How? By putting all of the application logic in SQL Server stored procedures. Seriously. The great bulk of the application functions by the HTML front end formulating XML messages. When the middle tier receives an XML message, it uses the document element's tag name as the name of the stored procedure it should call, and calls the SP, passing it the entire XML message as a parameter. It takes the XML message that the SP returns and returns it directly back to the front end. There is no other logic in the application tier. (There was some code in the middle tier to validate the incoming XML messages against a library of schemas. But I removed it, after ascertaining that 1) only a small handful of messages had corresponding schemas, 2) the messages didn't actually conform to these schemas, and 3) after validating the messages, if any errors were encountered, the method discarded them. "This fuse box is a real time-saver - it comes from the factory with pennies pre-installed!") I've seen software that does the wrong thing before. Lots of it. I've written quite a bit. But I've never seen anything like the steely-eyed determination to do the wrong thing, at every possible turn, that's embodied in the design and programming of this system. Well, at least he went with what he knew, right? Um. Apparently, what he knew was Access. And he didn't really understand Access. Or databases. Here's a common pattern in this code: SELECT @TestCodeID FROM TestCode WHERE TestCode = @TestCode SELECT @CountryID FROM Country WHERE CountryAbbr = @CountryAbbr SELECT Invoice.*, TestCode.*, Country.* FROM Invoice JOIN TestCode ON Invoice.TestCodeID = TestCode.ID JOIN Country ON Invoice.CountryID = Country.ID WHERE Invoice.TestCodeID = @TestCodeID AND Invoice.CountryID = @CountryID Okay, fine. You don't trust the query optimizer either. But how about this? (Originally, I was going to post this in What's the best comment in source code you have ever encountered? but I realized that there was so much more to write about than just this one comment, and things just got out of hand.) At the end of many of the utility stored procedures, you'll see code that looks like the following: -- Fix NULLs SET @TargetValue = ISNULL(@TargetValue, -9999) Yes, that code is doing exactly what you can't allow yourself to believe it's doing lest you be driven mad. If the variable contains a NULL, he's alerting the caller by changing its value to -9999. Here's how this number is commonly used: -- Get target value EXEC ap_GetTargetValue @Param1, @Param2, OUTPUT @TargetValue -- Check target value for NULL value IF @TargetValue = -9999 ... Really. For another dimension of this system, see the article on thedailywtf.com entitled I Think I'll Call Them "Transactions". I'm not making any of this up. I swear. I'm often reminded, when I work on this system, of Wolfgang Pauli's famous response to a student: "That isn't right. It isn't even wrong." This can't really be the very worst program ever. It's definitely the worst one I've worked

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• CodePlex Daily Summary for Sunday, August 12, 2012

  CodePlex Daily Summary for Sunday, August 12, 2012Popular ReleasesThisismyusername's codeplex page.: Run! Thunderstorm! Classic Multiplatform: The classic edition now on any device, you don't have to get the touch edition for touch screens!SharePoint Developers & Admins: SPTaxCleaner Tool - Cleaner Taxonomy Data: For more information on the tool and how to use it: SPTaxCleaner Run the tool at your own risk!BugNET Issue Tracker: BugNET 1.1: This release includes bug fixes from the 1.0 release for email notifications, RSS feeds, and several other issues. Please see the change log for a full list of changes. http://support.bugnetproject.com/Projects/ReleaseNotes.aspx?pid=1&m=76 Upgrade Notes The following changes to the web.config in the profile section have occurred: Removed <add name="NotificationTypes" type="String" defaultValue="Email" customProviderData="NotificationTypes;nvarchar;255" />Added <add name="ReceiveEmailNotifi...Virtual Keyboard: Virtual Keyboard v2.0 Source Code: This release has a few added keys that were missing in the earlier versions.????: ????2.0.5: 1、?????????????。RiP-Ripper & PG-Ripper: PG-Ripper 1.4.01: changes NEW: Added Support for Clipboard Function in Mono Version NEW: Added Support for "ImgBox.com" links FIXED: "PixHub.eu" links FIXED: "ImgChili.com" links FIXED: Kitty-Kats Forum loginPlayer Framework by Microsoft: Player Framework for Windows 8 (Preview 5): Support for Smooth Streaming SDK beta 2 Support for live playback New bitrate meter and SD/HD indicators Auto smooth streaming track restriction for snapped mode to conserve bandwidth New "Go Live" button and SeekToLive API Support for offset start times Support for Live position unique from end time Support for multiple audio streams (smooth and progressive content) Improved intellisense in JS version Support for Windows 8 RTM ADDITIONAL DOWNLOADSSmooth Streaming Client SD...Media Companion: Media Companion 3.506b: This release includes an update to the XBMC scrapers, for those who prefer to use this method. There were a number of behind-the-scene tweaks to make Media Companion compatible with the new TMDb-V3 API, so it was considered important to get it out to the users to try it out. Please report back any important issues you might find. For this reason, unless you use the XBMC scrapers, there probably isn't any real necessity to download this one! The only other minor change was one to allow the mc...Avian Mortality Detection Entry Application: Detection Entry: The most recent and up-to-date version of the Detection Entry application. Please click on the CLICKONCE link above to install.NVorbis: NVorbis v0.3: Fix Ogg page reader to correctly handle "split" packets Fix "zero-energy" packet handling Fix packet reader to always merge packets when needed Add statistics properties to VorbisReader.Stats Add multi-stream API (for Ogg files containing multiple Vorbis streams)The Ftp Library - Most simple, full-featured .NET Ftp Library: TheFtpLibrary v1.0: First version. Please report any bug and discuss how to improve this library in 'Discussion' section.VisioAutomation: Visio Power Tools 2010 (Beta): Visio Power Tools 2010 An Add-in for Visio 2010. In Beta but should be very stable. Some Cool Features Import Colors - From Kuler, ColourLovers, or manually enter RGB values Create a Document containing images of all masters in multiple stencils Toggle text case Copy All text from all shapes Export document to XHTML (with embedded SVG) Export document to XAML Updates2012-08-10 - Fixed path handling when generating the HTML stencil catalogXBMC for LCDSmartie: v 0.7.1: Changes: Version 0.7.1 - Removed unused configuration options: You can remove the user and pass section from your LCDSmartie.exe.config Version 0.7.0 - Changed JSON-Protocol to TCP: This means the plugin will run much faster and chances that LCDSmartie will stutter are minimized Note: You will have to change some settings in your LCDSmartie.exe.config, as TCP uses a different port than HTTP (9090 is default in XBMC)WPF RSS Feed Reader: WPF RSS Feed Reader 4.1: WPF RSS Feed Reader 4.1.x This application has been developed using Visual Studio 2010 with .NET 4.0 and Microsoft Expression Blend. It makes use of the MVVM Light Toolkit, more information can be found here Fixed bug when first installed - handle null reference on _proxySetting Fixed bug if trying to open error log but error log doesn't exist yet Added strings to resources Moved AsssemblyInfo centrally and linked to other projectsScutex: Scutex 4th Preview Release 0.4: This is the fourth preview release for the new Scutex 0.4 Beta. This preview release is unstable and contains some UI issues that are being worked on due to an installation of a brand new GUI. The stable version of the 0.4 Beta will be out shortly as soon as this release passes QA. The following were fixed in this release *Fixed an issue with the Upload Product dialog that would cause it to throw an exception. Known Issues *The download service logs grid does not display properlySystem.Net.FtpClient: System.Net.FtpClient 2012.08.08: 2012.08.08 Release. Several changes, see commit notes in source code section. CHM help as well as source for this release are included in the download. Remember that Windows 7 by default (and possibly older versions) will block you from opening the CHM by default due to trust settings. To get around the problem, right click on the CHM, choose properties and click the Un-block button. Please note that this will be the last release tested to compile with the .net 2.0 framework. I will be remov...Isis2 Cloud Computing Library: Isis2 Alpha V1.1.967: This is an alpha pre-release of the August 2012 version of the system. I've been testing and fixing many problems and have also added a new group "lock" API (g.Lock("lock name")/g.Unlock/g.Holder/g.SetLockPolicy); with this, Isis2 can mimic Chubby, Google's locking service. I wouldn't say that the system is entirely stable yet, and I haven't rechecked every single problem I had seen in May/June, but I think it might be good to get some additional use of this release. By now it does seem to...JSON C# Class Generator: JSON CSharp Class Generator 1.3: Support for native JSON.net serializer/deserializer (POCO) New classes layout option: nested classes Better handling of secondary classesAxiom 3D Rendering Engine: v0.8.3376.12322: Changes Since v0.8.3102.12095 ===================================================================== Updated ndoc3 binaries to fix bug Added uninstall.ps1 to nuspec packages fixed revision component in version numbering Fixed sln referencing VS 11 Updated OpenTK Assemblies Added CultureInvarient to numeric parsing Added First Visual Studio 2010 Project Template (DirectX9) Updated SharpInputSystem Assemblies Backported fix for OpenGL Auto-created window not responding to input Fixed freeInterna...DotSpatial: DotSpatial 1.3: This is a Minor Release. See the changes in the issue tracker. Minimal -- includes DotSpatial core and essential extensions Extended -- includes debugging symbols and additional extensions Tutorials are available. Just want to run the software? End user (non-programmer) version available branded as MapWindow Want to add your own feature? Develop a plugin, using the template and contribute to the extension feed (you can also write extensions that you distribute in other ways). Components ...New ProjectsAppFabric Cache Admin Tool: Appfabric Admin tool is a GUI tool provided for Cache Administration. This tool can be used for both Appfabric 1.0 and 1.1 versions.Bootstrap XML Navigation: Bootstrap XML Navigation is an ASP.NET Server Control which provide the ability to off-load your Bootstrap navigation structure to external XML files.Classic MVC: Classic MVC is an MVC framework written entirely in JScript for Microsoft's Classic ASP. Separation of concerns, controllers, partial views and more.Component Spectrum: Component Spectrum is an E-Commerce Application project.Developments in Java: Free Develop JavaDongGPrj: DongGPrjEsShop: ???????，????。。。F# Indent Visual Studio addon: The addon to show how to use SmartIndent and change the indent behavior in F# content.FizzBuzzAssignment: This is HeadSpring assignment.hotfighter: a act game!!!iSoilHotel: It is a hotel management system that using Microsoft N-Layer Architecture as the primary thoughts.KVBL (K's VB6 library) VB6????,????????.: KVBL??VB6??????、???????，????????，??????，????VB????，??????????。????：??????、???、??、????、??、????、??、??、?????、?????、???????，???????……Meteorite: c# game 3d wp7 space ship meteoriteMetro App Helpers: Helper classes for building Metro style app on Windows 8.MobileShop: Mobile shop for Iphone & AndroidMomentum: this is q project pqrticipqtion between meir and david concerning student university project on physics.OneLine: dfgfdgPreflight: Summary HereResilient FileSystemWatcher for monitoring network folders: Drop in replacement for FileSystemWatcher that works for network folders and compensate for network outages, server restarts ect.SkyPoint: A Windows Phone 7 app aimed at novice astronomers.test20120811: summary of this projectVS Unbind Source Control: Remove Source Control bindings from Visual Studio Solution and Project FilesWcf SWA (SFTI) implementation: First releasewebstart: new web tech testwinform_framework: winform_frameworkwtopenapi: wtopen sina weibo sdk txweibosdk qzone sdk

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• Unable to use NSURLConnection to get contents of password/username protected webpage

  - by bubster

  I am trying to get the contents of a webpage that requires a password and user name to access. I am using a NSURLConnection object to get it however when I write the NSMutableData object that is returned to a file all I get is the login page. Normally when you try to load the password protected page when you are not logged in it redirects to the login page however I thought that if I provided valid credentials then this I would be able to view the password protected page. Also I do not know if it is relevant the website is using a microsoft mysql database on an IIS (internet information server). Note: [protectionSpace authenticationMethod] returns NSURLAuthenticationMethodServerTrust I am pretty unfamiliar with this so any ideas would be greatly appreciated. Below is all of the relevant code: - (void)connection:(NSURLConnection *)connection didReceiveResponse:(NSURLResponse *)response { // This method is called when the server has determined that it // has enough information to create the NSURLResponse. // It can be called multiple times, for example in the case of a // redirect, so each time we reset the data. // receivedData is an instance variable declared elsewhere. [receivedData setLength:0]; } - (void)connection:(NSURLConnection *)connection didReceiveData:(NSData *)data { // Append the new data to receivedData. // receivedData is an instance variable declared elsewhere. [receivedData appendData:data]; } - (void)connection:(NSURLConnection *)connection didFailWithError:(NSError *)error { // release the connection, and the data object //[connection release]; // receivedData is declared as a method instance elsewhere //[receivedData release]; // inform the user NSLog(@"Connection failed! Error - %@ %@", [error localizedDescription], [[error userInfo] objectForKey:NSURLErrorFailingURLStringErrorKey]); } - (void)connectionDidFinishLoading:(NSURLConnection *)connection { // do something with the data // receivedData is declared as a method instance elsewhere NSLog(@"Succeeded! Received %d bytes of data",[receivedData length]); // release the connection, and the data object //[connection release]; //[receivedData release]; //Write data to a file [receivedData writeToFile:@"/Users/matsallen/Desktop/receivedData.html" atomically:YES]; } - (BOOL)connection:(NSURLConnection *)connection canAuthenticateAgainstProtectionSpace: (NSURLProtectionSpace *)protectionSpace { NSLog(@"The connection encountered a protection space. The authentication method is %@", [protectionSpace authenticationMethod]); secureTrustReference = [protectionSpace serverTrust]; //SecTrustResultType *result; //OSStatus status = SecTrustEvaluate(secureTrustReference, result); //NSLog(@"Result of the trust evaluation is %@",status); return YES; } - (void)connection:(NSURLConnection *)connection didReceiveAuthenticationChallenge:(NSURLAuthenticationChallenge *)challenge { NSURLCredential *newCredential; newCredential = [NSURLCredential credentialWithUser:@"username" password:@"password" persistence:NSURLCredentialPersistenceForSession]; newCredential = [NSURLCredential credentialForTrust:secureTrustReference]; // [[challenge sender] useCredential:newCredential forAuthenticationChallenge:challenge]; // [[challenge sender] continueWithoutCredentialForAuthenticationChallenge:challenge]; } #pragma mark - View lifecycle - (void)viewDidLoad { receivedData = [[NSMutableData alloc] init]; [super viewDidLoad]; // Do any additional setup after loading the view, typically from a nib. // Create the request. NSURLRequest *theRequest=[NSURLRequest requestWithURL:[NSURL URLWithString:@"https://www.markallenonline.com/secure/maoCoaching.aspx"] cachePolicy:NSURLRequestUseProtocolCachePolicy timeoutInterval:60.0]; // create the connection with the request // and start loading the data NSURLConnection *theConnection=[[NSURLConnection alloc] initWithRequest:theRequest delegate:self]; if (theConnection) { // Create the NSMutableData to hold the received data. // receivedData is an instance variable declared elsewhere. receivedData = [NSMutableData data]; NSLog(@"Connection succeeded!"); } else { // Inform the user that the connection failed. NSLog(@"Connection failed!"); } }

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• Clean Code Development & Flexible work environment - MSCC 26.10.2013

  Finally, some spare time to summarize my impressions and experiences of the recent meetup of Mauritius Software Craftsmanship Community. I already posted my comment on the event and on our social media networks: Professional - It's getting better with our meetups and I really appreciated that 'seniors' and 'juniors' were present today. Despite running a little bit out of time it was really great to see more students coming to the gathering. This time we changed location for our Saturday meetup and it worked out very well. A big thank you to Ebene Accelerator, namely Mrs Poonum, for the ability to use their meeting rooms for our community get-together. Already some weeks ago I had a very pleasant conversation with her about the MSCC aims, 'mission' and how we organise things. Additionally, I think that an environment like the Ebene Accelerator is a good choice as it acts as an incubator for young developers and start-ups. Reactions from other craftsmen Before I put my thoughts about our recent meeting down, I'd like to mention and cross-link to some of the other craftsmen that were present: "MSCC meet up is a massive knowledge gaining strategies for students, future entrepreneurs, or for geeks all around. Knowledge sharing becomes a fun. For those who have not been able to made it do subscribe on our MSCC meet up group at meetup.com." -- Nitin on Learning is fun with #MSCC #Ebene Accelerator "We then talked about the IT industry in Mauritius, salary issues in various field like system administration, software development etc. We analysed the reasons why people tend to hop from one company to another. That was a fun debate." -- Ish on MSCC meetup - Gang of Geeks "Flexible Learning Environment was quite interesting since these lines struck cords : "You're not a secretary....9 to 5 shouldn't suit you"....This allowed reflection...deep reflection....especially regarding the local mindset...which should be changed in a way which would promote creativity rather than choking it till death..." -- Yannick on 2nd MSCC Monthly Meet-up And others on Facebook... ;-) Visual impressions are available on our Meetup event page. More first time attendees We great pleasure I noticed that we have once again more first time visitors. A quick overlook showed that we had a majority of UoM students in first, second or last year. Some of them are already participating in the UoM Computer Club or are nominated as members of the Microsoft Student Partner (MSP) programme. Personally, I really appreciate the fact that the MSCC is able to gather such a broad audience. And as I wrote initially, the MSCC is technology-agnostic; we want IT people from any segment of this business. Of course, students which are about to delve into the 'real world' of working are highly welcome, and I hope that they might get one or other glimpse of experience or advice from employees. Sticking to the schedule? No, not really... And honestly, it was a good choice to go a little bit of the beaten tracks. I mean, yes we have a 'rough' agenda of topics that we would like to talk about or having a presentation about. But we keep it 'agile'. Due to the high number of new faces, we initiated another quick round of introductions and I gave a really brief overview of the MSCC. Next, we started to reflect on the Clean Code Developer (CCD) - Red Grade which we introduced on the last meetup. Nirvan was the lucky one and he did a good job on summarizing the various abbreviations of the first level of being a CCD. Actually, more interesting, we exchanged experience about the principles and practices of Red Grade, and it was very informative to get to know that Yann actually 'interviewed' a couple of friends, other students, local guys working in IT companies as well as some IT friends from India in order to counter-check on what he learned first-hand about Clean Code. Currently, he is reading the book of Robert C. Martin on that topic and I'm looking forward to his review soon. More output generates more input What seems to be like a personal mantra is working out pretty well for me since the beginning of this year. Being more active on social media networks, writing more article on my blog, starting the Mauritius Software Craftsmanship Community, and contributing more to other online communities has helped me to receive more project requests, job offers and possibilities to expand my business at IOS Indian Ocean Software Ltd. Actually, it is not a coincidence that one of the questions new craftsmen should answer during registration asks about having a personal blog. Whether you are just curious about IT, right in the middle of your Computer Studies, or already working in software development or system administration since a while you should consider to advertise and market yourself online. Easiest way to resolve this are to have online profiles on professional social media networks like LinkedIn, Xing, Twitter, and Google+ (no Facebook should be considered for private only), and considering to have a personal blog. Why? -- Be yourself, be proud of your work, and let other people know that you're passionate about your profession. Trust me, this is going to open up opportunities you might not have dreamt about... Exchanging ideas about having a professional online presence - MSCC meetup on the 26th October 2013 Furthermore, consider to put your Curriculum Vitae online, too. There are quite a number of service providers like 1ClickCV, Stack Overflow Careers 2.0, etc. which give you the ability to have an up to date CV online. At least put it on your site, next to your personal blog. Similar to what you would be able to see on my site here. Cyber Island Mauritius - are we there? A couple of weeks ago I got a 'cold' message on LinkedIn from someone living in the U.S. asking about the circumstances and conditions of the IT world of Mauritius. He has a great business idea, venture capital and is currently looking for a team of software developers (mainly mobile - iOS) for a new startup here in Mauritius. Since then we exchanged quite some details through private messages and Skype conversations, and I suggested that it might be a good chance to join our meetup through a conference call and see for yourself about potential candidates. During approximately 30 to 40 minutes the brief idea of the new startup was presented - very promising state-of-the-art technology aspects and integration of various public APIs -, and we had a good Q&A session about it. Also thanks to the excellent bandwidth provided by the Ebene Accelerator the video conference between three parties went absolutely well. Clean Code Developer - Orange Grade Hahaha - nice one... Being at the Orange Tower at Ebene and then talking about an Orange Grade as CCD. Well, once again I provided an overview of the principles and practices in that rank of Clean Code, and similar to our last meetup we discussed on the various aspect of each principle, whether someone already got in touch with it during studies or work, and how it could affect their future view on their source code. Following are the principles and practices of Clean Code Developer - Orange Grade: CCD Orange Grade - Principles Single Level of Abstraction (SLA) Single Responsibility Principle (SRP) Separation of Concerns (SoC) Source Code conventions CCD Orange Grade - Practices Issue Tracking Automated Integration Tests Reading, Reading, Reading Reviews Especially the part on reading technical books got some extra attention. We quickly gathered our views on that and came up with a result that ranges between Zero (0) and up to Fifteen (15) book titles per year. Personally, I'm keeping my progress between Six (6) and Eight (8) titles per year, but at least One (1) per quarter of a year. Which is also connected to the fact that I'm participating in the O'Reilly Reader Review Program and have a another benefit to get access to free books only by writing and publishing a review afterwards. We also had a good exchange on the extended topic of 'Reviews' - which to my opinion is abnormal difficult here in Mauritius for various reasons. As far as I can tell from my experience working with Mauritian software developers, either as colleagues, employees or during consulting services there are unfortunately two dominant pattern on that topic: Keeping quiet Running away Honestly, I have no evidence about why these are the two 'solutions' on reviews but that's the situation that I had to face over the last couple of years. Sitting together and talking about problematic issues, tackling down root causes of de-motivational activities and working on general improvements doesn't seem to have a ground within the IT world of Mauritius. Are you a typist or a creative software craftsman? - MSCC meetup on the 26th October 2013 One very good example that we talked about was the fact of 'job hoppers' as you can easily observe it on someone's CV - those people change job every single year; for no obvious reason! Frankly speaking, I wouldn't even consider an IT person like to for an interview. As a company you're investing money and effort into the abilities of your employees. Hiring someone that won't stay for a longer period is out of question. And sorry to say, these kind of IT guys smell fishy about their capabilities and more likely to cause problems than actually produce productive results. One of the reasons why there is a probation period on an employment contract is to give you the liberty to leave as early as possible in case that you don't like your new position. Don't fool yourself or waste other people's time and money by hanging around a full year only to snatch off the bonus payment... Future outlook: Developer's Conference Even though it is not official yet I already mentioned it several times during our weekly Code & Coffee sessions. The MSCC is looking forward to be able to organise or to contribute to an upcoming IT event. Currently, the rough schedule is set for April 2014 but this mainly depends on availability of location(s), a decent time frame for preparations, and the underlying procedures with public bodies to have it approved and so on. As soon as the information about date and location has been fixed there will be a 'Call for Papers' period in order to attract local IT enthusiasts to apply for a session slot and talk about their field of work and their passion in IT. More to come for sure... My resume of the day It was a great gathering and I am very pleased about the fact that we had another 15 craftsmen (plus 2 businessmen on conference call plus 2 young apprentices) in the same room, talking about IT related topics and sharing their experience as employees and students. Personally, I really appreciated the feedback from the students about their current view on their future career, and I really hope that some of them are going to pursue their dreams. Start promoting yourself and it will happen... Looking forward to your blogs! And last but not least our numbers on Meetup and Facebook have been increased as a direct consequence of this meetup. Please, spread the word about the MSCC and get your friends and colleagues to join our official site. The higher the number of craftsmen we have the better chances we have t achieve something great! Thanks!

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• Tips for XNA WP7 Developers

  - by Michael B. McLaughlin

  There are several things any XNA developer should know/consider when coming to the Windows Phone 7 platform. This post assumes you are familiar with the XNA Framework and with the changes between XNA 3.1 and XNA 4.0. It’s not exhaustive; it’s simply a list of things I’ve gathered over time. I may come back and add to it over time, and I’m happy to add anything anyone else has experienced or learned as well. Display · The screen is either 800x480 or 480x800. · But you aren’t required to use only those resolutions. · The hardware scaler on the phone will scale up from 240x240. · One dimension will be capped at 800 and the other at 480; which depends on your code, but you cannot have, e.g., an 800x600 back buffer – that will be created as 800x480. · The hardware scaler will not normally change aspect ratio, though, so no unintended stretching. · Any dimension (width, height, or both) below 240 will be adjusted to 240 (without any aspect ratio adjustment such that, e.g. 200x240 will be treated as 240x240). · Dimensions below 240 will be honored in terms of calculating whether to use portrait or landscape. · If dimensions are exactly equal or if height is greater than width then game will be in portrait. · If width is greater than height, the game will be in landscape. · Landscape games will automatically flip if the user turns the phone 180°; no code required. · Default landscape is top = left. In other words a user holding a phone who starts a landscape game will see the first image presented so that the “top” of the screen is along the right edge of his/her phone, such that the natural behavior would be to turn the phone 90° so that the top of the phone will be held in the user’s left hand and the bottom would be held in the user’s right hand. · The status bar (where the clock, battery power, etc., are found) is hidden when the Game-derived class sets GraphicsDeviceManager.IsFullScreen = true. It is shown when IsFullScreen = false. The default value is false (i.e. the status bar is shown). · You should have a good reason for hiding the status bar. Users find it helpful to know what time it is, how much charge their battery has left, and whether or not their phone is in service range. This is especially true for casual games that you expect someone to play for a few minutes at a time, e.g. while waiting for some event to start, for a phone call to come in, or for a train, bus, or subway to arrive. · In portrait mode, the status bar occupies 32 pixels of space. This means that a game with a back buffer of 480x800 will be scaled down to occupy approximately 461x768 screen pixels. Setting the back buffer to 480x768 (or some resolution with the same 0.625 aspect ratio) will avoid this scaling. · In landscape mode, the status bar occupies 72 pixels of space. This means that a game with a back buffer of 800x480 will be scaled down to occupy approximately 728x437 screen pixels. Setting the back buffer to 728x480 (or some resolution with the same 1.51666667 aspect ratio) will avoid this scaling. Input · Touch input is scaled with screen size. · So if your back buffer is 600x360, a tap in the bottom right corner will come in as (599,359). You don’t need to do anything special to get this automatic scaling of touch behavior. · If you do not use full area of the screen, any touch input outside the area you use will still register as a touch input. For example, if you set a portrait resolution of 240x240, it would be scaled up to occupy a 480x480 area, centered in the screen. If you touch anywhere above this area, you will get a touch input of (X,0) where X is a number from 0 to 239 (in accordance with your 240 pixel wide back buffer). Any touch below this area will give a touch input of (X,239). · If you keep the status bar visible, touches within its area will not be passed to your game. · In general, a screen measurement is the diagonal. So a 3.5” screen is 3.5” long from the bottom right corner to the top left corner. With an aspect ratio of 0.6 (480/800 = 0.6), this means that a phone with a 3.5” screen is only approximately 1.8” wide by 3” tall. So there are approximately 267 pixels in an inch on a 3.5” screen. · Again, this time in metric! 3.5 inches is approximately 8.89 cm. So an 8.89 cm screen is 8.89 cm long from the bottom right corner to the top left corner. With an aspect ratio of 0.6, this means that a phone with an 8.89 cm screen is only approximately 4.57 cm wide by 7.62 cm tall. So there are approximately 105 pixels in a centimeter on an 8.89 cm screen. · Think about the size of your finger tip. If you do not have large hands, think about the size of the fingertip of someone with large hands. Consider that when you are sizing your touch input. Especially consider that when you are spacing two touch targets near one another. You need to judge it for yourself, but items that are next to each other and are each 100x100 should be fine when it comes to selecting items individually. Smaller targets than that are ok provided that you leave space between them. · You want your users to have a pleasant experience. Making touch controls too small or too close to one another will make them nervous about whether they will touch the right target. Take this into account when you plan out your game initially. If possible, do some quick size mockups on an actual phone using colored rectangles that you position and size where you plan to have your game controls. Adjust as necessary. · People do not have transparent hands! Nor are their hands the size of a mouse pointer icon. Consider leaving a dedicated space for input rather than forcing the user to cover up to one-third of the screen with a finger just to play the game. · Another benefit of designing your controls to use a dedicated area is that you’re less likely to have players moving their finger(s) so frantically that they accidentally hit the back button, start button, or search button (many phones have one or more of these on the screen itself – it’s easy to hit one by accident and really annoying if you hit, e.g., the search button and then quickly tap back only to find out that the game didn’t save your progress such that you just wasted all the time you spent playing). · People do not like doing somersaults in order to move something forward with accelerometer-based controls. Test your accelerometer-based controls extensively and get a lot of feedback. Very well-known games from noted publishers have created really bad accelerometer controls and been virtually unplayable as a result. Also be wary of exceptions and other possible failures that the documentation warns about. · When done properly, the accelerometer can add a nice touch to your game (see, e.g. ilomilo where the accelerometer was used to move the background; it added a nice touch without frustrating the user; I also think CarniVale does direct accelerometer controls very well). However, if done poorly, it will make your game an abomination unto the Marketplace. Days, weeks, perhaps even months of development time that you will never get back. I won’t name names; you can search the marketplace for games with terrible reviews and you’ll find them. Graphics · The maximum frame rate is 30 frames per second. This was set as a compromise between battery life and quality. · At least one model of phone is known to have a screen refresh rate that is between 59 and 60 hertz. Because of this, using a fixed time step with a target frame rate of 30 will cause a slight internal delay to build up as the framework is forced to wait slightly for the next refresh. Eventually the delay will get to the point where a draw is skipped in order to recover from the delay. (See Nick's comment below for clarification.) · To deal with that delay, you can either stay with a fixed time step and set the frame rate slightly lower or else you can go to a variable time step and make sure to adjust all of your update data (e.g. player movement distance) to take into account the elapsed time from the last update. A variable time step makes your update logic slightly more complicated but will avoid frame skips entirely. · Currently there are no custom shaders. This might change in the future (there is no hardware limitation preventing it; it simply wasn’t a feature that could be implemented in the time available before launch). · There are five built-in shaders. You can create a lot of nice effects with the built-in shaders. · There is more power on the CPU than there is on the GPU so things you might typically off-load to the GPU will instead make sense to do on the CPU side. · This is a phone. It is not a PC. It is not an Xbox 360. The emulator runs on a PC and uses the full power of your PC. It is very good for testing your code for bugs and doing early prototyping and layout. You should not use it to measure performance. Use actual phone hardware instead. · There are many phone models, each of which has slightly different performance levels for I/O, screen blitting, CPU performance, etc. Do not take your game right to the performance limit on your phone since for some other phones you might be crossing their limits and leaving players with a bad experience. Leave a cushion to account for hardware differences. · Smaller screened phones will have slightly more dots per inch (dpi). Larger screened phones will have slightly less. Either way, the dpi will be much higher than the typical 96 found on most computer screens. Make sure that whoever is doing art for your game takes this into account. · Screens are only required to have 16 bit color (65,536 colors). This is common among smart phones. Using gradients on a 16 bit display can produce an ugly artifact known as banding. Banding is when, rather than a smooth transition from one color to another, you instead see distinct lines. Be careful to avoid this when possible. Banding can be avoided through careful art creation. Its effects can be minimized and even unnoticeable when the texture in question is always moving. You should be careful not to rely on “looks good on my phone” since some phones do have 32-bit displays and thus you’ll find yourself wondering why you’re getting bad reviews that complain about the graphics. Avoid gradients; if you can’t, make sure they are 16-bit safe. Audio · Never rely on sounds as your sole signal to the player that something is happening in the game. They might have the sound off. They might be playing somewhere loud. Etc. · You have to provide controls to disable sound & music. These should be separate. · On at least one model of phone, the volume control API currently has no effect. Players can adjust sound with their hardware volume buttons, but in game selectors simply won’t work. As such, it may not be worth the effort of providing anything beyond on/off switches for sound and music. · MediaPlayer.GameHasControl will return true when a game is hooked up to a PC running Zune. When Zune is running, any attempts to do anything (beyond check GameHasControl) with MediaPlayer will cause an exception to be thrown. If this exception is thrown, catch it and disable music. Exceptions take time to propagate; you don’t want one popping up in every single run of your game’s Update method. · Remember that players can already be listening to music or using the FM radio. In this case GameHasControl will be false and you should handle this appropriately. You can, alternately, ask the player for permission to stop their current music and play your music instead, but the (current) requirement that you restore their music when done is very hard (if not impossible) to deal with. · You can still play sound effects even when the game doesn’t have control of the music, but don’t think this is a backdoor to playing music. Your game will fail certification if your “sound effect” seems to be more like music in scope and length.

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• Array not showing in Jlist but filled in console

  - by OVERTONE

  Hey there. been a busy debugger today. ill give ths short version. ive made an array list that takes names from a database. then i put the contents of the arraylist into an array of strings. now i want too display the arrays contents in a JList. the weird thing is it was working earlier. and ive two methods. ones just a little practice too make sure i was adding to the Jlist correctly. so heres the key codes. this is the layout of my code. variables constructor methods in my variables i have these 3 defined String[] contactListNames = new String[5]; ArrayList<String> rowNames = new ArrayList<String>(); JList contactList = new JList(contactListNames); simple enough. in my constructor i have them again. contactListNames = new String[5]; contactList = new JList(contactListNames); //i dont have the array list defined though. printSqlDetails(); // the prinSqldetails was too make sure that the connectionw as alright. and its working fine. fillContactList(); // this is the one thats causing me grief. its where all the work happens. // fillContactListTest(); // this was the tester that makes sure its adding to the list alright. heres the code for fillContactListTest() public void fillContactListTest() { for(int i = 0;i<3;i++) { try { String contact; System.out.println(" please fill the list at index "+ i); Scanner in = new Scanner(System.in); contact = in.next(); contactListNames[i] = contact; in.nextLine(); } catch(Exception e) { e.printStackTrace(); } } } heres the main one thats supposed too work. public void fillContactList() { int i =0; createConnection(); ArrayList<String> rowNames = new ArrayList<String>(); try { Statement stmt = conn.createStatement(); ResultSet namesList = stmt.executeQuery("SELECT name FROM Users"); try { while (namesList.next()) { rowNames.add(namesList.getString(1)); contactListNames =(String[])rowNames.toArray(new String[rowNames.size()]); // this used to print out contents of array list // System.out.println("" + rowNames); while(i<contactListNames.length) { System.out.println(" " + contactListNames[i]); i++; } } } catch(SQLException q) { q.printStackTrace(); } conn.commit(); stmt.close(); conn.close(); } catch(SQLException e) { e.printStackTrace(); } } i really need help here. im at my wits end. i just cant see why the first method would add to the JList no problem. but the second one wont. both the contactListNames array and array list can print fine and have the names in them. but i must be transfering them too the jlist wrong. please help p.s im aware this is long. but trust me its the short version.

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• Unit testing authorization in a Pylons app fails; cookies aren't been correctly set or recorded

  - by Ian Stevens

  I'm having an issue running unit tests for authorization in a Pylons app. It appears as though certain cookies set in the test case may not be correctly written or parsed. Cookies work fine when hitting the app with a browser. Here is my test case inside a paste-generated TestController: def test_good_login(self): r = self.app.post('/dologin', params={'login': self.user['username'], 'password': self.password}) r = r.follow() # Should only be one redirect to root assert 'http://localhost/' == r.request.url assert 'Dashboard' in r This is supposed to test that a login of an existing account forwards the user to the dashboard page. Instead, what happens is that the user is redirected back to the login. The first POST works, sets the user in the session and returns cookies. Although those cookies are sent in the follow request, they don't seem to be correctly parsed. I start by setting a breakpoint at the beginning of the above method and see what the login response returns: > nosetests --pdb --pdb-failure -s foo.tests.functional.test_account:TestMainController.test_good_login Running setup_config() from foo.websetup > /Users/istevens/dev/foo/foo/tests/functional/test_account.py(33)test_good_login() -> r = self.app.post('/dologin', params={'login': self.user['username'], 'password': self.password}) (Pdb) n > /Users/istevens/dev/foo/foo/tests/functional/test_account.py(34)test_good_login() -> r = r.follow() # Should only be one redirect to root (Pdb) p r.cookies_set {'auth_tkt': '"4c898eb72f7ad38551eb11e1936303374bd871934bd871833d19ad8a79000000!"'} (Pdb) p r.request.environ['REMOTE_USER'] '4bd871833d19ad8a79000000' (Pdb) p r.headers['Location'] 'http://localhost/?__logins=0' A session appears to be created and a cookie sent back. The browser is redirected to the root, not the login, which also indicates a successful login. If I step past the follow(), I get: > /Users/istevens/dev/foo/foo/tests/functional/test_account.py(35)test_good_login() -> assert 'http://localhost/' == r.request.url (Pdb) p r.request.headers {'Host': 'localhost:80', 'Cookie': 'auth_tkt=""\\"4c898eb72f7ad38551eb11e1936303374bd871934bd871833d19ad8a79000000!\\"""; '} (Pdb) p r.request.environ['REMOTE_USER'] *** KeyError: KeyError('REMOTE_USER',) (Pdb) p r.request.environ['HTTP_COOKIE'] 'auth_tkt=""\\"4c898eb72f7ad38551eb11e1936303374bd871934bd871833d19ad8a79000000!\\"""; ' (Pdb) p r.request.cookies {'auth_tkt': ''} (Pdb) p r <302 Found text/html location: http://localhost/login?__logins=1&came_from=http%3A%2F%2Flocalhost%2F body='302 Found...y. '/149> This indicates to me that the cookie was passed in on the request, although with dubious escaping. The environ appears to be without the session created on the prior request. The cookie has been copied to the environ from the headers, but the cookies in the request seems incorrectly set. Lastly, the user is redirected to the login page, indicating that the user isn't logged in. Authorization in the app is done via repoze.who and repoze.who.plugins.ldap with repoze.who_friendlyform performing the challenge. I'm using the stock tests.TestController created by paste: class TestController(TestCase): def __init__(self, *args, **kwargs): if pylons.test.pylonsapp: wsgiapp = pylons.test.pylonsapp else: wsgiapp = loadapp('config:%s' % config['__file__']) self.app = TestApp(wsgiapp) url._push_object(URLGenerator(config['routes.map'], environ)) TestCase.__init__(self, *args, **kwargs) That's a webtest.TestApp, by the way. The encoding of the cookie is done in webtest.TestApp using Cookie: >>> from Cookie import _quote >>> _quote('"84533cf9f661f97239208fb844a09a6d4bd8552d4bd8550c3d19ad8339000000!"') '"\\"84533cf9f661f97239208fb844a09a6d4bd8552d4bd8550c3d19ad8339000000!\\""' I trust that that's correct. My guess is that something on the response side is incorrectly parsing the cookie data into cookies in the server-side request. But what? Any ideas?

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• A very strange problem related to Flash and Java

  - by Nitesh Panchal

  Hello, I have created one simple program for showing webcam of the user. It works absolutely fine when i am running without integrating it in my java web application. But as soon as i copy paste the same files in Netbeans 6.8 and try to run it. My swf file is visible but the buttons in it are totally unclickable. I get the message of allow or deny showing webcam but the buttons are not clickable. It makes my application totally useless. I thought it's a minor issue but now it's getting on my nerves. I am trying it since 3 hours but didn't find any solution. I don't think anybody faced this issue till now that's why can't seem to find any thread in any forum on it in google. I am using Netbeans 6.8, Ubuntu, Glassfish V3 and JSF. Thanks in advance :). UPDATE:- It works fine on Windows XP. Then what can be the problem with Ubuntu? Any kind of permission rights that i need to give? 2nd UPDATE:- I think this is bug with Flash. I found that this code doesn't work :- <object classid="clsid:d27cdb6e-ae6d-11cf-96b8-444553540000" codebase="http://download.macromedia.com/pub/shockwave/cabs/flash/swflash.cab#version=9,0,0,0" id="VideoConferenceAdmin" align="middle"> <param name="allowScriptAccess" value="sameDomain" /> <param name="wmode" value="opaque"/> <param name="allowFullScreen" value="false" /> <param NAME="FlashVars" VALUE="rootIp=localhost&amp;userName=admin&amp;roomName=test" /> <param name="movie" value="Conference/VideoConference.swf" /><param name="quality" value="high" /> <embed src="Conference/VideoConference.swf" wmode="window" FlashVars="rootIp=localhost&amp;userName=test&amp;roomName=test" quality="high" width="600" height="500" name="VideoConference" align="middle" allowScriptAccess="sameDomain" allowFullScreen="false" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" pluginspage="http://www.macromedia.com/go/getflashplayer" /> </object> And this one works :- <object classid="clsid:d27cdb6e-ae6d-11cf-96b8-444553540000" codebase="http://download.macromedia.com/pub/shockwave/cabs/flash/swflash.cab#version=9,0,0,0" id="VideoConferenceAdmin" align="middle"> <param name="allowScriptAccess" value="sameDomain" /> <param name="wmode" value="opaque"/> <param name="allowFullScreen" value="false" /> <param NAME="FlashVars" VALUE="rootIp=localhost&amp;userName=admin&amp;roomName=test" /> <param name="movie" value="Conference/VideoConference.swf" /><param name="quality" value="high" /> <embed src="Conference/VideoConference.swf" wmode="window" FlashVars="rootIp=localhost&amp;userName=test&amp;roomName=test" quality="high" name="VideoConference" align="middle" allowScriptAccess="sameDomain" allowFullScreen="false" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" pluginspage="http://www.macromedia.com/go/getflashplayer" /> </object> As you can see, just by removing the height and width attribute the panels of Flash settings work fine. I know you will find me funny but i am not. You can check out on your own if you don't trust me. Now, my question would be, can anybody tell me how do i set height and width of swf? I want it to be 600px width and 500px height. Even the style attribute doesn't work. Can i set height and width from within Flash? because without explicitly setting height and width, it looks very small. I think this should be very easy for all now. Thanks in advance :)

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• Session Evaluations

  - by BuckWoody

  I do a lot of public speaking. I write, teach, present and communicate at many levels. I love to do those things. And I love to get better at them. And one of the ways you get better at something is to get feedback on how you did. That being said, I have to confess that I really despise the “evaluations” I get at most venues. From college to technical events to other locations, at Microsoft and points in between, I find these things to be just shy of damaging, and most certainly useless. And it’s not always your fault. Ouch. That seems harsh. But let me ask you one question – and be as honest as you can with the answer – think about it first: “What is the point of a session evaluation?” I’m not saying there isn’t one. In fact, I think there’s a really important reason for them. In my mind, it’s really this: To make the speaker / next session better. Now, if you look at that, you can see right away that most session evals don’t accomplish this goal – not even a little. No, the way that they are worded and the way you (and I) fill them out, it’s more like the implied goal is this: Tell us how you liked this speaker / session. The current ones are for you, not for the speaker or the next person. It’s a popularity contest. Don’t get me wrong. I want to you have a good time. I want you to learn. I want (desperately, oh, please oh please) for you to like me. But in fact, that’s probably not why you went to the session / took the class / read that post. No, you want to learn, and to learn for a particular reason. Remember, I’m talking about college classes, sessions and other class environments here, not a general public event. Most – OK, all – session evaluations make you answer the second goal, not the first. Let’s see how: First, they don’t ask you why you’re there. They don’t ask you if you’re even qualified to evaluate the session or speaker. They don’t ask you how to make it better or keep it great. They use odd numeric scales that are meaningless. For instance, can someone really tell me the difference between a 100-level session and a 200-level one? Between a 400-level and a 500? Is it “internals” (whatever that means) or detail, or length or code, or what? I once heard a great description: A 100-level session makes me say, “wow - I’m smart.” A 500-level session makes me say “wow – that presenter is smart.” And just what is the difference between a 6 and a 7 answer on this question: How well did the speaker know the material? 1  2  3  4  5  6  7  8  9  10 Oh. My. Gosh. How does that make the next session better, or the speaker? And what criteria did you use to answer? And is a “10” better than a “1” (not always clear, and various cultures answer this differently). When it’s all said and done, a speaker basically finds out one thing from the current session evals: “They liked me. They really really liked me.” Or, “Wow. I think I may need to schedule some counseling for the depression I’m about to go into.” You may not think that’s what the speaker hears, but trust me, they do. Those are the only two reactions to the current feedback sheets they get. Either they keep doing what they are doing, or they get their feelings hurt. They just can’t use the information provided to do better. Sorry, but there it is. Keep in mind I do want your feedback. I want to get better. I want you to get your money and time’s worth, probably as much as any speaker alive. But I want those evaluations to be accurate, specific and actionable. I want to know if you had a good time, sure, but I also want to know if I did the right things, and if not, if I can do something different or better. And so, for your consideration, here is the evaluation form I would LOVE for you to use. Feel free to copy it and mail it to me any time. I’m going to put some questions here, and then I’ll even include why they are there. Notice that the form asks you a subjective question right away, and then makes you explain why. That’s work on your part. Notice also that it separates the room and the coffee and the lights and the LiveMeeting from the presenter. So many presenters are faced with circumstances beyond their control, and yet are rated high or low personally on those things. This form helps tease those apart. It’s not numeric. Numbers are easier for the scoring committees but are useless for you and me. So I don’t have any numbers. We’re actually going to have to read these things, not put them in a machine. Hey, if you put in the work to write stuff down, the least we could do is take the time to read it. It’s not anonymous. If you’ve got something to say, say it, and own up to it. People are not “more honest” when they are anonymous, they are less honest. So put your name on it. In fact – this is radical – I posit that these evaluations should be publicly available. Forever. Just like replies to a blog post. Hey, if I’m an organizer, I would LOVE to be able to have access to specific, actionable information on the attendees and the speakers. So if you want mine to be public, go for it. I’ll take the good and the bad. Enjoy. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Session Evaluation – Date, Time, Location, Topic Thanks for giving us your time today. We know that’s valuable, and we hope you learned something you can use from the session. If you can answer these questions as completely as you can, it will help the next person who attends a session here. Your Name: What you do for a living: (We Need your background to evaluate your evaluation) How long you have been doing that: (Again, we need your background to evaluate your evaluation) Paste Session Description Here: (This is what I said I would talk about) Did you like the session?                     No        Meh        Yes (General subjective question – overall “feeling”. You’ll tell us why in a minute.)  Tell us about the venue. Temperature, lights, coffee, or the online sound, performance, anything other than the speaker and the material. (Helps the logistics to be better or as good for the next person) 1. What did you expect to learn in this session? (How did you interpret that extract – did you have expectations that I should work towards for the next person?) 2. Did you learn what you expected to learn? Why? Be very specific. (This is the most important question there is. It tells us how to make the session better for someone like you.) 3. If you were giving this presentation, would you have done anything differently? What? (Helps us to gauge you, the listener, and might give us a great idea on how to do something better. Thanks!) 4. What will you do with the information you got? (Every presenter wants you to learn, and learn something useful. This will help us do that as well or better)  

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• MVVM Light V4 preview (BL0014) release notes

  - by Laurent Bugnion

  I just pushed to Codeplex an update to the MVVM Light source code. This is an early preview containing some of the features that I want to release later under the version 4. If you find these features useful for your project, please download the source code and build the assemblies. I will appreciate greatly any issue report. This version is labeled “V4.0.0.0/BL0014”. The “BL” string is an old habit that we used in my days at Siemens Building Technologies, called a “base level”. Somehow I like this way of incrementing the “base level” independently of any other consideration (such as alpha, beta, CTP, RTM etc) and continue to use it to tag my software versions. In Microsoft parlance, you could say that this is an early CTP of MVVM Light V4. Caveat The code is unit tested, but as we all know this does not mean that there are no bugs This code has not yet been used in production. Again, your help in testing this is greatly appreciated, so please report all bugs to me! What’s new? The following features have been implemented: Misc Various “maintenance work”. All WPF assemblies (that is .NET35 and .NET4) now allow partially trusted callers. It means that you can use them in am XBAP in partial trust mode. Testing Various test updates Added Windows Phone 7 unit tests Note: For Windows Phone 7, due to an issue in the unit test framework, not all tests can be executed. I had to isolate those tests for the moment. The error was reported to Microsoft. ViewModelBase The constructor is now public to allow serialization (especially useful on the phone to tombstone the state). ViewModelBase.MessengerInstance now returns Messenger.Default unless it is set explicitly. Previously, MessengerInstance was returning null, which was complicating the code. Two new ways to raise the PropertyChanged event have been added. See below for details. Messenger Updated the IMessenger interface with all public members from the Messenger class. Previously some members were missing. A new Unregister method is now available, allowing to unregister a recipient for a given token. RelayCommand RaiseCanExecuteChanged now acts the same in Windows Presentation Foundation than in Silverlight. In previous versions, I was relying on the CommandManager to raise the CanExecuteChanged event in WPF. However, it was found to be too unreliable, and a more direct way of raising the event was found preferable. See below for details. Raising the PropertyChanged event A very much requested update is now included: the ability to raise the PropertyChanged event in a viewmodel without using “magic strings”. Personally, I don’t see strings as a major issue, thanks to two features of the MVVM Light Toolkit: In the DEBUG configuration, every time that the RaisePropertyChanged method is called, the name of the property is checked against all existing properties of the viewmodel. Should the property name be misspelled (because of a typo or refactoring), an exception is thrown, notifying the developer that something is wrong. To avoid impacting the performance, this check is only made in DEBUG configuration, but that should be enough to warn the developers in case they miss a rename. The property name is defined as a public constant in the “mvvminpc” code snippet. This allows checking the property name from another class (for example if the PropertyChanged event is handled in the view). It also allows changing the property name in one place only. However, these two safeguards didn’t satisfy some of the users, who requested another way to raise the PropertyChanged event. In V4, you can now do the following: Using lambdas private int _myProperty; public int MyProperty { get { return _myProperty; } set { if (_myProperty == value) { return; } _myProperty = value; RaisePropertyChanged(() => MyProperty); } } This raises the property changed event using a lambda expression instead of the property name. Light reflection is used to get the name. This supports Intellisense and can easily be refactored. You can also broadcast a PropertyChangedMessage using the Messenger.Default instance with: private int _myProperty; public int MyProperty { get { return _myProperty; } set { if (_myProperty == value) { return; } var oldValue = _myProperty; _myProperty = value; RaisePropertyChanged(() => MyProperty, oldValue, value, true); } } Using no arguments When the RaisePropertyChanged method is called within a setter, you can also omit the property name altogether. This will fail if executed outside of the setter however. Also, to avoid confusion, there is no way to broadcast the PropertyChangedMessage using this syntax. private int _myProperty; public int MyProperty { get { return _myProperty; } set { if (_myProperty == value) { return; } _myProperty = value; RaisePropertyChanged(); } } The old way Of course the “old” way is still supported, without broadcast: public const string MyPropertyName = "MyProperty"; private int _myProperty; public int MyProperty { get { return _myProperty; } set { if (_myProperty == value) { return; } _myProperty = value; RaisePropertyChanged(MyPropertyName); } } And with broadcast: public const string MyPropertyName = "MyProperty"; private int _myProperty; public int MyProperty { get { return _myProperty; } set { if (_myProperty == value) { return; } var oldValue = _myProperty; _myProperty = value; RaisePropertyChanged(MyPropertyName, oldValue, value, true); } } Performance considerations It is notorious that using reflection takes more time than using a string constant to get the property name. However, after measuring for all platforms, I found the differences to be very small. I will measure more and submit the results to the community for evaluation, because some of the results are actually surprising (for example, using the Messenger to broadcast a PropertyChangedMessage does not significantly increase the time taken to raise the PropertyChanged event and update the bindings). For now, I submit this code to you, and would be delighted to hear about your own results. Raising the CanExecuteChanged event manually In WPF, until now, the CanExecuteChanged event for a RelayCommand was raised automatically. Or rather, it was attempted to be raised, using a feature that is only available in WPF called the CommandManager. This class monitors the UI and when something occurs, it queries the state of the CanExecute delegate for all the commands. However, this proved unreliable for the purpose of MVVM: Since very often the value of the CanExecute delegate changes according to non-UI events (for example something changing in the viewmodel or in the model), raising the CanExecuteChanged event manually is necessary. In Silverlight, the CommandManager does not exist, so we had to raise the event manually from the start. This proved more reliable, and I now changed the WPF implementation of the RaiseCanExecuteChanged method to be the exact same in WPF than in Silverlight. For instance, if a command must be enabled when a string property is set to a value other than null or empty string, you can do: public MainViewModel() { MyTestCommand = new RelayCommand( () => DoSomething(), () => !string.IsNullOrEmpty(MyProperty)); } public const string MyPropertyName = "MyProperty"; private string _myProperty = string.Empty; public string MyProperty { get { return _myProperty; } set { if (_myProperty == value) { return; } _myProperty = value; RaisePropertyChanged(MyPropertyName); MyTestCommand.RaiseCanExecuteChanged(); } } Logo update I made a minor change to the logo: Some people found the lack of the word “light” (as in MVVM Light Toolkit) confusing. I thought it was cool, because the feather suggests the idea of lightness, however I can see the point. So I added the word “light” to the logo. Things should be quite clear now. What’s next? This is only the first of a series of releases that will bring MVVM Light to V4. In the next weeks, I will continue to add some very requested features and correct some issues in the code. I will probably continue this fashion of releasing the changes to the public as source code through Codeplex. I would be very interested to hear what you think of that, and to get feedback about the changes. Cheers, Laurent   Laurent Bugnion (GalaSoft) Subscribe | Twitter | Facebook | Flickr | LinkedIn

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