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• What You Need to Know About Windows 8.1

  - by Chris Hoffman

  Windows 8.1 is available to everyone starting today, October 19. The latest version of Windows improves on Windows 8 in every way. It’s a big upgrade, whether you use the desktop or new touch-optimized interface. The latest version of Windows has been dubbed “an apology” by some — it’s definitely more at home on a desktop PC than Windows 8 was. However, it also offers a more fleshed out and mature tablet experience. How to Get Windows 8.1 For Windows 8 users, Windows 8.1 is completely free. It will be available as a download from the Windows Store — that’s the “Store” app in the Modern, tiled interface. Assuming upgrading to the final version will be just like upgrading to the preview version, you’ll likely see a “Get Windows 8.1″ pop-up that will take you to the Windows Store and guide you through the download process. You’ll also be able to download ISO images of Windows 8.1, so can perform a clean install to upgrade. On any new computer, you can just install Windows 8.1 without going through Windows 8. New computers will start to ship with Windows 8.1 and boxed copies of Windows 8 will be replaced by boxed copies of Windows 8.1. If you’re using Windows 7 or a previous version of Windows, the update won’t be free. Getting Windows 8.1 will cost you the same amount as a full copy of Windows 8 — $120 for the standard version. If you’re an average Windows 7 user, you’re likely better off waiting until you buy a new PC with Windows 8.1 included rather than spend this amount of money to upgrade. Improvements for Desktop Users Some have dubbed Windows 8.1 “an apology” from Microsoft, although you certainly won’t see Microsoft referring to it this way. Either way, Steven Sinofsky, who presided over Windows 8′s development, left the company shortly after Windows 8 was released. Coincidentally, Windows 8.1 contains many features that Steven Sinofsky and Microsoft refused to implement. Windows 8.1 offers the following big improvements for desktop users: Boot to Desktop: You can now log in directly to the desktop, skipping the tiled interface entirely. Disable Top-Left and Top-Right Hot Corners: The app switcher and charms bar won’t appear when you move your mouse to the top-left or top-right corners of the screen if you enable this option. No more intrusions into the desktop. The Start Button Returns: Windows 8.1 brings back an always-present Start button on the desktop taskbar, dramatically improving discoverability for new Windows 8 users and providing a bigger mouse target for remote desktops and virtual machines. Crucially, the Start menu isn’t back — clicking this button will open the full-screen Modern interface. Start menu replacements will continue to function on Windows 8.1, offering more traditional Start menus. Show All Apps By Default: Luckily, you can hide the Start screen and its tiles almost entirely. Windows 8.1 can be configured to show a full-screen list of all your installed apps when you click the Start button, with desktop apps prioritized. The only real difference is that the Start menu is now a full-screen interface. Shut Down or Restart From Start Button: You can now right-click the Start button to access Shut down, Restart, and other power options in just as many clicks as you could on Windows 7. Shared Start Screen and Desktop Backgrounds; Windows 8 limited you to just a few Steven Sinofsky-approved background images for your Start screen, but Windows 8.1 allows you to use your desktop background on the Start screen. This can make the transition between the Start screen and desktop much less jarring. The tiles or shortcuts appear to be floating above the desktop rather than off in their own separate universe. Unified Search: Unified search is back, so you can start typing and search your programs, settings, and files all at once — no more awkwardly clicking between different categories when trying to open a Control Panel screen or search for a file. These all add up to a big improvement when using Windows 8.1 on the desktop. Microsoft is being much more flexible — the Start menu is full screen, but Microsoft has relented on so many other things and you’d never have to see a tile if you didn’t want to. For more information, read our guide to optimizing Windows 8.1 for a desktop PC. These are just the improvements specifically for desktop users. Windows 8.1 includes other useful features for everyone, such as deep SkyDrive integration that allows you to store your files in the cloud without installing any additional sync programs. Improvements for Touch Users If you have a Windows 8 or Windows RT tablet or another touch-based device you use the interface formerly known as Metro on, you’ll see many other noticeable improvements. Windows 8′s new interface was half-baked when it launched, but it’s now much more capable and mature. App Updates: Windows 8′s included apps were extremely limited in many cases. For example, Internet Explorer 10 could only display ten tabs at a time and the Mail app was a barren experience devoid of features. In Windows 8.1, some apps — like Xbox Music — have been redesigned from scratch, Internet Explorer allows you to display a tab bar on-screen all the time, while apps like Mail have accumulated quite a few useful features. The Windows Store app has been entirely redesigned and is less awkward to browse. Snap Improvements: Windows 8′s Snap feature was a toy, allowing you to snap one app to a small sidebar at one side of your screen while another app consumed most of your screen. Windows 8.1 allows you to snap two apps side-by-side, seeing each app’s full interface at once. On larger displays, you can even snap three or four apps at once. Windows 8′s ability to use multiple apps at once on a tablet is compelling and unmatched by iPads and Android tablets. You can also snap two of the same apps side-by-side — to view two web pages at once, for example. More Comprehensive PC Settings: Windows 8.1 offers a more comprehensive PC settings app, allowing you to change most system settings in a touch-optimized interface. You shouldn’t have to use the desktop Control Panel on a tablet anymore — or at least not as often. Touch-Optimized File Browsing: Microsoft’s SkyDrive app allows you to browse files on your local PC, finally offering a built-in, touch-optimized way to manage files without using the desktop. Help & Tips: Windows 8.1 includes a Help+Tips app that will help guide new users through its new interface, something Microsoft stubbornly refused to add during development. There’s still no “Modern” version of Microsoft Office apps (aside from OneNote), so you’ll still have to head to use desktop Office apps on tablets. It’s not perfect, but the Modern interface doesn’t feel anywhere near as immature anymore. Read our in-depth look at the ways Microsoft’s Modern interface, formerly known as Metro, is improved in Windows 8.1 for more information. In summary, Windows 8.1 is what Windows 8 should have been. All of these improvements are on top of the many great desktop features, security improvements, and all-around battery life and performance optimizations that appeared in Windows 8. If you’re still using Windows 7 and are happy with it, there’s probably no reason to race out and buy a copy of Windows 8.1 at the rather high price of $120. But, if you’re using Windows 8, it’s a big upgrade no matter what you’re doing. If you buy a new PC and it comes with Windows 8.1, you’re getting a much more flexible and comfortable experience. If you’re holding off on buying a new computer because you don’t want Windows 8, give Windows 8.1 a try — yes, it’s different, but Microsoft has compromised on the desktop while making a lot of improvements to the new interface. You just might find that Windows 8.1 is now a worthwhile upgrade, even if you only want to use the desktop.     

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• SQL SERVER – Guest Posts – Feodor Georgiev – The Context of Our Database Environment – Going Beyond the Internal SQL Server Waits – Wait Type – Day 21 of 28

  - by pinaldave

  This guest post is submitted by Feodor. Feodor Georgiev is a SQL Server database specialist with extensive experience of thinking both within and outside the box. He has wide experience of different systems and solutions in the fields of architecture, scalability, performance, etc. Feodor has experience with SQL Server 2000 and later versions, and is certified in SQL Server 2008. In this article Feodor explains the server-client-server process, and concentrated on the mutual waits between client and SQL Server. This is essential in grasping the concept of waits in a ‘global’ application plan. Recently I was asked to write a blog post about the wait statistics in SQL Server and since I had been thinking about writing it for quite some time now, here it is. It is a wide-spread idea that the wait statistics in SQL Server will tell you everything about your performance. Well, almost. Or should I say – barely. The reason for this is that SQL Server is always a part of a bigger system – there are always other players in the game: whether it is a client application, web service, any other kind of data import/export process and so on. In short, the SQL Server surroundings look like this: This means that SQL Server, aside from its internal waits, also depends on external waits and settings. As we can see in the picture above, SQL Server needs to have an interface in order to communicate with the surrounding clients over the network. For this communication, SQL Server uses protocol interfaces. I will not go into detail about which protocols are best, but you can read this article. Also, review the information about the TDS (Tabular data stream). As we all know, our system is only as fast as its slowest component. This means that when we look at our environment as a whole, the SQL Server might be a victim of external pressure, no matter how well we have tuned our database server performance. Let’s dive into an example: let’s say that we have a web server, hosting a web application which is using data from our SQL Server, hosted on another server. The network card of the web server for some reason is malfunctioning (think of a hardware failure, driver failure, or just improper setup) and does not send/receive data faster than 10Mbs. On the other end, our SQL Server will not be able to send/receive data at a faster rate either. This means that the application users will notify the support team and will say: “My data is coming very slow.” Now, let’s move on to a bit more exciting example: imagine that there is a similar setup as the example above – one web server and one database server, and the application is not using any stored procedure calls, but instead for every user request the application is sending 80kb query over the network to the SQL Server. (I really thought this does not happen in real life until I saw it one day.) So, what happens in this case? To make things worse, let’s say that the 80kb query text is submitted from the application to the SQL Server at least 100 times per minute, and as often as 300 times per minute in peak times. Here is what happens: in order for this query to reach the SQL Server, it will have to be broken into a of number network packets (according to the packet size settings) – and will travel over the network. On the other side, our SQL Server network card will receive the packets, will pass them to our network layer, the packets will get assembled, and eventually SQL Server will start processing the query – parsing, allegorizing, generating the query execution plan and so on. So far, we have already had a serious network overhead by waiting for the packets to reach our Database Engine. There will certainly be some processing overhead – until the database engine deals with the 80kb query and its 20 subqueries. The waits you see in the DMVs are actually collected from the point the query reaches the SQL Server and the packets are assembled. Let’s say that our query is processed and it finally returns 15000 rows. These rows have a certain size as well, depending on the data types returned. This means that the data will have converted to packages (depending on the network size package settings) and will have to reach the application server. There will also be waits, however, this time you will be able to see a wait type in the DMVs called ASYNC_NETWORK_IO. What this wait type indicates is that the client is not consuming the data fast enough and the network buffers are filling up. Recently Pinal Dave posted a blog on Client Statistics. What Client Statistics does is captures the physical flow characteristics of the query between the client(Management Studio, in this case) and the server and back to the client. As you see in the image, there are three categories: Query Profile Statistics, Network Statistics and Time Statistics. Number of server roundtrips–a roundtrip consists of a request sent to the server and a reply from the server to the client. For example, if your query has three select statements, and they are separated by ‘GO’ command, then there will be three different roundtrips. TDS Packets sent from the client – TDS (tabular data stream) is the language which SQL Server speaks, and in order for applications to communicate with SQL Server, they need to pack the requests in TDS packets. TDS Packets sent from the client is the number of packets sent from the client; in case the request is large, then it may need more buffers, and eventually might even need more server roundtrips. TDS packets received from server –is the TDS packets sent by the server to the client during the query execution. Bytes sent from client – is the volume of the data set to our SQL Server, measured in bytes; i.e. how big of a query we have sent to the SQL Server. This is why it is best to use stored procedures, since the reusable code (which already exists as an object in the SQL Server) will only be called as a name of procedure + parameters, and this will minimize the network pressure. Bytes received from server – is the amount of data the SQL Server has sent to the client, measured in bytes. Depending on the number of rows and the datatypes involved, this number will vary. But still, think about the network load when you request data from SQL Server. Client processing time – is the amount of time spent in milliseconds between the first received response packet and the last received response packet by the client. Wait time on server replies – is the time in milliseconds between the last request packet which left the client and the first response packet which came back from the server to the client. Total execution time – is the sum of client processing time and wait time on server replies (the SQL Server internal processing time) Here is an illustration of the Client-server communication model which should help you understand the mutual waits in a client-server environment. Keep in mind that a query with a large ‘wait time on server replies’ means the server took a long time to produce the very first row. This is usual on queries that have operators that need the entire sub-query to evaluate before they proceed (for example, sort and top operators). However, a query with a very short ‘wait time on server replies’ means that the query was able to return the first row fast. However a long ‘client processing time’ does not necessarily imply the client spent a lot of time processing and the server was blocked waiting on the client. It can simply mean that the server continued to return rows from the result and this is how long it took until the very last row was returned. The bottom line is that developers and DBAs should work together and think carefully of the resource utilization in the client-server environment. From experience I can say that so far I have seen only cases when the application developers and the Database developers are on their own and do not ask questions about the other party’s world. I would recommend using the Client Statistics tool during new development to track the performance of the queries, and also to find a synchronous way of utilizing resources between the client – server – client. Here is another example: think about similar setup as above, but add another server to the game. Let’s say that we keep our media on a separate server, and together with the data from our SQL Server we need to display some images on the webpage requested by our user. No matter how simple or complicated the logic to get the images is, if the images are 500kb each our users will get the page slowly and they will still think that there is something wrong with our data. Anyway, I don’t mean to get carried away too far from SQL Server. Instead, what I would like to say is that DBAs should also be aware of ‘the big picture’. I wrote a blog post a while back on this topic, and if you are interested, you can read it here about the big picture. And finally, here are some guidelines for monitoring the network performance and improving it: Run a trace and outline all queries that return more than 1000 rows (in Profiler you can actually filter and sort the captured trace by number of returned rows). This is not a set number; it is more of a guideline. The general thought is that no application user can consume that many rows at once. Ask yourself and your fellow-developers: ‘why?’. Monitor your network counters in Perfmon: Network Interface:Output queue length, Redirector:Network errors/sec, TCPv4: Segments retransmitted/sec and so on. Make sure to establish a good friendship with your network administrator (buy them coffee, for example J ) and get into a conversation about the network settings. Have them explain to you how the network cards are setup – are they standalone, are they ‘teamed’, what are the settings – full duplex and so on. Find some time to read a bit about networking. In this short blog post I hope I have turned your attention to ‘the big picture’ and the fact that there are other factors affecting our SQL Server, aside from its internal workings. As a further reading I would still highly recommend the Wait Stats series on this blog, also I would recommend you have the coffee break conversation with your network admin as soon as possible. This guest post is written by Feodor Georgiev. Read all the post in the Wait Types and Queue series. Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.SQLAuthority.com) Filed under: Pinal Dave, PostADay, Readers Contribution, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL Query, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, SQL Wait Stats, SQL Wait Types, T SQL

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• Turning a board game idea into a browser based, slow paced gameplay

  - by guillaume31

  Suppose I want to create a strategy game with global mutable state shared between all players (think game board). But unlike a board game, I don't want it to be real time action and/or turn-based. Instead, players should be able to log in at any time of the day and spend a fixed number of action points per day as they wish. As opposed to a few hours, game sessions would run over a few weeks. This is meant to reward good strategy rather than time spent playing (as an alternative, hardcore players could always play multiple games in parallel instead) as well as all kind of issues related to live playing like disconnections and synchronization. The game should remain addictive still have a low time investment footprint for casual players. So far so good, but this still leaves open the question of when to solve actions and when they should be visible. I want to avoid "ninja play" like doing all your moves just a few minutes before daily point reset to take other players by surprise, or people spamming F5 to place a well-timed action which would defeat the whole point of a non real-time game. I thought of a couple of approaches to that : Resolve all events in a single scheduled process running once a day. This basically means a "blind" gameplay where players can take actions but don't see their results immediately. The thing is, I played a similar browser game a few years ago and didn't like the fact that you feel disconnected and powerless until there's that deus ex machina telling you what really happened during all that time. You see the world evolve in large increments of one day, which often doesn't seem like seeing it evolve at all. For actions that have an big impact on the game or on other players (attacks, big achievements), make them visible to everyone immediately but delay their effect by something like 24 hours. Opposing players could be notified when such an event happens, so that they can react to it. Do you have any other ideas how I could go about solving this ? Are there any known approaches in similar existing games ?

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• Differences in cg shader code for OpenGL vs. for DirectX?

  - by Cray

  I have been trying to use an existing library that automatically generates shaders (Hydrax plugin for Ogre3D). These shaders are used to render water and somewhat involved, but are not extremely complicated. However there seems to be some differences in how the cg shaders are handled by OpenGL and DirectX, more specifically, I am pretty sure that the author of the library only has debugged all the shaders for DirectX, and they work flawlessly there, but not so in OpenGL. There are no compiler errors, but the result just doesn't look the same. (And I have to run the library in OpenGL.) Isn't cg supposed to be a language that can freely use the exact same code for both platforms? Are there any specific known caveats one should know about when using the same code for them? Are there any fast ways to find what parts of the code work differently? (I am pretty sure that the shaders are the problem. Otherwise Ogre3D has great support for both problems, and everything is abstracted away nicely. Other shaders work in OpenGL, etc...)

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• Oracle Cloud Solutions at Cloud Expo West

  - by Gene Eun

  Oracle is proud to be the Platinum Sponsor at next week's Cloud Expo West in Santa Clara (Nov 4-7).  This is the third consecutive year that Oracle has been sponsoring Cloud Expo and each year our involvement and presence at the conference has grown. This year, we have a great lineup of sessions which I've listed below. If you’re attending Cloud Expo West, we'd love to have you attend our sessions that will show our thought leadership and leading solutions in the cloud. You should also swing by Booth #130 to see some of our latest cloud offerings firsthand. Date  Time  Session Title  Track  Room  Monday, Nov 4  3:00 pm - 3:45 pm Ten Myths of Cloud Computing - General Session All Tracks Ballroom A-H  Monday, Nov 4  5:10 pm - 5:55 pm Driving Recurring Revenue Streams Through Cloud Billing Cloud Computing and Big Data M1  Monday, Nov 4  5:10 pm - 5:55 pm An Introduction to Oracle's Cloud Application Marketplace Cloud Bootcamp Great America Room J  Tuesday, Nov 5  6:25 pm - 7:05 pm Delivering Database as a Service with Oracle Database 12c Deploying the Cloud Great America Room 2  Wednesday, Nov 6  5:35 pm - 6:20 pm Accelerating Your Journey to Self-Service IT Enterprise Cloud Computing B2  Thursday, Nov 7  1:35 pm - 2:20 pm Oracle's Strategy for Public Cloud Platform and Infrastructure Services Infrastructure Management | Virtualization M2 At Cloud Expo West, you'll get to learn about and experience the latest in Cloud and Big Data. If you're in Silicon Valley or the Bay Area and don't have a pass to Cloud Expo, no problem. Oracle is giving away FREE VIP Gold Passes! We would love to have you be our VIP guest. Just go to Oracle's Cloud Expo 2013 event registration page and follow the instructions to get your complimentary pass. Stay tuned to this blog and follow us on Twitter (@OracleCloudZone) during and after Cloud Expo for more of our insight and observations about this year's conference.

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• FY13 Partner Kickoff Kick’s off Summer Right

  - by Kristin Rose

  This summer’s blockbuster movie lineup is far from disappointing – From the Avengers to Prometheus and The Dark Knight Rises, there is no shortage of ‘cling-to-your-seat’ entertainment in store, not to mention buttery popcorn fingers. Will all this big screen action taking place, Oracle wanted to take part in some big premiers of its own, which is why we are happy to announce that our FY13 Partner Kickoff event is taking place June 26th. This year we are welcoming several partners from around the globe in person to Oracle’s Headquarters, as well as another 22,000 partners tuning in to help us kickoff FY13. Hosted by Judson Althoff, SVP of WWA&C, the Oracle PartnerNetwork FY13 Kickoff is being held live — five times throughout the day — and will include a special message for each region.  Have a look at the schedule of shows below: EMEA Kickoff – Tuesday, June 26 @ 2:00 pm BST (London) LAD Kickoff – Tuesday, June 26 @ 4:00 pm UTC (San Paulo) North America Kickoff – Tuesday, June 26 @ 8:30 am PT (San Francisco) Japan Kickoff – Wednesday, June 27 @ 10:00 am JST (Tokyo) Asia Pacific Kickoff – Wednesday, June 27 @ 8:30 am IST (Bangalore) / 11:00 am SGT (Singapore) / 1:00 pm AEST (Sydney) Partners near and far will be able to get a first row seat to some exciting Oracle announcements, keynotes, round-tables and a live after-show event hosted by Nick Kritikos, VP of Partner Enablement. Did we mention there is an exciting online component which will allow partners to send in questions or comments and get them answered in real time? Now that deserves two thumbs up!So whether you’re partial to Milk Duds or Junior Mints, grab a box of your favorite candy and sign-up for this strategy driven, partner focused blockbuster event. To get a sneak-peek at what’s in store, watch this short PKO “trailer” below, starring our very own GVP of WWA&C, Lydia Smyers to find out more.   To the Depths and Back,The OPN Communications Team

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• Part 2: Career development as a Software Developer without becoming a manager.

  - by albertpascual

  Seems like my previous post inspired by the work of Michael “Doc” Norton was a great success for the amount of emails I have received. Yet amazed how many people didn’t want to discuss their questions in the comments  sections. I would encourage people to be more public, still I would like to reply to all of you on this public media. I still welcome those emails. What I found out is that many people feels like me, they want to be developers and still be compensated for their experience without wanting to take a job as a manager. Their perfect day is a full day of coding and learning. Many believe their companies will never pay a manager’s salary to a developer no matter what. Most of you ask how to get the ball rolling. And is the later that I’m addressing here, the previous group, will never try. What companies understand developers value and where can I find them? This is a very difficult question to ask, I don’t have a list of those companies or departments, I have seen in my past signs in companies bending backwards to compensate, in more ways the monetary, a developer that is a good resource to them. Allowing the person to move out of the state and still let them work for the company from home is a sign that company goes by individual cases. Allowing them to go to conference that will not benefit the company is another big sign. Simple signs like flexible hours and letting some people work from home. To see those signs you need to be working in that company for awhile and look at the departments where the manager is taking care of their employees in individual cases. Look for the department where people get quiet extra perks, where some people in the department work from home or remotely. In my experience, but not always true, medium to big companies, are prompt to recognize good developers. Then again, some companies just don’t get it and is when you see many technical people managing developers. For all the people that email me stating that developers can also be very good managers, I do not disagree, I just think that a good developers loves writing code, when you remove that part the better salary isn’t enough to keep a developer happy. Burned out developers appreciate being promoted to managers. How do I know I work in a bad company? In my experience I have been a consultant and seen many companies, a few signs I have learned about companies that will not recognize good developers are: When the turn over is pretty high, when developers are moving out in a big rate, no rocket scientist needs to tap you in the shoulder. When the company is looking always to outsource their development resources. The product is not that interesting nor the company cares too much for their final result and support. Code sweat shops. You’ll know when you start working in one of those. Run for the hills! Where do I start? Disclaimer: I have only based this post on Michael “Doc” Norton, this is just my interpretation and ideas. First thing is to look at Michael “Doc” Norton presentation Take Control of Your Development Career http://docondev.blogspot.com/ That should be the first thing any developer should look and follow like it was a pattern. I would personally recommend to find some language or pattern you are interested with and learn it, learn something that will make you happy. Second, join a User Group and get involve in the community. There are hundreds of user groups, and I’m sure you’ll find one in your city or near you town. Code Camps are Developers Meet Ups are also good resources. Third, I would join a open source project you are interested or better yet, create a new open source project with the new technology that you have learn and get coding. Fourth, create a Twitter account and follow the people that talks about the technology you are interested on. If you follow this 4 steps above I think you’ll be on your way, after they are complete, when you release your Open Source project you can say that you accomplished the first steps. Now, do not expect anything to change in your career life, you are changing and should not expect anything in return, besides borrowing some time from sleeping and your family. Creating a good schedule may help you, I find wasted time in many places that I use. Flying for work is actually one of those that allows me to do my best work on a airplane, don’t need to borrow time from anywhere else. Making sure you always have a light, charged laptop is so important. Next steps following the Michael “Doc” Norton Pattern or my interpretation of. First, help run a user group or better yet, start a new user group. I’ll add, as well, go to one conference a year and free development events around your city; Code Camps, Geek Dinners, etc. There are many free events sponsored by different companies for developers to get to know their products, I highly recommend those as the way to get connected. Second, chose a mentor, this is a very hard thing to do I experienced, find an expert in the technology you are learning that has the time for you, it is difficult, I wish you best of luck. Third, learn another technology or pattern, open your horizons a little bit more. Why not, if you had fun previously, keep doing it. Fourth, get involved in forums to answer and ask questions, getting notice in public forums is rewarding for your ego after such a long journey. Final steps following the Michael “Doc” Norton Pattern Teach what you know, become humble on your knowledge, find as many opportunities to teach and to get involved with the community, bring all that to your day job. Mr. Norton talks about getting naked, expose yourself to others in your knowledge and what you do not know. You are never too important for small opportunities, yet don’t  be afraid to take anything big and learn from the experience. Anytime you have the opportunity to talk to somebody that has reach the point the community knows his or her name, means that you should learn from it. Take opportunities that won’t make you money, yet will make you happy. Sometimes you need to spend money and time. Register talks in Code Camps and Dev Meet Ups, those are free, also go to Conference, Development Summits and Geek Diners for example. One day, people will pay you to attend. When will all these pay off? I don’t know. I’m still in the path, there are a few things that during your journey you may get little acknowledgements that you are in the correct path. In my case I think those are the little signs that tells you about your journey. I got awarded the Microsoft Most Valuable Professional for ASP.NET in 2007, 2008, 2009 and 2010. I got selected to speak at the DevConnections in Las Vegas in 2010 and Orlando 2011. I do believe that I do have a long way to go, yet what I do makes me happy and I hope I can keep doing for years to come. Every year I can see an improvement on my code, and more frameworks and languages are under my belt, I learn to embrace them all as well as in my daily job, I have been able to work in a few projects beyond my department. I’m a learner and believer of the Michael “Doc” Norton pattern. Looking forward to learn more about it to be able to apply it better. In my short journey I now see my mistakes, I did a few things right, I have been listening the intelligent people and not being afraid to move along the technology changes. In my professional life, I have tried to avoid being placed in only one technology and product. I have always share my code and never confused anybody that wanted to take over any of my projects, I didn’t think anything I created as my own nor care too much when politics didn’t see my vision. I stayed flexible, ready and visible, yet humble. I keep my head just below the clouds, and avoided managers meetings. I credit my manager for my success, and I faulted publicly only myself for the failures. Hope this helps. Cheers, Al Follow me in Twitter  Read my previous post tweetmeme_url = 'http://weblogs.asp.net/albertpascual/archive/2010/12/09/part-2-career-development-as-a-software-developer-without-becoming-a-manager.aspx'; tweetmeme_source = 'alpascual';

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• SQL Spatial: Getting “nearest” calculations working properly

  - by Rob Farley

  If you’ve ever done spatial work with SQL Server, I hope you’ve come across the ‘nearest’ problem. You have five thousand stores around the world, and you want to identify the one that’s closest to a particular place. Maybe you want the store closest to the LobsterPot office in Adelaide, at -34.925806, 138.605073. Or our new US office, at 42.524929, -87.858244. Or maybe both! You know how to do this. You don’t want to use an aggregate MIN or MAX, because you want the whole row, telling you which store it is. You want to use TOP, and if you want to find the closest store for multiple locations, you use APPLY. Let’s do this (but I’m going to use addresses in AdventureWorks2012, as I don’t have a list of stores). Oh, and before I do, let’s make sure we have a spatial index in place. I’m going to use the default options. CREATE SPATIAL INDEX spin_Address ON Person.Address(SpatialLocation); And my actual query: WITH MyLocations AS (SELECT * FROM (VALUES ('LobsterPot Adelaide', geography::Point(-34.925806, 138.605073, 4326)),                        ('LobsterPot USA', geography::Point(42.524929, -87.858244, 4326))                ) t (Name, Geo)) SELECT l.Name, a.AddressLine1, a.City, s.Name AS [State], c.Name AS Country FROM MyLocations AS l CROSS APPLY (     SELECT TOP (1) *     FROM Person.Address AS ad     ORDER BY l.Geo.STDistance(ad.SpatialLocation)     ) AS a JOIN Person.StateProvince AS s     ON s.StateProvinceID = a.StateProvinceID JOIN Person.CountryRegion AS c     ON c.CountryRegionCode = s.CountryRegionCode ; Great! This is definitely working. I know both those City locations, even if the AddressLine1s don’t quite ring a bell. I’m sure I’ll be able to find them next time I’m in the area. But of course what I’m concerned about from a querying perspective is what’s happened behind the scenes – the execution plan. This isn’t pretty. It’s not using my index. It’s sucking every row out of the Address table TWICE (which sucks), and then it’s sorting them by the distance to find the smallest one. It’s not pretty, and it takes a while. Mind you, I do like the fact that it saw an indexed view it could use for the State and Country details – that’s pretty neat. But yeah – users of my nifty website aren’t going to like how long that query takes. The frustrating thing is that I know that I can use the index to find locations that are within a particular distance of my locations quite easily, and Microsoft recommends this for solving the ‘nearest’ problem, as described at http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-au/library/ff929109.aspx. Now, in the first example on this page, it says that the query there will use the spatial index. But when I run it on my machine, it does nothing of the sort. I’m not particularly impressed. But what we see here is that parallelism has kicked in. In my scenario, it’s split the data up into 4 threads, but it’s still slow, and not using my index. It’s disappointing. But I can persuade it with hints! If I tell it to FORCESEEK, or use my index, or even turn off the parallelism with MAXDOP 1, then I get the index being used, and it’s a thing of beauty! Part of the plan is here: It’s massive, and it’s ugly, and it uses a TVF… but it’s quick. The way it works is to hook into the GeodeticTessellation function, which is essentially finds where the point is, and works out through the spatial index cells that surround it. This then provides a framework to be able to see into the spatial index for the items we want. You can read more about it at http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb895265.aspx#tessellation – including a bunch of pretty diagrams. One of those times when we have a much more complex-looking plan, but just because of the good that’s going on. This tessellation stuff was introduced in SQL Server 2012. But my query isn’t using it. When I try to use the FORCESEEK hint on the Person.Address table, I get the friendly error: Msg 8622, Level 16, State 1, Line 1 Query processor could not produce a query plan because of the hints defined in this query. Resubmit the query without specifying any hints and without using SET FORCEPLAN. And I’m almost tempted to just give up and move back to the old method of checking increasingly large circles around my location. After all, I can even leverage multiple OUTER APPLY clauses just like I did in my recent Lookup post. WITH MyLocations AS (SELECT * FROM (VALUES ('LobsterPot Adelaide', geography::Point(-34.925806, 138.605073, 4326)),                        ('LobsterPot USA', geography::Point(42.524929, -87.858244, 4326))                ) t (Name, Geo)) SELECT     l.Name,     COALESCE(a1.AddressLine1,a2.AddressLine1,a3.AddressLine1),     COALESCE(a1.City,a2.City,a3.City),     s.Name AS [State],     c.Name AS Country FROM MyLocations AS l OUTER APPLY (     SELECT TOP (1) *     FROM Person.Address AS ad     WHERE l.Geo.STDistance(ad.SpatialLocation) < 1000     ORDER BY l.Geo.STDistance(ad.SpatialLocation)     ) AS a1 OUTER APPLY (     SELECT TOP (1) *     FROM Person.Address AS ad     WHERE l.Geo.STDistance(ad.SpatialLocation) < 5000     AND a1.AddressID IS NULL     ORDER BY l.Geo.STDistance(ad.SpatialLocation)     ) AS a2 OUTER APPLY (     SELECT TOP (1) *     FROM Person.Address AS ad     WHERE l.Geo.STDistance(ad.SpatialLocation) < 20000     AND a2.AddressID IS NULL     ORDER BY l.Geo.STDistance(ad.SpatialLocation)     ) AS a3 JOIN Person.StateProvince AS s     ON s.StateProvinceID = COALESCE(a1.StateProvinceID,a2.StateProvinceID,a3.StateProvinceID) JOIN Person.CountryRegion AS c     ON c.CountryRegionCode = s.CountryRegionCode ; But this isn’t friendly-looking at all, and I’d use the method recommended by Isaac Kunen, who uses a table of numbers for the expanding circles. It feels old-school though, when I’m dealing with SQL 2012 (and later) versions. So why isn’t my query doing what it’s supposed to? Remember the query... WITH MyLocations AS (SELECT * FROM (VALUES ('LobsterPot Adelaide', geography::Point(-34.925806, 138.605073, 4326)),                        ('LobsterPot USA', geography::Point(42.524929, -87.858244, 4326))                ) t (Name, Geo)) SELECT l.Name, a.AddressLine1, a.City, s.Name AS [State], c.Name AS Country FROM MyLocations AS l CROSS APPLY (     SELECT TOP (1) *     FROM Person.Address AS ad     ORDER BY l.Geo.STDistance(ad.SpatialLocation)     ) AS a JOIN Person.StateProvince AS s     ON s.StateProvinceID = a.StateProvinceID JOIN Person.CountryRegion AS c     ON c.CountryRegionCode = s.CountryRegionCode ; Well, I just wasn’t reading http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ff929109.aspx properly. The following requirements must be met for a Nearest Neighbor query to use a spatial index: A spatial index must be present on one of the spatial columns and the STDistance() method must use that column in the WHERE and ORDER BY clauses. The TOP clause cannot contain a PERCENT statement. The WHERE clause must contain a STDistance() method. If there are multiple predicates in the WHERE clause then the predicate containing STDistance() method must be connected by an AND conjunction to the other predicates. The STDistance() method cannot be in an optional part of the WHERE clause. The first expression in the ORDER BY clause must use the STDistance() method. Sort order for the first STDistance() expression in the ORDER BY clause must be ASC. All the rows for which STDistance returns NULL must be filtered out. Let’s start from the top. 1. Needs a spatial index on one of the columns that’s in the STDistance call. Yup, got the index. 2. No ‘PERCENT’. Yeah, I don’t have that. 3. The WHERE clause needs to use STDistance(). Ok, but I’m not filtering, so that should be fine. 4. Yeah, I don’t have multiple predicates. 5. The first expression in the ORDER BY is my distance, that’s fine. 6. Sort order is ASC, because otherwise we’d be starting with the ones that are furthest away, and that’s tricky. 7. All the rows for which STDistance returns NULL must be filtered out. But I don’t have any NULL values, so that shouldn’t affect me either. ...but something’s wrong. I do actually need to satisfy #3. And I do need to make sure #7 is being handled properly, because there are some situations (eg, differing SRIDs) where STDistance can return NULL. It says so at http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb933808.aspx – “STDistance() always returns null if the spatial reference IDs (SRIDs) of the geography instances do not match.” So if I simply make sure that I’m filtering out the rows that return NULL… …then it’s blindingly fast, I get the right results, and I’ve got the complex-but-brilliant plan that I wanted. It just wasn’t overly intuitive, despite being documented. @rob_farley

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• Looking Back at MIX10

  - by WeigeltRo

  It’s the sad truth of my life that even though I’m fascinated by airplanes and flight in general since my childhood days, my body doesn’t like flying. Even the ridiculously short flights inside Germany are taking their toll on me each time. Now combine this with sitting in the cramped space of economy class for many hours on a transatlantic flight from Germany to Las Vegas and back, and factor in some heavy dose of jet lag (especially on my way eastwards), and you get an idea why after coming back home I had this question on my mind: Was it really worth it to attend MIX10? This of course is a question that will also be asked by my boss at Comma Soft (for other reasons, obviously), who decided to send me and my colleague Jens Schaller, to the MIX10 conference. (A note to my German readers: An dieser Stelle der Hinweis, dass Comma Soft noch Silverlight-Entwickler und/oder UI-Designer für den Standort Bonn sucht – aussagekräftige Bewerbungen bitte an [email protected]) Too keep things short: My answer is yes. Before I’ll go into detail, let me ask the heretical questions whether tech conferences in general still make sense. There was a time, where actually being at a tech conference gave you a head-start in regard to learning about new technologies. Nowadays this is no longer true, where every bit of information and every detail is immediately twittered, blogged and whatevered to death. In the case of MIX10 you even can download the video-taped sessions shortly after. So: Does visiting a conference still make sense? It depends on what you expect from a conference. It should be clear to everybody that you’ll neither get exclusive information, nor receive training in a small group. What a conference does offer that sitting in front of your computer does not can be summarized as follows: Focus Being away from work and home will help you to focus on the presented information. Of course there are always the poor guys who are haunted by their work (with mails and short text messages reporting the latest showstopper problem), but in general being out of your office makes a huge difference. Inspiration With the focus comes the emotional involvement. I find it much easier to absorb information if I feel that certain vibe when sitting in a session. This still means that I have put work into reviewing the information later, but it’s a better starting point. And all the impressions collected at a (good) conference combined lead to a higher motivation – be it by the buzz (“this is gonna be sooo cool!”) or by the fear to fall behind (“man, we’ll have work on this, or else…”). People At a conference it’s pretty easy to get into contact with other people during breakfast, lunch and other breaks. This is a good opportunity to get a feel for what other development teams are doing (on a very general level of course, nobody will tell you about their secret formula) and what they are thinking about specific technologies. So MIX10 did offer focus, inspiration and people, but that would have meant nothing without valuable content. When I (being a frontend developer with a strong interest in UI/UX) planned my visit to MIX10, I made the decision to focus on the "soft" topics of design, interaction and user experience. I figured that I would be bombarded with all the technical details about Silverlight 4 anyway in the weeks and months to come. Actually, I would have liked to catch a few technical sessions, but the agenda wasn’t exactly in favor of people interested in any kind of Silverlight and UI/UX/Design topics. That’s one of my few complaints about the conference – I would have liked one more day and/or more sessions per day. Overall, the quality of the workshops and sessions was pretty high. In fact, looking back at my collection of conferences I’ve visited in the past I’d say that MIX10 ranks somewhere near the top spot. Here’s an overview of the workshops/sessions I attended (I’ll leave out the keynotes): Day 0 (Workshops on Sunday) Design Fundamentals for Developers Robby Ingebretsen is the man! Great workshop in three parts with the perfect mix of examples, well-structured definition of terminology and the right dose of humor. Robby was part of the WPF team before founding his own company so he not only has a strong interest in design (and the skillz!) but also the technical background.   Design Tools and Techniques Originally announced to be held by Arturo Toledo, the Rosso brothers from ArcheType filled in for the first two parts, and Corrina Black had a pretty general part about the Windows Phone UI. The first two thirds were a mixed bag; the two guys definitely knew what they were talking about, and the demos were great, but the talk lacked the preparation and polish of a truly great presentation. Corrina was not allowed to go into too much detail before the keynote on Monday, but the session was still very interesting as it showed how much thought went into the Windows Phone UI (and there’s always a lot to learn when people talk about their thought process). Day 1 (Monday) Designing Rich Experiences for Data-Centric Applications I wonder whether there was ever a test-run for this session, but what Ken Azuma and Yoshihiro Saito delivered in the first 15 minutes of a 30-minutes-session made me walk out. A commercial for a product (just great: a video showing a SharePoint plug-in in an all-Japanese UI) combined with the most generic blah blah one could imagine. EPIC FAIL.   Great User Experiences: Seamlessly Blending Technology & Design I switched to this session from the one above but I guess I missed the interesting part – what I did catch was what looked like a “look at the cool stuff we did” without being helpful. Or maybe I was just in a bad mood after the other session.   The Art, Technology and Science of Reading This talk by Kevin Larson was very interesting, but was more a presentation of what Microsoft is doing in research (pretty impressive) and in the end lacked a bit the helpful advice one could have hoped for.   10 Ways to Attack a Design Problem and Come Out Winning Robby Ingebretsen again, and again a great mix of theory and practice. The clean and simple, yet effective, UI of the reader app resulted in a simultaneous “wow” of Jens and me. If you’d watch only one session video, this should be it. Microsoft has to bring Robby back next year! Day 2 (Tuesday) Touch in Public: Multi-touch Interaction Design for Kiosks & Architectural Experiences Very interesting session by Jason Brush, a great inspiration with many details to look out for in the examples. Exactly what I was hoping for – and then some!   Designing Bing: Heart and Science How hard can it be to design the UI for a search engine? An input field and a list of results, that should be it, right? Well, not so fast! The talk by Paul Ray showed the many iterations to finally get it right (up to the choice of a specific blue for the links). And yes, I want an eye-tracking device to play around with!   The Elephant in the Room When Nishant Kothary presented a long list of what his session was not about, I told to myself (not having the description text present) “Am I in the wrong talk? Should I leave?”. Boy, was I wrong. A great talk about human factors in the process of designing stuff.   An Hour with Bill Buxton Having seen Bill Buxton’s presentation in the keynote, I just had to see this man again – even though I didn’t know what to expect. Being more or less unplanned and intended to be more of a conversation, the session didn’t provide a wealth of immediately useful information. Nevertheless Bill Buxton was impressive with his huge knowledge of seemingly everything. But this could/should have been a session some when in the evening and not in parallel to at least two other interesting talks. Day 3 (Wednesday) Design the Ordinary, Like the Fixie This session by DL Byron and Kevin Tamura started really well and brought across the message to keep things simple. But towards the end the talk lost some of its steam. And, as a member of the audience pointed out, they kind of ignored their own advice when they used a fancy presentation software other then PowerPoint that sometimes got in the way of showing things.   Developing Natural User Interfaces Speaking of alternative presentation software, Joshua Blake definitely had the most remarkable alternative to PowerPoint, a self-written program called NaturalShow that was controlled using multi-touch on a touch screen. Not a PowerPoint-killer, but impressive nevertheless. The (excellent) talk itself was kind of eye-opening in regard to what “multi-touch support” on various platforms (WPF, Silverlight, Windows Phone) actually means.   Treat your Content Right The talk by Tiffani Jones Brown wasn’t even on my planned schedule, but somehow I ended up in that session – and it was great. And even for people who don’t necessarily have to write content for websites, some points made by Tiffani are valid in many places, notably wherever you put texts with more than a single word into your UI. Creating Effective Info Viz in Microsoft Silverlight The last session of MIX10 I attended was kind of disappointing. At first things were very promising, with Matthias Shapiro giving a brief but well-structured introduction to info graphics and interactive visualizations. Then the live-coding began and while the result was interesting, too much time was spend on wrestling to get the code working. Ending earlier than planned, the talk was a bit light on actual content, but at least it included a nice list of resources. Conclusion It could be felt all across MIX10, UIs will take a huge leap forward; in fact, there are enough examples that have already. People who both have the technical know-how and at least a basic understanding of design (“literacy” as Bill Buxton called it) are in high demand. The concept of the MIX conference and initiatives like design.toolbox shows that Microsoft understands very well that frontend developers have to acquire new knowledge besides knowing how to hack code and putting buttons on a form. There are extremely exciting times before us, with lots of opportunity for those who are eager to develop their skills, that is for sure.

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• Clarity of the cloud with Microsoft Learning Experience.

  - by Testas

    while waiting for the Superbowl, I thought I would write this..... 2014 will not only see the release of a new version of SQL Server, but also accompanying this is the release of courses and certification tracks from Microsoft Learning Experience – formerly Microsoft Learning -- that will support the education of SQL Server and related technologies. The notable addition in the curriculum, is substantial material on cloud and big data features that pertain to data and business intelligence. There are entire module/chapters that are dedicated Power BI, SQL Azure and HDInsight. Certifications and courses from Microsoft can get stick – sometimes fair and sometimes unfairly. Whilst I am a massive advocate of community to get information and education. Microsoft’s new courses will bring clarity to the burning topics of the moment and help you to understand the capabilities of Power BI and HDInsight. From a business intelligence perspective there will be three courses: 20463C: Data warehousing in SQL Server 2014 20466C: data models and reports in SQL Server 2014 20467A: Designing Self-Service Business Intelligence and Big Data Solutions These are not the exact titles of the course, but will be confirmed prior to the release. And if you have already completed the SQL Server 2012 or 2008 curriculum, there is an upgrade course from 10977A: Upgrading business intelligence skills from 2008 to 2014. Again this is not the exact title, but these should give you an idea. Look out for announcements from Microsoft Learning Experience….   CHRIS

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• Elastic versus Distributed in caching.

  - by Mike Reys

  Until now, I hadn't heard about Elastic Caching yet. Today I read Mike Gualtieri's Blog entry. I immediately thought about Oracle Coherence and got a little scare throughout the reading. Elastic Caching is the next step after Distributed Caching. As we've always positioned Coherence as a Distributed Cache, I thought for a brief instance that Oracle had missed a new trend/technology. But then I started reading the characteristics of an Elastic Cache. Forrester definition: Software infrastructure that provides application developers with data caching services that are distributed across two or more server nodes that consistently perform as volumes grow can be scaled without downtime provide a range of fault-tolerance levels Hey wait a minute, doesn't Coherence fullfill all these requirements? Oh yes, I think it does! The next defintion in the article is about Elastic Application Platforms. This is mainly more of the same with the addition of code execution. Now there is analytics functionality in Oracle Coherence. The analytics capability provides data-centric functions like distributed aggregation, searching and sorting. Coherence also provides continuous querying and event-handling. I think that when it comes to providing an Elastic Application Platform (as in the Forrester definition), Oracle is close, nearly there. And what's more, as Elastic Platform is the next big thing towards the big C word, Oracle Coherence makes you cloud-ready ;-) There you go! Find more info on Oracle Coherence here.

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• To the world, with love

  - by kaleidoscope

  kaleidoscope 1817, lit. "observer of beautiful forms," coined by its inventor, Sir David Brewster (1781-1868), from Gk. kalos "beautiful" + eidos "shape" (see -oid) + -scope, on model of telescope, etc. Figurative meaning "constantly changing pattern" is first attested 1819 in Lord Byron, whose publisher had sent him one. Let’s start by setting some context here. “We” are not a single blogger but a bunch of like minded people who will be contributing to this blog. We belong to a team led by some folks possessed by innovation, and this has rubbed on us in a good way. How it started It all started with initiative from Girish, A. A big thank you, goes to him. To get it straight from the horse’ mouth: What is it? - Everybody (as per the published schedule) post a small write-up (not more than say 5/6 lines) regarding any Azure related concept. - We shall consolidate all these mails (which would be 5/week) and quickly discuss/brain storm about it, end of the week i.e. on Fridays. What’s the benefit? - This should make our basic Azure concepts rock-solid. - As part of this exercise, we will have a very good collection of Azure FAQs. As the team grew stronger, so did the contributions and after almost 3 months of regular contributions and weekly discussions we thought of sharing the content with the world at large. Afterall we are IT folks and the big I in IT is there for a reason. :) The road ahead We will post the entire collection as time permits. Tagged by contributor. Going forward each contributor will post individually adding his/her specific tag. Get blogging!!

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• Desktop Fun: Music Icon Packs

  - by Asian Angel

  If you really love music and want to liven up your desktop then get ready to create a desktop concert with our Music Icon Packs collection. Note: To customize the icon setup on your Windows 7 & Vista systems see our article here. Using Windows XP? We have you covered here. Sneak Preview For our desktop example we decided to go with a touch of anime musical fun. The icons used are from the Guitar Icons set shown below. Note: Wallpaper can be found here. An up close look at the icons that we used… Notes icon set 1 *.png format only Download Notes icon set 2 *.png format only Download Notes icon set 3 *.png format only Download Notes icon set 4 *.png format only Download Big Band Set 1 *.ico format only Download Big Band Set 2 *.ico format only Download Acoustic Guitars *.ico and .png format Download Acoustic Guitar *.ico format only Download Guitar Icons *.ico format only Download Guiter Skulll *.ico format only Download Dented Music *.ico format only Download Music Icons *.ico format only Download Ipod Mini *.ico format only Download MP3 Players Icons *.ico format only Download MusicPhones icon *.ico and .png format Download Wanting more great icon sets to look through? Be certain to visit our Desktop Fun section for more icon goodness! Similar Articles Productive Geek Tips Desktop Fun: Video Game Icon PacksDesktop Fun: Sci-Fi Icons Packs Series 2Why Did Windows Vista’s Music Folder Icon Turn Yellow?Restore Missing Desktop Icons in Windows 7 or VistaAdd Home Directory Icon to the Desktop in Windows 7 or Vista TouchFreeze Alternative in AutoHotkey The Icy Undertow Desktop Windows Home Server – Backup to LAN The Clear & Clean Desktop Use This Bookmarklet to Easily Get Albums Use AutoHotkey to Assign a Hotkey to a Specific Window Latest Software Reviews Tinyhacker Random Tips HippoRemote Pro 2.2 Xobni Plus for Outlook All My Movies 5.9 CloudBerry Online Backup 1.5 for Windows Home Server Download Songs From MySpace Steve Jobs’ iPhone 4 Keynote Video Watch World Cup Online On These Sites Speed Up Windows With ReadyBoost Awesome World Cup Soccer Calendar Nice Websites To Watch TV Shows Online

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• Lubuntu Stability Problems

  - by marinara

  I installed Lubuntu 11.10 from scratch a few days ago, now I can't even run aptitude without crashing from the mess it's made of the package system. (yes I added a non-offical repository, because I needed firefox 8) I'm a new user. So I don't know. Did I make a mistake by loading Lubuntu? I really like the LXDE stuff. but so many things seem very buggy. ***edit I think besides the sound problems, all of my other problems are with either LXDE or with openbox. And I think the sound problem is Lubuntu specific also. Problems like windows not popping up, windows not getting painted. Windows flashing in the panel for no reason, Windows losing their title bar occasionally, mousewheel changing desktops when i'm clearly in a window, LXDE panel not responding to clicks, applications not launching from the menu, applications not launching from firefox downloads window, applications crashing when I don't do anything but click on them. Pretty sure all this stuff is openbox or LXDE. This is just too much work to keep Lubuntu running. It's a lemon. (sorry I realize I should be constructive but I'm tired) It's pretty clear that openbox needs some damn bugfixes for compatibility with Oneric. And LXDE isn't that great either. I expect things to launch when I click on them. I think installing the acpid package is what made it clear to me. If 20 seconds after installing the package (from the offical repo), linux has already crashed, then I'm in the wrong damn neighborhood.

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• Discover the MySQL Connect Content Catalog!

  - by Bertrand Matthelié

  The MySQL Connect content catalog is now live! MySQL Connect offers you a unique opportunity to attend:Keynotes including: "The State of the Dolphin", by Oracle's Chief Corporate Architect Edward Screven and VP of MySQL Engineering Tomas Ulin. An exciting panel on "Current MySQL Usage Models and Future Developments" with Davi Arnaud from LinkedIn, Daniel Austin from PayPal, Mark Callaghan from Facebook and Calvin Sun from Twitter. Over 65 Conference sessions enabling you to hear from: Oracle MySQL engineers on MySQL 5.6, InnoDB, replication, performance tuning, security, NoSQL, MySQL Cluster, Big Data...and more. MySQL customers including the US Census Bureau, Big Fish Games, Booking.com, Ticketmaster, and Tumblr. Internationally recognized MySQL community members and partners on topics such as performance, MySQL 5.6, backup, MySQL in the Cloud, OpenStack and Hadoop. 6 Birds-of-a-feather sessions about sharding, replication, backup, and other subjects.8 Hands-On Labs designed to give you hands-on experience about MySQL replication, the MySQL Performance Schema, MySQL Cluster...and more.6 Tutorials providing you in-depth knowledge about MySQL Performance Tuning best practices, enhancing productivity with MySQL 5.6 new features or the essentials to get started with MySQL (tutorials are available as an add-on package to MySQL Connect registrants).Demo pods and exhibitors, to learn more about Partner’s and Oracle’s offerings.Receptions on both Saturday and Sunday nights, enabling you to ask all your questions to Oracle's MySQL engineers and to network with some of the world’s best MySQL professionals.Check out the MySQL Connect content catalog and find out about the amazing sessions you have the opportunity to attend.Reminder: The early bird discount is running until July 19, Register Now to save US$500! Plan to Attend Oracle OpenWorld or JavaOne? Add the MySQL Connect event to your Oracle OpenWorld or JavaOne registration for only US$100. Exhibit/Sponsorship opportunities are also available. We look forward to seeing you at MySQL Connect!

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• Daylight Saving Time Visualized

  - by Jason Fitzpatrick

  When you map out the Daylight Saving Time adjusted sunrise and sunset times over the course of the year, an interesting pattern emerges. Chart designer Germanium writes: I tried to come up with the reason for the daylight saving time change by just looking at the data for sunset and sunrise times. The figure represents sunset and sunrise times thought the year. It shows that the daylight saving time change marked by the lines (DLS) is keeping the sunrise time pretty much constant throughout the whole year, while making the sunset time change a lot. The spread of sunrise times as measured by the standard deviation is 42 minutes, which means that the sunrise time changes within that range the whole year, while the standard deviation for the sunset times is 1:30 hours. Whatever the argument for doing this is, it’s pretty clear that reason is to keep the sunrise time constant. You can read more about the controversial history of Daylight Saving Time here. Daylight Saving Time Explained [via Cool Infographics] 6 Ways Windows 8 Is More Secure Than Windows 7 HTG Explains: Why It’s Good That Your Computer’s RAM Is Full 10 Awesome Improvements For Desktop Users in Windows 8

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• Please help me, I need some solid career advice, put myself in a dumb situation

  - by Kevin

  Hi, First off, I just want to say thank you in advance for looking at my question and would really value your input on this subject. My core question is how do I proceed from the following predicament. I will be honest with you, I wasted my College Experience. I slacked off and didn't take any of my comp sci classes that seriously, somehow i still got out with a 3.25 GPA. But truth be told I learned nothing. I befriended most of my professors who went pretty lenient on me in terms of grading. However, I basically came out of College knowing how to program a simple calculator in VB.Net. I was (to my great surprise) hired by a very large respected company in Denver as a Junior developer. Well the long and the short of it is that I knew so little about programming that I quickly became the office pariah and was almost fired due to my incompetence. It has been 8 months now and I feel I have learned some basic things and I am not as picked on as I used to be by the other developers. However, everyone hates me and the first few months have given the other developers a horrible perception of me. I am no longer afraid of code or learning, but I have put my self in the precarious position of being the scapegoat of our department. I hate going to work every day because no one there is my friend and pretty much everyone is hostile to me. What should I do? Any advice?

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• Lost website rankings as a result of using a 302 redirect instead of a 301

  - by george peris

  I have an online store and during the last 2 days I noticed a big change in its SERPS for some keywords. The site is indexed in local Google for 5 keywords, and the online store is based on Magento 1.7. 5 days ago, I set up an SSL certificate in the online store in order to get better ranking results. I setup the SSL and followed the instructions from the Magento to make permanent 301 redirects from the HTTP URLs to the HTTPS URLs. I replaced all the URLs of the online store with HTTPS. When I saw in the SERPS that the rankings for some keywords were going up and down, I checked some URLs to see if all was going well with 301 redirects and found that the redirects where 302 and not 301, which is a big bug caused by Magento. I solved the problem with the .htaccess, but still the rankings for the homepage have disappeared. I fetched the site again using Google Webmaster Tools and am waiting to see. Can you please advise if I did something wrong, and what else I could do?

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• SharePoint Saturday Charlotte 2010 Recap, Slides and Photos

  - by Brian Jackett

  This past weekend I attended SharePoint Saturday Charlotte (SPSCLT) in Charlotte, North Carolina.  For those unfamiliar, SharePoint Saturday is a community driven event where various speakers gather to present at a FREE conference on all topics related to SharePoint.  This made my fourth SharePoint Saturday attended and third I’ve spoken at.  The event was very well organized, attended, and a pleasure to be a part of along with many other great speakers.     At SharePoint Saturday Charlotte I had the opportunity to give two presentations.  First was “The Power of PowerShell + SharePoint 2007” and second was a new one “Managing SharePoint 2010 Farms with PowerShell.”  I want to thank everyone who attended either of my sessions and for all of the feedback given.  Below you will find links to my slides, demo scripts, and pictures taken throughout the event.  If anyone has any questions from the slides or scripts feel free to drop me a line.   Pictures SharePoint Saturday Charlotte Apr '10 Pictures on Facebook (recommend these with comments and tagging)   View Full Album   Slides, Scripts, and Rating Links SharePoint Saturday Charlotte Apr '10 Slides and Demo Scripts SpeakerRate: The Power of PowerShell + SharePoint 2007 SpeakerRate: Managing SharePoint 2010 Farms with PowerShell   Conclusion     Big thanks out to Brian Gough (@bkgough), Dan Lewis (@sharepointcomic) and all of the other organizers of this event.  Also a big thanks out to the other speakers and sponsors (too many to list) who made the event possible.  Lastly thanks to my Sogeti coworker Kelly Jones (@kellydjones) for picking me up from the airport and a ride back to Columbus.  I hope everyone that attended got something out of the event and will continue to grow the SharePoint community.  I’m on a break from conferences for a few weeks and then have 3 more back to back weekends in May, blog posts announcing those coming later.  Enjoy the slides, scripts, and pictures.         -Frog Out

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• l'e-news Arrow ECS-Oracle

  - by mseika

  Si vous ne visualisez pas cet email, cliquez ici Agenda Accompagnement Arrow ECS Cut-off Q4FY12 Oracle SoftwareEn raison du closing Oracle de mai, les commandes Oracle doivent être enregistrées chez Arrow ECS avant : - Le 27 avril 2012 pour les commandes Hardware - Le 20 mai 2012 pour les commandes Software Pour plus d'information, contactez votre commercial dédié Oracle Les WebExperts Oracle by Arrow45 minutes pour monter en compétence grâce à nos formations gratuites en ligne.Prochaines sessions :- La tarification Oracle SW : 2 avril à 11h- Le programme OMM : 4 avril à 11h- ODA : l'appliance Oracle pour les PME-PMI : 16 avril à 11h- Weblogic, les différentes éditions : 2 mai 2012 à 11h Forum Big Data le 5 avrilDécouvrez comment Oracle va accélérer et faciliter vos projets de déploiement Big Data.Pour en savoir plus et vous inscrire Workshop technique Oracle VM3Venez découvrir les nouveautés d'Oracle VM3 et de Linux 6 lors d'un workshop technique, le 26 avril prochain à Colombes.Pour en savoir plus et vous inscrire Bootcamp ODA en régions Arrow vous propose des formations sur la solution Oracle Database Appliance.Les prochaines étapes : Aix, Bordeaux et Nantes.Préinscrivez-vous dès aujourd'hui ! "Bootcamp Implementation" Oracle : obtenez la préférence de vos clients en devenant spécialiste Oracle Nous vous proposons 2 sessions de préparation à ces examens au tarif spécial de 1090€ HT : - Oracle Database 11g Certified Implementation Specialist : du 23 au 27 avril 2012 - Oracle WebLogic Server 11g : Administration avancé, du 21 au 25 mai 2012 Inscrivez-vous vite, le nombre de places est limité.Pour en savoir plus, contactez l'équipe formation L'Exalabs Solution Center d'Arrow ECS Centre de formation unique en France, l'Exalabs Solution Center dispose de l'intégralité de l'infrastructure technique intégrée d'Oracle : Exadata, Exalogic, ODA...Mobile, il permet d'organiser des démonstrations pratiques, des séminaires de formation, des POC* in situ.*Proof Of ConceptFaîtes vos demandes auprès de notre équipe dédiée Ateliers de certification OracleLe passage des tests de certification est l'étape préalable vers la Spécialisation de votre société.Nous vous proposons de vous accompagner lors d'ateliers dédiés.Vous êtes intéressés ? Faites-le nous savoir Formez-vous sur les produits OracleVous souhaitez former vos commerciaux aux nouveaux produits Oracle : ODA, Exadata...Faîtes vos demandes auprès de notre équipe dédiée Lancez votre activité Oracle avec le Starter KitVous souhaitez démarrer votre business Oracle Software ou Oracle Hardware ?Arrow ECS vous propose un programme dédié pour vous aider à développer rapidement les ventes.Demandez votre Starter Kit L'équipe Oracle chez Arrow ECS - Tél : 01 49 97 59 63 - email : [email protected] Pour passer vos commandes, un n° de fax : 01 49 97 49 49

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• how many times can i buy swtor credits with Extra 100% Bonus in Father’s Day at swtor2credits?

  - by user46860

  When you buy swtor credits, the most important factor must be the price of swtor credits! how can you get the cheap swtor credits? Big surprise for you: For such a special festival - Father’s Day, swtor2credits made a super promotion for all of the swtor players, in the only three days promotion time, you can buy 1600 credits with only $5.04, buy 2000 credits with only $6.30, and 3000k Credits just only need $9.44. The detail time is June 16 to June 18, 2014, 02:00-03:00 a.m. GMT! swtor2credits have been selling at a big loss with so much cheap swtor credits, this is mean 50% off for your order! that is really a crazy super promotion! So may you can not use the 8% disount code and getting double swtor credits at the same time! Everyone has only one chance to get double swtor credits at swtor2credits during our promotion.As long as your order has used extra discount code or voucher, you lose the chance to get exclusive 100% bonus. don't miss the time to buy such cheap swtor credits, like swtor2credits facebook give you more surprise, From May 29, 2014 to June 12.2014.GMT, you can gain Free Cash Coupon, Up to $16 Giveaways for Swtor Credits if you like swtor2credits facebook! http://www.swtor2credits.com/

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• Call for authors for new eBook on the Windows Azure Platform

  - by Eric Nelson

  I intend to pull together a FREE eBook on the Windows Azure Platform – but I need your help to make it rock! If you have detailed experience of any aspect of the Windows Azure Platform and can spare a few hours of time to turn that into a short article (400 to 800 words) then please get in touch. This is not a big commitment but my suspicion is the end result will make for a cracking good read. I am hoping for a mix – everything from lessons learnt from early adopters to introductions to elements of the platform to getting technologies such as Ruby up and running on Azure. 10 to 20 articles sound about right – which means I am after 10 to 20 authors :) All I need from you right now is: One or two suggestions of topics you would like to cover A pointer to any example of your previous work – which could be as simple as a blog post or a work document. For simplicity, just drop me an email direct to eric.nelson A@T microsoft.com. BIG THANKS! Eric The provisional dates are: Confirm authors and topics by 3rd May Get first draft from all authors by 10th May Complete reviews by 17th May Final versions by 24th May Published by 31st May And finally, an example: To give you an idea of what I have in mind, check out the eBook we pulled together last December which has had several thousand downloads. However I’m thinking of making this one a little bit more fun/informal. More on that later. UK MSDN Flash eBook Best Technical Articles #2 - ericnel Related Links: Spread the word – 6 Weeks of FREE Azure Training UK Azure Online Community – join today. UK Windows Azure Site Start working with Windows Azure

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• Is Test Driven Development viable in game development?

  - by Will Marcouiller

  As being Scrum certified, I tend to prone for Agile methodologies while developping a system, and even use some canvas from the Scrum framework to manage my day-to-day work. Besides, I am wondering whether TDD is an option in game development, if it is viable? If I believe this GD question, TDD is not much of a use in game development. Why are MVC & TDD not employed more in game architecture? I come from industrial programming where big projects with big budgets need to work flawlessly, as it could result to catastrophic scenarios if the code wasn't throroughly tested inside and out. Plus, following Scrum rules encourages meeting the due dates of your work while every single action in Scrum is time-boxed! So, I agree when in the question linked above they say to stop trying to build a system, and start writing the game. It is quite what Scrum says, try not to build the perfect system, first: make it work by the Sprint end. Then, refactor the code while working in the second Sprint if needed! I understand that if not all departments responsible for the game development use Scrum, Scrum becomes useless. But let's consider for a moment that all the departments do use Scrum... I think that TDD would be good to write bug-free code, though you do not want to write the "perfect" system/game. So my question is the following: Is TDD viable in game development anyhow?

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• 2D Side Scrolling game and "walk over ground" collision detection

  - by Fire-Dragon-DoL

  The question is not hard, I'm writing a game engine for 2D side scrolling games, however I'm thinking to my 2D side scrolling game and I always come up with the problem of "how should I do collision with the ground". I think I couldn't handle the collision with ground (ground for me is "where the player walk", so something heavily used) in a per-pixel way, and I can't even do it with simple shape comparison (because the ground can be tilted), so what's the correct way? I'know what tiles are and i've read about it, but how much should be big each tile to not appear like a stairs?Are there any other approach? I watched this game and is very nice how he walks on ground: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DmSAQwbbig8&feature=player_embedded If there are "platforms" in mid air, how should I handle them?I can walk over them but I can't pass "inside". Imagine a platform in mid air, it allows you to walk over it but limit you because you can't jump in the area she fits Sorry for my english, it's not my native language and this topic has a lot of keywords I don't know so I have to use workarounds Thanks for any answer Additional informations and suggestions: I'm doing a game course in this period and I asked them how to do this, they suggested me this approach (a QuadTree): -All map is divided into "big nodes" -Each bigger node has sub nodes, to find where the player is -You can find player's node with a ray on player position -When you find the node where the player is, you can do collision check through all pixels (which can be 100-200px nothing more) Here is an example, however i didn't show very well the bigger nodes because i'm not very good with photoshop :P How is this approach?

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• Macedonian Code Camp 2011

  - by hajan

  Autumn was filled with lot of conferences, events, speaking engagements and many interesting happenings in Skopje, Macedonia. First at October 20, I was speaking at Microsoft Vizija 9 on topic ASP.NET MVC3 and Razor. One week ago, November 15 I was speaking for first time on topic not related to web development (but still deployment of web apps was part of the demos) on topic “Cloud Computing – Windows Azure” at Microsoft BizSpark Bootcamp. The next event, which is the biggest event by the number of visitors and number of tracks is the Code Camp 2011 event. After we opened the registrations for the event, we sold out (free) 600 tickets in the first 15 hours! We all got astonished by the extremely big number of responses we’ve got… In this event, I can freely say that we expect about 700 attendees to come, and we already have 900+ registered. The event will be held at Saturday, 26 November 2011. At Code Camp 2011, I will speak on topic ASP.NET MVC Best Practices. There are many interesting things to say on this presentation, I will mainly focus on Tips, Tricks, Guidelines and other Practices that I have been using in real-life projects developed by using ASP.NET MVC Framework, with special focus on ASP.NET MVC3 and the next release, ASP.NET MVC4 Developer Preview. There are big number of known local and regional speakers, including 7 MVPs. You can find more info about this event at the official event website: http://codecamp.mkdot.net As for my session, if you have some interesting trick or good practice you have been using in your ASP.NET MVC projects, you can freely share it with me… If I find it interesting and if it’s not part of the current practices I have included for the presentation (I can’t tell you which ones for now… *secret* ;))… I will consider including it in the presentation. Stay tuned for more info soon… Regards, Hajan

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