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• My father is a doctor. He is insisting on writing a database to store non-critical patient information, with no programming background

  - by Dominic Bou-Samra

  So, my father is currently in the process of "hacking" together a database using FileMaker Pro, a GUI based databasing tool for his small (4 doctor) practice. The database will be used to help ease the burden on reporting from medical machines, streamlining quite a clumsy process. He's got no programming background, and seems to be doing everything in his power to not learn things correctly. He's got duplicate data types, no database-enforced relationships (foreign/primary key constraints) and a dozen other issues. He's doing it all by hand via GUI tool using Youtube videos. My issue is, that whilst I want him to succeed 100%, I don't think it's appropriate for him to be handling these types of decisions. How do I convince him that without some sort of education in these topics, a hacked together solution is a bad idea? He's can be quite stubborn and I think he sees these types of jobs as "childs play" How should I approach this? Is it even that bad an idea - or am I correct in thinking he should hire a proper DBA/developer to handle this so that it doesn't become a maintenance nightmare? NB: I am a developer consultant of 4 years and I've seen my share of painful customer implementations.

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• What to do when the programming activity becomes a problem?

  - by gablin

  I once saw a program (can't remember which) where it talked about people "experiencing flow" when they are doing something they are passionate about. When "in flow", they tend to lose track of time and surrounding, concentrating only on their activity at hand. This happens a lot for me when I program; most particularly when I face a problem. I refuse to give up until it's solved. This usually leads to hours just rushing by and I forget to eat lunch, dinner gets pushed into far into the evening, and when I finally look at the clock, it's way into the wee-hours of the night and I will only get a few hours of sleep before having to rise early in the morning. (This is not to say that I'm in flow only when facing a problem - but I find it particularly hard to stop programming and step back when there's something I can't solve immediately.) I love programming, but I hate it when it disrupts my normal routines (most importantly eating and sleeping patterns). And sitting still for so many hours, staring a screen, is not healthy. Please, any ideas on how I can get my rampant programming activity under control?

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• Service Testing made easy with SO-Aware Test Workbench

  - by cibrax

  I happy to announce today a new addition to our SO-Aware service repository toolset, SO-Aware Test Workbench, a WPF desktop application for doing functional and load testing against existing WCF Services. This tool is completely integrated to the SO-Aware service repository, which makes configuring new load and functional tests for WCF Soap and REST services a breeze. From now on, the service repository can play a very important role in an organization by facilitating collaboration between developers and testers. Developers can create and register new services in the repository with all the related artifacts like configuration. On the other hand, Testers can just pick one of the existing services in the repository and create functional or load tests from there, with no need to deal with specific details of the service implementation, location or configuration settings. Developers and Testers can later use the result of those tests to modify the services or adjust different settings on the tests or service configuration. Gustavo Machado, one of the developers behind this project, has written an excellent post describing all the functionality that can find today in the tool. You can also see the tool in action in this Endpoint Tv episode with Jesus and Ron Jacobs.

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• What is the ideal length of a method?

  - by iPhoneDeveloper

  In object-oriented programming, there is no exact rule on the maximum length of a method , but I still found these two qutes somewhat contradicting each other, so I would like to hear what you think. In Clean Code: A Handbook of Agile Software Craftsmanship, Robert Martin says: The first rule of functions is that they should be small. The second rule of functions is that they should be smaller than that. Functions should not be 100 lines long. Functions should hardly ever be 20 lines long. and he gives an example from Java code he sees from Kent Beck: Every function in his program was just two, or three, or four lines long. Each was transparently obvious. Each told a story. And each led you to the next in a compelling order. That’s how short your functions should be! This sounds great, but on the other hand, in Code Complete, Steve McConnell says something very different: The routine should be allowed to grow organically up to 100-200 lines, decades of evidence say that routines of such length no more error prone then shorter routines. And he gives a reference to a study that says routines 65 lines or long are cheaper to develop. So while there are diverging opinions about the matter, is there a functional best-practice towards determining the ideal length of a method for you?

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• Javascript form validation - what's lacking?

  - by box9

  I've tried out two javascript form validation frameworks - jQuery validation, and jQuery Tools validator - and I've found both of them lacking. jQuery validation lacks the clear separation between the concepts of "validating" and "displaying validation errors", and is highly inflexible when it comes to displaying dynamic error messages. jQuery Tools on the other hand lacks decent remote validation support (to check if a username exists for example). Even though jQuery validation supports remote validation, the built-in method requires the server to respond in a particular format. In both cases, any sort of asynchronous validation is a pain, as is defining rules for dependencies between multiple inputs. I'm thinking of rolling my own framework to address these shortcomings, but first I want to ask... have others experienced similar annoyances with javascript validation? What did you end up doing? What are some common validation requirements you've had which really should be catered for? And are there other, much better frameworks out there which I've missed? I'm looking primarily at jQuery-based frameworks, though well-implemented frameworks built on other libraries can still provide some useful ideas.

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• Need help with exploring a USB drive

  - by Bob Getsla

  When I plug in a USB drive, I see it on the left hand edge of the Unity desktop (11.10, 64 bit) but when I try to explore it, VLC starts and tries to play whatever it can find in the USB drive. This behavior began when I updated from 11.04 to 11.10. I literally cannot look into the contents of any of the USB drives I have, because I cannot stop VLC, nor can I do anything when I click Open other than watch VLC start up. This is very frustrating because it makes my USB sticks essentially useless. HELP! I'm sure that there is something a wizard could do about this, but I am not a wizard, and I am at my wits ends. Trying to get to the System Settings menu works, and I can see the setup for "Removable" devices, and they are all set to "Ask" but that is clearly not what is happening. So it looks like I must reach for the command line, but where do I go to find the settings for what the desktop does when I plug in a USB drive and wish to explore the file structure in it and possible copy a file into the USB or from the USB drive. Right now, VLC media player is always getting in my way. :-(

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• Are Intel compilers really better than Microsoft ones?

  - by Rocket Surgeon

  Years ago I was surprised when discovered that Intel sells Studio compatible compilers. I tried it in particular for C/C++ as well as fantastic diagnostic tools. But the code was simply not that computationally intensive to notice the difference. The only impression was: did Intel really did it for me just now, Wow, amazing tools with nanoseconds resolution, unbeleivable. But the trial ended and team never seriously considered a purchase. From your experience, if license cost does not matter, which vendor is a winner ? It is not broad or vague question or attemt to spark a holy war. This sort of question about 2 very visible tools. Nobody likes when tools have any mysteries or surprises. And choices between best and best are always the pain. I also understand the "grass greener" argument. I want to hear all "what ifs" stories. What if Intel just locally optimizes it for the chip stepping of the month, and not every hardware target will actually work as well as Microsoft compiled ? What if AMD hardware is the target and everything will slow down for no reason ? Or on other hand, what if Intel's hardware has so many unnoticable opportunities, that Microsoft compiler writers are too slow to adopt and never implement in the compiler ? What if both are the same exactly, actually a single codebase just wrapped into 2 different boxes and licensed to both vendors by some 3rd party shop? And so on. But someone knows some answers.

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• ArchBeat Link-o-Rama Top 10 for November 2, 2012

  - by Bob Rhubart

  ADF Mobile - Login Functionality | Andrejus Baranovskis "The new ADF Mobile approach with native deployment is cool when you want to access phone functionality (camera, email, sms and etc.), also when you want to build mobile applications with advanced UI, " reports Oracle ACE Director Andrejus Baranovskis. Big Data: Running out of Metric System | Andrew McAfee Do very large numbers make your brain hurt? Better stock up on aspirin. According to Andrew McAfee: "It seems safe to say that before the current decade is out we’ll need to convene a 20th conference to come up with some more prefixes for extraordinarily large quantities not to describe intergalactic distances or the amount of energy released by nuclear reactions, but to capture the amount of digital data in the world." Cloud computing will save us from the zombie apocalypse | Cloud Computing - InfoWorld "It's just a matter of time before we migrate our existing IT assets to public cloud systems," says InfoWorld cloud blogger David Linthicum. "Additionally, it's a short window until the dead rise from the grave and attempt to eat our brains." Is is Halloween or something? Thought for the Day "A computer lets you make more mistakes faster than any invention in human history—with the possible exceptions of hand guns and tequila." — Mitch Ratcliffe

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• Announcing Oracle Database Mobile Server 11gR2

  - by Eric Jensen

  I'm pleased to announce that Oracle Database Mobile Server 11gR2 has been released. It's available now for download by existing customers, or anyone who wants to try it out. New features include: Support for J2ME platforms, specifically CDC platforms including OJEC(this is in addition to our existing support for Java SE and SE Embedded) Per-application integration with Berkeley DB on Android Server-side support for Apache TomEE platform Adding support for Oracle Java Micro Edition Embedded Client (OJEC for short) is an important milestone for us; it enables Database Mobile Server to work with any of the incredibly wide array of devices that run J2ME. In particular, it enables management of  networks of embedded devices, AKA machine to machine (M2M) networks. As these types of networks become more common in areas like healthcare, automotive, and manufacturing, we're seeing demand for Database Mobile Server from new and different areas. This is in addition to our existing array of mobile device use cases. The Android integration feature with Berkeley DB represents the completion of phase I of our Android support plan, we now offer a full set of sync, device and app management features for that platform. Going forward, we plan to continue the dual-focus approach, supporting mobile platforms such as Android, and iOS (hint) on the one hand, and networks of embedded M2M devices on the other. In either case, Database Mobile Server continues to be the best way to connect data-driven applications to an Oracle backend.

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• What is the best way to track / record the current programming project you work on? [duplicate]

  - by user2424160

  This question already has an answer here: Methodology for Documenting Existing Code Base 6 answers When do you start documenting the code? 13 answers Where should a programmer explain the extended logic behind the code? 5 answers I have been in this problem for long time and I want to know how it's done in real / big companies project? Suppose I have the project to build a website. Now I divide the project into sub tasks and do it. But you know that suppose I have task1 in hand like export the page to pdf. Now I spend 3 days to do that , came across various problems, many Stack Overflow questions and in the end I solve it. Now 4 months after someone told me that there is some error in the code. Now by that I completely forgot about (60%) of how I did it and why I do this way. I document the code but I can't write the whole story of that in the code. Then I have to spend much time on code to find what was the problem so that I added this line etc. I want to know that is there any way that i can log steps in completing the project. So that I can see how I end up with code, what errors I got, what questions I asked on SO and etc. How people do it in real time? Which software to use? I know in our project management software called JIRA we have tasks but that does not cover what steps I took to solve that tasks. What is the best way so that when I look back at my 2 year old project, I know how I solve particular task?

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• Grab a Copy of Plants vs. Zombies for Free; Courtesy of the ADA

  - by Jason Fitzpatrick

  In a rather unlikely pairing, PopCap Games and the American Dental Association have teamed up to give away copies of PopCap’s smash hit game Plants vs. Zombies; grab a copy for yourself and print off some game coupons to hand out at Halloween. At StopZombieMouth.com they explain the pairing: This Halloween, the ADA and PopCap Games are redefining what a Halloween “treat” can be… by giving FUN instead of candy. We’re giving away Plants vs. Zombies™ download games as a sugar-free alternative, and you can join in the fun. Ask if your local dentist has the limited-edition, collectible Plants vs. Zombies trading cards with the code for a free Plants vs. Zombies download game. Or, download printable free-game coupons here. Now go out and give PvZ fun as a Halloween treat to kids of all ages. And thanks for helping Stop Zombie Mouth! 7 Ways To Free Up Hard Disk Space On Windows HTG Explains: How System Restore Works in Windows HTG Explains: How Antivirus Software Works

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• Customize Colors for Sprites in Web Game

  - by NateDSaint

  So I'm working on an html5/javascript/css3-based game. Without going into too much detail, I'm thinking of having the characters be simple 8 or 16-bit style sprites, but I'd like to allow the user to customize the colors of their character. Here are some examples of what I'm talking about : http://jsfiddle.net/simurai/CGmCe/light/ http://www.splashnology.com/article/sprite-animation-in-css3/1485/ So the problem I'm having is two-fold: 1) Should I use something other than a sprite map for my characters, like actually draw them as shapes and animate them in a canvas element? That way I can fill the sprite with colors of the user's choosing? My fear there is that this would be inefficient as far as resources and also waste a lot of time hand-drawing everything, but could allow other customization (like height/width etc). 2) Are there potentially some web apis that would allow you to alter colors inside of a sprite? I suppose I could do it on the back-end with GD, but I'm trying to make it entirely in-browser (including local storage). It's not a definitive one-answer only question, but I'm hoping someone can suggest something they've seen that approaches the same problem from another angle or gives us a way to customize the sprites or manipulate them in some manner. Or avoid them altogether, and use a different method.

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• Unity Greeter login screen cuts off login options

  - by ammianus

  I have a pretty newly installed Ubuntu 12.04, using Unity. My external monitor is 1920x1080 max resolution. In the Unity desktop itself everything looks great. I have an NVidia graphics card. When I start my computer and get to the Unity greeter login screen the display is oddly formatted and the resolution seems off. It looks like a zoomed view on the larger 1920x1080 screen. As such it crops the login options off to the left hand side of the screen. So I can only just see the edge of the password box for the user I want to log in with. I can log in with one account by default by blindly typing the password, but I am unable to switch to other accounts. Is there anything I can do to fix the log in screen display so that I can see the normal login options? Note: I first noticed it when I changed my desktop background and the next time I logged in I saw the issue.

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• Mobile cross-platform SDK for computationally intensive apps

  - by K.Steff

  I am aware of the PhoneGap toolkit for creating mobile applications for virtually all mobile platforms with a significant market share. However, the code in PhoneGap that is shared between the different platforms is written in JavaScript. While I like JS, I think it's hardly appropriate for computationally intensive tasks. The situation with Titanium is pretty much the same. So, is there any way that I can create a cross-platform mobile app that has the computationally intensive code shared between the platforms? Some context: Obviously, I don't want to implement the time consuming algorithm in many different languages, since this violates DRY, increases the chance for bugs slipping in at least one version and require boilerplate code to work. I've looked at Xamarin's MonoTouch and Mono for Android tools, but while they cover iOS and Android, they're not nearly as versatile for deployment as PhoneGap. On the other hand, (IMO) the statically typed nature of C# is more suited for intense computation than JS. Are there any other SDK/tools appropriate for the task that I don't know about or a point about the mentioned above that I've missed? Also, uploading data to a web service for processing is not an option, because of the traffic required.

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• Efficient coding in Visual Studio (or another IDE), with touch typing

  - by cheeesus

  Moving the cursor to another position in code is one of the most frequent actions when coding. I don't write my programs from the beginning to the end, like a letter. However, moving the cursor requires me to move my right hand to the key arrows or to the mouse, which feels like an interruption to my writing rhythm, since I'm using touch typing. I want my hands to rest on the keyboard. It's difficult to explain what I mean, but I think every coder using touch typing knows what I mean. I tried many things, like defining some shortcuts as surrogate arrow keys (Shift+Alt+J, K, L, I), or buying a keyboard with a Trackpoint, Trackpad, or Trackball on it, but I have not yet found a satisfying solution to the problem. What is the best solution you know of, regardless of which IDE you use? Edit: Thank you for your answers. I am using a lot of shortkeys, but I think using a Vim plugin in Visual Studio would interfere too much with the shortkeys I am used to. Also, I have a keyboard with a built-in mouse, but I'm still looking for a better solution.

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• Ray Tracing concers: Efficient Data Structure and Photon Mapping

  - by Grieverheart

  I'm trying to build a simple ray tracer for specific target scenes. An example of such scene can be seen below. I'm concerned as to what accelerating data structure would be most efficient in this case since all objects are touching but on the other hand, the scene is uniform. The objects in my ray tracer are stored as a collection of triangles, thus I also have access to individual triangles. Also, when trying to find the bounding box of the scene, how should infinite planes be handled? Should one instead use the viewing frustum to calculate the bounding box? A few other questions I have are about photon mapping. I've read the original paper by Jensen and many more material. In the compact data structure for the photon they introduce, they store photon power as 4 chars, which from my understanding is 3 chars for color and 1 for flux. But I don't understand how 1 char is enough to store a flux of the order of 1/n, where n is the number of photons (I'm also a bit confused about flux vs power). The other question about photon mapping is, if it would be more efficient in my case to store photons per object (or even per Object's triangle) instead of using a balanced kd-tree. Also, same question about bounding box of the scene but for photon mapping. How should one find a bounding box from the pov of the light when infinite planes are involved?

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• HTG Explains: Which Linux File System Should You Choose?

  - by Justin Garrison

  File systems are one of the layers beneath your operating system that you don’t think about—unless you’re faced with the plethora of options in Linux. Here’s how to make an educated decision on which file system to use. The landscape of the Linux file system support is drastically different from Windows and OS X. In Windows and OS X you can find software that will add support for non-standard file systems, but both operating systems can only be installed on their native file system and third party support is added after the fact. Linux on the other hand has a vast array of supported file systems built into the kernel. But how are you supposed to know which file system to pick when installing? We will take a look at some of the most popular choices available and give you use cases to consider—the choice is ultimately up to you based on your needs. Latest Features How-To Geek ETC The 50 Best Registry Hacks that Make Windows Better The How-To Geek Holiday Gift Guide (Geeky Stuff We Like) LCD? LED? Plasma? The How-To Geek Guide to HDTV Technology The How-To Geek Guide to Learning Photoshop, Part 8: Filters Improve Digital Photography by Calibrating Your Monitor Our Favorite Tech: What We’re Thankful For at How-To Geek Settle into Orbit with the Voyage Theme for Chrome and Iron Awesome Safari Compass Icons Set Escape from the Exploding Planet Wallpaper Move Your Tumblr Blog to WordPress Pytask is an Easy to Use To-Do List Manager for Your Ubuntu System Snowy Christmas House Personas Theme for Firefox

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• Turn-based Client-Server Card Game - Unicast (TCP) or Multicast (UDP)

  - by LDM91

  I am currently planning to make a card game project where the clients will communicate with the server in a turn-based and synchronous manner using messages sent over sockets. The problem I have is how to handle the following scenario: (Client takes it turn and sends its action to server) Client sends a message telling the server its move for the turn (e.g. plays the card 5 from its hand which needs to placed onto the table) Server receives messages and updates game state (server will hold all game state). Server iterates through a list of connected clients and sends a message to tell of them change in state Clients all refresh to display the state This is all based on using TCP, and looking at it now it seems a bit like the Observer pattern. The reason this seems to be an issue to me is this message doesn't seem to be point-to-point like the others as I want to send it to all the clients, and doesn't seem very efficient sending the same message in that way. I was thinking about using multicasting with UDP as then I could send the message to all the clients, however wouldn't this mean that the clients would in theory be able to message each other? There is of course the synchronous aspect as well, though this could be put on top of the UDP I guess. Basically, I would like to know what would be good practice as this project is really all about learning, and even though it won't be big enough to encounter performance issues from this I would like to consider them anyway. However, please note I am not interested in using message oriented middleware as a solution (I have experience with using MOM and I'm interested in considering other options excluding MOM if TCP sockets is a bad idea!).

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• Evolution of mainstream programming languages: simplicity versus complexity.

  - by Giorgio

  I had posted this question on http://stackoverflow.com but I was suggested that it may be more appropriate to post it on this forum. I did a quick search on this site and it seems to me that this question has not been asked yet. Please give me a hint if the topic has been raised already by someone else. Update I have rephrased this question, removed personal opinions and made it shorter. I hope in this way it is better suited for this forum. By looking at the recent development of Java (Java 7) and C++ (C++0x) I see that new features are added to these languages. For sure this makes it easier to use certain programming idioms, adding to the productivity of developers. On the other hand, there might be the following risks A language becomes too big, complex, and difficult to understand. It lacks coherence in the design, e.g. if it mixes different paradigms like object-orientation and functional programming, which might not fit well together. Questions: what is more important to you as a developer: to have a rich language that captures a large collection of programming idioms or to have a small language that aims at coherence and simplicity (of course, with a good deal of libraries and tools accompanying it)? Or is it possible to have both? With respect to these issues: How do you judge the current evolutions of main-stream programming languages like Java or C++? Are they becoming too complex, less intuitive? Do they have enough features? Do they need more? Are they still easy enough to understand and use?

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• How to tell your boss that his programming style is really bad?

  - by Roflcoptr

  I'm a student and in my spare time I'm working for a big enterprise as Java developer. The job is good, but the problem is, my boss is writing very strange code. I don't want to complain, but some issues are in my opinion really strange. For example: he doesn't know any booleans. All boolean conditions are Strings called "YesOrNo" and then in the condition he uses if (YesOrNo == "Yes") there are a lot of very strange characters in method names and variables like é õ ô or è all loops are infinite loops in the style of for(;;). Then at the end of the loop the condition is tested and if the conditions is fulfilled break; is called. I don't now if I should tell him that I think this isn't a good practice, since he is my boss and decides how and what to do. On the other hand some of this examples are really very weird. Any hints how to cope with? And is this only me who thinks that's bad style?

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• Breaking The Promise of Web Service Interoperability

  The promise of web service interoperability is achievable if certain technical and non-technical issues are dealt with properly. As the world gets smaller and smaller thanks to our growing global economy the need for security is increasing. The use of security is vital in the transferring of data from one server to another. As new security standards and protocols are created, the environments for web service hosts and clients must be in sync so that they can communicate on the same standard and protocols. For example, if a new protocol x can only be implemented on computers built after 2010 then all computers built prior to 2010 will not be able to connect to any web service hosts that only use this protocol in its security policy. If both the host and client of a web service cannot communicate using a set of common standards and protocols then web services are not available to these clients thus breaking the promise of interoperability. Another limiting factor of web services is governmental policies and regulations. I have experienced this first hand last year when I had to work on a project that dealt with personally identifiable information (PII) regarding US and Canadian Citizens. Currently the Canadian government regulates that any data pertaining to Canadian citizens must be store in Canada only. The issue that we had was that fact that we are a US based company that sometimes works with Canadian PII as part of a service that we provide. As you can see we are US based company and dealing with Canadian Data, so we had to place a file server inside the border of Canada in order for us to continue working for our Canadian customers.

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• Google+ Platform Office Hours for June 13th, 2012

  Google+ Platform Office Hours for June 13th, 2012 Here are the show notes for this week's office hours. This week was devoted to your questions and our answers. We covered a wide breadth of topics. 0:43 - Introductions 2:54 - About Tabletop Forge's KickStarter - goo.gl 10:00 - Can I run multiple Hangout Apps at the same time? 12:28 - Is Google looking into adding more powerful Hangout moderation controls? 13:47 - How do you use Hangout Apps with Hangouts on Air? - +Fraser Cain's tips and tricks for Hangouts on Air: goo.gl 23:40 - I have an Android game. How do I port it to the Hangouts API? 27:57 - Pre-hangout Apps, Hangouts on Air pre-rolls, scheduling hangouts and other ways to help viewers find your Hangouts on Air 33:55 - How do I bookmark useful Google+ posts with Google+? 38:13 - Can you add a host ID field to the Hangouts API? When will the overlay garbage collection improve? 40:17 - Hand movement tracking as part of the Hangouts API Thanks to everyone who joined the hangout and asked questions on Google+! From: GoogleDevelopers Views: 698 18 ratings Time: 44:16 More in Science & Technology

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• Fixing Windows7 Bootmgr

  - by Ashfame

  I made my laptop Dell XPS 15z dual boot with Ubuntu last year, and something went wrong & BOOTMGR of my windows got fried. I couldn't fix it that time. And I kept using Ubuntu. I don't even remember whether I installed directly via a live usb or used wubi, sorry. I installed 11.10 at that point of time, but right now I am on 12.10. Today, I got to know about the Boot repair tool, so I was wondering with this tool may be I can figure out what's exactly wrong with my setup. This is my Boot info - http://paste.ubuntu.com/1343575/ If I select the Win7 entry on GRUB2, I get the error BOOTMGR is missing. Press Ctrl-Alt-Del. Now the thing is I have read numerous links on how this could be fixed, but I don't feel comfortable without knowing what I am doing. So unless I am sure what a certain tool would do, I would prefer fixing it by hand (manually editing files). So reading from my boot info file, can anyone explain it to me what's messed up wrong here and what could fix it? I certainly can't afford to have my ubuntu install unbootable right now, but looking into this issue is bothering me too much. Help appreciated! I have Win7 DVD & Ubuntu live USBs with me, I am just looking for a sure shot way of fixing Win7 without any harm to my existing Ubuntu install.

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• With Choice Comes Complexity

  - by BuckWoody

  "Complex" may be defined as "Having many steps, details or parts." Many of Microsoft's products, including SQL Server, can be complex. I'm stating what most data professionals already know - there's usually multiple ways to do things in SQL Server. For instance, to import some data into a table you can use graphical tools, SQLCMD, bcp, SQL Server Integration Services, BULK INSERT, even PowerShell, just to name a few tools at your disposal. That's really not the issue, though. The bigger issue is that there are normally multiple thought-processes, or methods, that you have available for a task. That's both a strength and a weakness. If things were more simple, you would have fewer choices. Sometimes that's a good thing. Just tell me what I need to do and I'll do it. However, your particular situation may not fit that tool or process, so having more options increases your ability to get your job done the way you need to do it. On the other hand, that's more for you to learn, which is harder. There's another side of this benefit/difficulty that you need to be aware of. Even if you're quite good at what you do, keep in mind that the way you know how to do something may not be the only way to do it. Keep your mind open to new possibilities, and most importantly - to new knowledge. SQL Server professionals teach me something new every day. So embrace the complexity - on balance, it's a good thing! Share this post: email it! | bookmark it! | digg it! | reddit! | kick it! | live it!

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• Data Movement and the Decision Matrix

  - by BuckWoody

  Maybe it’s my military background, or maybe I’ve always had this predilection, but I like to use two devices when I need to make a complex decision: A checklist and a decision matrix. I like to use a checklist because it ensures that I remember the big bits of what I need to do, and brings up questions or areas that I didn’t think about when evaluating options for the decision. And the decision matrix – that’s the thing I use to actually lay out those options. It’s simply a spreadsheet-like grid (I use Excel, but paper and pencil works as well) that lays out the requirements or advantages for the decision across the top, and the options I have on the left-hand side. Then in the “cells” I put whether or not that option on the left will meet the requirement in that column. I then simply “weight” each cell to organize the choices by best-fit. The right answer (or answers) will float right to the top. I was asked yesterday about options for moving data in SQL Server to another system. There are just dozens of ways to do this, from bcp to Replication, each with certain advantages and costs. But asking the questions for the top row first helped me show the person that it isn’t a particular technology that is important, it’s laying out those requirements and thinking about which elements are more important than the other. For instance, is it more important to have the data moved all the time, or is it OK if that happens once in a while? Does the data have to move in two directions or just one? All of these will help that answer jump right out. Try it sometime – it’s a great learning exercise, since it will force you to focus on filling out the matrix. The answer is out there, Neo. Share this post: email it! | bookmark it! | digg it! | reddit! | kick it! | live it!

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