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• OpenGL Polygon Stipple Not Working On Different Machine

  - by FranticPedantic

  I have a situation where I am trying to draw a semi-transparent rectangle over a background that is not using openGL and so I can not use blending. I decided to use polygon stippling for a 'screen door transparency' effect as recommended by some. It works fine on my machine and some others, but on some machines with slightly old Intel graphics cards it's failing to render the rectangle at all. If I turn off polygon stipple, it renders fine (but without the stipple). I have compared many of the state variables that I thought might affect it (see code) between machines and they are all the same, and I get no errors. static const GLubyte stipplePatternChkr[128]; //definition omitted for clarity //but works on my machine // stipple the box glPolygonMode(GL_FRONT_AND_BACK, GL_FILL); glColor4ubv(Color(COLORREF_PADGRAY)); glEnable(GL_POLYGON_STIPPLE); glPolygonStipple(stipplePatternChkr); CRect rcStipple(dim); rcStipple.DeflateRect(padding - 1, padding - 1); glBegin(GL_QUADS); glVertex2i(rcStipple.left, rcStipple.bottom); glVertex2i(rcStipple.right, rcStipple.bottom); glVertex2i(rcStipple.right, rcStipple.top); glVertex2i(rcStipple.left, rcStipple.top); glEnd(); glDisable(GL_POLYGON_STIPPLE); int err = glGetError(); if (err != GL_NO_ERROR) { TRACE("glError(%s: %s)\n", s, gluErrorString(err)); } float x; glGetFloatv(GL_UNPACK_ALIGNMENT, &x); TRACE("unpack alignment %f\n", x); glGetFloatv(GL_UNPACK_IMAGE_HEIGHT, &x); TRACE("unpack height %f\n", x); glGetFloatv(GL_UNPACK_LSB_FIRST, &x); TRACE("unpack lsb %f\n", x); glGetFloatv(GL_UNPACK_ROW_LENGTH, &x); TRACE("unpack length %f\n", x); glGetFloatv(GL_UNPACK_SKIP_PIXELS, &x); TRACE("upnack skip %f\n", x); glGetFloatv(GL_UNPACK_SWAP_BYTES, &x); TRACE("upnack swap %f\n", x);

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• WPF Storyboard works well, except for the first time it runs. Why?

  - by sofri

  Hi, I'm doing a Surface Application. And there I have something like a bulletin board where little cards with news on it are pinned on. On click they shall fly out of the board and scale bigger. My storyboard works well, except for the first time it runs. It's not a smooth animation then but it scales to its final size immediately and it's the same with the orientation-property. Just the center-property seems to behave correctly. This is an example for one of my Storyboards doing that: Storyboard stb = new Storyboard(); PointAnimation moveCenter = new PointAnimation(); DoubleAnimationUsingKeyFrames changeWidth = new DoubleAnimationUsingKeyFrames(); DoubleAnimationUsingKeyFrames changeHeight = new DoubleAnimationUsingKeyFrames(); DoubleAnimationUsingKeyFrames changeOrientation = new DoubleAnimationUsingKeyFrames(); moveCenter.From = News1.ActualCenter; moveCenter.To = new Point(250, 400); moveCenter.Duration = new Duration(TimeSpan.FromSeconds(1.0)); moveCenter.FillBehavior = FillBehavior.Stop; stb.Children.Add(moveCenter); Storyboard.SetTarget(moveCenter, News1); Storyboard.SetTargetProperty(moveCenter, new PropertyPath(ScatterViewItem.CenterProperty)); changeWidth.Duration = TimeSpan.FromSeconds(1); changeWidth.KeyFrames.Add(new EasingDoubleKeyFrame(266, KeyTime.FromTimeSpan(new System.TimeSpan(0, 0, 1)))); changeWidth.FillBehavior = FillBehavior.Stop; stb.Children.Add(changeWidth); Storyboard.SetTarget(changeWidth, News1); Storyboard.SetTargetProperty(changeWidth, new PropertyPath(FrameworkElement.WidthProperty)); changeHeight.Duration = TimeSpan.FromSeconds(1); changeHeight.KeyFrames.Add(new EasingDoubleKeyFrame(400, KeyTime.FromTimeSpan(new System.TimeSpan(0, 0, 1)))); changeHeight.FillBehavior = FillBehavior.Stop; stb.Children.Add(changeHeight); Storyboard.SetTarget(changeHeight, News1); Storyboard.SetTargetProperty(changeHeight, new PropertyPath(FrameworkElement.HeightProperty)); changeOrientation.Duration = TimeSpan.FromSeconds(1); changeOrientation.KeyFrames.Add(new EasingDoubleKeyFrame(0, KeyTime.FromTimeSpan(new System.TimeSpan(0, 0, 1)))); changeOrientation.FillBehavior = FillBehavior.Stop; stb.Children.Add(changeOrientation); Storyboard.SetTarget(changeOrientation, News1); Storyboard.SetTargetProperty(changeOrientation, new PropertyPath(ScatterViewItem.OrientationProperty)); stb.Begin(this); News1.Center = new Point(250, 400); News1.Orientation = 0; News1.Width = 266; News1.Height = 400; Pin1.Visibility = Visibility.Collapsed; news1IsOutside = true; Scroll1.IsEnabled = true; What's wrong with it?

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• Is Java assert broken?

  - by BlairHippo

  While poking around the questions, I recently discovered the assert keyword in Java. At first, I was excited. Something useful I didn't already know! A more efficient way for me to check the validity of input parameters! Yay learning! But then I took a closer look, and my enthusiasm was not so much "tempered" as "snuffed-out completely" by one simple fact: you can turn assertions off.* This sounds like a nightmare. If I'm asserting that I don't want the code to keep going if the input listOfStuff is null, why on earth would I want that assertion ignored? It sounds like if I'm debugging a piece of production code and suspect that listOfStuff may have been erroneously passed a null but don't see any logfile evidence of that assertion being triggered, I can't trust that listOfStuff actually got sent a valid value; I also have to account for the possibility that assertions may have been turned off entirely. And this assumes that I'm the one debugging the code. Somebody unfamiliar with assertions might see that and assume (quite reasonably) that if the assertion message doesn't appear in the log, listOfStuff couldn't be the problem. If your first encounter with assert was in the wild, would it even occur to you that it could be turned-off entirely? It's not like there's a command-line option that lets you disable try/catch blocks, after all. All of which brings me to my question (and this is a question, not an excuse for a rant! I promise!): What am I missing? Is there some nuance that renders Java's implementation of assert far more useful than I'm giving it credit for? Is the ability to enable/disable it from the command line actually incredibly valuable in some contexts? Am I misconceptualizing it somehow when I envision using it in production code in lieu of statements like if (listOfStuff == null) barf();? I just feel like there's something important here that I'm not getting. *Okay, technically speaking, they're actually off by default; you have to go out of your way to turn them on. But still, you can knock them out entirely.

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• Why is it still so hard to write software?

  - by nornagon

  Writing software, I find, is composed of two parts: the Idea, and the Implementation. The Idea is about thinking: "I have this problem; how do I solve it?" and further, "how do I solve it elegantly?" The answers to these questions are obtainable by thinking about algorithms and architecture. The ideas come partially through analysis and partially through insight and intuition. The Idea is usually the easy part. You talk to your friends and co-workers and you nut it out in a meeting or over coffee. It takes an hour or two, plus revisions as you implement and find new problems. The Implementation phase of software development is so difficult that we joke about it. "Oh," we say, "the rest is a Simple Matter of Code." Because it should be simple, but it never is. We used to write our code on punch cards, and that was hard: mistakes were very difficult to spot, so we had to spend extra effort making sure every line was perfect. Then we had serial terminals: we could see all our code at once, search through it, organise it hierarchically and create things abstracted from raw machine code. First we had assemblers, one level up from machine code. Mnemonics freed us from remembering the machine code. Then we had compilers, which freed us from remembering the instructions. We had virtual machines, which let us step away from machine-specific details. And now we have advanced tools like Eclipse and Xcode that perform analysis on our code to help us write code faster and avoid common pitfalls. But writing code is still hard. Writing code is about understanding large, complex systems, and tools we have today simply don't go very far to help us with that. When I click "find all references" in Eclipse, I get a list of them at the bottom of the window. I click on one, and I'm torn away from what I was looking at, forced to context switch. Java architecture is usually several levels deep, so I have to switch and switch and switch until I find what I'm really looking for -- by which time I've forgotten where I came from. And I do that all day until I've understood a system. It's taxing mentally, and Eclipse doesn't do much that couldn't be done in 1985 with grep, except eat hundreds of megs of RAM. Writing code has barely changed since we were staring at amber on black. We have the theoretical groundwork for much more advanced tools, tools that actually work to help us comprehend and extend the complex systems we work with every day. So why is writing code still so hard?

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• How to embed html table into the body of email

  - by Michael Mao

  Hi all: I am sending info to target email via PHP native mail() method right now. Everything else works fine but the table part troubles me the most. See sample output : Dear Michael Mao : Thank you for purchasing flight tickets with us, here is your receipt : Your tickets will be delivered by mail to the following address : Street Address 1 : sdfsdafsadf sdf Street Address 2 : N/A City : Sydney State : nsw Postcode : 2 Country : Australia Credit Card Number : *************1234 Your purchase details are recorded as : <table><tr><th class="delete">del?</th><th class="from_city">from</th><th class="to_city">to</th><th class="quantity">qty</th><th class="price">unit price</th><th class="price">total price</th></tr><tr class="evenrow" id="Sydney-Lima"><td><input name="isDeleting" type="checkbox"></td><td>Sydney</td><td>Lima</td><td>1</td><td>1030.00</td><td>1030</td></tr><tr class="oddrow" id="Sydney-Perth"><td><input name="isDeleting" type="checkbox"></td><td>Sydney</td><td>Perth</td><td>3</td><td>340.00</td><td>1020</td></tr><tr class="totalprice"><td colspan="5">Grand Total Price</td><td id="grandtotal">2050</td></tr></table> The source of table is directly taken from a webpage, exactly as the same. However, Gmail, Hotmail and most of other emails will ignore to render this as a table. So I am wondering, without using Outlook or other email sending agent software, how could I craft a embedded table for the PHP mail() method to send? Current code snippet corresponds to table generation : $purchaseinfo = $_POST["purchaseinfo"]; //if html tags are not to be filtered in the body of email $stringBuilder .= "<table>" .stripslashes($purchaseinfo) ."</table>"; //must send json response back to caller ajax request if(mail($email, 'Your purchase information on www.hardlyworldtravel.com', $emailbody, $headers)) echo json_encode(array("feedback"=>"successful")); else echo json_encode(array("feedback"=>"error")); Any hints and suggestions are welcomed, thanks a lot in advance.

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• Can GPU capabilities impact virtual machine performance?

  - by Dave White

  While this many not seem like a programming question directly, it impacts my development activities and so it seems like it belongs here. It seems that more and more developers are turning to virtual environments for development activities on their computers, SharePoint development being a prime example. Also, as a trainer, I have virtual training environments for all of the classes that I teach. I recently purchased a new Dell E6510 to travel around with. It has the i7 620M (Dual core, HyperThreaded cpu running at 2.66GHz) and 8 GB of memory. Reading the spec sheet, it sounded like it would be a great laptop to carry around and run virtual machines on. Getting the laptop though, I've been pretty disappointed with the user experience of developing in a virtual machine. Giving the Virtual Machine 4 GB of memory, it was slow and I could type complete sentences and watch the VM "catchup". My company has training laptops that we provide for our classes. They are Dell Precision M6400 Intel Core 2 Duo P8700 running at 2.54Ghz with 8 GB of memory and the experience on this laptops is night and day compared to the E6510. They are crisp and you barely aware that you are running in a virtual environment. Since the E6510 should be faster in all categories than the M6400, I couldn't understand why the new laptop was slower, so I did a component by component comparison and the only place where the E6510 is less performant than the M6400 is the graphics department. The M6400 is running a nVidia FX 2700m GPU and the E6510 is running a nVidia 3100M GPU. Looking at benchmarks of the two GPUs suggest that the FX 2700M is twice as fast as the 3100M. http://www.notebookcheck.net/Mobile-Graphics-Cards-Benchmark-List.844.0.html 3100M = 111th (E6510) FX 2700m = 47th (Precision M6400) Radeon HD 5870 = 8th (Alienware) The host OS is Windows 7 64bit as is the guest OS, running in Virtual Box 3.1.8 with Guest Additions installed on the guest. The IDE being used in the virtual environment is VS 2010 Premium. So after that long setup, my question is: Is the GPU significantly impacting the virtual machine's performance or are there other factors that I'm not looking at that I can use to boost the vm's performance? Do we now have to consider GPU performance when purchasing laptops where we expect to use virtualized development environments? Thanks in advance. Cheers, Dave

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• Complex SQL query with group by and two rows in one

  - by Ricket

  Okay, I need help. I'm usually pretty good at SQL queries but this one baffles me. By the way, this is not a homework assignment, it's a real situation in an Access database and I've written the requirements below myself. Here is my table layout. It's in Access 2007 if that matters; I'm writing the query using SQL. Id (primary key) PersonID (foreign key) EventDate NumberOfCredits SuperCredits (boolean) There are events that people go to. They can earn normal credits, or super credits, or both at one event. The SuperCredits column is true if the row represents a number of super credits earned at the event, or false if it represents normal credits. So for example, if there is an event which person 174 attends, and they earn 3 normal credits and 1 super credit at the event, the following two rows would be added to the table: ID PersonID EventDate NumberOfCredits SuperCredits 1 174 1/1/2010 3 false 2 174 1/1/2010 1 true It is also possible that the person could have done two separate things at the event, so there might be more than two columns for one event, and it might look like this: ID PersonID EventDate NumberOfCredits SuperCredits 1 174 1/1/2010 1 false 2 174 1/1/2010 2 false 3 174 1/1/2010 1 true Now we want to print out a report. Here will be the columns of the report: PersonID LastEventDate NumberOfNormalCredits NumberOfSuperCredits The report will have one row per person. The row will show the latest event that the person attended, and the normal and super credits that the person earned at that event. What I am asking of you is to write, or help me write, the SQL query to SELECT the data and GROUP BY and SUM() and whatnot. Or, let me know if this is for some reason not possible, and how to organize my data to make it possible. This is extremely confusing and I understand if you do not take the time to puzzle through it. I've tried to simplify it as much as possible, but definitely ask any questions if you give it a shot and need clarification. I'll be trying to figure it out but I'm having a real hard time with it, this is grouping beyond my experience...

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• Flatten date range memberships retaining only the highest priority membership (TRANSACT-SQL)

  - by shadowranger

  Problem statement: A table contains an item_id, a category_id and a date range (begin_date and end_date). No item may be in more than one category on any given date (in general; during daily rebuilding it can be in an invalid state temporarily). By default, all items are added (and re-added if removed) to a category (derived from outside data) automatically on a daily basis, and their membership in that category matches the lifespan of the item (items have their own begin and end date, and usually spend their entire lives in the same category, which is why this matches). For items in category X, it is occasionally desirable to override the default category by adding them to category Y. Membership in category Y could entirely replace membership in category X (that is, the begin and end dates for membership in category Y would match the begin and end dates of the item itself), or it could override it for an arbitrary period of time (at the beginning, middle or end the item's lifespan, possibly overriding for short periods at multiple times). Membership in category Y is not renewed automatically and additions to that category is done by manual data entry. Every day, when category X is rebuilt, we get an overlap, where any item in category Y will now be in category X as well (which is forbidden, as noted previously). Goal: After each repopulation of category X (which is done in a rather complicated and fragile manner, and ideally would be left alone), I'm trying to find an efficient means of writing a stored procedure that: Identifies the overlaps Changes existing entries, adds new ones where necessary (such as in the case where an item starts in category X, switches to category Y, then eventually switches back to category X before ending), or removes entries (when an item is in category Y for its entire life) such that every item remains in category Y (and only Y) where specified, while category X membership is maintained when not overridden by category Y. Does not affect memberships of categories A, B, C, Z, etc., which do not have override categories and are built separately, by completely different rules. Note: It can be assumed that X membership covers the entire lifespan of the item before this procedure is called, so it is unnecessary to query any data outside this table. Bonus credit: If for some reason there are two adjacent or overlapping memberships in for the same item in category Y, stitching them together into a single entry is appreciated, but not necessary. Example: item_id category_id begin_date end_date 1 X 20080101 20090628 1 Y 20090101 20090131 1 Y 20090601 20090628 2 X 20080201 20080731 2 Y 20080201 20080731 Should become: item_id category_id begin_date end_date 1 X 20080101 20081231 1 Y 20090101 20090131 1 X 20090201 20090531 1 Y 20090601 20090628 2 Y 20080201 20080731 If it matters, this needs to work on SQL Server 2005 and SQL Server 2008

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• A two player game over the intranet..

  - by Santwana

  Hi everybody.. I am a student of 3rd year engineering and only a novice in my programming skills. I need some help with my project.. I wish to develop a two player game to be played over the network (Intranet). I want to develop a simple website with a few html pages for this.My ideas for the project run as follows: 1.People can log in from different systems and check who ever is online on the network currently. the page also shows who is playing with whom. 2.If a person is interested in playing with a player who is currently online, he sends a request of which the other player is somehow notified( using a message or an alert on his profile page..) 3.If the player accepts the request, a game is started. This is exactly where I am clueless.. How can I make them play the game? I need to develop a turn based game with two players, eg chessboard.. how can I do this? The game has to be played live.. and it is time tracked. i need your help with coding the above.. the other features i wish to include are: 4.The game could not be abruptly terminated by any one if the users.The request to terminate the game should be sent to the other player first and only if he accepts can the game be terminated. Whoever wins the game would get a plus 10 on their credit and if he terminated he gets a minus 10. The credits remains constant even if he loses but the success percentage is reduced. 6.The player with highest winning percentage is projected as the player of the week on the home page and he can post a challenge to all others.. I only have an intermediate knowledge of core java and know the basics of Swing and Awt. I am not at all familiar with networking in java right now. I have 5 to 6 weeks of time for developing the project but I hope to learn the things before I start my project. i would prefer to use a lan to illustrate the project and I know only java,jsp,oracle,html and bit of xml to develop my proj. Also I wish to know if I can code this within 6 weeks, would it be too difficult or complicated? Please spare some time to tell me. Please.. please.. I need your suggestions and help.. thank you so much..

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• First record does not show in pagination script

  - by whitstone86

  This is my pagination script which extracts info for my TV guide project that I am working on. Currently I've been experimenting with different PHP/MySQL before it becomes a production site. This is my current script: <?php /*********************************** * PhpMyCoder Paginator * * Created By PhpMyCoder * * 2010 PhpMyCoder * * ------------------------------- * * You may use this code as long * * as this notice stays intact and * * the proper credit is given to * * the author. * ***********************************/ // set the default timezone to use. Available since PHP 5.1 putenv("TZ=US/Eastern") ?> <head> <title> Pagination Test - Created By PhpMyCoder</title> <style type="text/css"> #nav { font: normal 13px/14px Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; margin: 2px 0; } #nav a { background: #EEE; border: 1px solid #DDD; color: #000080; padding: 1px 7px; text-decoration: none; } #nav strong { background: #000080; border: 1px solid #DDD; color: #FFF; font-weight: normal; padding: 1px 7px; } #nav span { background: #FFF; border: 1px solid #DDD; color: #999; padding: 1px 7px; } </style> </head> <?php //Require the file that contains the required classes include("pmcPagination.php"); //PhpMyCoder Paginator $paginator = new pmcPagination(20, "page"); //Connect to the database mysql_connect("localhost","root","PASSWORD"); //Select DB mysql_select_db("mytvguide"); //Select only results for today and future $result = mysql_query("SELECT programme, channel, airdate, expiration, episode, setreminder FROM lagunabeach where expiration >= now() order by airdate, 3 ASC LIMIT 0, 100;"); //You can also add reuslts to paginate here mysql_data_seek($queryresult,0) ; while($row = mysql_fetch_array($result)) { $paginator->add(new paginationData($row['programme'], $row['channel'], $row['airdate'], $row['expiration'], $row['episode'], $row['setreminder'])); } ?> <?php //Show the paginated results $paginator->paginate (); ?><? include("pca-footer1.php"); ?> <?php //Show the navigation $paginator->navigation(); ?> Despite me having two records for the programmes airing today, it only shows records from the second one onwards - the programme that airs at 8:35pm UK time GMT does not show, but the later 11:25pm UK time GMT one does show. How should I fix this? Above is my code if that is of any use! Thanks

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• SQL not yielding expected results

  - by AnonJr

  I have three tables related to this particular query: Lawson_Employees: LawsonID (pk), LastName, FirstName, AccCode (numeric) Lawson_DeptInfo: AccCode (pk), AccCode2 (don't ask, HR set up), DisplayName tblExpirationDates: EmpID (pk), ACLS (date), EP (date), CPR (date), CPR_Imported (date), PALS (date), Note The goal is to get the data I need to report on all those who have already expired in one or more certification, or are going to expire in the next 90 days. Some important notes: This is being run as part of a vbScript, so the 90-day date is being calculated when the script is run. I'm using 2010-08-31 as a placeholder since its the result at the time this question is being posted. All cards expire at the end of the month. (which is why the above date is for the end of August and not 90 days on the dot) A valid EP card supersedes ACLS certification, but only the latter is required of some employees. (wasn't going to worry about it until I got this question answered, but if I can get the help I'll take it) The CPR column contains the expiration date for the last class they took with us. (NULL if they didn't take any classes with us) The CPR_Imported column contains the expiration date for the last class they took somewhere else. (NULL if they didn't take it elsewhere, and bravo for following policy) The distinction between CPR classes is important for other reports. For purposes of this report, all we really care about is which one is the most current - or at least is currently current. If I have to, I'll ignore ACLS and PALS for the time being as it is non-compliance with CPR training that is the big issue at the moment. (not that the others won't be, but they weren't mentioned in the last meeting...) Here's the query I have so far, which is giving me good data: SELECT iEmp.LawsonID, iEmp.LastName, iEmp.FirstName, dept.AccCode2, dept.DisplayName, Exp.ACLS, Exp.EP, Exp.CPR, Exp.CPR_Imported, Exp.PALS, Exp.Note FROM (Lawson_Employees AS iEmp LEFT JOIN Lawson_DeptInfo AS dept ON dept.AccCode = iEmp.AccCode) LEFT JOIN tblExpirationDates AS Exp ON iEmp.LawsonID = Exp.EmpID WHERE iEmp.CurrentEmp = 1 AND ((Exp.ACLS <= #2010-08-31# AND Exp.ACLS IS NOT NULL) OR (Exp.CPR <= #2010-08-31# AND Exp.CPR_Imported <= #2010-08-31#) OR (Exp.PALS <= #2010-08-31# AND Exp.PALS IS NOT NULL)) ORDER BY dept.AccCode2, iEmp.LastName, iEmp.FirstName; After perusing the result set, I think I'm missing some expiration dates that should be in the result set. Am I missing something? This is the sucky part of being the only developer in the department... no one to ask for a little help.

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• Insert Registration Data in MySQL using PHP

  - by J M 4

  I may not be asking this in the best way possible but i will try my hardest. Thank you ahead of time for your help: I am creating an enrollment website which allows an individual OR manager to enroll for medical testing services for professional athletes. I will NOT be using the site as a query DB which anybody can view information stored within the database. The information is instead simply stored, and passed along in a CSV format to our network provider so they can use as needed after the fact. There are two possible scenarios: Scenario 1 - Individual Enrollment If an individual athlete chooses to enroll him/herself, they enter their personal information, submit their payment information (credit/bank account) for processing, and their information is stored in an online database as Athlete1. Scenario 2 - Manager Enrollment If a manager chooses to enroll several athletes he manages/ promotes for, he enters his personal information, then enters the personal information for each athlete he wishes to pay for (name, address, ssn, dob, etc), then submits payment information for ALL athletes he is enrolling. This number can range from 1 single athlete, up to 20 athletes per single enrollment (he can return and complete a follow up enrollment for additional athletes). Initially, I was building the database to house ALL information regardless of enrollment type in a single table which housed over 400 columns (think 20 athletes with over 10 fields per athlete such as name, dob, ssn, etc). Now that I think about it more, I believe create multiple tables (manager(s), athlete(s)) may be a better idea here but still not quite sure how to go about it for the following very important reasons: Issue 1 If I list the manager as the parent table, I am afraid the individual enrolling athlete will not show up in the primary table and will not be included in the overall registration file which needs to be sent on to the network providers. Issue 2 All athletes being enrolled by a manager are being stored in SESSION as F1FirstName, F2FirstName where F1 and F2 relate to the id of the fighter. I am not sure technically speaking how to store multiple pieces of information within the same table under separate rows using PHP. For example, all athleteswill have a first name. The very basic theory of what i am trying to do is: If number_of_athletes 1, store F1FirstName in row 1, column 1 of Table "Athletes"; store F1LastName in row 1, column 2 of Table "Athletes"; store F2FirstName in row 2, column 1 of Table "Athletes"; store F2LastName in row 2, column 2 of table "Athletes"; Does this make sense? I know this question is very long and probably difficult so i appreciate the guidance.

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• Why jQuery selector can't work but getElementById works in this scenario?

  - by Stallman

  Here is the HTML: <html> <head> <script type="text/javascript" src="jquery-1.7.2.min.js"></script> <script type="text/javascript" charset="utf-8" src="jquery-1.7.2.js"></script> <script type="text/javascript" src="access.js"></script> </head> <body> <button id="trigger"></button> <img id= "testElement" style= "position: absolute; border-color: white; top:340px; left:615px;" width="34px" height= "34px" /> </body> </html> And the access.js file is: $(document).ready( function(){ $('#trigger').click(function(){ $('#testElement').src="success.png"; //THIS WON'T WORK. document.getElementById('testElement').src= "success.png"; //BUT THIS WORKS. }); }); I know that if I use $, the return object is a jQuery object. It's not the same as getElementById. But why the jQuery selector can't work here? I need the jQuery object to make more operations like "append/style"... Thanks. UPDATE Too much correct answers appear at almost the same time... Please give more explanations to let me decide who I should give the credit, thanks!!! Sorry for my poor understanding of your correct answer... I just want more detail. Are all the attribute nodes(src/width/height...) not the property of jQuery object? So does the jQuery selector only select DOM Element Node like ? Thank you! 3. List item

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• Finding good heuristic for A* search

  - by Martin

  I'm trying to find the optimal solution for a little puzzle game called Twiddle (an applet with the game can be found here). The game has a 3x3 matrix with the number from 1 to 9. The goal is to bring the numbers in the correct order using the minimum amount of moves. In each move you can rotate a 2x2 square either clockwise or counterclockwise. I.e. if you have this state 6 3 9 8 7 5 1 2 4 and you rotate the upper left 2x2 square clockwise you get 8 6 9 7 3 5 1 2 4 I'm using a A* search to find the optimal solution. My f() is simply the number of rotations need. My heuristic function already leads to the optimal solution but I don't think it's the best one you can find. My current heuristic takes each corner, looks at the number at the corner and calculates the manhatten distance to the position this number will have in the solved state (which gives me the number of rotation needed to bring the number to this postion) and sums all these values. I.e. You take the above example: 6 3 9 8 7 5 1 2 4 and this end state 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 then the heuristic does the following 6 is currently at index 0 and should by at index 5: 3 rotations needed 9 is currently at index 2 and should by at index 8: 2 rotations needed 1 is currently at index 6 and should by at index 0: 2 rotations needed 4 is currently at index 8 and should by at index 3: 3 rotations needed h = 3 + 2 + 2 + 3 = 10 But there is the problem, that you rotate 4 elements at once. So there a rare cases where you can do two (ore more) of theses estimated rotations in one move. This means theses heuristic overestimates the distance to the solution. My current workaround is, to simply excluded one of the corners from the calculation which solves this problem at least for my test-cases. I've done no research if really solves the problem or if this heuristic still overestimates in same edge-cases. So my question is: What is the best heuristic you can come up with? (Disclaimer: This is for a university project, so this is a bit of homework. But I'm free to use any resource if can come up with, so it's okay to ask you guys. Also I will credit Stackoverflow for helping me ;) )

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• Need help with tweaking a Dropdown with three options, user selects one - a hidden div appears with correct fields

  - by Jack

  Hello Again, I posted a question on here and got an answer within minutes I'm hoping the wizards on here can help me again. Okay so I'm using a script I found online to try and add this function to a shopping cart form. Here's the setup. I have a payment method dropdown with Visa, Mastercard and Bank Withdrawal as the options. For the credit cards I have one hidden div with a certain set of fields, and for the bank I have another hidden div. Each of the divs have named ID's - #payCredit and #payBank The css for both have margin: 0px and display: none; Here's a peice of javascript I used successfuly on a shipping address checkbox `function toggleLayer( whichLayer ) { var elem, vis; if( document.getElementById ) // this is the way the standards work elem = document.getElementById( whichLayer ); else if( document.all ) // this is the way old msie versions work elem = document.all[whichLayer]; else if( document.layers ) // this is the way nn4 works elem = document.layers[whichLayer]; vis = elem.style; // if the style.display value is blank we try to figure it out here if(vis.display==''&&elem.offsetWidth!=undefined&&elem.offsetHeight!=undefined) vis.display = (elem.offsetWidth!=0&&elem.offsetHeight!=0)?'block':'none'; vis.display = (vis.display==''||vis.display=='block')?'none':'block'; }` I was hoping I could change it slightly to meet my needs. Here's the dropdown <label>Payment Method:</label> <select name="payment" id="payment" class="dropdown3" style="width:8em"> <option selected="selected">Select</option> <option value="Visa" onclick="javascript:toggleLayer('payCredit');">Visa</option> <option value="MasterCard" onclick="javascript:toggleLayer('payCredit');">Mastercard</option> <option value="Direct" onclick="javascript:toggleLayer('payBank');">Direct Withdraw</option> </select></li> The current result is that it kinda works. I can open the dropdown and select Visa and it appears, if I select Visa again it disappears, if I select Visa and then select bank, both appear. You can see what i'm working on here - http://test.sharevetcare.com/bestfriends/cart3.html

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• Week in Geek: LastPass Rescues Xmarks Edition

  - by Asian Angel

  This week we learned how to breathe new life into an aging Windows Mobile 6.x device, use filters in Photoshop, backup and move VirtualBox machines, use the BitDefender Rescue CD to clean an infected PC, and had fun setting up a pirates theme on our computers. Photo by _nash. Weekly Feature Do you love using the Faenza icon set on your Ubuntu system but feel that there are a few much needed icons missing (or you desire a different version of a particular icon)? Then you may want to take a look at the Faenza Variants icon pack. The icons are available in the following sizes: 16px, 22px, 32px, 48px and scalable sizes. Photo by Asian Angel. Faenza Variants Random Geek Links Another week with extra link goodness to help keep you on top of the news. Photo by Asian Angel. LastPass acquires Xmarks, premium service announced Xmarks announced that it has been acquired by LastPass, a cross-platform password management service. This also means that Xmarks is now in transition from a “free” to a “freemium” business model. WikiLeaks reappears on European Net domains WikiLeaks has re-emerged on a Swiss Internet domain followed by domains in Germany, Finland, and the Netherlands, sidestepping a move that had in effect taken the controversial site off the Internet. Iran: Yes, Stuxnet hurt our nuclear program The Stuxnet worm got some big play from Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who acknowledged that the malware dinged his nuclear program. More Windows Rogues than Just AV – Fake Defragmenter Check Disk Don’t think for a second that rogues are limited to scareware, because as so-called products such as “System Defragmenter”, “Scan Disk” “Check Disk” prove, they’re not. Internet Explorer’s Protected Mode can be bypassed Researchers from Verizon Business have now described a way of bypassing Protected Mode in IE 7 and 8 in order to gain access to user accounts. Can you really see who viewed your Facebook profile? Rogue application spreads virally Once again, a rogue application is spreading virally between Facebook users pretending to offer you a way of seeing who has viewed your profile. More holes in Palm’s WebOS Researchers Orlando Barrera and Daniel Herrera, who both work for security firm SecTheory, have discovered a gaping security hole in Palm’s WebOS smartphone operating system. Next-gen banking Trojans hit APAC With the proliferation of banking Trojans, Web and smartphone users of online banking services have to be on constant alert to avoid falling prey to fraud schemes, warned Etay Maor, project manager for RSA Fraud Action. AVG update cripples 64-bit computers A signature update automatically deployed by the AVG virus scanner Thursday has crippled numerous computers. Article includes link to forums to fix computers affected after a restart. Congress moves to outlaw ‘mystery charges’ for Web shoppers Legislation that makes it illegal for Web merchants and so-called post-transaction marketers to charge credit cards without the card owners’ say-so came closer to becoming law this week. Ballmer Set to “Look Into” Windows Home Server Drive Extender Fiasco Tuesday’s announcement from Microsoft regarding the removal of Drive Extender from Windows Home Server has sent shock waves across the web. Google tweaks search recipe to ding scam artists Google has changed its search algorithm to penalize sites deemed to provide an “extremely poor user experience” following a New York Times story on a merchant who justified abusive behavior towards customers as a search-engine optimization tactic. Geek Video of the Week Watch as our two friends debate back and forth about the early adoption of new technology through multiple time periods (Stone Age to the far future). Will our reluctant friend finally succumb to the temptation? Photo by CollegeHumor. Early Adopters Through History Random TinyHacker Links Fix Issues in Windows 7 Using Reliability Monitor Learn how to analyze Windows 7 errors and then fix them using the built-in reliability monitor. Learn About IE Tab Groups Tab groups is a useful feature in IE 8. Here’s a detailed guide to what it is all about. Google’s Book Helps You Learn About Browsers and Web A cool new online book by the Google Chrome team on browsers and the web. TrustPort Internet Security 2011 – Good Security from a Less Known Provider TrustPort is not exactly a well-known provider of security solutions. At least not in the consumer space. This review tests in detail their latest offering. How the World is Using Cell phones An infographic showing the shocking demographics of cell phone use. Super User Questions See the great answers to these questions from Super User. I am unable to access my C drive. It says it is unable to display current owner. List of Windows special directories/shortcuts like ‘%TEMP%’ Is using multiple passes for wiping a disk really necessary? How can I view two files side by side in Notepad++ Is there any tool that automatically puts screenshots to my Dropbox? How-To Geek Weekly Article Recap Look through our hottest articles from this past week at How-To Geek. How to Create a Software RAID Array in Windows 7 9 Alternatives for Windows Home Server’s Drive Extender Why Doesn’t Disk Cleanup Delete Everything from the Temp Folder? Ask the Readers: How Much Do You Customize Your Operating System? How to Upload Really Large Files to SkyDrive, Dropbox, or Email One Year Ago on How-To Geek Enjoy reading through these awesome articles from one year ago. How To Upgrade from Vista to Windows 7 Home Premium Edition How To Fix No Aero Transparency in Windows 7 Troubleshoot Startup Problems with Startup Repair Tool in Windows 7 & Vista Rename the Guest Account in Windows 7 for Enhanced Security Disable Error Reporting in XP, Vista, and Windows 7 The Geek Note That wraps things up here for this week. Regardless of the weather wherever you may be, we hope that you have an opportunity to get outside and have some fun! Remember to keep sending those great tips in to us at [email protected]. Photo by Tony the Misfit. Latest Features How-To Geek ETC The How-To Geek Guide to Learning Photoshop, Part 8: Filters Get the Complete Android Guide eBook for Only 99 Cents [Update: Expired] Improve Digital Photography by Calibrating Your Monitor The How-To Geek Guide to Learning Photoshop, Part 7: Design and Typography How to Choose What to Back Up on Your Linux Home Server How To Harmonize Your Dual-Boot Setup for Windows and Ubuntu Hang in There Scrat! – Ice Age Wallpaper How Do You Know When You’ve Passed Geek and Headed to Nerd? On The Tip – A Lamborghini Theme for Chrome and Iron What if Wile E. Coyote and the Road Runner were Human? [Video] Peaceful Winter Cabin Wallpaper Store Tabs for Later Viewing in Opera with Tab Vault

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• I have finally traded my Blackberry in for a Droid!

  - by Bob Porter

  Over the years I have used a number of different types of phones. Windows Mobile, Blackberry, Nokia, and now Android. Until the Blackberry, which was my last phone (and I still have one issued from my office) I had never found a phone that “just worked” especially with email and messaging. The Blackberry did, and does, excel at those functions. My last personal phone was a Storm 1 which was Blackberry’s first touch screen phone. The Storm 2 was an improved version that fixed some screen press detection issues from the first model and it added Wifi. Over the last few years I have watched others acquire and fall in love with their ‘Droid’s including a number of iPhone users which surprised me. Our office has until recently only supported Blackberry phones, adding iPhones within the last year or so. When I spoke with our internal telecom folks they confirmed they were evaluating Android phones, but felt they still were not secure enough out of the box for corporate use and SOX compliance. That being said, as a personal phone, the Droid Rocks! I am impressed with its speed, the number of apps available, and the overall design. It is not as “flashy” as an iPhone but it does everything that I care about and more. The model I bought is the Motorola Droid 2 Global from Verizon. It is currently running Android 2.2 for it’s OS, 2.3 is just around the corner. It has 8 gigs of internal flash memory and can handle up to a 32 gig SDCard. (I currently have 2 8 gig cards, one for backups, and have ordered a 16 gig card!) Being a geek at heart, I “rooted” the phone which means gained superuser access to the OS on the phone. And opens a number of doors for further modifications down the road. Also being a geek meant I have already setup a development environment and built and deployed the obligatory “Hello Droid” application. I will be writing of my development experiences with this new platform here often, to start off I thought I would share my current application list to give you an idea what I am using. Zedge: http://market.android.com/details?id=net.zedge.android XDA: http://market.android.com/details?id=com.quoord.tapatalkxda.activity WRAL.com: http://market.android.com/details?id=com.mylocaltv.wral Wireless Tether: http://market.android.com/details?id=android.tether Winamp: http://market.android.com/details?id=com.nullsoft.winamp Win7 Clock: http://market.android.com/details?id=com.androidapps.widget.toggles.win7 Wifi Analyzer: http://market.android.com/details?id=com.farproc.wifi.analyzer WeatherBug: http://market.android.com/details?id=com.aws.android Weather Widget Forecast Addon: http://market.android.com/details?id=com.androidapps.weather.forecastaddon Weather & Toggle Widgets: http://market.android.com/details?id=com.androidapps.widget.weather2 Vlingo: http://market.android.com/details?id=com.vlingo.client VirtualTENHO-G: http://market.android.com/details?id=jp.bustercurry.virtualtenho_g Twitter: http://market.android.com/details?id=com.twitter.android TweetDeck: http://market.android.com/details?id=com.thedeck.android.app Tricorder: http://market.android.com/details?id=org.hermit.tricorder Titanium Backup PRO: http://market.android.com/details?id=com.keramidas.TitaniumBackupPro Titanium Backup: http://market.android.com/details?id=com.keramidas.TitaniumBackup Terminal Emulator: http://market.android.com/details?id=jackpal.androidterm Talking Tom Free: http://market.android.com/details?id=com.outfit7.talkingtom Stock Blue: http://market.android.com/details?id=org.adw.theme.stockblue ST: Red Alert Free: http://market.android.com/details?id=com.oldplanets.redalertwallpaper ST: Red Alert: http://market.android.com/details?id=com.oldplanets.redalertwallpaperplus Solitaire: http://market.android.com/details?id=com.kmagic.solitaire Skype: http://market.android.com/details?id=com.skype.raider Silent Time Lite: http://market.android.com/details?id=com.QuiteHypnotic.SilentTime ShopSavvy: http://market.android.com/details?id=com.biggu.shopsavvy Shopper: http://market.android.com/details?id=com.google.android.apps.shopper Shiny clock: http://market.android.com/details?id=com.androidapps.clock.shiny ShareMyApps: http://market.android.com/details?id=com.mattlary.shareMyApps Sense Glass ADW Theme: http://market.android.com/details?id=com.dtanquary.senseglassadwtheme ROM Manager: http://market.android.com/details?id=com.koushikdutta.rommanager Roboform Bookmarklet Installer: http://market.android.com/details?id=roboformBookmarkletInstaller.android.com RealCalc: http://market.android.com/details?id=uk.co.nickfines.RealCalc Package Buddy: http://market.android.com/details?id=com.psyrus.packagebuddy Overstock: http://market.android.com/details?id=com.overstock OMGPOP Toggle: http://market.android.com/details?id=com.androidapps.widget.toggle.omgpop OI File Manager: http://market.android.com/details?id=org.openintents.filemanager nook: http://market.android.com/details?id=bn.ereader MyAtlas-Google Maps Navigation ext: http://market.android.com/details?id=com.adaptdroid.navbookfree3 MSN Droid: http://market.android.com/details?id=msn.droid.im Matrix Live Wallpaper: http://market.android.com/details?id=com.jarodyv.livewallpaper.matrix LogMeIn: http://market.android.com/details?id=com.logmein.ignitionpro.android Liveshare: http://market.android.com/details?id=com.cooliris.app.liveshare Kobo: http://market.android.com/details?id=com.kobobooks.android Instant Heart Rate: http://market.android.com/details?id=si.modula.android.instantheartrate IMDb: http://market.android.com/details?id=com.imdb.mobile Home Plus Weather: http://market.android.com/details?id=com.androidapps.widget.skin.weather.homeplus Handcent SMS: http://market.android.com/details?id=com.handcent.nextsms H7C Clock: http://market.android.com/details?id=com.androidapps.widget.clock.skin.h7c GTasks: http://market.android.com/details?id=org.dayup.gtask GPS Status: http://market.android.com/details?id=com.eclipsim.gpsstatus2 Google Voice: http://market.android.com/details?id=com.google.android.apps.googlevoice Google Sky Map: http://market.android.com/details?id=com.google.android.stardroid Google Reader: http://market.android.com/details?id=com.google.android.apps.reader GoMarks: http://market.android.com/details?id=com.androappsdev.gomarks Goggles: http://market.android.com/details?id=com.google.android.apps.unveil Glossy Black Weather: http://market.android.com/details?id=com.androidapps.widget.weather.skin.glossyblack Fox News: http://market.android.com/details?id=com.foxnews.android Foursquare: http://market.android.com/details?id=com.joelapenna.foursquared FBReader: http://market.android.com/details?id=org.geometerplus.zlibrary.ui.android Fandango: http://market.android.com/details?id=com.fandango Facebook: http://market.android.com/details?id=com.facebook.katana Extensive Notes Pro: http://market.android.com/details?id=com.flufflydelusions.app.extensive_notes_donate Expense Manager: http://market.android.com/details?id=com.expensemanager Espresso UI (LightShow w/ Slide): http://market.android.com/details?id=com.jaguirre.slide.lightshow Engadget: http://market.android.com/details?id=com.aol.mobile.engadget Earth: http://market.android.com/details?id=com.google.earth Drudge: http://market.android.com/details?id=com.iavian.dreport Dropbox: http://market.android.com/details?id=com.dropbox.android DroidForums: http://market.android.com/details?id=com.quoord.tapatalkdrodiforums.activity DroidArmor ADW: http://market.android.com/details?id=mobi.addesigns.droidarmorADW Droid Weather Icons: http://market.android.com/details?id=com.androidapps.widget.weather.skins.white Droid 2 Bootstrapper: http://market.android.com/details?id=com.koushikdutta.droid2.bootstrap doubleTwist: http://market.android.com/details?id=com.doubleTwist.androidPlayer Documents To Go: http://market.android.com/details?id=com.dataviz.docstogo Digital Clock Widget: http://market.android.com/details?id=com.maize.digitalClock Desk Home: http://market.android.com/details?id=com.cowbellsoftware.deskdock Default Clock: http://market.android.com/details?id=com.androidapps.widget.clock.skins.defaultclock Daily Expense Manager: http://market.android.com/details?id=com.techahead.ExpenseManager ConnectBot: http://market.android.com/details?id=org.connectbot Colorized Weather Icons: http://market.android.com/details?id=com.androidapps.widget.weather.colorized Chrome to Phone: http://market.android.com/details?id=com.google.android.apps.chrometophone CardStar: http://market.android.com/details?id=com.cardstar.android Books: http://market.android.com/details?id=com.google.android.apps.books Black Ipad Toggle: http://market.android.com/details?id=com.androidapps.toggle.widget.skin.blackipad Black Glass ADW Theme: http://market.android.com/details?id=com.dtanquary.blackglassadwtheme Bing: http://market.android.com/details?id=com.microsoft.mobileexperiences.bing BeyondPod Unlock Key: http://market.android.com/details?id=mobi.beyondpod.unlockkey BeyondPod: http://market.android.com/details?id=mobi.beyondpod BeejiveIM: http://market.android.com/details?id=com.beejive.im Beautiful Widgets Animations Addon: http://market.android.com/details?id=com.levelup.bw.forecast Beautiful Widgets: http://market.android.com/details?id=com.levelup.beautifulwidgets Beautiful Live Weather: http://market.android.com/details?id=com.levelup.beautifullive BBC News: http://market.android.com/details?id=net.jimblackler.newswidget Barnacle Wifi Tether: http://market.android.com/details?id=net.szym.barnacle Barcode Scanner: http://market.android.com/details?id=com.google.zxing.client.android ASTRO SMB Module: http://market.android.com/details?id=com.metago.astro.smb ASTRO Pro: http://market.android.com/details?id=com.metago.astro.pro ASTRO Bluetooth Module: http://market.android.com/details?id=com.metago.astro.network.bluetooth ASTRO: http://market.android.com/details?id=com.metago.astro AppBrain App Market: http://market.android.com/details?id=com.appspot.swisscodemonkeys.apps App Drawer Icon Pack: http://market.android.com/details?id=com.adwtheme.appdrawericonpack androidVNC: http://market.android.com/details?id=android.androidVNC AndroidGuys: http://market.android.com/details?id=com.handmark.mpp.AndroidGuys Android System Info: http://market.android.com/details?id=com.electricsheep.asi AndFTP: http://market.android.com/details?id=lysesoft.andftp ADWTheme Red: http://market.android.com/details?id=adw.theme.red ADWLauncher EX: http://market.android.com/details?id=org.adwfreak.launcher ADW.Theme.One: http://market.android.com/details?id=org.adw.theme.one ADW.Faded theme: http://market.android.com/details?id=com.xrcore.adwtheme.faded ADW Gingerbread: http://market.android.com/details?id=me.robertburns.android.adwtheme.gingerbread Advanced Task Killer Free: http://market.android.com/details?id=com.rechild.advancedtaskkiller Adobe Reader: http://market.android.com/details?id=com.adobe.reader Adobe Flash Player 10.1: http://market.android.com/details?id=com.adobe.flashplayer Adobe AIR: http://market.android.com/details?id=com.adobe.air 3G Auto OnOff: http://market.android.com/details?id=com.yuantuo --- Generated by ShareMyApps http://market.android.com/details?id=com.mattlary.shareMyApps Sent from my Droid

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• TFS, G.I. Joe and Under-doing

  If I were to rank the most consistently irritating parts of my work day, using TFS would come in first by a wide margin. Even repeated network outages this week seem like a pleasant reprieve from this monolithic beast. This is not a reflexive anti-Microsoft feeling, that attitude just wouldnt work for a consultant who does .NET development. It is also not an utter dismissal of TFS as worthless; Ive seen people use it effectively on several projects. So why? Ill start with a laundry list of shortcomings. An out of the box UI for work items that is insultingly bad, a source control system that is confoundingly fragile when handling merges, folder renames and long file names, the arcane XML wizardry necessary to customize a template and a build system that adds an extra layer of oddness on top of msbuild. Im sure my legion of readers will soon point out to me how I can work around all these issues, how this is fixed in TFS 2010 or with this add-in, and how once you have everything set up, youre fine. And theyd be right, any one of these problems could be worked around. If not dirty laundry, what else? I thought about it for a while, and came to the conclusion that TFS is so irritating to me because it represents a vision of software development that I find unappealing. To expand upon this, lets start with some wisdom from those great PSAs at the end of the G.I. Joe cartoons of the 80s: Now you know, and knowing is half the battle. In software development, Id go further and say knowing is more than half the battle. Understanding the dimensions of the problem you are trying to solve, the needs of the users, the value that your software can provide are more than half the battle. Implementation of this understanding is not easy, but it is not even possible without this knowledge. Assuming we have a fixed amount of time and mental energy for any project, why does this spell trouble for TFS? If you think about what TFS is doing, its offering you a huge array of options to track the day to day implementation of your project. From tasks, to code churn, to test coverage. All valuable metrics, but only in exchange for valuable time to get it all working. In addition, when you have a shiny toy like TFS, the temptation is to feel obligated to use it. So the push from TFS is to encourage a project manager and team to focus on process and metrics around process. You can get great visibility, and graphs to show your project stakeholders, but none of that is important if you are not implementing the right product. Not just unimportant, these activities can be harmful as they drain your time and sap your creativity away from the rest of the project. To be more concrete, lets suppose your organization has invested the time to create a template for your projects and trained people in how to use it, so there is no longer a big investment of time for each project to get up and running. First, Id challenge if that template could be specific enough to be full featured and still applicable for any project. Second, the very existence of this template would be a indication to a project manager that the success of their project was somehow directly related to fitting management of that project into this format. Again, while the capabilities are wonderful, the mirage is there; just get everything into TFS and your project will run smoothly. Ill close the loop on this first topic by proposing a thought experiment. Think of the projects youve worked on. How many times have you been chagrined to discover youve implemented the wrong feature, misunderstood how a feature should work or just plain spent too much time on a screen that nobody uses? That sounds like a really worthwhile area to invest time in improving. How about going back to these projects and thinking about how many times you wished you had optimized the state change flow of your tasks or been embarrassed to not have a code churn report linked back to the latest changeset? With thanks to the Real American Heroes, Ill move on to a more current influence, that of the developers at 37signals, and their philosophy towards software development. This philosophy, fully detailed in the books Getting Real and Rework, is a vision of software that under does the competition. This is software that is deliberately limited in functionality in order to concentrate fully on making sure ever feature that is there is awesome and needed. Why is this relevant? Well, in one of those fun seeming paradoxes in life, constraints can be a spark for creativity. Think Twitter, the small screen of an iPhone, the limitations of HTML for applications, the low memory limits of older or embedded system. As long as there is some freedom within those constraints, amazing things emerge. For project management, some of the most respected people in the industry recommend using just index cards, pens and tape. They argue that with change the constant in software development, your process should be as limited (yet rigorous) as possible. Looking at TFS, this is not a system designed to under do anybody. It is a big jumble of components and options, with every feature you could think of. Predictably this means many basic functions are hard to use. For task management, many people just use an Excel spreadsheet linked up to TFS. Not a stirring endorsement of the tooling there. TFS as a whole would be far more appealing to me if there was less of it, but better. Id cut 50% of the features to make the other half really amaze and inspire me. And thats really the heart of the matter. TFS has great promise and I want to believe it can work better. But ultimately it focuses your attention on a lot of stuff that doesnt really matter and then clamps down your creativity in a mess of forms and dialogs obscuring what does.   --- Relevant Links --- All those great G.I. Joe PSAs are on YouTube, including lots of mashed up versions. A simple Google search will get you on the right track.Did you know that DotNetSlackers also publishes .net articles written by top known .net Authors? We already have over 80 articles in several categories including Silverlight. Take a look: here.

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• Hey, Google: It’s Time to Add Multi-Window Multitasking To Android

  - by Chris Hoffman

  In 2012, Google’s Dianne Hackborn threatened to revoke CyanogenMod’s access to the Android Market if they moved forward with adding “Cornerstone” multitasking to their custom ROM. Samsung has since created their own multi-window multitasking feature. Dianne Hackborn said this “is something that needs to be done at the mainline platform level” so apps wouldn’t break. She was right — Android needs this as a standard feature and it’s time for Google to provide it. Doesn’t Android Have Multitasking? Android originally stood out from Apple’s iOS with its powerful multitasking. Applications can continue running in the background while you’re using another application. This makes Android powerful — you can even have BitTorrent clients downloading files in the background while using another app. Android still kept the design of a single app on screen at a time. This made a lot of sense when Android only ran on smartphones with small screens. Today, Android runs on everything from smaller smartphones all the way up to huge “phablets” like the Galaxy Note. Android has gone beyond phones and runs on 12-inch tablets, convertibles with keyboard docks, laptops, and even Android desktops. Android isn’t just a phone operating system. Samsung’s Multi-Window Isn’t Good Enough Samsung has tried to add value to Android by adding a multi-window feature. When you’re using a high-end phone like the Galaxy Note or Galaxy S, or a Galaxy tablet, you have the ability to run certain apps side-by-side with each other. There are big problems here. This only works on Samsung devices, and only on specific Samsung devices. To add support for this feature in a way that doesn’t break other apps, Samsung’s multi-window feature also only works with specific apps. You can’t just run any app in multi-window view, only the apps on the Multi Window bar Samsung provides. This prevents third-party apps from breaking, which is what Google was worried about with CyanogenMod’s Cornerstone feature. A feature that only works with a handful of apps on specific devices from a single manufacturer isn’t good enough. This feature needs to work on every Android device — or at least ones with suitably large screens and powerful enough internals. It needs to be an Android platform feature so application developers can ensure their apps will work properly with it on every device. Android developers shouldn’t have to add support for each manufacturer’s own multi-window feature if other manufacturers decide to copy Samsung. Floating Apps Are a Dirty Hack Floating apps also enable real multitasking. Remember that Android allows apps to run in the background while you’re using an app in the foreground. These apps can present interfaces that appear floating above the current app — think of it like using “always on top” to make a window always appear over every other app on a desktop operating system. You can install floating apps to browse the web, take notes, chat, and watch videos while using any app. Only apps specifically designed to run as floating apps will work, so you have to seek them out. Floating apps are also awkward to use because they float over the app you’re using, blocking parts of its interface. Microsoft added floating-window support to Skype for Android. You can have a video conversation and the other person’s face will always appear on your screen, even when you leave the Skype app. Microsoft is using more of Android’s multi-window multitasking power than Google is. Custom ROMs and Root-Only Tweaks Aren’t Acceptable Some custom ROMs are adding this feature to Android. Google threatened to revoke CyanogenMod’s access to the Android Market (now known as Google Play) if they added this feature because it could potentially break third-party apps. Today, other custom ROMs are working on split-screen multitasking. Samsung added their own version to their own devices. You can also get this feature by using a root-only Xposed Framework tweak known as XMultiWindow. If you have root access, you can get multi-window multitasking or any app on your device. This shouldn’t require rooting your device or installing a custom ROM. These third-party solutions often have awkward interfaces and bugs. We need an integrated, supported solution that works the same on every device. Why Multi-Window is Important Microsoft’s Windows 8.1 stands out among tablet operating systems for its powerful multitasking support, allowing you to view several apps side-by-side at the same time. Apple is also reported to be working on adding side-by-side apps to the iPad with iOS 8. On every competitor’s operating system, you’ll be able to view a web page while you write an email, watch a video while you browse the web, or chat with someone while you do anything else. But Android’s still remained frozen in time. Despite all Android’s underlying power — and despite the way Android allows apps to adapt to different screen sizes — Google is resisting adding this feature. Large-screen Android tablets like the Nexus 10 (remember that tablet Google hasn’t updated in over 18 months?) need this feature. So do huge phones, convertibles, laptops, and Android desktops. If tablets are the future of personal computing, we should be able to do more than one thing at a time on our tablets’ big screens. Microsoft, Samsung, and even Apple are realizing this — now it’s Google’s turn. Image Credit: Sergey Galyonkin on Flickr, Karlis Dambrans on Flickr

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• Refreshing Your PC Won’t Help: Why Bloatware is Still a Problem on Windows 8

  - by Chris Hoffman

  Bloatware is still a big problem on new Windows 8 and 8.1 PCs. Some websites will tell you that you can easily get rid of manufacturer-installed bloatware with Windows 8′s Reset feature, but they’re generally wrong. This junk software often turns the process of powering on your new PC from what could be a delightful experience into a tedious slog, forcing you to spend hours cleaning up your new PC before you can enjoy it. Why Refreshing Your PC (Probably) Won’t Help Manufacturers install software along with Windows on their new PCs. In addition to hardware drivers that allow the PC’s hardware to work properly, they install more questionable things like trial antivirus software and other nagware. Much of this software runs at boot, cluttering the system tray and slowing down boot times, often dramatically. Software companies pay computer manufacturers to include this stuff. It’s installed to make the PC manufacturer money at the cost of making the Windows computer worse for actual users. Windows 8 includes “Refresh Your PC” and “Reset Your PC” features that allow Windows users to quickly get their computers back to a fresh state. It’s essentially a quick, streamlined way of reinstalling Windows.  If you install Windows 8 or 8.1 yourself, the Refresh operation will give your PC a clean Windows system without any additional third-party software. However, Microsoft allows computer manufacturers to customize their Refresh images. In other words, most computer manufacturers will build their drivers, bloatware, and other system customizations into the Refresh image. When you Refresh your computer, you’ll just get back to the factory-provided system complete with bloatware. It’s possible that some computer manufacturers aren’t building bloatware into their refresh images in this way. It’s also possible that, when Windows 8 came out, some computer manufacturer didn’t realize they could do this and that refreshing a new PC would strip the bloatware. However, on most Windows 8 and 8.1 PCs, you’ll probably see bloatware come back when you refresh your PC. It’s easy to understand how PC manufacturers do this. You can create your own Refresh images on Windows 8 and 8.1 with just a simple command, replacing Microsoft’s image with a customized one. Manufacturers can install their own refresh images in the same way. Microsoft doesn’t lock down the Refresh feature. Desktop Bloatware is Still Around, Even on Tablets! Not only is typical Windows desktop bloatware not gone, it has tagged along with Windows as it moves to new form factors. Every Windows tablet currently on the market — aside from Microsoft’s own Surface and Surface 2 tablets — runs on a standard Intel x86 chip. This means that every Windows 8 and 8.1 tablet you see in stores has a full desktop with the capability to run desktop software. Even if that tablet doesn’t come with a keyboard, it’s likely that the manufacturer has preinstalled bloatware on the tablet’s desktop. Yes, that means that your Windows tablet will be slower to boot and have less memory because junk and nagging software will be on its desktop and in its system tray. Microsoft considers tablets to be PCs, and PC manufacturers love installing their bloatware. If you pick up a Windows tablet, don’t be surprised if you have to deal with desktop bloatware on it. Microsoft Surfaces and Signature PCs Microsoft is now selling their own Surface PCs that they built themselves — they’re now a “devices and services” company after all, not a software company. One of the nice things about Microsoft’s Surface PCs is that they’re free of the typical bloatware. Microsoft won’t take money from Norton to include nagging software that worsens the experience. If you pick up a Surface device that provides Windows 8.1 and 8 as Microsoft intended it — or install a fresh Windows 8.1 or 8 system — you won’t see any bloatware. Microsoft is also continuing their Signature program. New PCs purchased from Microsoft’s official stores are considered “Signature PCs” and don’t have the typical bloatware. For example, the same laptop could be full of bloatware in a traditional computer store and clean, without the nasty bloatware when purchased from a Microsoft Store. Microsoft will also continue to charge you $99 if you want them to remove your computer’s bloatware for you — that’s the more questionable part of the Signature program. Windows 8 App Bloatware is an Improvement There’s a new type of bloatware on new Windows 8 systems, which is thankfully less harmful. This is bloatware in the form of included “Windows 8-style”, “Store-style”, or “Modern” apps in the new, tiled interface. For example, Amazon may pay a computer manufacturer to include the Amazon Kindle app from the Windows Store. (The manufacturer may also just receive a cut of book sales for including it. We’re not sure how the revenue sharing works — but it’s clear PC manufacturers are getting money from Amazon.) The manufacturer will then install the Amazon Kindle app from the Windows Store by default. This included software is technically some amount of clutter, but it doesn’t cause the problems older types of bloatware does. It won’t automatically load and delay your computer’s startup process, clutter your system tray, or take up memory while you’re using your computer. For this reason, a shift to including new-style apps as bloatware is a definite improvement over older styles of bloatware. Unfortunately, this type of bloatware has not replaced traditional desktop bloatware, and new Windows PCs will generally have both. Windows RT is Immune to Typical Bloatware, But… Microsoft’s Windows RT can’t run Microsoft desktop software, so it’s immune to traditional bloatware. Just as you can’t install your own desktop programs on it, the Windows RT device’s manufacturer can’t install their own desktop bloatware. While Windows RT could be an antidote to bloatware, this advantage comes at the cost of being able to install any type of desktop software at all. Windows RT has also seemingly failed — while a variety of manufacturers came out with their own Windows RT devices when Windows 8 was first released, they’ve all since been withdrawn from the market. Manufacturers who created Windows RT devices have criticized it in the media and stated they have no plans to produce any future Windows RT devices. The only Windows RT devices still on the market are Microsoft’s Surface (originally named Surface RT) and Surface 2. Nokia is also coming out with their own Windows RT tablet, but they’re in the process of being purchased by Microsoft. In other words, Windows RT just isn’t a factor when it comes to bloatware — you wouldn’t get a Windows RT device unless you purchased a Surface, but those wouldn’t come with bloatware anyway. Removing Bloatware or Reinstalling Windows 8.1 While bloatware is still a problem on new Windows systems and the Refresh option probably won’t help you, you can still eliminate bloatware in the traditional way. Bloatware can be uninstalled from the Windows Control Panel or with a dedicated removal tool like PC Decrapifier, which tries to automatically uninstall the junk for you. You can also do what Windows geeks have always tended to do with new computers — reinstall Windows 8 or 8.1 from scratch with installation media from Microsoft. You’ll get a clean Windows system and you can install only the hardware drivers and other software you need. Unfortunately, bloatware is still a big problem for Windows PCs. Windows 8 tries to do some things to address bloatware, but it ultimately comes up short. Most Windows PCs sold in most stores to most people will still have the typical bloatware slowing down the boot process, wasting memory, and adding clutter. Image Credit: LG on Flickr, Intel Free Press on Flickr, Wilson Hui on Flickr, Intel Free Press on Flickr, Vernon Chan on Flickr     

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• Making Money from your SQL Server Blog

  - by Bill Graziano

  My SQL Server blog reading list is around one hundred blogs.  Many people are writing great content and generating lots of page views.  I see some of them running Google AdSense and trying to make a little money off their traffic.  If you want to earn some some extra money from what you’ve written there are a couple of options.  And one new option that I’m announcing here. Background Internet advertising is sold based on a few different pricing schemes.  Flat Fee.  You offer either all your impressions (page views) or some percentage of your impressions in exchange for a flat monthly fee.  CPM or cost per thousand impressions.  If the quoted price is $2 CPM you’ll get $2 for every 1,000 times the ad is displayed.  While you might think the “M” means millions, the “M” in CPM is the roman numeral for 1,000. CPC or cost per click.  This is also called PPC or pay per click.  In this method you get paid based on how many clicks there are on the ad.  CPA or cost per action.  In this method you get paid based on an action that occurs on the advertisers site after they click on the ad.  This is typically some type of sign up form.  This is how most affiliate programs work. Darren Rowse at ProBlogger has been writing about blogging and making money off blogs for years.  He has a good introduction to making money on your blog in his “Making Money” section.  If you’re interested in learning more he has a post up titled How to Make More Money From Your Blog in the New Year that links to many of his best posts on the subject. Google AdSense This is the most common method for people earning money from their blogging.  It’s easy to setup and administer.  You tell AdSense what size ads you’d like to run and it gives you a little piece of JavaScript to put on your site.  AdSense quickly learns the topics you write about and displays ads that are appropriate for your site.  I typically see ads for hosting, SQL Server tools and developer tools running in AdSense slots.  AdSense pays on a CPC model.  If you translate that back to CPM pricing you’ll see rates from $0.50 to $1.00 CPM. Amazon While you might not make much money writing books it’s now possible to make even less helping Amazon sell them.  You can sign up for an Amazon affiliate program.  Each time you send Amazon a link and someone buys the book you get a cut of that sale.  This is the CPA model from above.  Amazon can help you build some pretty nice “stores”.  Here’s the SQL Server bookstore I built for SQLTeam.com.  If you’re just putting in a page with books like I’ve done on SQLTeam you should keep your expectations low.  If you’re writing book reviews of suggesting books on your blog it really does make sense to setup an Amazon affiliate link.  People are much more likely to buy a book based on a review from a trusted source.  I always try to buy through a referral link if there is one. Amazon pays about 4% of the price as a referral fee.  You also get credit for anything else they buy while on the site.  I recently had someone buy an iPod nano with their SQL Server book making me an extra $5.60 richer!  Estimating how much you can make is difficult though.  How much attention you draw to the links and book reviews can dramatically affect the earnings. Private Ad Sales This is the hardest but potentially most lucrative option.  You sell advertising directly to companies that want to sell things to your readers.  Typically this would be SQL Server tool vendors, hosting companies or anyone else that wants to make money off database administrators.  This is also the most difficult to do.  You’ll need the contacts at the companies and enough page views to make it worth their while.  You’ll also need software to track the page views and clicks, geo-target your ads and smooth out the impressions.  Your earnings are based on whatever you can negotiate with the companies. SQL Server Ad Network For the last couple of years I’ve run any extra ads that I sold on the SQLTeam Weblogs.  You can see an example of that on Mladen’s blog.  The ad in the upper right corner is one that I’m running for him.  (Note: Many of the ads I’m running are geo-targeted to only appear in English speaking countries.  You may see a different set of ads outside the US, Canada and the UK.  You can also see he has a couple of Google ads on his blog.)  When I run ads on his blog I split the advertising revenue with him.  They make a little and I make a little. I recently started to expand this and sell advertising specifically to run on SQL Server-related blogs.  I’m also starting to run ads on non-SQLTeam blogs.  The only way I can sell more advertising is to have more blogs to run it on.  And that’s where you come in. I’ve created a SQL Server advertising network.  I handle all the ad sales and provide the technology to serve the ads.  I handle collections and payments back to you.  You get paid at the end of each month regardless of when (or if) the advertiser actually pays.  All you need to do is add a small piece of JavaScript to your site to display the ads. If you’re writing about SQL Server and interested in earning a little money for your site I’d like to talk to you.  You can use the Contact Us page on SQLTeam.com to reach me.  Running advertising on your blog isn’t for everyone.  If you’re concerned about what advertisers might think about certain posts then you might not be a good fit.  For the most part this isn’t an issue.  You’ll also need to have a PayPal account to receive payments.  You probably won’t get rich doing this.  But you can earn extra cash on the side for doing what you would do anyway.  I do know that people have earned enough to buy themselves a nice laptop doing this. My initial target is blogs with more than 10,000 page views per month.  I expect to pay two to three times what Google pays.  If you have less than 10,000 page views per month but are still interested I’d still like to hear from you.  I may not be able to sign up smaller blogs right away but we’ll get the process started.  If you’re unsure about your traffic Google Analytics is a free tool that provides great reporting on traffic, popular posts and how people find your blog.  If you have any questions or are just curious drop me a line and I’ll try to answer your questions.

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• Interview with Lenz Grimmer about MySQL Connect

  - by Keith Larson

  Keith Larson: Thank you for allowing me to do this interview with you.  I have been talking with a few different Oracle ACEs   about the MySQL Connect Conference. I figured the MySQL community might be missing you as well. You have been very busy with Oracle Linux but I know you still have an eye on the MySQL Community. How have things been?Lenz Grimmer: Thanks for including me in this series of interviews, I feel honored! I've read the other interviews, and really liked them. I still try to follow what's going on over in the MySQL community and it's good to see that many of the familiar faces are still around. Over the course of the 9 years that I was involved with MySQL, many colleagues and contacts turned into good friends and we still maintain close relationships.It's been almost 1.5 years ago that I moved into my new role here in the Linux team at Oracle, and I really enjoy working on a Linux distribution again (I worked for SUSE before I joined MySQL AB in 2002). I'm still learning a lot - Linux in the data center has greatly evolved in so many ways and there are a lot of new and exciting technologies to explore. Keith Larson: What were your thoughts when you heard that Oracle was going to deliver the MySQL Connect conference to the MySQL Community?Lenz Grimmer: I think it's testament to the fact that Oracle deeply cares about MySQL, despite what many skeptics may say. What started as "MySQL Sunday" two years ago has now evolved into a full-blown sub-conference, with 80 sessions at one of the largest corporate IT events in the world. I find this quite telling, not many products at Oracle enjoy this level of exposure! So it certainly makes me feel proud to see how far MySQL has come. Keith Larson: Have you had a chance to look over the sessions? What are your thoughts on them?Lenz Grimmer: I did indeed look at the final schedule.The content committee did a great job with selecting these sessions. I'm glad to see that the content selection was influenced by involving well-known and respected members of the MySQL community. The sessions cover a broad range of topics and technologies, both covering established topics as well as recent developments. Keith Larson: When you get a chance, what sessions do you plan on attending?Lenz Grimmer: I will actually be manning the Oracle booth in the exhibition area on one of these days, so I'm not sure if I'll have a lot of time attending sessions. But if I do, I'd love to see the keynotes and catch some of the sessions that talk about recent developments and new features in MySQL, High Availability and Clustering . Quite a lot has happened and it's hard to keep up with this constant flow of new MySQL releases.In particular, the following sessions caught my attention: MySQL Connect Keynote: The State of the Dolphin Evaluating MySQL High-Availability Alternatives CERN’s MySQL “as a Service” Deployment with Oracle VM: Empowering Users MySQL 5.6 Replication: Taking Scalability and High Availability to the Next Level What’s New in MySQL Server 5.6? MySQL Security: Past and Present MySQL at Twitter: Development and Deployment MySQL Community BOF MySQL Connect Keynote: MySQL Perspectives Keith Larson: So I will ask you just like I have asked the others I have interviewed, any tips that you would give to people for handling the long hours at conferences?Lenz Grimmer: Wear comfortable shoes and make sure to drink a lot! Also prepare a plan of the sessions you would like to attend beforehand and familiarize yourself with the venue, so you can get to the next talk in time without scrambling to find the location. The good thing about piggybacking on such a large conference like Oracle OpenWorld is that you benefit from the whole infrastructure. For example, there is a nice schedule builder that helps you to keep track of your sessions of interest. Other than that, bring enough business cards and talk to people, build up your network among your peers and other MySQL professionals! Keith Larson: What features of the MySQL 5.6 release do you look forward to the most ?Lenz Grimmer: There has been solid progress in so many areas like the InnoDB Storage Engine, the Optimizer, Replication or Performance Schema, it's hard for me to really highlight anything in particular. All in all, MySQL 5.6 sounds like a very promising release. I'm confident it will follow the tradition that Oracle already established with MySQL 5.5, which received a lot of praise even from very critical members of the MySQL community. If I had to name a single feature, I'm particularly and personally happy that the precise GIS functions have finally made it into a GA release - that was long overdue. Keith Larson:  In your opinion what is the best reason for someone to attend this event?Lenz Grimmer: This conference is an excellent opportunity to get in touch with the key people in the MySQL community and ecosystem and to get facts and information from the domain experts and developers that work on MySQL. The broad range of topics should attract people from a variety of roles and relations to MySQL, beginning with Developers and DBAs, to CIOs considering MySQL as a viable solution for their requirements. Keith Larson: You will be attending MySQL Connect and have some Oracle Linux Demos, do you see a growing demand for MySQL on Oracle Linux ?Lenz Grimmer: Yes! Oracle Linux is our recommended Linux distribution and we have a good relationship to the MySQL engineering group. They use Oracle Linux as a base Linux platform for development and QA, so we make sure that MySQL and Oracle Linux are well tested together. Setting up a MySQL server on Oracle Linux can be done very quickly, and many customers recognize the benefits of using them both in combination.Because Oracle Linux is available for free (including free bug fixes and errata), it's an ideal choice for running MySQL in your data center. You can run the same Linux distribution on both your development/staging systems as well as on the production machines, you decide which of these should be covered by a support subscription and at which level of support. This gives you flexibility and provides some really attractive cost-saving opportunities. Keith Larson: Since I am a Linux user and fan, what is on the horizon for  Oracle Linux?Lenz Grimmer: We're working hard on broadening the ecosystem around Oracle Linux, building up partnerships with ISVs and IHVs to certify Oracle Linux as a fully supported platform for their products. We also continue to collaborate closely with the Linux kernel community on various projects, to make sure that Linux scales and performs well on large systems and meets the demands of today's data centers. These improvements and enhancements will then rolled into the Unbreakable Enterprise Kernel, which is the key ingredient that sets Oracle Linux apart from other distributions. We also have a number of ongoing projects which are making good progress, and I'm sure you'll hear more about this at the upcoming OpenWorld conference :) Keith Larson: What is something that more people should be aware of when it comes to Oracle Linux and MySQL ?Lenz Grimmer: Many people assume that Oracle Linux is just tuned for Oracle products, such as the Oracle Database or our Engineered Systems. While it's of course true that we do a lot of testing and optimization for these workloads, Oracle Linux is and will remain a general-purpose Linux distribution that is a very good foundation for setting up a LAMP-Stack, for example. We also provide MySQL RPM packages for Oracle Linux, so you can easily stay up to date if you need something newer than what's included in the stock distribution.One more thing that is really unique to Oracle Linux is Ksplice, which allows you to apply security patches to the running Linux kernel, without having to reboot. This ensures that your MySQL database server keeps up and running and is not affected by any downtime. Keith Larson: What else would you like to add ?Lenz Grimmer: Thanks again for getting in touch with me, I appreciated the opportunity. I'm looking forward to MySQL Connect and Oracle OpenWorld and to meet you and many other people from the MySQL community that I haven't seen for quite some time! Keith Larson:  Thank you Lenz!

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• Big Data – Is Big Data Relevant to me? – Big Data Questionnaires – Guest Post by Vinod Kumar

  - by Pinal Dave

  This guest post is by Vinod Kumar. Vinod Kumar has worked with SQL Server extensively since joining the industry over a decade ago. Working on various versions of SQL Server 7.0, Oracle 7.3 and other database technologies – he now works with the Microsoft Technology Center (MTC) as a Technology Architect. Let us read the blog post in Vinod’s own voice. I think the series from Pinal is a good one for anyone planning to start on Big Data journey from the basics. In my daily customer interactions this buzz of “Big Data” always comes up, I react generally saying – “Sir, do you really have a ‘Big Data’ problem or do you have a big Data problem?” Generally, there is a silence in the air when I ask this question. Data is everywhere in organizations – be it big data, small data, all data and for few it is bad data which is same as no data :). Wow, don’t discount me as someone who opposes “Big Data”, I am a big supporter as much as I am a critic of the abuse of this term by the people. In this post, I wanted to let my mind flow so that you can also think in the direction I want you to see these concepts. In any case, this is not an exhaustive dump of what is in my mind – but you will surely get the drift how I am going to question Big Data terms from customers!!! Is Big Data Relevant to me? Many of my customers talk to me like blank whiteboard with no idea – “why Big Data”. They want to jump into the bandwagon of technology and they want to decipher insights from their unexplored data a.k.a. unstructured data with structured data. So what are these industry scenario’s that come to mind? Here are some of them: Financials Fraud detection: Banks and Credit cards are monitoring your spending habits on real-time basis. Customer Segmentation: applies in every industry from Banking to Retail to Aviation to Utility and others where they deal with end customer who consume their products and services. Customer Sentiment Analysis: Responding to negative brand perception on social or amplify the positive perception. Sales and Marketing Campaign: Understand the impact and get closer to customer delight. Call Center Analysis: attempt to take unstructured voice recordings and analyze them for content and sentiment. Medical Reduce Re-admissions: How to build a proactive follow-up engagements with patients. Patient Monitoring: How to track Inpatient, Out-Patient, Emergency Visits, Intensive Care Units etc. Preventive Care: Disease identification and Risk stratification is a very crucial business function for medical. Claims fraud detection: There is no precise dollars that one can put here, but this is a big thing for the medical field. Retail Customer Sentiment Analysis, Customer Care Centers, Campaign Management. Supply Chain Analysis: Every sensors and RFID data can be tracked for warehouse space optimization. Location based marketing: Based on where a check-in happens retail stores can be optimize their marketing. Telecom Price optimization and Plans, Finding Customer churn, Customer loyalty programs Call Detail Record (CDR) Analysis, Network optimizations, User Location analysis Customer Behavior Analysis Insurance Fraud Detection & Analysis, Pricing based on customer Sentiment Analysis, Loyalty Management Agents Analysis, Customer Value Management This list can go on to other areas like Utility, Manufacturing, Travel, ITES etc. So as you can see, there are obviously interesting use cases for each of these industry verticals. These are just representative list. Where to start? A lot of times I try to quiz customers on a number of dimensions before starting a Big Data conversation. Are you getting the data you need the way you want it and in a timely manner? Can you get in and analyze the data you need? How quickly is IT to respond to your BI Requests? How easily can you get at the data that you need to run your business/department/project? How are you currently measuring your business? Can you get the data you need to react WITHIN THE QUARTER to impact behaviors to meet your numbers or is it always “rear-view mirror?” How are you measuring: The Brand Customer Sentiment Your Competition Your Pricing Your performance Supply Chain Efficiencies Predictive product / service positioning What are your key challenges of driving collaboration across your global business?  What the challenges in innovation? What challenges are you facing in getting more information out of your data? Note: Garbage-in is Garbage-out. Hold good for all reporting / analytics requirements Big Data POCs? A number of customers get into the realm of setting a small team to work on Big Data – well it is a great start from an understanding point of view, but I tend to ask a number of other questions to such customers. Some of these common questions are: To what degree is your advanced analytics (natural language processing, sentiment analysis, predictive analytics and classification) paired with your Big Data’s efforts? Do you have dedicated resources exploring the possibilities of advanced analytics in Big Data for your business line? Do you plan to employ machine learning technology while doing Advanced Analytics? How is Social Media being monitored in your organization? What is your ability to scale in terms of storage and processing power? Do you have a system in place to sort incoming data in near real time by potential value, data quality, and use frequency? Do you use event-driven architecture to manage incoming data? Do you have specialized data services that can accommodate different formats, security, and the management requirements of multiple data sources? Is your organization currently using or considering in-memory analytics? To what degree are you able to correlate data from your Big Data infrastructure with that from your enterprise data warehouse? Have you extended the role of Data Stewards to include ownership of big data components? Do you prioritize data quality based on the source system (that is Facebook/Twitter data has lower quality thresholds than radio frequency identification (RFID) for a tracking system)? Do your retention policies consider the different legal responsibilities for storing Big Data for a specific amount of time? Do Data Scientists work in close collaboration with Data Stewards to ensure data quality? How is access to attributes of Big Data being given out in the organization? Are roles related to Big Data (Advanced Analyst, Data Scientist) clearly defined? How involved is risk management in the Big Data governance process? Is there a set of documented policies regarding Big Data governance? Is there an enforcement mechanism or approach to ensure that policies are followed? Who is the key sponsor for your Big Data governance program? (The CIO is best) Do you have defined policies surrounding the use of social media data for potential employees and customers, as well as the use of customer Geo-location data? How accessible are complex analytic routines to your user base? What is the level of involvement with outside vendors and third parties in regard to the planning and execution of Big Data projects? What programming technologies are utilized by your data warehouse/BI staff when working with Big Data? These are some of the important questions I ask each customer who is actively evaluating Big Data trends for their organizations. These questions give you a sense of direction where to start, what to use, how to secure, how to analyze and more. Sign off Any Big data is analysis is incomplete without a compelling story. The best way to understand this is to watch Hans Rosling – Gapminder (2:17 to 6:06) videos about the third world myths. Don’t get overwhelmed with the Big Data buzz word, the destination to what your data speaks is important. In this blog post, we did not particularly look at any Big Data technologies. This is a set of questionnaire one needs to keep in mind as they embark their journey of Big Data. I did write some of the basics in my blog: Big Data – Big Hype yet Big Opportunity. Do let me know if these questions make sense?  Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.sqlauthority.com)Filed under: Big Data, PostADay, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL Query, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, T SQL

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• Dual head setup for Ubuntu 10.04.1 and Windows XP Pro with same hardware configuration

  - by mejpark

  Hello. I have a Dell OptiPlex 360 workstation at work, with 2 x ATI RV280 [Radeon 9200 PRO] graphics cards installed, which are attached to two identical 19" HII flat panel monitors. I'm using the open source Radeon driver with Ubuntu, and the proprietary drivers with Windows. The good news is that dual head configuration works for both OSes. The bad news is, I have to use a different hardware configuration for each OS to achieve this. Hardware config #1: Dual monitors work for Windows XP Pro like this: First display -> external VGA port Second display -> DVI input on gfx card Hardware config #2: Dual monitors work for Ubuntu 10.04.1 like this: First display -> VGA port on gfx card Second display -> DVI input on gfx card I connected up the displays according to Config #2 and booted up Windows, which resulted in a mirror image on both screens. I was unable to login, as the login box was not visible. I unplugged the VGA lead from gfx card and plugged it into the external VGA port (Config #1) - Windows dual head works again, but the VGA-connected screen is not recognised by Ubuntu and remains in standby mode. Is it possible to configure a dual head setup for Ubuntu using Config #1, or am I missing something? I tried setting up dual monitors using Config #1, this morning which didn't work. By default, there is no xorg.conf file in Ubuntu 10.04.1, so I generated one using: $ sudo X :2 -configure X.Org X Server 1.7.6 Release Date: 2010-03-17 X Protocol Version 11, Revision 0 Build Operating System: Linux 2.6.24-27-server i686 Ubuntu Current Operating System: Linux harrier 2.6.32-24-generic #42-Ubuntu SMP Fri Aug 20 14:24:04 UTC 2010 i686 Kernel command line: BOOT_IMAGE=/boot/vmlinuz-2.6.32-24-generic root=UUID=a34c1931-98d4-4a34-880c-c227a2936c4a ro quiet splash Build Date: 21 July 2010 12:47:34PM xorg-server 2:1.7.6-2ubuntu7.3 (For technical support please see http://www.ubuntu.com/support) Current version of pixman: 0.16.4 Before reporting problems, check http://wiki.x.org to make sure that you have the latest version. Markers: (--) probed, (**) from config file, (==) default setting, (++) from command line, (!!) notice, (II) informational, (WW) warning, (EE) error, (NI) not implemented, (??) unknown. (==) Log file: "/var/log/Xorg.2.log", Time: Mon Sep 13 10:02:02 2010 List of video drivers: apm ark intel mach64 s3virge trident mga tseng ati nouveau neomagic i740 openchrome voodoo s3 i128 radeon siliconmotion nv ztv vmware v4l chips rendition savage sisusb tdfx geode sis r128 cirrus fbdev vesa (++) Using config file: "/home/michael/xorg.conf.new" (==) Using config directory: "/usr/lib/X11/xorg.conf.d" (II) [KMS] No DRICreatePCIBusID symbol, no kernel modesetting. Xorg detected your mouse at device /dev/input/mice. Please check your config if the mouse is still not operational, as by default Xorg tries to autodetect the protocol. Xorg has configured a multihead system, please check your config. Your xorg.conf file is /home/michael/xorg.conf.new To test the server, run 'X -config /home/michael/xorg.conf.new' ddxSigGiveUp: Closing log $ sudo X -config /home/michael/xorg.conf.new Fatal server error: Server is already active for display 0 If this server is no longer running, remove /tmp/.X0-lock and start again. Please consult the The X.Org Foundation support at http://wiki.x.org for help. ddxSigGiveUp: Closing log I then booted Ubuntu in failsafe mode, dropped into root shell, and executed $ X -config /home/michael/xorg.conf.new again. The screen went blank and turned off, so I reset the machine. There must be a way round this. Any help to set up a dual head config for Ubuntu using Config #1 would be hugely appreciated. TIA, Mike

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• How to Organize a Programming Language Club

  - by Ben Griswold

  I previously noted that we started a language club at work.  You know, I searched around but I couldn’t find a copy of the How to Organize a Programming Language Club Handbook. Maybe it’s sold out?  Yes, Stack Overflow has quite a bit of information on how to learn and teach new languages and there’s also a good number of online tutorials which provide language introductions but I was interested in group learning.  After   two months of meetings, I present to you the Unofficial How to Organize a Programming Language Club Handbook.  1. Gauge interest. Start by surveying prospects. “Excuse me, smart-developer-whom-I-work-with-and-I-think-might-be-interested-in-learning-a-new-coding-language-with-me. Are you interested in learning a new language with me?” If you’re lucky, you work with a bunch of really smart folks who aren’t shy about teaching/learning in a group setting and you’ll have a collective interest in no time.  Simply suggesting the idea is the only effort required.  If you don’t work in this type of environment, maybe you should consider a new place of employment.  2. Make it official. Send out a “Welcome to the Club” email: There’s been talk of folks itching to learn new languages – Python, Scala, F# and Haskell to name a few.  Rather than taking on new languages alone, let’s learn in the open.  That’s right.  Let’s start a languages club.  We’ll have everything a real club needs – secret handshake, goofy motto and a high-and-mighty sense that we’re better than everybody else. T-shirts?  Hell YES!  Anyway, I’ve thrown this idea around the office and no one has laughed at me yet so please consider this your very official invitation to be in THE club. [Insert your ideas about how the club might be run, solicit feedback and suggestions, ask what other folks would like to get out the club, comment about club hazing practices and talk up the T-shirts even more. Finally, call out the languages you are interested in learning and ask the group for their list.] 3.  Send out invitations to the first meeting.  Don’t skimp!  Hallmark greeting cards for everyone.  Personalized.  Hearts over the I’s and everything.  Oh, and be sure to include the list of suggested languages with vote count.  Here the list of languages we are interested in: Python 5 Ruby 4 Objective-C 3 F# 2 Haskell 2 Scala 2 Ada 1 Boo 1 C# 1 Clojure 1 Erlang 1 Go 1 Pi 1 Prolog 1 Qt 1 4.  At the first meeting, there must be cake.  Lots of cake. And you should tackle some very important questions: Which language should we start with?  You can immediately go with the top vote getter or you could do as we did and designate each person to provide a high-level review of each of the proposed languages over the next two weeks.  After all presentations are completed, vote on the language. Our high-level review consisted of answers to a series of questions. Decide how often and where the group will meet.  We, for example, meet for a brown bag lunch every Wednesday.  Decide how you’re going to learn.  We determined that the best way to learn is to just dive in and write code.  After choosing our first language (Python), we talked about building an application, or performing coding katas, but we ultimately choose to complete a series of Project Euler problems.  We kept it simple – each member works out the same two problems each week in preparation of a code review the following Wednesday. 5.  Code, Review, Learn.  Prior to the weekly meeting, everyone uploads their solutions to our internal wiki.  Each Project Euler problem has a dedicated page.  In the meeting, we use a really fancy HD projector to show off each member’s solution.  It is very important to use an HD projector.  Again, don’t skimp!  Each code author speaks to their solution, everyone else comments, applauds, points fingers and laughs, etc.  As much as I’ve learned from solving the problems on my own, I’ve learned at least twice as much at the group code review.  6.  Rinse. Lather. Repeat.  We’ve hosted the language club for 7 weeks now.  The first meeting just set the stage.  The next two meetings provided a review of the languages followed by a first language selection.  The remaining meetings focused on Python and Project Euler problems.  Today we took a vote as to whether or not we’re ready to switch to another language and/or another problem set.  Pretty much everyone wants to stay the course for a few more weeks at least.  Until then, we’ll continue to code the next two solutions, review and learn. Again, we’ve been having a good time with the programming language club.  I’m glad it got off the ground.  What do you think?  Would you be interested in a language club?  Any suggestions on what we might do better?

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