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  • Developer’s Life – Every Developer is a Batman

    - by Pinal Dave
    Batman is one of the darkest superheroes in the fantasy canon.  He does not come to his powers through any sort of magical coincidence or radioactive insect, but through a lot of psychological scarring caused by witnessing the death of his parents.  Despite his dark back story, he possesses a lot of admirable abilities that I feel bear comparison to developers. Batman has the distinct advantage that his alter ego, Bruce Wayne is a millionaire (or billionaire in today’s reboots).  This means that he can spend his time working on his athletic abilities, building a secret lair, and investing his money in cool tools.  This might not be true for developers (well, most developers), but I still think there are many parallels. So how are developers like Batman? Well, read on my list of reasons. Develop Skills Batman works on his skills.  He didn’t get the strength to scale Gotham’s skyscrapers by inheriting his powers or suffering an industrial accident.  Developers also hone their skills daily.  They might not be doing pull-ups and scaling buldings, but I think their skills are just as impressive. Clear Goals Batman is driven to build a better Gotham.  He knows that the criminal who killed his parents was a small-time thief, not a super villain – so he has larger goals in mind than simply chasing one villain.  He wants his city as a whole to be better.  Developers are also driven to make things better.  It can be easy to get hung up on one problem, but in the end it is best to focus on the well-being of the system as a whole. Ultimate Teamplayers Batman is the hero Gotham needs – even when that means appearing to be the bad guys.  Developers probably know that feeling well.  Batman takes the fall for a crime he didn’t commit, and developers often have to deliver bad news about the limitations of their networks and servers.  It’s not always a job filled with glory and thanks, but someone has to do it. Always Ready Batman and the Boy Scouts have this in common – they are always prepared.  Let’s add developers to this list.  Batman has an amazing tool belt with gadgets and gizmos, and let’s not even get into all the functions of the Batmobile!  Developers’ skills might be the knowledge and skills they have developed, not tools they can carry in a utility belt, but that doesn’t make them any less impressive. 100% Dedication Bruce Wayne cultivates the personality of a playboy, never keeping the same girlfriend for long and spending his time partying.  Even though he hides it, his driving force is his deep concern and love for his friends and the city as a whole.  Developers also care a lot about their company and employees – even when it is driving them crazy.  You do your best work when you care about your job on a personal level. Quality Output Batman believes the city deserves to be saved.  The citizens might have a love-hate relationship with both Batman and Bruce Wayne, and employees might not always appreciate developers.  Batman and developers, though, keep working for the best of everyone. I hope you are all enjoying reading about developers-as-superheroes as much as I am enjoying writing about them.  Please tell me how else developers are like Superheroes in the comments – especially if you know any developers who are faster than a speeding bullet and can leap tall buildings in a single bound. Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.sqlauthority.com)Filed under: PostADay, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL Query, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, T SQL Tagged: Developer, Superhero

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  • You Might Be a DBA

    - by BuckWoody
    With all apologies to Jeff Foxworthy, I was up late Friday night on a holiday weekend (which translated into T-SQL becomes “Maintenance Window”) and I got bored in between the two or three minutes I had between clicks. So I started a “Twitter” meme – and it just took off. I haven’t cleaned these up much, but here, in author order as of Saturday the 29th of May is the list “You might be a DBA” from around the Twitterverse: buckwoody Your two main enemies are developers and SAN admins #youmightbeaDBA  buckwoody People can use Access as a cross or garlic on you #youmightbeaDBA  buckwoody You always plan an exit strategy, even when entering a McDonald's #youmightbeaDBA  buckwoody You can't explain to your family what you really do for a living #youmightbeaDBA  buckwoody You have at least one set of scripts you won't share #youmightbeaDBA  buckwoody You have an opinion on the best code-beautifier #youmightbeaDBA  buckwoody You have children older than the rest of your team #youmightbeaDBA  buckwoody You and the Oracle DBA would kill each other, but you'll happily fight off a developer together first #youmightbeaDBA  buckwoody You've threatened to quit if they give anyone the sa password on production #youmightbeaDBA  buckwoody You've sent a vendor suggestions on improving their database design or code (and been ignored) #youmightbeaDBA  buckwoody You've sent a vendor suggestions on improving their database design or code (and been ignored) #youmightbeaDBA  buckwoody You have an opinion on the best code-beautifier #youmightbeaDBA  buckwoody You have at least one set of scripts you won't share #youmightbeaDBA  buckwoody You refer to co-workers as "carbon-units" #youmightbeaDBA  buckwoody Being paranoid is on your resume at the top #youmightbeaDBA  buckwoody Everyone comes to your cube to find the MSDN DVD's #youmightbeaDBA  buckwoody You always plan an exit strategy, even when entering a McDonald's #youmightbeaDBA  buckwoody You've worn down developers to get your way by explaining normalization levels #youmightbeaDBA  buckwoody You refer to clothes as "Data Abstractions" #youmightbeaDBA  buckwoody Users pester you to be able to put data in a database, then they pester you to take it out and put it in Excel #youmightbeaDBA  buckwoody Others try to de-duplicate data, you try to copy it to more than three locations #youmightbeaDBA  buckwoody You have at least one DLT tape in the trunk of your car #youmightbeaDBA  buckwoody You use twitter and facebook to talk with colleagues because there's no one else in your company that does what you do #youmightbeaDBA  buckwoody Your spouse knows what "ETL" means #youmightbeaDBA  buckwoody You've referred to yourself as the "Data Janitor" #youmightbeaDBA  buckwoody You don't have positive connotations of the word "upgrade" #youmightbeaDBA  buckwoody You get your coffee before you check your servers, because you know you won't get any if you don't #youmightbeaDBA  buckwoody You always come to work through the back door so no one hijacks you on the way to your cube #youmightbeaDBA  buckwoody You check your server logs before you check your e-mail in the morning so you can reply "Yeah, I already fixed that." #youmightbeaDBA  buckwoody You have more conference badges than clean socks #youmightbeaDBA  buckwoody Your coffee mug says "It depends" #youmightbeaDBA  buckwoody You can convince a boss that you need 16GB of RAM in your laptop #youmightbeaDBA  buckwoody You've used ebay to find production equipment #youmightbeaDBA  buckwoody You pad all project timelines by 2X, and you still miss them #youmightbeaDBA  buckwoody You know when your company is acquiring another even before the CFO #youmightbeaDBA  buckwoody You pad all project timelines by 2X, and you still miss them #youmightbeaDBA  buckwoody You call aspirin "work vitamins" #youmightbeaDBA  buckwoody You get the same amount of sleep even after you have a child #youmightbeaDBA  buckwoody You obsess about performance metrics from over one year ago #youmightbeaDBA  buckwoody The first thing you buy after the database software is aftermarket tools to manage the database software #youmightbeaDBA  buckwoody You've tried to convince someone else to become a DBA #youmightbeaDBA  buckwoody You use twitter and facebook to talk with colleagues because there's no one else in your company that does what you do #youmightbeaDBA  buckwoody You only know other DBA's by their Tweet Handle #youmightbeaDBA  buckwoody You've explained the difference between 32 and 64-bit to more than one manager in terms they can understand, using puppets #youmightbeaDBA  buckwoody Your two main enemies are developers and SAN admins #youmightbeaDBA  buckwoody You've driven to the Datacenter to install SQL Server because "you don't trust those NOC admins" #youmightbeaDBA  buckwoody You pay more for faster Internet connections than cable at home so you don't have to drive in #youmightbeaDBA  buckwoody You call texting a "queuing system" #youmightbeaDBA  buckwoody You know that if someone can read Perl, they manage an Oracle system #youmightbeaDBA  buckwoody You have an e-mail rule for backup notifications #youmightbeaDBA  buckwoody Your food pyramid includes coffee, salt and fat #youmightbeaDBA  buckwoody You wish everything had a graphical query plan #youmightbeaDBA  buckwoody You refactor your e-mails #youmightbeaDBA  buckwoody You've gotten more help from twitter and facebook than all your years in college #youmightbeaDBA  buckwoody You would pay money for a license plate that has the letters S-Q-L together #youmightbeaDBA  buckwoody You have actually considered making a RAID array from thumb drives #youmightbeaDBA  buckwoody Everything on your laptop is installed from your MSDN subscription #youmightbeaDBA  buckwoody You've written blog posts on technology you've never actually implemented in production #youmightbeaDBA  buckwoody Everything on your laptop is installed from your MSDN subscription #youmightbeaDBA  buckwoody @MidnightDBA Click the #youmightbeaDBA tag. I've had WAY too much coffee today.  buckwoody There is no other position that is 1-deep except you and the CEO #youmightbeaDBA  buckwoody When you watch "The Office" you call it "OJT" #youmightbeaDBA  buckwoody You would pay money for a license plate that has the letters S-Q-L together #youmightbeaDBA  buckwoody Your blog would make a "best practices" or "worst practices" book #youmightbeaDBA  buckwoody You have actually considered making a RAID array from thumb drives #youmightbeaDBA  buckwoody The first thing you install on your netbook is SSMS #youmightbeaDBA  buckwoody Everything on your laptop is installed from your MSDN subscription #youmightbeaDBA  buckwoody Your watch is set to UTC because it's just easier #youmightbeaDBA  buckwoody You make plenty of money, but you're excited to get a $2.00 squeeze-ball from Quest and Redgate #youmightbeaDBA  buckwoody You make plenty of money, but you're excited to get a $2.00 squeeze-ball from Quest and Redgate #youmightbeaDBA  buckwoody You think data can be represented as something OTHER than XML #youmightbeaDBA  buckwoody You tell people that you made a database query go faster, and expect them to be happy for you #youmightbeaDBA  buckwoody You take the word "NoSQL" as a personal attack #youmightbeaDBA  buckwoody People can use Access as a cross or garlic on you #youmightbeaDBA  buckwoody * == bad #youmightbeaDBA  buckwoody * == bad #youmightbeaDBA  buckwoody There are just as many females in your technical field as males #youmightbeaDBA  buckwoody People can use Access as a cross or garlic on you #youmightbeaDBA  buckwoody You've gotten more help from twitter and facebook than all your years in college #youmightbeaDBA  buckwoody You think that something OTHER than the database might be the performance bottleneck #youmightbeaDBA  buckwoody You refer to time as a "Clustered Index" #youmightbeaDBA  buckwoody You know why "user" refers to both business people and crack addicts #youmightbeaDBA  buckwoody You make plenty of money, but you're excited to get a $2.00 squeeze-ball from Quest and Redgate #youmightbeaDBA  buckwoody You can't explain to your family what you really do for a living #youmightbeaDBA  buckwoody You tell people that you made a database query go faster, and expect them to be happy for you #youmightbeaDBA  buckwoody You think a millisecond is a really long time #youmightbeaDBA  buckwoody You're sitting and typing #youmightbeaDBA when you could be outside #youmightbeaDBA  buckwoody You can't wait for a technical conference so you can wear a kilt - and you're not Scottish #youmightbeaDBA  buckwoody You know that "DBA" stands for "Default Blame Acceptor" #youmightbeaDBA  buckwoody People can use Access as a cross or garlic on you #youmightbeaDBA  buckwoody You know what "the truth, thole truth and nothing but the truth, so help me Codd" means #youmightbeaDBA  buckwoody You've gotten more help from twitter and facebook than all your years in college #youmightbeaDBA  buckwoody You can't talk fast enough to get a concept out of your head so you tweet it instead #youmightbeaDBA  buckwoody You cry when someone doesn't use a WHERE clause #youmightbeaDBA  buckwoody You think data can be represented as something OTHER than XML #youmightbeaDBA  buckwoody You think "Set theory" is not an verb but a noun #youmightbeaDBA  buckwoody You try to convince random strangers to vote on your Connect item #youmightbeaDBA  buckwoody You think 3 hours of contiguous sleep is a good thing #youmightbeaDBA or #youmightbeamother  buckwoody You don't like Oracle, and not just because of what she did to Neo #youmightbeaDBA  buckwoody You know when to say "sequel" and "s-q-l" #youmightbeaDBA  buckwoody You know where the data is #youmightbeaDBA  buckwoody You refer to your children as "Fully Redundant Mirrors" #youmightbeaDBA  buckwoody Holiday == "Maintenance Window" #youmightbeaDBA  buckwoody Your laptop is more powerful than the servers in most companies - including your own #youmightbeaDBA  buckwoody You capitalize SELECTed words #youmightbeaDBA  buckwoody You take the word "NoSQL" as a personal attack #youmightbeaDBA  buckwoody You know why "user" refers to both business people and crack addicts #youmightbeaDBA  buckwoody You cringe in public when the word "upgrade" is used in a sentence #youmightbeaDBA  buckwoody Holiday == "Maintenance Window" #youmightbeaDBA  buckwoody All Data Is MetaData means something to you #youmightbeaDBA  buckwoody You've never seen the driveway to your house in the daylight #youmightbeaDBA  buckwoody You think that something OTHER than the database might be the performance bottleneck #youmightbeaDBA  buckwoody Most of your bloodstream is composed of caffeine #youmightbeaDBA  buckwoody Your task list is labeled "CRUD Matrix" #youmightbeaDBA  buckwoody You call your wife/husband a "Linked Server" #youmightbeaDBA  anonythemouse When someone tells you they are going to take a dump and you wonder of which database then #youmightbeaDBA  anonythemouse When it's 11pm on a holiday weekend and you are working #youmightbeaDBA  anonythemouse When you sit down at a table and look for it's primary key #youmightbeaDBA  anonythemouse When getting milk from the fridge you check the expiry date is > getdate() #youmightbeaDBA  blakmk when you wake up dreaming about sql #youmightbeaDBA  CharlesGarver You think a @buckwoody bobblehead would be a cool thing to have on the dashboard of your car #youmightbeaDBA  CharlesGarver Your friends don't understand why you think there's a difference between single and double quotes #youmightbeaDBA  CharlesGarver Even the newest employees know your name from all the downtime notices you've sent out #youmightbeaDBA  CharlesGarver You sometimes feel anxious and think "I should test restoring those backups" and then the feeling passes #youmightbeadba  CharlesGarver You know what a co-worker means when they ask "how is your squirrel server?" #youmightbeadba  CharlesGarver You can't sleep at night and you ponder the logisitcs of collecting every copy of Access for the world's biggest bonfire #youmightbeaDBA  CharlesGarver You can't sleep at night and you ponder the logisitcs of collecting every copy of Access for the world's biggest bonfire #youmightbeaDBA  CharlesGarver You're willing to move someone's job up in priority for a box of #voodoodonuts #youmightbeaDBA  CharlesGarver Each person in your company seems to think you work for THEM #youmightbeaDBA  CharlesGarver You have a Love/Hate relationship going on with #Microsoft #youmightbeaDBA  CharlesGarver People ask you to troubleshoot their Access program #youmightbeaDBA  CharlesGarver The first words you hear in the morning are 'your voicemail box is full' #youmightbeaDBA  CharlesGarver The thought of disrupting 500 people's work so you can do something doesn't phase you #youmightbeaDBA  CharlesGarver You can't sleep at night and you ponder the logisitcs of collecting every copy of Access for the world's biggest bonfire #youmightbeaDBA  CharlesGarver Your home computer is backed up in 3 different places #youmightbeaDBA  CharlesGarver Your wardrobe for work includes pajamas #youmightbeaDBA  CharlesGarver Someone tells you to look in the INDEX and you look puzzled before finally going to the back of the book. #youmightbeaDBA  chuckboycejr If you have ever set up a SQLAgent job to email your mobile phone to serve as an alarm clock #youmightbeaDBA  chuckboycejr If you'd rather meet Itzik than Jay Z #youmightbeaDBA  chuckboycejr If you'd rather meet Itzik than Jay Z #youmightbeaDBA  chuckboycejr If you'd wrestle a SysAdmin to the ground to implement #DPA best practices as per @aspiringgeek #youmightbeaDBA  databaseguy I need to be up in 7 hours, so I'm off to bed! I'll have to read the rest of @buckwoody's #youmightbeaDBA posts in the AM. (g'night Buck!)  databaseguy When people ask you about your house, the first thing you describe is the network. #youmightbeaDBA  databaseguy The last thing you say at the office each day is, "is anybody else here? I'm shutting off the lights!" #youmightbeaDBA  databaseguy Your blood pressure rises when you read application specs drafted by marketing. #youmightbeaDBA  databaseguy A good day at work is one when nobody pays you no mind. #youmightbeaDBA  databaseguy You care about latches and wait states. #youmightbeaDBA  databaseguy You have worked over 200 hours on a performance tuning project that required no application changes at all. #youmightbeaDBA  databaseguy The late-night security guard knows the names of your spouse and kids. #youmightbeaDBA  databaseguy You have had vigorous debates about whether it should be pronounced "sequel" or "ess-queue-ell". #youmightbeaDBA  databaseguy You have VPN and RDP software installed on your phone ... just in case. #youmightbeaDBA  databaseguy You have edited a data file by hand, just to see what would happen. #youmightbeaDBA  databaseguy You decorate your office walls with database catalog posters. #youmightbeaDBA  databaseguy You've built programs that access data just to keep other developers from asking you to run queries all the time. #youmightbeaDBA  databaseguy When you watch movies like The Matrix, you find yourself calculating the fasibility of storing all that data. #youmightbeaDBA  databaseguy You have tried to convince someone to spend money on an SSD storage array. #youmightbeaDBA  databaseguy When CPU is spiked on a server, you want to gather forensic evidence. #youmightbeaDBA  databaseguy You have to remind developers not to push code to production without checking if the database is ready. #youmightbeaDBA  databaseguy Nobody cares what you wear to work, as long as the thing keeps running. #youmightbeaDBA  databaseguy Telepathy is a job requirement when working with app dev teams. #youmightbeaDBA  databaseguy You read database statistics for the educational value. #youmightbeaDBA  databaseguy And your boss freely admits this to anyone within earshot. #youmightbeaDBA  databaseguy Your boss cannot explain or understand what you do. #youmightbeaDBA  databaseguy You envision ERDs when you see a GUI. #youmightbeaDBA  databaseguy You say things like "applications come and go, but data lasts forever." #youmightbeaDBA  databaseguy You have memorized the names of several of the AdventureWorks employees. #youmightbeaDBA  databaseguy You know what MAXDOP setting you can get away with for a big query based on current server load. #youmightbeaDBA  databaseguy And you immediately recognize the recursion in my last tweet. #youmightbeaDBA  databaseguy You find 50 simultaneous tweets from @buckwoody about #youmightbeaDBA :O)  DBAishness You have "funny stories" about the times your developers accidentally deleted the T-log in their test environment. #youmightbeaDBA  DBAishness Planning to slice and dice your MDW data with PowerPivot makes you giggle like a schoolgirl. #youmightbeaDBA  donalddotfarmer You think @buckwoody lives in the "real world." #youmightbeaDBA  jamach09 @buckwoody #youmightbeaDBA Why go outside when you can sit in the nice cool server room?  jamach09 If you refer to procreation as "Replication", #youmightbeaDBA.  jamach09 If you think ORM is a four-letter word, #youmightbeaDBA  JamesMarsh If you have ever preached the value of Source Code Control, #YouMightBeADBA  jethrocarr @venzann You store your shopping list in a ACID compliant DB #youmightbeaDBA  joe_positive @buckwoody thought it stood for "Don't Bother Asking" #youmightbeaDBA  joe_positive when you check your IT Events Calendar before making weekend plans #youmightbeaDBA  LadyRuna You cringe whenever someone calls Excel a database #youmightbeaDBA  LadyRuna When the waiter says he'll be your server today, you ask how many terabytes he is #youmightbeaDBA  LadyRuna you always call the asterisk a "Star" #youmightbeaDBA  LadyRuna You walk into a server room, say "Nice RACK!" and everyone there knows you're talking about server rack... #youmightbeaDBA  LadyRuna You receive more messages from servers than from friends #youmightbeaDBA  LadyRuna hmmm... #youmightbeaDBA if your recipe for gumbo is "SELECT * FROM Refrigerator"  markjholmes @SQLSoldier Heh. #youmightbeaDBA if you correct other DBAs' spelling of @PaulRandal  markjholmes #youmightbeaDBA if you actually test RAID5 vs RAID10 on your SAN because when it comes to configuration, "it depends."  markjholmes #youmightbeaDBA if you have at least 3 definitions of the word "cluster"  MarlonRibunal 3 Words: @BrentO, snicker, & Access #youmightbeaDBA  MarlonRibunal @onpnt @mikeSQL my appeal was a couple of mins late. Enjoying #youmightbeaDBA  MarlonRibunal @mikeSQL @onpnt pls, don't mention bacon #youmightbeaDBA  merv @buckwoody You HATE 3-way joins #youmightbeaDBA  MidnightDBA If you're up at midnight Tweeting about SQL #youmightbeaDBA  MidnightDBA @buckwoody I'd noticed that. :) #youmightbeaDBA  mikeSQL when people talk about "their type" you're thinking varchar, bigint, binary, etc #youmightbeadba  mikeSQL people ask you to go to lunch , but you can't go because you're attending #SQLlunch #youmightbeadba  mikeSQL you laugh for hours at all of the #sqlmoviequotes ....things in which a normal individual would scratch their head at. #youmightbeadba  mikeSQL you laugh for hours at all of the #sqlmoviequotes ....things in which a normal individual would scratch their head at. #youmightbeadba  mrdenny If you think that @buckwoody's demo using PowerPivot to analyze index usage data from DMVs is awesome then #youmightbeaDBA  mrdenny You wish @PaulRandal still worked at Microsoft so that they would make a bobble head of him #youmightbeadba  mrdenny When it's 11pm on a holiday weekend, and your posting stupid jokes on Twitter then #youmightbeadba  mrdenny If you go out with friends and wonder why no one's wearing a kilt then #YouMightBeADBA  mrdenny You can't do basic math, but you know off the top of your head how many CALs $14,412 can buy you. #YoumightbeaDBA  mrdenny If you've ever setup a SQL Job to email you to get you out of a regularly scheduled meeting #YouMightBeADBA.  mrdenny You throw up in your mouth a little when ever you here the word "Access". Even if it doesn't relate to a MS product. #YouMightBeADBA  msdtjones You spend more time listening to @buckwoody than your wife #youmightbeaDBA  NFDotCom You perform "hail deltas" on a regular basis. #YouMightBeADBA  NoelMcKinney If you tell your wife you want to go to Columbus Ohio for your wedding anniversary so you can attend #sqlsat42 then #youmightbeaDBA  NoelMcKinney You read a union is on strike and wonder if it's a UNION ALL #youmightbeaDBA  NoelMcKinney You read a union is on strike and wonder if it's a UNION ALL #youmightbeaDBA  NoelMcKinney Someone asks you to throw another log on the fire and you tell them not to worry about it because Autogrowth is turned on #youmightbeaDBA  Nuurdygirl Even if you have a girlfriend...its possible #youmightbeadba. Yeah-i said its possible!  Nuurdygirl When your girlfriend has to lean around the laptop to kiss you goodnight #youmightbeadba  Old_Man_Fish If you worry about how big your package is and how long it takes to finish #youmightbeaDBA  Old_Man_Fish If you no longer wonder if someone is in trouble or died if you are getting calls at 2AM #youmightbeaDBA  Old_Man_Fish If, when you hear the word ACCESS with no connotation you blood pressure jumps 50 points, #youmightbeaDBA  onpnt When you hear the word inject you immediately get concerned if your databases are OK #youmightbeaDBA  onpnt Your servers haven't been rebooted in a year #youmightbeaDBA  onpnt You know why it's funny when @PaulRandal has the word, "Sheep" in a tweet #youmightbeaDBA  onpnt You have read BOL without actually having a problem to figure out #youmightbeaDBA  onpnt You can type "SELECT columns FROM tables" without typos but tipen ni Banglish ares a messis #youmightbeaDBA  onpnt DR strategies doesn't include the word, RAID in them #youmightbeaDBA  onpnt you can move a SQL Server instance to a new server without the users ever knowing #youmightbeaDBA  onpnt You have made an SSIS package that is more than one step #youmightbeaDBA  onpnt You have the balls to say no to your boss when they ask for the sa password #youmightbeaDBA  onpnt you google to trouble shoot a problem and end up at your own blog (and it fixes it) #youmightbeaDBA  onpnt You talk your wife into moving the family vacation a week earlier so you can attend the areas local SSUG meeting #youmightbeaDBA  onpnt you can explain to a nontechnical person what a deadlock is #youmightbeaDBA  onpnt You hope a girl asks you what your collation is #youmightbeaDBA  onpnt you make jokes that include the words shrink, truncate and 1205. And you are the only one that laughs at them #youmightbeaDBA  onpnt You rate your ability to stay awake to work longer on blogs, twitter, forums and your day to day job with the 5 9's goal #youmightbeaDBA  onpnt you have major surgery and beg the doctor to release you back to work 5 days later because you miss your servers #youmightbeaDBA #TrueStory  onpnt You do have backups and you know how to use them #youmightbeaDBA  onpnt It's the network #youmightbeaDBA  onpnt When the developers get to work your mood changes rapidly #youmightbeaDBA  onpnt When someone says, "PASS", you first think of karaoke #youmightbeaDBA  onpnt Recruiters try to get you to call them *just* because they think you'll give them @BrentO contact info #youmightbeaDBA  onpnt You chuckle every time you go to grab the "CLR" Calcium, Lime and Rust Remover to clean something #youmightbeaDBA  onpnt @MarlonRibunal @mikeSQL Sorry man, it was already in motion ;-) #youmightbeaDBA  onpnt When you have an "I love bacon" sticker on your laptop. #youmightbeaDBA http://twitpic.com/1ry671  onpnt You sing SELECT statements in the shower #youmightbeaDBA  onpnt When you see a chicken it doesn't remind you of food. It reminds you of a guy named Jorge #youmightbeaDBA  onpnt At time, SQL is your mistress #youmightbeaDBA  onpnt Your wife wonders if SQL is the code name of your mistress at times #youmightbeaDBA  onpnt it's Friday and you are on twitter thinking really hard about what would be funny for hash tag #youmightbeaDBA  onpnt You organize your wife's "decorative"pillows on the bed in a B-Tree structure #youmightbeaDBA  PaulWhiteNZ If you: SELECT TOP (1) milk FROM fridge WHERE use_by_date >= GET_DATE() ORDER BY use_by_date ASC #YouMightBeaDBA  RonDBA #youmightbeaDBA if you read @buckwoody's and @BrentO's blogs.  ryaneastabrook @buckwoody omg, you have to stand up a website with these on them, they are awesome #youmightbeaDBA  soulvy @StrateSQL @LadyRuna Or a "Splat" #youmightbeaDBA  speedracer You can still fall asleep after three cups of coffee #youmightbeaDBA  speedracer You retweet @buckwoody on a Friday night #youmightbeaDBA  speedracer You can still fall asleep after three cups of coffee #youmightbeaDBA  speedracer Developers make you twitch #youmightbeaDBA  sqlagentman You know what X/1024*8 is. #YouMightBeADBA  SqlAsylum Your still in the office at 5:00 on memorial day weekend. #youmightbeadba :)  SQLBob Whenever someone you know gets pregnant you bring up INNER JOINs or SQL Injection attacks... #youmightbeaDBA  SQLChicken You know one or more SQL folks in the community with an animal in their username #youmightbeaDBA  SQLChicken You've used one or more car analogies to explain how a database works #youmightbeaDBA  SQLChicken “@sqljoe: #youmightbeaDBA if you applied to attend #sqlu and requested @SQLChicken to pull strings for you” lmao nice!  SQLChicken When talking about SSIS your discussions break down into various jokes about packages #youmightbeaDBA  SQLChicken Just SEEING the code for cursors makes you break out in hives #youmightbeaDBA  SQLChicken Just SEEING the code for cursors makes you break out in hives #youmightbeaDBA  SQLCraftsman You coined the phrase "Magic SAN Dust" because calling a vendor's marketing claims BS is not acceptable in a meeting. #YouMightBeADBA  SQLCraftsman If you hear about a new feature with the acronym "DAC" and wonder what disaster of a feature it is attached to this time. #YouMightBeADBA  SQLCraftsman You really own a "Stick of Much Developer Whacking" #YouMightBeADBA  SQLCraftsman You coined the phrase "Magic SAN Dust" because calling a vendor's marketing claims BS is not acceptable in a meeting. #YouMightBeADBA  SQLCraftsman Default Blame Acceptor #YouMightBeADBA  SQLCraftsman If you hear about a new feature with the acronym "DAC" and wonder what disaster of a feature it is attached to this time. #YouMightBeADBA  SQLCraftsman Default Blame Acceptor #YouMightBeADBA  SQLCraftsman If you hear about a new feature with the acronym "DAC" and wonder what disaster of a feature it is attached to this time. #YouMightBeADBA  sqljoe #youmightbeaDBA if you wished your wife knew T-sql. USE ShoppingList SELECT NecessaryItems from Supermarket WHERE Category<> ("junk food")  sqljoe #youmightbeaDBA if the first thing you kiss when you wake up is your mobile for not waking you up in the middle of the night  sqljoe #youmightbeaDBA if your wife has a "Do Not Fly" family vacation list of her own including your laptop and mobile  sqljoe #youmightbeaDBA if you have researched for DBA Anonymous groups and attended a #SSUG willing to drop your database (vice)  sqljoe #youmightbeaDBA if your only maintenance windows are staff meetings  sqljoe #youmightbeaDBA if you think of yourself as "The One" in The Matrix "balancing the equation" from The Architect's (developers) poor coding  sqljoe #youmightbeaDBA if you think @PaulRandal should have played the Oracle in The Matrix  sqljoe #youmightbeaDBA if home CD & Movie collection is stored in secured containers,in logical order & naming convention,and with a backup copy  sqljoe #youmightbeaDBA if you applied to attend #sqlu and requested @SQLChicken to pull strings for you  sqljoe #youmightbeaDBA if you have tried to TiVo @MidnightDBA broadcasts  sqljoe #youmightbeaDBA if your #sql user group feels like #AA meetings  sqljoe #youmightbeaDBA if you thought of bringing your #sql books to #sqlsaturday and #sqlpass for autographs  sqljoe #youmightbeaDBA if #sqlpass feels like the #oscars  sqljoe #youmightbeaDBA if you are proud of your small package  SQLLawman #youmightbeaDBA when you hear MDX and Acura is not first thought that comes to mind.  sqlrunner If your wife double checks that there isn't a SQLSat within 200 miles of your vacation destination #youmightbeaDBA  sqlrunner When you're on a conference call and your wife thinks your speaking in a foreign language #youmightbeaDBA  sqlrunner When you're on a conference call and your wife thinks your speaking in a foreign language #youmightbeaDBA  sqlrunner You treat the word 'access' as a verb, not a noun #youmightbeaDBA  sqlrunner If you are happy with sub-second performance #youmightbeaDBA  sqlrunner When you know the names of the NOC people AND their families #youmightbeadba  sqlrunner When you know the names of the NOC people AND their families #youmightbeadba  sqlrunner Your company set's up international phone coverage for your cruise #youmightbeaDBA  sqlsamson @buckwoody if your manager asks you for data and you respond with "there's a script for that" #youmightbeadba  sqlsamson @buckwoody If you receive more messages from your server then your spouse #youmightbeadba  SQLSoldier You've spent all night Valentines Day upgrading the SQL Servers and forgot to tell your wife you'd be working late. #youmightbeadba  SQLSoldier You're flattered when someone calls you a geek. #youmightbeadba  SQLSoldier @llangit @mrdenny it's 11pm on a holiday weekend, & your reading stupid jokes on Twitter then #youmightbeadba  SQLSoldier Your manager borrows lunch money from you because your salary is 30% higher than his. #youmightbeaDBA  SQLSoldier You think "intellisense" is a double negative because it's not intelligent nor makes sense. #youmightbeaDBA  SQLSoldier 75% of the emails you receive at home have the phrase "now following you on Twitter!" in the subject line. #youmightbeaDBA  SQLSoldier You petition Ken Burns to remake Office Space because it should have been 18 hours long. #youmightbeaDBA  SQLSoldier You select a candidate for a Jr DBA position because his resume said he's willing to get your coffee. #youmightbeaDBA  SQLSoldier Somebody misquotes @PaulRandall and you call him on your cell to verify. #youmightbeaDBA  SQLSoldier You wish the elevator in your building was slower because it's the last time you'll be left alone all day. #youmightbeaDBA  SQLSoldier The developers sacrifice small animals before giving you their code for review. #youmightbeaDBA  SQLSoldier Developers bring you coffee and a BLT when you review their code. #youmightbeaDBA #IWish  SQLSoldier You can get out of any family get-together by saying you have to work and nobody questions it. #youmightbeaDBA  SQLSoldier You've requested a HP Superdome for you "test" box. #youmightbeaDBA  SQLSoldier Your leave work early because your internet connection to the data center is better at home #youmightbeaDBA  SQLSoldier The new CEO asks you to justify your salary, so you go on vacation for 2 weeks. And he never questions you again. #youmightbeaDBA  SQLSoldier You cheer when Milton burns down the company in Office Space #youmightbeaDBA  SQLSoldier A dev. asks if you've heard about some great new feature in SQL and you show the 16 blog posts you wrote on it ... last year #youmightbeaDBA  SQLSoldier Your dev team is still testing SQL 2008 and you're already planning for SQL 11. #youmightbeaDBA #TrueStory  SQLSoldier The new CEO asks you to justify your salary, so you go on vacation for 2 weeks. And he never questions you again. #youmightbeaDBA  SQLSoldier Your dev team is still testing SQL 2008 and you're already planning for SQL 11. #youmightbeaDBA  SQLSoldier You use a cell phone service coverage map to plan your next vacation. #youmightbeaDBA  SQLSoldier You come in to work at 7 AM because it gives you at least 3 hours without any developers around. #youmightbeaDBA  SQLSoldier You figure out a way to make take your wife on a cruise and deduct it as a business expense. #youmightbeaDBA #sqlcruise  SQLSoldier You name your cat SQLDog because the name @SQLCat was already taken. #youmightbeaDBA  SQLSoldier You rate your blog posts based on the number of retweets you get. #youmightbeaDBA  SQLSoldier You disable random logins just to mess with people. #youmightbeaDBA  SQLSoldier You fall for the pickup line, "Hey baby, what's your collation?" #youmightbeaDBA  SQLSoldier You can blame an outage on anyone in the company because you're the only one that knows how to find out what really happened #youmightbeaDBA  SQLSoldier You can blame an outage on anyone in the company because you're the only one that knows how to find out what really happened #youmightbeaDBA  SQLSoldier You cheer when Milton burns down the company in Office Space #youmightbeaDBA  SQLSoldier Your leave work early because your internet connection to the data center is better at home #youmightbeaDBA  SQLSoldier You cheer when Milton burns down the company in Office Space #youmightbeaDBA  SQLSoldier Your think the 4 food groups are coffee, bacon, fast food, and Mountain Dew. #youmightbeaDBA  SQLSoldier You tell someone your job title and they ask "What?" You describe it and they ask "What?". So you say "computer geek". #youmightbeaDBA  SQLSoldier The #1 referrer to your blog is Twitter.com. #youmightbeaDBA  SQLSoldier Your idea of a good time on a Saturday involves free training. #youmightbeaDBA #sqlsat43  SQLSoldier You write a book that all of your co-workers have and none have read it. #youmightbeaDBA  SQLSoldier You write a book that sells a couple thousand copies and is heralded a best seller. #youmightbeaDBA  SQLSoldier No matter how sick you are, you go to work if it's time to pass the pager on to the next guy. #youmightbeaDBA #TrueStory  SQLSoldier You go out on the town, and strangers walk up to you and say, "Hey you're that SQL guy" #youmightbeaDBA #TrueStory  SQLSoldier Your wife asks you to fix something, and you request a downtime window. #youmightbeaDBA  SQLSoldier Your wife asks when you'll be home, and you tell her that you wish you knew. #youmightbeaDBA  SQLSoldier Your best pickup line, "Hey baby, what's your collation?" #youmightbeaDBA  SQLSoldier Your wife asks when you'll be home, and you tell her that you wish you knew. #youmightbeaDBA  SQLSoldier You know that @BuckWoody is not someone's porno name. #youmightbeaDBA  SQLSoldier You list TSQL as your native language on the 2010 census. #youmightbeaDBA  SQLSoldier Starbucks' stock price drops every time you go on vacation. #youmightbeaDBA  SQLSoldier You're happy when the web master says that the website is down. #youmightbeaDBA  SQLSoldier You know that @BuckWoody is not someone's porno name. #youmightbeaDBA  SQLSoldier You get mad when someone calls your car a "heap" because you've always considered it to be a "clustered index". #youmightbeaDBA  SQLSoldier Your blog has more hits than your company's website. #youmightbeaDBA  SQLSoldier You systematically remove the asterisk key from all keyboards in the company except yours. #youmightbeaDBA  SQLSoldier When asked if you recycle, you reply that you run sp_cycle_errorlog every night at midnight #youmightbeaDBA  SQLSoldier You wouldn't allow someone named @AdamMachanic to work on your car. #youmightbeaDBA  SQLSoldier You switch offices every 3 days to avoid developers #youmightbeaDBA  SQLSoldier PSS has your number on speed dial. #youmightbeaDBA  SQLSoldier You frown when you they tell Neo that he's going to the Oracle #youmightbeaDBA  swhaley you regretted saying "This shouldn't effect production" #youmightbeaDBA  swhaley you regretted saying "This shouldn't effect production" #youmightbeaDBA  Tarwn A pleasurable saturday means spending the day learning more about what you already do the rest of the week #youmightbeaDBA ...oh, wait...  thelostforum For great justice; all our base are belong to YOU !! #youmightbeadba  thelostforum @SQLSoldier: You need a witness to use a mirror #youmightbeaDBA ;)  TimCost you capitalize key words. always. everywhere. you can't help it, usually don't even notice. #youmightbeaDBA  Toshana Your the only one in your company not impressed with the developers new application. #youmightbeaDBA  venzann Coming soon from a (respected) book publisher - @buckwoody's #youmightbeaDBA  venzann He's on a role tonight. @buckwoody is summing up my life with his #youmightbeaDBA tweets...  venzann I love the #youmightbeaDBA tag. Found at least 6 new DBAs to follow..  venzann He's on a role tonight. @buckwoody is summing up my life with his #youmightbeaDBA tweets...  venzann You use #sqlhelp as a primary resource during troubleshooting #youmightbeaDBA  venzann You insist on stricter password security for your sql servers than you implement on your own laptop #youmightbeaDBA  WesBrownSQL @buckwoody you are up so late the only tweets you see are from @buckwoody #youmightbeaDBA  WesBrownSQL @SQLSoldier you are upgrading all your 2005 prod servers to 2008 R2 on a three day weekend... #youmightbeaDBA  zippy1981 #youmightbeaDBA if everytime you do something with #mongodb you think of the Vulcan proverb "only Nixon could go to China."  Share this post: email it! | bookmark it! | digg it! | reddit! | kick it! | live it!

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  • Google TV Gets Bad Reception. Can Media Center Pull in the Signal?

    - by andrewbrust
    The news hit Monday morning that Google has decided to delay the release of its Google TV platform, and has asked its OEMs to delay any products that embed the software.  Coming just about two weeks prior to the 2011 Consumer Electronics Show (CES), Google’s timing is about the worst imaginable.  CES is where the platform should have had its coming out party, especially given all the anticipation that has built up since its initial announcement came 7 months ago. At last year’s CES, it seemed every consumer electronics company had fashioned its own software stack for Internet-based video programming and applications/widgets on its TVs, optical disc players and set top boxes.  In one case, I even saw two platforms on a single TV set (one provided by Yahoo and the other one native to the TV set). The whole point of Google TV was to solve this problem and offer a standard, embeddable platform.  But that won’t be happening, at least not for a while.  Google seems unable to get it together, and more proprietary approaches, like Apple TV, don’t seem to be setting the world of TV-Internet convergence on fire, either. It seems to me, that when it comes to building a “TV operating system,” Windows Media Center is still the best of a bad bunch.  But it won’t stay so for much longer without some changes.  Will Redmond pick up the ball that Google has fumbled?  I’m skeptical, but hopeful.  Regardless, here are some steps that could help Microsoft make the most of Google’s faux pas: Introduce a new Media Center version that uses XBox 360, rather than Windows 7 (or 8), as the platform.  TV platforms should be appliance-like, not PC-like.  Combine that notion with the runaway sales numbers for Xbox 360 Kinect, and the mass appeal it has delivered for Xbox, and the switch form Windows makes even more sense. As I have pointed out before, Microsoft’s Xbox implementation of its Mediaroom platform (announced and demoed at last year’s CES) gets Redmond 80% of the way toward this goal.  Nothing stops Microsoft from going the other 20%, other than its own apathy, which I hope has dissipated. Reverse the decision to remove Drive Extender technology from Windows Home Server (WHS), and create deep integration between WHS and Media Center.  I have suggested this previously as well, but the recent announcement that Drive Extender would be dropped from WHS 2.0 creates the need for me to a) join the chorus of people urging Microsoft to reconsider and b) reiterate the importance of Media Center-WHS integration in the context of a Google compete scenario. Enable Windows Phone 7 (WP7) as a Media Center client.  This would tighten the integration loop already established between WP7, Xbox and Zune.  But it would also counter Echostar/DISH Network/Sling Media, strike a blow against Google/Android (and even Apple/iOS) and could be the final strike against TiVO. Bring the WP7 user interface to Media Center and Kinect-enable it.  This would further the integration discussed above and would be appropriate recognition of WP7’s Metro UI having been built on the heritage of the original Media Center itself.  And being able to run your DVR even if you can’t find the remote (or can’t see its buttons in the dark) could be a nifty gimmick. Microsoft can do this but its consumer-oriented organization, responsible for Xbox, Zune and WP7, has to take the reins here, or none of this will likely work.  There’s a significant chance that won’t happen, but I won’t let that stop me from hoping that it does and insisting that it must.  Honestly, this fight is Microsoft’s to lose.

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  • Amazon Product Advertising API SOAP Namespace Changes

    - by Rick Strahl
    About two months ago (twowards the end of February 2012 I think) Amazon decided to change the namespace of the Product Advertising API. The error that would come up was: <ItemSearchResponse > was not expected. If you've used the Amazon Product Advertising API you probably know that Amazon has made it a habit to break the services every few years or so and I guess last month was about the time for another one. Basically the service namespace of the document has been changed and responses from the service just failed outright even though the rest of the schema looks fine. Now I looked around for a while trying to find a recent update to the Product Advertising API - something semi-official looking but everything is dated around 2009. Really??? And it's not just .NET - the newest thing on the sample/APIs is dated early 2011 and a handful of 2010 samples. There are newer full APIs for the 'cloud' offerings, but the Product Advertising API apparently isn't part of that. After searching for quite a bit trying to trace this down myself and trying some of the newer samples (which also failed) I found an obscure forum post that describes the solution of getting past the namespace issue. FWIW, I've been using an old version of the Product Advertising API using the old Microsoft WSE3 services (pre-WCF), which provides some of the WS* security features required by the Amazon service. The fix for this code is to explicitly override the namespace declaration on each of the imported service method signatures. The old service namespace (at least on my build) was: http://webservices.amazon.com/AWSECommerceService/2009-03-31 and it should be changed to: http://webservices.amazon.com/AWSECommerceService/2011-08-01 Change it on the class header:[Microsoft.Web.Services3.Messaging.SoapService("http://webservices.amazon.com/AWSECommerceService/2011-08-01")] [System.Xml.Serialization.XmlIncludeAttribute(typeof(Property[]))] [System.Xml.Serialization.XmlIncludeAttribute(typeof(BrowseNode[]))] [System.Xml.Serialization.XmlIncludeAttribute(typeof(TransactionItem[]))] public partial class AWSECommerceService : Microsoft.Web.Services3.Messaging.SoapClient { and on all method signatures:[Microsoft.Web.Services3.Messaging.SoapMethodAttribute("http://soap.amazon.com/ItemSearch")] [return: System.Xml.Serialization.XmlElementAttribute("ItemSearchResponse", Namespace="http://webservices.amazon.com/AWSECommerceService/2011-08-01")] public ItemSearchResponse ItemSearch(ItemSearch ItemSearch1) { Microsoft.Web.Services3.SoapEnvelope results = base.SendRequestResponse("ItemSearch", ItemSearch1); return ((ItemSearchResponse)(results.GetBodyObject(typeof(ItemSearchResponse), this.SoapServiceAttribute.TargetNamespace))); } It's easy to do with a Search and Replace on the above strings. Amazon Services <rant> FWIW, I've not been impressed by Amazon's service offerings. While the services work well, their documentation and tool support is absolutely horrendous. I was recently working with a customer on an old AWS application and their old API had been completely removed with a new API that wasn't even a close match. One old API call resulted in requiring three different APIs to perform the same functionality. We had to re-write the entire piece from scratch essentially. The documentation was downright wrong, and incomplete and so scattered it was next to impossible to follow. The examples weren't examples at all - they're mockups of real service calls with fake data that didn't even provide everything that was required to make same service calls work. Additionally there appears to be just about no public support from Amazon, only peer support which is sparse at best - and getting a hold of somebody at Amazon, even for pay seems to be mythical task. It's a terrible business model they have going. I can't see why anybody would put themselves through this sort of customer and development experience. Sad really, but an experience we see more and more these days. Nobody puts in the time to document anything anymore, leaving it to devs to figure this stuff out over and over again… </rant>© Rick Strahl, West Wind Technologies, 2005-2012Posted in CSharp  Web Services   Tweet !function(d,s,id){var js,fjs=d.getElementsByTagName(s)[0];if(!d.getElementById(id)){js=d.createElement(s);js.id=id;js.src="//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js";fjs.parentNode.insertBefore(js,fjs);}}(document,"script","twitter-wjs"); (function() { var po = document.createElement('script'); po.type = 'text/javascript'; po.async = true; po.src = 'https://apis.google.com/js/plusone.js'; var s = document.getElementsByTagName('script')[0]; s.parentNode.insertBefore(po, s); })();

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  • Exceptional DBA 2011 Jeff Moden on why you should enter in 2012

    - by RedAndTheCommunity
    My "reign" as the Red Gate Exceptional DBA is almost over and I was asked to say a few words about this wonderful award. Having been one of those folks that shied away from entering the contest during the first 3 years of the award, I thought I'd spend the time encouraging DBAs of all types to enter. Winning this award has some obvious benefits. You win a trip to PASS including money towards your flight, paid hotel stay, and, of course, paid admission. You win a wonderful bundle of software from Red Gate to make your job as a DBA a whole lot easier. You also win some pretty incredible notoriety for your resume. After all, it's not everyone who wins a worldwide contest. To date, there are only 4 of us in the world who have won this award. You could be number 5! For me, all of that pales in comparison to what I found out during the entry process. I'm very confident in my skills, but I'm also humble. It was suggested to me that I enter the contest when it first started. I just couldn't bring myself to nominate myself. When the 2011 nomination period opened up, several people again suggested that I enter, so I swallowed hard and asked several co-workers to have a look at the online nomination form and, if they thought me worthy, to write a nomination for me. I won't bore you with the details, but what they wrote about me was one of the most incredible rewards that I could ever have hoped to receive. I had no idea of the impact that I'd made on my co-workers. Even if I hadn't made it to the top 5 for the award, I had already won something very near and dear that no one can ever top. "Even if I hadn't made it to the top 5 for the award, I had already won something very near and dear that no one can ever top." There's only one named winner and 4 "runners up" in this competition every year but don't let that discourage you. Enter this competition. Even if you work in the proverbial "Mom'n'Pop" shop, get your boss and the people you work with directly to nominate you. Even if you don't make it to the top 5, you might just find out that you're more of a winner than you think. If you're too proud to ask them, then take the time to nominate yourself instead of shying away like I did for the first 3 years. You work hard as a DBA and, as David Poole once said, if you're the first person that people ask for help rather than one of the last, then you're probably an Exceptional DBA. It's time to stand up and be counted! Win or lose, the entry process can be a huge reward in itself. It was for me. Thank you, Red Gate, for giving me such a wonderful opportunity. Thanks for listening folks and for all that you do as DBAs. As 'Red Green' says, "We're all in this together and I'm pullin' for ya". --Jeff Moden Red Gate Exceptional DBA 2011

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  • Boost Netbook Speed with an SD Card & ReadyBoost

    - by Matthew Guay
    Looking for a way to increase the performance of your netbook?  Here’s how you can use a standard SD memory card or a USB flash drive to boost performance with ReadyBoost. Most netbooks ship with 1Gb of Ram, and many older netbooks shipped with even less.  Even if you want to add more ram, often they can only be upgraded to a max of 2GB.  With ReadyBoost in Windows 7, it’s easy to boost your system’s performance with flash memory.  If your netbook has an SD card slot, you can insert a memory card into it and just leave it there to always boost your netbook’s memory; otherwise, you can use a standard USB flash drive the same way. Also, you can use ReadyBoost on any desktop or laptop; ones with limited memory will see the most performance increase from using it. Please Note:  ReadyBoost requires at least 256Mb of free space on your flash drive, and also requires minimum read/write speeds.  Most modern memory cards or flash drives meet these requirements, but be aware that an old card may not work with it. Using ReadyBoost Insert an SD card into your card reader, or connect a USB flash drive to a USB port on your computer.  Windows will automatically see if your flash memory is ReadyBoost capable, and if so, you can directly choose to speed up your computer with ReadyBoost. The ReadyBoost settings dialog will open when you select this.  Choose “Use this device” and choose how much space you want ReadyBoost to use. Click Ok, and Windows will setup ReadyBoost and start using it to speed up your computer.  It will automatically use ReadyBoost whenever the card is connected to the computer. When you view your SD card or flash drive in Explorer, you will notice a ReadyBoost file the size you chose before.  This will be deleted when you eject your card or flash drive. If you need to remove your drive to use elsewhere, simply eject as normal. Windows will inform you that the drive is currently being used.  Make sure you have closed any programs or files you had open from the drive, and then press Continue to stop ReadyBoost and eject your drive. If you remove the drive without ejecting it, the ReadyBoost file may still remain on the drive.  You can delete this to save space on the drive, and the cache will be recreated when you use ReadyBoost next time. Conclusion Although ReadyBoost may not make your netbook feel like a Core i7 laptop with 6GB of RAM, it will still help performance and make multitasking even easier.  Also, if you have, say, a memory stick and a flash drive, you can use both of them with ReadyBoost for the maximum benefit.  We have even noticed better battery life when multitasking with ReadyBoost, as it lets you use your hard drive less.  SD cards and thumb drives are relatively cheap today, and many of us have several already, so this is a great way to improve netbook performance cheaply. Similar Articles Productive Geek Tips Speed up Your Windows Vista Computer with ReadyBoostSet the Speed Dial as the Opera Startup PageAsk the Readers: What are Your Computer’s Hardware Specs?Understanding Windows Vista Aero Glass RequirementsReplace Google Chrome’s New Tab Page with Speed Dial TouchFreeze Alternative in AutoHotkey The Icy Undertow Desktop Windows Home Server – Backup to LAN The Clear & Clean Desktop Use This Bookmarklet to Easily Get Albums Use AutoHotkey to Assign a Hotkey to a Specific Window Latest Software Reviews Tinyhacker Random Tips DVDFab 6 Revo Uninstaller Pro Registry Mechanic 9 for Windows PC Tools Internet Security Suite 2010 Recycle ! Find That Elusive Icon with FindIcons Looking for Good Windows Media Player 12 Plug-ins? Find Out the Celebrity You Resemble With FaceDouble Whoa ! Use Printflush to Solve Printing Problems

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  • Don&rsquo;t Kill the Password

    - by Anthony Trudeau
    A week ago Mr. Honan from Wired.com penned an article on security he titled “Kill the Password: Why a String of Characters Can’t Protect Us Anymore.” He asserts that the password is not effective and a new solution is needed. Unfortunately, Mr. Honan was a victim of hacking. As a result he has a victim’s vendetta. His conclusion is ill conceived even though there are smatterings of truth and good advice. The password is a security barrier much like a lock on your door. In of itself it’s not guaranteeing protection. You can have a good password akin to a steel reinforced door with the best lock money can buy, or you can have a poor password like “password” which is like a sliding lock like on a bathroom stall. But, just like in the real world a lock isn’t always enough. You can have a lock, security system, video cameras, guard dogs, and even armed security guards; but none of that guarantees your protection. Even top secret government agencies can be breached by someone who is just that good (as dramatized in movies like Mission Impossible). And that’s the crux of it. There are real hackers out there that are that good. Killer coding ninja monkeys do exist! We still have locks on our doors, because they still serve their role. Passwords are no different. Security doesn’t end with the password. Most people would agree that stuffing your mattress with your life savings isn’t a good idea even if you have the best locks and security system. Most people agree its safest to have the money in a bank. Essentially this is compartmentalization. Compartmentalization extends to the online world as well. You’re at risk if your online banking accounts are linked to the same account as your social networks. This is especially true if you’re lackadaisical about linking those social networks to outside sources including apps. The object here is to minimize the damage that can be done. An attacker should not be able to get into your bank account, because they breached your Twitter account. It’s time to prioritize once you’ve compartmentalized. This simply means deciding how much security you want for the different compartments which I’ll call security zones. Social networking applications like Facebook provide a lot of security features. However, security features are almost always a compromise with privacy and convenience. It’s similar to an engineering adage, but in this case it’s security, convenience, and privacy – pick two. For example, you might use a safe instead of bank to store your money, because the convenience of having your money closer or the privacy of not having the bank records is more important than the added security. The following are lists of security do’s and don’ts (these aren’t meant to be exhaustive and each could be an article in of themselves): Security Do’s: Use strong passwords based on a phrase Use encryption whenever you can (e.g. HTTPS in Facebook) Use a firewall (and learn to use it properly) Configure security on your router (including port blocking) Keep your operating system patched Make routine backups of important files Realize that if you’re not paying for it, you’re the product Security Don’ts Link accounts if at all possible Reuse passwords across your security zones Use real answers for security questions (e.g. mother’s maiden name) Trust anything you download Ignore message boxes shown by your system or browser Forget to test your backups Share your primary email indiscriminately Only you can decide your comfort level between convenience, privacy, and security. Attackers are going to find exploits in software. Software is complex and depends on other software. The exploits are the responsibility of the software company. But your security is always your responsibility. Complete security is an illusion. But, there is plenty you can do to minimize the risk online just like you do in the physical world. Be safe and enjoy what the Internet has to offer. I expect passwords to be necessary just as long as locks.

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  • Many Stack Overflow users' pages have no Google PageRank and they are not indexed, why?

    - by Marco Demaio
    If you go to my user page on Stack Overflow and you check it with the Google Toolbar, you can see it has no PageRank at all (this does happen for almost any user page, even people with much higher reputation, the only exceptions seem to be the users in page 1, and some other users they have PR). My user page's Page Rank is not only zero, but not calculated at all. When PR is 0 or less than 1, but calculated the Google bar shows white, but when the PR is not even calculated like in my user page the Google bar shows in grey. I further more discovered that my user page is NOT EVEN INDEXED on Google, simple test is searching on Google for the exact page url: "http://stackoverflow.com/users/260080/marco-demaio" and you will see no result. The question is how can this be??? This is really weird to me because of the following reason: If you search on Google for "Marco Demaio" on Stack Overflow only (you can do this by searching "site:stackoverflow.com Marco Demaio") the search result shows hundreds of 'asking/answering questions' pages where I was 'tagged'!!! Let's check one of these: the 1st one that appears now (shows one of the question I asked). We can be sure this page is indexed in Google because comes out in a search. Moreover, its PR is calculated. It's probably nearly zero. Still, some PR flows there, the PR bar is not grey, but white: The page shown above has got links to my own user page. I checked the source code of the page shown above and the links are not hidden or set with a rel="nofollow", moreover I can't see any meta character excluding the links on the page from being followed. So what's happening? Why Google does not see my user page at all. Did Stack Overflow do something to achieve this? If yes what did they do? Any explanation really appreciates (as always). P.S. obviously I checked also the code of my user page, but I could not find meta tags excluding Google search for the page. P.S. 2 in a desperate adventure I also checked Stack Overflow's robots.txt but it does not seem to exclude user pages. UPDATE 1 following up on some answers, I did some more research. Excluding for a while the PR problem (since PR is not science), and looking only at the user page on Stack Overflow NOT BEING INDEXED problem: pages do not seem to be indexed by Google because of the user reputation, this user for instance has got NOW 200 points less reputation than me and his page is indexed (while mine not). It does not seem even to be connected with months you have been on Stack Overflow, this user (almost my same reputation) has been there for 3 months only and his page is indexed (while mine not and I have been a user for 7 months). It's bizarre! UPDATE February/2011 As of today, the page got indexed by Google at least when you search for "site:stackoverflow.com Marco Demaio" it's the 1st page. The amazing thing is that it has still got NO PageRank at all: Google toolbar states loud and clear "No PageRank information available". It's odd!

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  • CPU Temperature sensor wrong?

    - by Matias Nino
    Everest Ultimate is suddenly telling me that the CPU temperature (and core temps) for my E6850 Core 2 Duo is 72 degrees Celsius. When I stress-test the machine, the temp goes up to 91 degrees and the CPU actually throttles. System remains stable though. For over a year now, my CPU has run very cool (40's) with a large commercial copper heatsink/fan that I bought separately. To top it off, I removed the cover of the box and felt the cpu heatsink and it wasn't even warm. Is there such a thing as a CPU temp sensor showing the wrong readings? Any tips would help. UPDATE #1 Temp is also just as high in BIOS. So that leads me to believe it's a CPU seating issue (even though I used thermal paste to seat it two years ago when I built the machine) UPDATE #2 Well. I removed the heatsink and cleaned off the original thermal paste (which was somewhat crusty). I polished the surface, re-applied some new paste, and reseated the heat sink. After powering it up, there was no noticeable change in the temp - ideling at 74. Ran the stress test and it went up to 94 degrees before being 100% throttled. I let it sit at 94 degrees for 20 minutes straight and the computer didn't even flinch. I then immediately shut it off and opened the case and felt around. The heatsink was completely cold to the touch. Even the copper rods were cold. The area near contact with the CPU was slightly warm but not hot to touch. Then I ran REALTEMP, which is supposedly more accurate and it told me the CPU was at 104 degrees. (LOL) At this point, I'm thinking no doubt the cpu's sensor is wrong. Sidenote: the BIOS has the latest version so no option to flash there. Reverting hasn't been known to help from what I've read. What pisses me off is the false temps force the CPU to artificially throttle from 3GHz down to 2GHz and my CPU fan is cranking at full force all the time. Should I call intel and tell them to send me another E6850? SOLUTION UPDATE I switched the processor out with another one and got the same obscene temperatures with the new processor followed by a heatsink that was cool to touch. My suspicion in the heatsink was suddenly renewed. I swapped it out with the stock heatsink/fan and lo and behold the temperatures returned to the normal 35C-50C. Even though the thermal paste was visibly flattened out every time I removed it, it looks like the heatsink was still not pressing hard enough on the CPU to effectively conduct the heat. The heatsink is a Masscool 8Wa741, which screws into a standard position on a mount on the back of the MOBO. Only thing I can surmise after 2 years of use was that, over time, the heatsink pressure on the CPU gave way until the heat began to be ineffectively conducted. Lessons learned: Intel CPU's can run SUPER HOT (upwards of 95C) and still be stable. Heatsink's need to be VERY firmly pressed against the CPU to conduct heat.

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  • How do I achieve lossless JPEG joining without truncation of partial MCUs?

    - by Karan
    I am working on a project for which I need to join thousands of JPEG images losslessly (I'm not talking about the Lossless JPEG/JPEG 2000/JPEG-LS formats here). Aforementioned images have varying levels of chroma subsampling (1x1, 1x2, 2x1, 2x2), resulting in varying MCU sizes (8x8, 8x16, 16x8, 16x16 px). However, in any given set of images to be joined together, each image has identical characteristics. For now, let's assume I only have 2 images. Image #1 (I1) is 256x256px in size and #2 (I2) is 239x256px in size. 2x2 subsampling is used such that MCU size is 16x16px. I2 thus obviously has partial MCUs at the right edge, since its width is not evenly divisible by 16. (I've read that so-called 'partial' MCUs actually contain the data for a complete MCU, but the image dimensions instruct the renderer to only display the relevant pixels and ignore/hide the extra ones.) Looking around for tools that could help me accomplish this, I came across a modified version of JpegTran, that contains an experimental lossless crop 'n' drop (cut & paste) feature. All the other apps I encountered that support lossless JPEG editing seem to utilise IJG's (JpegTran) code, so this seemed to be the logical choice. Also, given the sheer number of images, I wanted something that could preferably be run from the command-line so that I could automate the process with a script. Unfortunately, while everything else worked fine, it seems JpegTran truncates the partial MCUs instead of retaining them. Thus in the example above, the final joined image contains all of I1, but only 224x256px of I2. Why 224? because 239 = 14x16+15, which means there are 14 full MCUs along the width, and 1 partial MCU (just 1px short of the complete 16px). The last 15px is what is getting blanked, leading to a 495x256px image with 15px of blank (grey) pixels at the right edge. See images below (shame that imgur re-compresses them): (left )+ (right) = As you can clearly see, the red portion (15px) of I2 has been truncated by JpegTran. If the MCUs were 8px in width, the lost portion would have been the right-most 7px of I2. Similarly, joining I3 (256x239px) *below * I1 would cause the loss of 7 or 15px, depending on the MCU height of course: (top) + (bottom) = If this is better suited to some other StackExchange (or even non-SE) site/forum where JPEG/image encoding experts hang out, do let me know. Can what I am attempting even be done, or is the so-called 'lossless' JPEG crop 'n' drop only valid for images with no partial MCUs? (Maybe that is why the feature is still in an "experimental state" more than a decade after being introduced...) Until I know for sure that it is impossible, I am not interested in suggestions for lossy joining. Avoiding any generational loss whatsoever is the sole reason why I'm breaking my head over this, else I'd have had this done and dusted ages ago. Also, I am not interested in suggestions related to switching image formats. I do not control the source of the images. If it can be done, how? Please keep in mind that any alternate apps suggested must ideally be capable of automation, given the requirements stated above. (But given how it's unlikely I'm even going to receive a useful answer given the constraints, I would be happy with any app suggestion just as long as it actually works. I can always look into an AutoIT/AHK script or something later to automate it.) I understand that an odd-sized final image might cause issues, so I am fully prepared to accept any solution, even if it results in blank (preferably black) padding pixels to the right/bottom. What I mean is, I don't care if I1 + I2 is 496x256px (1px padding) or even 512x256px (17px padding) in size, as long as the final image contains all the actual image data from both source images, and the entire process is lossless. Obviously the lesser the padding (if any), the better, but at this point any solution will do. A Windows-based solution would be perfect, but a Linux-based one would be entirely acceptable.

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  • Exceptional DBA 2011 Jeff Moden on why you should enter in 2012

    - by Red and the Community
    My "reign" as the Red Gate Exceptional DBA is almost over and I was asked to say a few words about this wonderful award. Having been one of those folks that shied away from entering the contest during the first 3 years of the award, I thought I’d spend the time encouraging DBAs of all types to enter. Winning this award has some obvious benefits. You win a trip to PASS including money towards your flight, paid hotel stay, and, of course, paid admission. You win a wonderful bundle of software from Red Gate to make your job as a DBA a whole lot easier. You also win some pretty incredible notoriety for your resume. After all, it’s not everyone who wins a worldwide contest. To date, there are only 4 of us in the world who have won this award. You could be number 5! For me, all of that pales in comparison to what I found out during the entry process. I’m very confident in my skills, but I’m also humble. It was suggested to me that I enter the contest when it first started. I just couldn’t bring myself to nominate myself. When the 2011 nomination period opened up, several people again suggested that I enter, so I swallowed hard and asked several co-workers to have a look at the online nomination form and, if they thought me worthy, to write a nomination for me. I won’t bore you with the details, but what they wrote about me was one of the most incredible rewards that I could ever have hoped to receive. I had no idea of the impact that I’d made on my co-workers. Even if I hadn’t made it to the top 5 for the award, I had already won something very near and dear that no one can ever top. “Even if I hadn’t made it to the top 5 for the award, I had already won something very near and dear that no one can ever top.” There’s only one named winner and 4 "runners up" in this competition every year but don’t let that discourage you. Enter this competition. Even if you work in the proverbial "Mom’n'Pop" shop, get your boss and the people you work with directly to nominate you. Even if you don’t make it to the top 5, you might just find out that you’re more of a winner than you think. If you’re too proud to ask them, then take the time to nominate yourself instead of shying away like I did for the first 3 years. You work hard as a DBA and, as David Poole once said, if you’re the first person that people ask for help rather than one of the last, then you’re probably an Exceptional DBA. It’s time to stand up and be counted! Win or lose, the entry process can be a huge reward in itself. It was for me. Thank you, Red Gate, for giving me such a wonderful opportunity. Thanks for listening folks and for all that you do as DBAs. As ‘Red Green’ says, "We’re all in this together and I’m pullin’ for ya". –Jeff Moden Red Gate Exceptional DBA 2011

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  • Exceptional DBA 2011 Jeff Moden on why you should enter in 2012

    - by RedAndTheCommunity
    My "reign" as the Red Gate Exceptional DBA is almost over and I was asked to say a few words about this wonderful award. Having been one of those folks that shied away from entering the contest during the first 3 years of the award, I thought I'd spend the time encouraging DBAs of all types to enter. Winning this award has some obvious benefits. You win a trip to PASS including money towards your flight, paid hotel stay, and, of course, paid admission. You win a wonderful bundle of software from Red Gate to make your job as a DBA a whole lot easier. You also win some pretty incredible notoriety for your resume. After all, it's not everyone who wins a worldwide contest. To date, there are only 4 of us in the world who have won this award. You could be number 5! For me, all of that pales in comparison to what I found out during the entry process. I'm very confident in my skills, but I'm also humble. It was suggested to me that I enter the contest when it first started. I just couldn't bring myself to nominate myself. When the 2011 nomination period opened up, several people again suggested that I enter, so I swallowed hard and asked several co-workers to have a look at the online nomination form and, if they thought me worthy, to write a nomination for me. I won't bore you with the details, but what they wrote about me was one of the most incredible rewards that I could ever have hoped to receive. I had no idea of the impact that I'd made on my co-workers. Even if I hadn't made it to the top 5 for the award, I had already won something very near and dear that no one can ever top. "Even if I hadn't made it to the top 5 for the award, I had already won something very near and dear that no one can ever top." There's only one named winner and 4 "runners up" in this competition every year but don't let that discourage you. Enter this competition. Even if you work in the proverbial "Mom'n'Pop" shop, get your boss and the people you work with directly to nominate you. Even if you don't make it to the top 5, you might just find out that you're more of a winner than you think. If you're too proud to ask them, then take the time to nominate yourself instead of shying away like I did for the first 3 years. You work hard as a DBA and, as David Poole once said, if you're the first person that people ask for help rather than one of the last, then you're probably an Exceptional DBA. It's time to stand up and be counted! Win or lose, the entry process can be a huge reward in itself. It was for me. Thank you, Red Gate, for giving me such a wonderful opportunity. Thanks for listening folks and for all that you do as DBAs. As 'Red Green' says, "We're all in this together and I'm pullin' for ya". --Jeff Moden Red Gate Exceptional DBA 2011

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  • SEO: many stackoverflow users' pages have got no Google PR and they are not indexed, why?

    - by Marco Demaio
    If you go to my user page on Stack Overflow and you check it with the Gogle bar you can see has got no PR at all (this does happen for almost any user page, even people with much higher reputation, the only exceptions seem to be the users in page 1, and some other users they have PR). My user page's Page Rank is not only zero, but not calculated at all. When PR is 0 or less than 1, but calculated the Google bar shows white, but when the PR is not even calculated like in my user page the Google bar shows in grey. I further more discovered that my user page is NOT EVEN INDEXED on Google, simple test is searching on Google for the exact page url: "http://stackoverflow.com/users/260080/marco-demaio" and you will see no result. The question is how can this be??? This is really weird to me because of the following reason: If you search on Google for "Marco Demaio" on stackoverflow site only (you can do this by searching "site:stackoverflow.com Marco Demaio") the search result shows hundreds of 'asking/answering questions' pages where I was 'tagged'!!! Let's check one of these: the 1st one that appears now (shows one of the question I asked). We can be sure this page is indexed in Google because comes out in a search moreover its PR is calculated, it's probably nearly zero, but still some PR flows there, the PR bar is not grey, but white: The page shown above has got links to my own user page. I checked the source code of the page shown above and the links are not hidden or set with a rel="nofollow", moreover I can't see any meta character excluding the links on the page from being followed. So what's happening? Why Google does not see my user page at all. Did stackoverflow do something to achieve this? If yes what did they do? Any explantion really appreciates (as always). P.S. obviously I checked also the code of my user page, but I could not find meta tags excluding Google search for the page. P.S. 2 in a desperate adventure I also checked StackOverflow robots but it does not seem to exclude user pages. UPDATE 1 following up on some answers, I did some more research. Excluding for a while the PR problem (since PR is not science), and looking only at the user page on StackOverflow NOT BEING INDEXED problem: pages do not seem to be indexed by Google because of the user reputation, this user for instance has got NOW 200 points less reputation than me and his page is indexed (while mine not). It does not seem even to be connected with months you have been on Stackoverflow, this user (almost my same reputation) has been there for 3 months only and his page is indexed (while mine not and I have been a user for 7 months). It's bizzarre! UPDATE February/2011 As of today the page got indexed by Google at least when you search for "site:stackoverflow.com Marco Demaio" it's the 1st page. The amazing thing is that it has still got NO PageRank at all: Google toolbar states loud and clear "No PageRank information available". It's odd!

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  • Why your Netapp is so slow...

    - by Darius Zanganeh
    Have you ever wondered why your Netapp FAS box is slow and doesn't perform well at large block workloads?  In this blog entry I will give you a little bit of information that will probably help you understand why it’s so slow, why you shouldn't use it for applications that read and write in large blocks like 64k, 128k, 256k ++ etc..  Of course since I work for Oracle at this time, I will show you why the ZS3 storage boxes are excellent choices for these types of workloads. Netapp’s Fundamental Problem The fundamental problem you have running these workloads on Netapp is the backend block size of their WAFL file system.  Every application block on a Netapp FAS ends up in a 4k chunk on a disk. Reference:  Netapp TR-3001 Whitepaper Netapp has proven this lacking large block performance fact in at least two different ways. They have NEVER posted an SPC-2 Benchmark yet they have posted SPC-1 and SPECSFS, both recently. In 2011 they purchased Engenio to try and fill this GAP in their portfolio. Block Size Matters So why does block size matter anyways?  Many applications use large block chunks of data especially in the Big Data movement.  Some examples are SAS Business Analytics, Microsoft SQL, Hadoop HDFS is even 64MB! Now let me boil this down for you.  If an application such MS SQL is writing data in a 64k chunk then before Netapp actually writes it on disk it will have to split it into 16 different 4k writes and 16 different disk IOPS.  When the application later goes to read that 64k chunk the Netapp will have to again do 16 different disk IOPS.  In comparison the ZS3 Storage Appliance can write in variable block sizes ranging from 512b to 1MB.  So if you put the same MSSQL database on a ZS3 you can set the specific LUNs for this database to 64k and then when you do an application read/write it requires only a single disk IO.  That is 16x faster!  But, back to the problem with your Netapp, you will VERY quickly run out of disk IO and hit a wall.  Now all arrays will have some fancy pre fetch algorithm and some nice cache and maybe even flash based cache such as a PAM card in your Netapp but with large block workloads you will usually blow through the cache and still need significant disk IO.  Also because these datasets are usually very large and usually not dedupable they are usually not good candidates for an all flash system.  You can do some simple math in excel and very quickly you will see why it matters.  Here are a couple of READ examples using SAS and MSSQL.  Assume these are the READ IOPS the application needs even after all the fancy cache and algorithms.   Here is an example with 128k blocks.  Notice the numbers of drives on the Netapp! Here is an example with 64k blocks You can easily see that the Oracle ZS3 can do dramatically more work with dramatically less drives.  This doesn't even take into account that the ONTAP system will likely run out of CPU way before you get to these drive numbers so you be buying many more controllers.  So with all that said, lets look at the ZS3 and why you should consider it for any workload your running on Netapp today.  ZS3 World Record Price/Performance in the SPC-2 benchmark ZS3-2 is #1 in Price Performance $12.08ZS3-2 is #3 in Overall Performance 16,212 MBPS Note: The number one overall spot in the world is held by an AFA 33,477 MBPS but at a Price Performance of $29.79.  A customer could purchase 2 x ZS3-2 systems in the benchmark with relatively the same performance and walk away with $600,000 in their pocket.

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  • Chrome does not re-draw properly on Windows 8

    - by Akshat Mittal
    There are a lot of problems with Chrome (24.0.1312.14 beta || But all this happened before update also) on Windows 8. Problems and explanations are listed below: Google Chrome re-draw time: When I switch tabs, the window retains the content of the previous tab and displays that even if I move my mouse, if only refreshes (re-draws) when there is a change on the webpage (like on hover) or I do a select all (or scroll). One thing to note is that the hover and select happens on the real page and not the retained image-like thing of the older webpage. Chrome is slow and laggy: Websites such as Facebook and Twitter (and more) have gone extremely laggy on Chrome (Win 8). When I was using Windows 7, I never experienced a lag or something. Also when using HTML-5 Websites, the transition (the -webkit-transition in CSS) goes extremely slow at times. Plugins Crash: Plugins like Flash Player, Shockwave Player, and more that are in-built into Chrome Crashes a lot, even when doing simple tasks like playing YouTube Videos, displaying ads or something. Chrome Crashes: Chrome has crashed over 100 times in the past month. Google Chrome just crashes randomly or I don't know the reason. Random Page crashes: Chrome results chrome://crash/(Copy-Paste this in address bar) on random pages even when the page is just loaded, I understand that this can happen on heavy HTML5 or JS websites but what about HTML only websites? Computer Freeze: Chrome sometimes, randomly, freezes my computer. Freeze in the sense, none of the other apps are also working. It's like the whole system freezes, I can not even switch to other apps. I am sure that this is because of Chrome since this happens only when Chrome is active. Most of the things above happens on Super User also, Super User never had any problem when using Chrome on Windows 7. UPDATE 1: @magicandre1981 Commented for trying to disable Hardware Acceleration. I tried it, it somewhat solved the problem but din't fix it. I am still experiencing all the above issues but less frequently (maybe because Chrome Restarted Completely) UPDATE 2: @avirk asked me to try a Stable Version of Chrome and Firefox, I din't experience any lag in Firefox, a little (negligible) lag in Chrome 22 (Maybe because its a new copy of Chrome, I haven't used it much). UPDATE 3: @NothingsImpossible said that He is also experiencing the same problem on Windows Server 2008! This seams to be a major issue now. He also said that GPU load is also high at the same time! Even I saw the same thing. UPDATE 4: Recently, Chrome updated to v24 Stable (I am using stable from a long time now). I was experiencing this problem a lot less in Chrome 23, but this is back in Chrome 24. Seams like Chrome 24 is the most affected from this bug, as this same problem was high in Chrome 24 beta also. UPDATE 5: Chrome was updated to v25 Stable. This problem is 99% Gone, it is still there in 1% of the cases. One such example is when I leave chrome inactive for a while with a few tabs open, the tabs go black and no activity can get them back to active state. If I open a new tab, the new tab is OK but the others are still black, I need to close all those tabs. UPDATE 6: Chrome updated to v27 Stable channel, this problem is nearly gone. This does happen occasionally, but not as frequent as in earlier versions of Chrome. UPDATE 7: I am on Chrome v35.0.1916.114 Stable, Windows 8.1 Pro Update 1. Some of the other problems appears to be back. Chrome is slow and laggy again. Re-draw time is getting worse. Is anybody else experiencing such issues? Does anybody have a solution to any of these?

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  • Building a Data Mart with Pentaho Data Integration Video Review by Diethard Steiner, Packt Publishing

    - by Compudicted
    Originally posted on: http://geekswithblogs.net/Compudicted/archive/2014/06/01/building-a-data-mart-with-pentaho-data-integration-video-review.aspx The Building a Data Mart with Pentaho Data Integration Video by Diethard Steiner from Packt Publishing is more than just a course on how to use Pentaho Data Integration, it also implements and uses the principals of the Data Warehousing (and I even heard the name of Ralph Kimball in the video). Indeed, a video watcher should be familiar with its concepts as the Star Schema, Slowly Changing Dimension types, etc. so I suggest prior to watching this course to consider skimming through the Data Warehouse concepts (if unfamiliar) or even better, read the excellent Ralph’s The Data Warehouse Tooolkit. By the way, the author expands beyond using Pentaho along to MySQL and MonetDB which is a real icing on the cake! Indeed, I even suggest the name of the course should be ‘Building a Data Warehouse with Pentaho’. To successfully complete the course one needs to know some Linux (Ubuntu used in the course), the VI editor and the Bash command shell, but it seems that similar requirements would also apply to the Weindows OS. Additionally, knowing some basic SQL would not hurt. As I had said, MonetDB is used in this course several times which seems to be not anymore complex than say MySQL, but based on what I read is very well suited for fast querying big volumes of data thanks to having a columnstore (vertical data storage). I don’t see what else can be a barrier, the material is very digestible. On this note, I must add that the author does not cover how to acquire the software, so here is what I found may help: Pentaho: the free Community Edition must be more than anyone needs to learn it. Or even go into a POC. MonetDB can be downloaded (exists for both, Linux and Windows) from http://goo.gl/FYxMy0 (just see the appropriate link on the left). The author seems to be using Eclipse to run SQL code, one can get it from http://goo.gl/5CcuN. To create, or edit database entities and/or schema otherwise one can use a universal tool called SQuirreL, get it from http://squirrel-sql.sourceforge.net.   Next, I must confess Diethard is very knowledgeable in what he does and beyond. However, there will be some accent heard to the user of the course especially if one’s mother tongue language is English, but it I got over it in a few chapters. I liked the rate at which the material is being presented, it makes me feel I paid for every second Eventually, my impressions are: Pentaho is an awesome ETL offering, it is worth learning it very much (I am an ETL fan and a heavy user of SSIS) MonetDB is nice, it tickles my fancy to know it more Data Warehousing, despite all the BigData tool offerings (Hive, Scoop, Pig on Hadoop), using the traditional tools still rocks Chapters 2 to 6 were the most fun to me with chapter 8 being the most difficult.   In terms of closing, I highly recommend this video to anyone who needs to grasp Pentaho concepts quick, likewise, the course is very well suited for any developer on a “supposed to be done yesterday” type of a project. It is for a beginner to intermediate level ETL/DW developer. But one would need to learn more on Data Warehousing and Pentaho, for such I recommend the 5 star Pentaho Data Integration 4 Cookbook. Enjoy it! Disclaimer: I received this video from the publisher for the purpose of a public review.

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  • Building a Data Mart with Pentaho Data Integration Video Review by Diethard Steiner, Packt Publishing

    - by Compudicted
    Originally posted on: http://geekswithblogs.net/Compudicted/archive/2014/06/01/building-a-data-mart-with-pentaho-data-integration-video-review-again.aspx The Building a Data Mart with Pentaho Data Integration Video by Diethard Steiner from Packt Publishing is more than just a course on how to use Pentaho Data Integration, it also implements and uses the principals of the Data Warehousing (and I even heard the name of Ralph Kimball in the video). Indeed, a video watcher should be familiar with its concepts as the Star Schema, Slowly Changing Dimension types, etc. so I suggest prior to watching this course to consider skimming through the Data Warehouse concepts (if unfamiliar) or even better, read the excellent Ralph’s The Data Warehouse Tooolkit. By the way, the author expands beyond using Pentaho along to MySQL and MonetDB which is a real icing on the cake! Indeed, I even suggest the name of the course should be ‘Building a Data Warehouse with Pentaho’. To successfully complete the course one needs to know some Linux (Ubuntu used in the course), the VI editor and the Bash command shell, but it seems that similar requirements would also apply to the Windows OS. Additionally, knowing some basic SQL would not hurt. As I had said, MonetDB is used in this course several times which seems to be not anymore complex than say MySQL, but based on what I read is very well suited for fast querying big volumes of data thanks to having a columnstore (vertical data storage). I don’t see what else can be a barrier, the material is very digestible. On this note, I must add that the author does not cover how to acquire the software, so here is what I found may help: Pentaho: the free Community Edition must be more than anyone needs to learn it. Or even go into a POC. MonetDB can be downloaded (exists for both, Linux and Windows) from http://goo.gl/FYxMy0 (just see the appropriate link on the left). The author seems to be using Eclipse to run SQL code, one can get it from http://goo.gl/5CcuN. To create, or edit database entities and/or schema otherwise one can use a universal tool called SQuirreL, get it from http://squirrel-sql.sourceforge.net.   Next, I must confess Diethard is very knowledgeable in what he does and beyond. However, there will be some accent heard to the user of the course especially if one’s mother tongue language is English, but it I got over it in a few chapters. I liked the rate at which the material is being presented, it makes me feel I paid for every second Eventually, my impressions are: Pentaho is an awesome ETL offering, it is worth learning it very much (I am an ETL fan and a heavy user of SSIS) MonetDB is nice, it tickles my fancy to know it more Data Warehousing, despite all the BigData tool offerings (Hive, Scoop, Pig on Hadoop), using the traditional tools still rocks Chapters 2 to 6 were the most fun to me with chapter 8 being the most difficult.   In terms of closing, I highly recommend this video to anyone who needs to grasp Pentaho concepts quick, likewise, the course is very well suited for any developer on a “supposed to be done yesterday” type of a project. It is for a beginner to intermediate level ETL/DW developer. But one would need to learn more on Data Warehousing and Pentaho, for such I recommend the 5 star Pentaho Data Integration 4 Cookbook. Enjoy it! Disclaimer: I received this video from the publisher for the purpose of a public review.

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  • Do we still have a case against the goto statement? [closed]

    - by FredOverflow
    Possible Duplicate: Is it ever worthwhile using goto? In a recent article, Andrew Koenig writes: When asked why goto statements are harmful, most programmers will say something like "because they make programs hard to understand." Press harder, and you may well hear something like "I don't really know, but that's what I was taught." For that reason, I'd like to summarize Dijkstra's arguments. He then shows two program fragments, one without a goto and and one with a goto: if (n < 0) n = 0; Assuming that n is a variable of a built-in numeric type, we know that after this code, n is nonnegative. Suppose we rewrite this fragment: if (n >= 0) goto nonneg; n = 0; nonneg: ; In theory, this rewrite should have the same effect as the original. However, rewriting has changed something important: It has opened the possibility of transferring control to nonneg from anywhere else in the program. I emphasized the part that I don't agree with. Modern languages like C++ do not allow goto to transfer control arbitrarily. Here are two examples: You cannot jump to a label that is defined in a different function. You cannot jump over a variable initialization. Now consider composing your code of tiny functions that adhere to the single responsibility principle: int clamp_to_zero(int n) { if (n >= 0) goto n_is_not_negative: n = 0; n_is_not_negative: return n; } The classic argument against the goto statement is that control could have transferred from anywhere inside your program to the label n_is_not_negative, but this simply is not (and was never) true in C++. If you try it, you will get a compiler error, because labels are scoped. The rest of the program doesn't even see the name n_is_not_negative, so it's just not possible to jump there. This is a static guarantee! Now, I'm not saying that this version is better then the one without the goto, but to make the latter as expressive as the first one, we would at least have to insert a comment, or even better yet, an assertion: int clamp_to_zero(int n) { if (n < 0) n = 0; // n is not negative at this point assert(n >= 0); return n; } Note that you basically get the assertion for free in the goto version, because the condition n >= 0 is already written in line 1, and n = 0; satisfies the condition trivially. But that's just a random observation. It seems to me that "don't use gotos!" is one of those dogmas like "don't use multiple returns!" that stem from a time where the real problem were functions of hundreds or even thousand of lines of code. So, do we still have a case against the goto statement, other than that it is not particularly useful? I haven't written a goto in at least a decade, but it's not like I was running away in terror whenever I encountered one. 1 Ideally, I would like to see a strong and valid argument against gotos that still holds when you adhere to established programming principles for clean code like the SRP. "You can jump anywhere" is not (and has never been) a valid argument in C++, and somehow I don't like teaching stuff that is not true. 1: Also, I have never been able to resurrect even a single velociraptor, no matter how many gotos I tried :(

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  • When is your interview?

    - by Rob Farley
    Sometimes it’s tough to evaluate someone – to figure out if you think they’d be worth hiring. These days, since starting LobsterPot Solutions, I have my share of interviews, on both sides of the desk. Sometimes I’m checking out potential staff members; sometimes I’m persuading someone else to get us on board for a project. Regardless of who is on which side of the desk, we’re both checking each other out. The world is not how it was some years ago. I’m pretty sure that every time I walk into a room for an interview, I’ve searched for them online, and they’ve searched for me. I suspect they usually have the easier time finding me, although there are obviously other Rob Farleys in the world. They may have even checked out some of my presentations from conferences, read my blog posts, maybe even heard me tell jokes or sing. I know some people need me to explain who I am, but for the most part, I think they’ve done plenty of research long before I’ve walked in the room. I remember when this was different (as it could be for you still). I remember a time when I dealt with recruitment agents, looking for work. I remember sitting in rooms having been giving a test designed to find out if I knew my stuff or not, and then being pulled into interviews with managers who had to find out if I could communicate effectively. I’d need to explain who I was, what kind of person I was, what my value-system involved, and so on. I’m sure you understand what I’m getting at. (Oh, and in case you hadn’t realised, it’s a T-SQL Tuesday post, this month about interviews.) At TechEd Australia some years ago (either 2009 or 2010 – I forget which), I remember hearing a comment made during the ‘locknote’, the closing session. The presenter described a conversation he’d heard between two girls, discussing a guy that one of them had just started dating. The other girl expressed horror at the fact that her friend had met this guy in person, rather than through an online dating agency. The presenter pointed out that people realise that there’s a certain level of safety provided through the checks that those sites do. I’m not sure I completely trust this, but I’m sure it’s true for people’s technical profiles. If I interview someone, I hope they have a profile. I hope I can look at what they already know. I hope I can get samples of their work, and see how they communicate. I hope I can get a feel for their sense of humour. I hope I already know exactly what kind of person they are – their value system, their beliefs, their passions. Even their grammar. I can work out if the person is a good risk or not from who they are online. If they don’t have an online presence, then I don’t have this information, and the risk is higher. So if you’re interviewing with me, your interview started long before the conversation. I hope it started before I’d ever heard of you. I know the interview in which I’m being assessed started before I even knew there was a product called SQL Server. It’s reflected in what I write. It’s in the way I present. I have spent my life becoming me – so let’s talk! @rob_farley

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  • surviveFocusChange=true

    - by Geertjan
    Here's a very cool thing that I keep forgetting about but that Jesse reminded me of in the recent blog entries on Undo/Redo: "surviveFocusChange=true". Look at the screenshot below. You see two windows with a toolbar button. The toolbar button is enabled whenever an object named "Bla" is in the Lookup. The "Demo" window has a "Bla" object in its Lookup and hence the toolbar button is enabled when the focus is in the "Demo" window, as shown below: Now the focus is in the "Output" window, which does not have a "Bla" object in its Lookup and hence the button is disabled: However, there are scenarios where you might like the button to remain enabled even when the focus changes. (One such scenario is the Undo/Redo scenario in this blog a few days ago, i.e., even when the Properties window has the focus the Undo/Redo buttons should be enabled.) Here you can see that the button is enabled even though the focus has switched to the "Output" window: How to achieve this? Well, you need to register your Action to have "surviveFocusChange" set to "true". It is, by default, set to "false": import java.awt.event.ActionEvent; import java.awt.event.ActionListener; import org.openide.awt.ActionID; import org.openide.awt.ActionReference; import org.openide.awt.ActionReferences; import org.openide.awt.ActionRegistration; import org.openide.util.NbBundle.Messages; @ActionID(category = "File", id = "org.mymodule.BlaAction") @ActionRegistration(surviveFocusChange=true, iconBase = "org/mymodule/Datasource.gif", displayName = "#CTL_BlaAction") @ActionReferences({     @ActionReference(path = "Toolbars/Bla", position = 0) }) @Messages("CTL_BlaAction=Bla") public final class BlaAction implements ActionListener {     private final Bla context;     public BlaAction(Bla context) {         this.context = context;     }     @Override     public void actionPerformed(ActionEvent ev) {         // TODO use context     } } That's all. Now folders and files will be created in the NetBeans Platform filesystem from the annotations above when the module is compiled such that the NetBeans Platform will automatically keep the button enabled even when the user switches focus to a window that does not contain a "Bla" object in its Lookup. Hence, the same "Bla" object will remain available when switching from one window to another, until a new "Bla" object will be made available in the Lookup.

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  • What Counts For A DBA: ESP

    - by Louis Davidson
    Now I don’t want to get religious here, and I’m not going to, but what I’m going to describe in this ‘What Counts for a DBA’ installment sometimes feels like magic. Often  I will spend hours thinking about the solution to a design issue or coding problem, working diligently to try to come up with a solution and then finally just give up with the feeling that I’m not even qualified to be a data entry clerk, much less a data architect.  At this point I often take a walk (or sometimes a nap), and then it hits me. I realize that I have the answer just sitting in my brain, ready to implement.  This phenomenon is not limited to walks either; it can happen almost any time after I stop my obsession about a problem. I call this phenomena ESP (or Extra-Sensory Programming.)  Another term for this could be ‘sleeping on it’, and while the idiom tends to mean to let time pass to actively think about a problem, sleeping on a problem also lets you relax and let your brain do the work. I first noticed this back in my college days when I would play video games for hours on end. We would get stuck deep in some dungeon unable to find a way out, playing for days on end until we were beaten down tired. Once we gave up and walked away, the solution would usually be there waiting for one of us before we came back to play the next day.  Sometimes it would be in the form of a dream, and sometimes it would just be that the problem was now easy to solve when we started to play again.  While it worked great for video games, it never occurred when I studied English Literature for hours on end, or even when I worked for the same sort of frustrating hours attempting to solve a homework problem in Calculus.  I believe that the difference was that I was passionate about the video game, and certainly far less so about homework where people used the word “thou” instead of “you” or x to represent a number. This phenomenon occurs somewhat more often in my current work as a professional data programmer, because I am very passionate about SQL and love those aspects of my career choice.  Every day that I get to draw a new data model to solve a customer issue, or write a complex SELECT statement to ferret out the answer to a complex data question, is a great day. I hope it is the same for any reader of this blog.  But, unfortunately, while the day on a whole is great, a heck of a lot of noise is generated in work life. There are the typical project deadlines, along with the requisite project manager sitting on your shoulders shouting slogans to try to make you to go faster: Add in office politics, and the occasional family issues that permeate the mind, and you lose the ability to think deeply about any problem, not to mention occasionally forgetting your own name.  These office realities coupled with a difficult SQL problem staring at you from your widescreen monitor will slowly suck the life force out of your body, making it seem impossible to solve the problem This is when the walk starts; or a nap. Maybe you hide from the madness under your desk like George Costanza hides from Steinbrenner on Seinfeld.  Forget about the problem. Free your mind from the insanity of the problem and your surroundings. Then let your training and education deep in your brain take over and see if it will passively do the rest for you. If you don’t end up with a solution, the worst case scenario is that you have a bit of exercise or rest, and you won’t have heard the phrase “better is the enemy of good enough” even once…which certainly will do your brain some good. Once you stop expecting whipping your brain for information, inspiration may just strike and instead of a humdrum solution you find a solution you hadn’t even considered, almost magically. So, my beloved manager, next time you have an urgent deadline and you come across me taking a nap, creep away quietly because I’m working, doing some extra-sensory programming.

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  • Hyper-V Live Migration across Sites!

    - by Ryan Roussel
    One of the great sessions I sat in on at Tech Ed this week was stretching a Windows 2008 R2 Hyper-V  Failover Cluster across sites.  With this ability, you could actually implement a Hyper-V cluster where you could migrate or even Live Migrate VMs across sites.   With this area’s propensity for Hurricanes, this will be a very popular topic for me over the next few months. While this technology is possible today, it’s also very complicated and can be very expensive to implement.    First your WAN connection has to support the ability to trunk your VLAN across both sites in order to Live Migrate.  This means you can’t use a Layer 3 routed connection like MPLS.  It has to be a Metro Ethernet connection or "Dark Fiber”.  Dark Fiber is unused Fiber already in the ground that can be leased from  various providers. Both of these connections would allow you to trunk layer 2 across your WAN.  Cisco does have the ability to trunk layer 2 across a routed connection by muxing the traffic but this is only available in their Nexus product line which has a very steep price tag.   If you are stuck with MPLS or the like and Nexus switching is not a realistic possibility, you will have to implement a multi-subnet cluster in which case Live Migration won’t be possible.  However you can still failover VMs to the remote site with some planning and manual intervention.  The consideration here is that the VMs will be on a different subnet once migrated, so you will have to change the IP addressing of your VMs.  This also has ramifications with DNS and Name resolution to control your down time.  DHCP with Reservations for your VMs is the preferred method to achieve the IP changes as this will automate that part of the process.   Secondly, you will have to have  a mechanism to replicate your storage across both sites.  Many SAN vendors natively support hardware based synchronous and asynchronous replication.  Some even support cluster shared volumes which were introduced in 2008 R2.   If your SANs do not support this natively, there are alternative file based replication products either software based like Double Take or hardware appliance like EMC.  Be sure to check with your vendor on the support of Disk majority if you’re replicating your quorum disk between SANs.   The last consideration is the ability to maintain quorum for your cluster.  If your replication provider does not support Disk Majority through replication, you will have to explore Node Majority with File Share Witness.  This will affect your design as a 3 node cluster with 1 node at the remote site and FSW at the production site would not have the ability to maintain quorum if the production site was lost. MS best practice for this would be to implement an even node cluster with 2 nodes at  each site and the FSW at a third site.   And there you have it.  While some considerations and research goes into implementing this solution, even a multi-subnet solution would be invaluable to organizations in the implementations of “warm” DR sites.

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  • Is It Worth It To Learn Experimental Languages

    - by Xander Lamkins
    I'm a young programmer who desires to work in the field someday as a programmer. I know Java, VB.NET and C#. I want to learn a new language (as I programmer, I know that it is valuable to extend what I know - to learn languages that make you think differently). I took a look online to see what languages were common. Everybody knows C and C++ (even those muggles who know so little about computers in general), so I thought, maybe I should push for C. C and C++ are nice but they are old. Things like Haskell and Forth (etc. etc. etc.) are old and have lost their popularity. I'm scared of learning C (or even C++) for this same reason. Java is pretty old as well and is slow because it's run by the JVM and not compiled to native code. I've been a Windows developer for quite a while. I recently started using Java - but only because it was more versatile and spreadable to other places. The problem is that it doesn't look like a very usable language for these reasons: It's most used purpose is for web application and cellphone apps (specifically Android) As far as actual products made with it, the only things that come to mind are Netbeans, Eclipse (hurrah for making and IDE with the language the IDE is for - it's like making a webpage for writing HTML/CSS/Javascript), and Minecraft which happens to be fun but laggy and bipolar as far as computer spec. support. Other than that it's used for servers but heck - I don't only want to make/configure servers. The .NET languages are nice, however: People laugh if I even mention VB.NET or C# in a serious conversation. It isn't cross-platform unless you use MONO (which is still in development and has some improvements to be made). Lacks low level stuff because, like Java with the JVM, it is run/managed by the CLR. My first thought was learning something like C and then using it to springboard into C++ (just to make sure I would have a strong understanding/base), but like I said earlier, it's getting older and older by the minute. What I've Looked Into Fantom looks nice. It's like a nice middleman between my two favorite languages and even lets me publish between the two interchangeably, but, unlike what I want, it compiles to the CLR or JVM (depending on what you publish it to) instead of it being a complete compile. D also looks nice. It seems like a very usable language and from multiple sources it appears to actually be better than C/C++. I would jump right with it, but I'm still unsure of its success because it obviously isn't very mainstream at this point. There are a couple others that looked pretty nice that focused on other things such as Opa with web development and Go by GOOGLE. My Question Is it worth learning these "experimental" languages? I've read other questions that say that if you aren't constantly learning languages and open to all languages that you aren't in the right mindset for programming. I understand this and I still might not quite be getting it, but in truth, if a language isn't going to become mainstream, should I spend my time learning something else? I don't want to learn old (or any going to soon be old) programming languages. I know that many people see this as something important, *but would any of you ever actually consider (assuming you didn't already know) FORTRAN? My goal is to stay current to make sure I'm successful in the future. Disclaimer Yes, I am a young programmer, so I probably made a lot of naive statements in my question. Feel free to correct me on ANYTHING! I have to start learning somewhere so I'm sure a lot of my knowledge is sketchy enough to have caused to incorrect statements or flaws in my thinking. Please leave any feelings you have in the comments.

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  • Is it worth to learn Experimental Languages?

    - by Xander Lamkins
    I'm a young programmer who desires to work in the field someday as a programmer. I know Java, VB.NET and C#. I want to learn a new language (as I programmer, I know that it is valuable to extend what I know - to learn languages that make you think differently). I took a look online to see what languages were common. Everybody knows C and C++ (even those muggles who know so little about computers in general), so I thought, maybe I should push for C. C and C++ are nice but they are old. Things like Haskell and Forth (etc. etc. etc.) are old and have lost their popularity. I'm scared of learning C (or even C++) for this same reason. Java is pretty old as well and is slow because it's run by the JVM and not compiled to native code. I've been a Windows developer for quite a while. I recently started using Java - but only because it was more versatile and spreadable to other places. The problem is that it doesn't look like a very usable language for these reasons: It's most used purpose is for web application and cellphone apps (specifically Android) As far as actual products made with it, the only things that come to mind are Netbeans, Eclipse (hurrah for making and IDE with the language the IDE is for - it's like making a webpage for writing HTML/CSS/Javascript), and Minecraft which happens to be fun but laggy and bipolar as far as computer spec. support. Other than that it's used for servers but heck - I don't only want to make/configure servers. The .NET languages are nice, however: People laugh if I even mention VB.NET or C# in a serious conversation. It isn't cross-platform unless you use MONO (which is still in development and has some improvements to be made). Lacks low level stuff because, like Java with the JVM, it is run/managed by the CLR. My first thought was learning something like C and then using it to springboard into C++ (just to make sure I would have a strong understanding/base), but like I said earlier, it's getting older and older by the minute. What I've Looked Into Fantom looks nice. It's like a nice middleman between my two favorite languages and even lets me publish between the two interchangeably, but, unlike what I want, it compiles to the CLR or JVM (depending on what you publish it to) instead of it being a complete compile. D also looks nice. It seems like a very usable language and from multiple sources it appears to actually be better than C/C++. I would jump right with it, but I'm still unsure of its success because it obviously isn't very mainstream at this point. There are a couple others that looked pretty nice that focused on other things such as Opa with web development and Go by GOOGLE. My Question Is it worth learning these "experimental" languages? I've read other questions that say that if you aren't constantly learning languages and open to all languages that you aren't in the right mindset for programming. I understand this and I still might not quite be getting it, but in truth, if a language isn't going to become mainstream, should I spend my time learning something else? I don't want to learn old (or any going to soon be old) programming languages. I know that many people see this as something important, *but would any of you ever actually consider (assuming you didn't already know) FORTRAN? My goal is to stay current to make sure I'm successful in the future. Disclaimer Yes, I am a young programmer, so I probably made a lot of naive statements in my question. Feel free to correct me on ANYTHING! I have to start learning somewhere so I'm sure a lot of my knowledge is sketchy enough to have caused to incorrect statements or flaws in my thinking. Please leave any feelings you have in the comments.

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  • Know your Data Lineage

    - by Simon Elliston Ball
    An academic paper without the footnotes isn’t an academic paper. Journalists wouldn’t base a news article on facts that they can’t verify. So why would anyone publish reports without being able to say where the data has come from and be confident of its quality, in other words, without knowing its lineage. (sometimes referred to as ‘provenance’ or ‘pedigree’) The number and variety of data sources, both traditional and new, increases inexorably. Data comes clean or dirty, processed or raw, unimpeachable or entirely fabricated. On its journey to our report, from its source, the data can travel through a network of interconnected pipes, passing through numerous distinct systems, each managed by different people. At each point along the pipeline, it can be changed, filtered, aggregated and combined. When the data finally emerges, how can we be sure that it is right? How can we be certain that no part of the data collection was based on incorrect assumptions, that key data points haven’t been left out, or that the sources are good? Even when we’re using data science to give us an approximate or probable answer, we cannot have any confidence in the results without confidence in the data from which it came. You need to know what has been done to your data, where it came from, and who is responsible for each stage of the analysis. This information represents your data lineage; it is your stack-trace. If you’re an analyst, suspicious of a number, it tells you why the number is there and how it got there. If you’re a developer, working on a pipeline, it provides the context you need to track down the bug. If you’re a manager, or an auditor, it lets you know the right things are being done. Lineage tracking is part of good data governance. Most audit and lineage systems require you to buy into their whole structure. If you are using Hadoop for your data storage and processing, then tools like Falcon allow you to track lineage, as long as you are using Falcon to write and run the pipeline. It can mean learning a new way of running your jobs (or using some sort of proxy), and even a distinct way of writing your queries. Other Hadoop tools provide a lot of operational and audit information, spread throughout the many logs produced by Hive, Sqoop, MapReduce and all the various moving parts that make up the eco-system. To get a full picture of what’s going on in your Hadoop system you need to capture both Falcon lineage and the data-exhaust of other tools that Falcon can’t orchestrate. However, the problem is bigger even that that. Often, Hadoop is just one piece in a larger processing workflow. The next step of the challenge is how you bind together the lineage metadata describing what happened before and after Hadoop, where ‘after’ could be  a data analysis environment like R, an application, or even directly into an end-user tool such as Tableau or Excel. One possibility is to push as much as you can of your key analytics into Hadoop, but would you give up the power, and familiarity of your existing tools in return for a reliable way of tracking lineage? Lineage and auditing should work consistently, automatically and quietly, allowing users to access their data with any tool they require to use. The real solution, therefore, is to create a consistent method by which to bring lineage data from these data various disparate sources into the data analysis platform that you use, rather than being forced to use the tool that manages the pipeline for the lineage and a different tool for the data analysis. The key is to keep your logs, keep your audit data, from every source, bring them together and use the data analysis tools to trace the paths from raw data to the answer that data analysis provides.

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