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• Planning an Event&ndash;SPS NYC

  - by MOSSLover

  I bet some of you were wondering why I am not going to any events for the most part in June and July (aside from volunteering at SPS Chicago).  Well I basically have no life for the next 2 months.  We are approaching the 11th hour of SharePoint Saturday New York City.  The event is slated to have 350 to 400 attendees.  This is second year in a row I’ve helped run it with Jason Gallicchio.  It’s amazingly crazy how much effort this event requires versus Kansas City.  It’s literally 2x the volume of attendees, speakers, and sponsors plus don’t even get me started about volunteers.  So here is a bit of the break down… We have 30 volunteers+ that Tasha Scott from the Hampton Roads Area will be managing the day of the event to do things like timing the speakers, handing out food, making sure people don’t walk into the event that did not sign up until we get a count for fire code, registering people, watching the sharpees, watching the prizes, making sure attendees get to the right place,  opening and closing the partition in the big room, moving chairs, moving furniture, etc…Then there is Jason, Greg, and I who will be making sure that the speakers, sponsors, and everything is going smoothly in the background.  We need to make sure that everything is setup properly and in the right spot.  We also need to make sure signs are printed, schedules are created, bags are stuffed with sponsor material.  Plus we need to send out emails to sponsors reminding them to send us the right information to post on the site for charity sessions, send us boxes with material to stuff bags, and we need to make sure that Michael Lotter gets there information for invoicing.  We also need to check that Michael has invoiced everyone and who has paid, because we can’t order anything for the event without money.  Once people have paid we need to setup food orders, speaker and volunteer dinners, buy prizes, buy bags, buy speakers/volunteer/organizer shirts, etc…During this process we need all the abstracts from speakers, all the bios, pictures, shirt sizes, and other items so we can create schedules and order items.  We also need to keep track of who is attending the dinner the night before for volunteers and speakers and make sure we don’t hit capacity.  Then there is attendee tracking and making sure that we don’t hit too many attendees.  We need to make sure that attendees know where to go and what to do.  We have to make all kinds of random supply lists during this process and keep on track with a variety of lists and emails plus conference calls.  All in all it’s a lot of work and I am trying to keep track of it all the top so that we don’t duplicate anything or miss anything.  So basically all in all if you don’t see me around for another month don’t worry I do exist. Right now if you look at what I’m doing I am traveling every Monday morning and Thursday night back and forth to Washington DC from New Jersey.  Every night I am working on organizational stuff for SharePoint Saturday New York City.  Every Tuesday night we are running an event conference call.  Every weekend I am either with family or my boyfriend and cat trying hard not to touch the event.  So all my time is pretty much work, event, and family/boyfriend.  I have 0 bandwidth for anything in the community.  If you compound that with my severe allergy problems in DC and a doctor’s appointment every month plus a new med once a week I’m lucky I am still standing and walking.  So basically once July 30th hits hopefully Jason Gallicchio, Greg Hurlman, and myself will be able to breathe a little easier.  If I forget to do this thank you Greg and Jason.  Thank you Tom Daly.  Thank you Michael Lotter.  Thank you Tasha Scott.  Thank you Kevin Griffin.  Thank you all the volunteers, speakers, sponsors, and attendees who will and have made this event a success.  Hopefully, we have enough time until next year to regroup, recharge, and make the event grow bigger in a different venue.  Awesome job everyone we sole out within 3 days of registration and we still have several weeks to go.  Right now the waitlist is at 49 people with room to grow.  If you attend the event thank all these guys I mentioned above for making it possible.  It’s going to be awesome I know it but I probably won’t remember half of it due to the blur of things that we will all be taking care of the day of the event.  Catch you all in the end of July/Early August where I will attempt to post something useful and clever and possibly while wearing a fez. Technorati Tags: SPS NYC,SharePoint Saturday,SharePoint Saturday New York City

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• Day 1 - Finding Like Minds

  - by dapostolov

  So, is being a Game Developer any different from being an IT Developer? I picture a poorly lit environment where I get to purchase my own desk lamp; I'm thinking one of those huge lava lamps that pump out so much heat you could fry an egg on it. To my right: a "great wall" of empty coke cans dwarf me. Eating my last slice of pizza I look across my desk to see a fellow developer with a smug look on his face;  he's just coded his latest module for the game and it looks like he's in nirvana. My duty, of course, is to remind him to keep focused on the job at hand. So, picking up my trusty elastic and aerodynamically crafted paper bullet I begin a 10 minute war of welts and laughter which is promptly abrupted by our Project Manager demanding more details from our morning Scrum meeting. After providing about 5 minutes of geek speak and several words of comfort to make his eyes glaze over...it hits me, the idea for the module...beckoning my developer friend over, we quickly shoo the Project Manager away and begin our brainstorming frenzy ... now, where'd I put that full can of coke? OK. OK. This isn't probably the most ideal game developer environment, but it definitely sounds fun to me...and from what I gather is nothing like most game development companies. But I'm not doing this blog series to "go pro"; like I stated in my first post I want to make a 2D game from an idea my best friend and I drummed up long, long ago. I'm in this for the passion AND I want to see how easy it is for us .Net Developers to create a game. So where do I start? Where can I find like minded individuals? What technologies are there? What do I need to make a video game? The questions are endless....AND...since I already have an idea ... lets start with ... Technology (yes, I'm a geek, live with it...) Technology OK. Predominantly, games are still made in C++ or even C. I'm not sure how much assembly code is floating around lately, however, that is not my concern. I do know C / C++ from my past, enough to even get me by, but I'm mainly interested in a recent, not-so-new, technology called XNA. What is XNA? XNA allows us .Net Developers to make 2D / 3D games for windows, Xbox*, and Windows Mobile 7*. * = for a nominal fee *cough* The following link is your one stop shop to XNA game development: http://creators.xna.com/en-US/education/gettingstarted The above site hosts information such as: - getting started - a sample/instructional shooter game in 2D / 3D with code (if I'm taking too long for you in this blog series) - downloads - starter kits... http://creators.xna.com/en-US/education/starterkits/ And of course...forums. You can also subscribe and pay for their premium membership which gets you some pretty awesome tutorials, resources, downloads, and premium community support. Some general Wiki information about XNA: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XNA_%28Microsoft%29 Community Support OK. Let's move on to industry and community support. Apart from XNA, there are some really cool sites out there, I just haven't found all of them yet. However, I found a really cool Game Development website called Gamastura. You can click on the following link to get you there: http://www.gamasutra.com/ The site is 100% dedicated to "The Art & Business of Making Games". Armed with blogs, twitter, jobs/resumes and most importantly industry news; one could subscribe to the feed and got lost in the wealth of information it provides. On a side note: I remember Gamasutra being around when my best friend and I wanted to make a video game...meaning, they've been around for a while now. I think the most beneficial aspect of this site is to understand the industry you want to get into. Otherwise, it's just a cool site to keep up to date with the industry in general. Another Community Support option is LinkedIn. Amongst the land of extremely bloated achievements and responsibilities lay 3 groups (that I have found) that deal with game development.: http://www.linkedin.com/groups?gid=59205 - Game Developers http://www.linkedin.com/groups?gid=824817 - DirectX Game Developer Network http://www.linkedin.com/groups?gid=756587 - DirectX Developers The Game Developers group in LinkedIn is by far the most active of the three and could possibly provide a wealth of support. What I've done thus far: - I lightly researched the XNA technology - I looked around for some community sites to assist me - I downloaded the XNA Game Studio 3.1 on my PC and installed it on my IDE - I even tried both tutorials! http://creators.xna.com/en-US/education/gettingstarted/bgintro/chapter1   Best Regards D.

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• 2011 The Year of Awesomesauce

  - by MOSSLover

  So I was talking to one of my friends, Cathy Dew, and I’m wondering how to start out this post.  What kind of title should I put?  Somehow we’re just randomly throwing things out and this title pops into my head the one you see above. I woke up today to the buzz of a text message.  I spent New Years laying around until 3 am watching Warehouse 13 Episodes and drinking champagne.  It was one of the best New Year’s I spent with my boyfriend and my cat.  I figured I would sleep in until Noon, but ended up waking up around 11:15 to that text message buzz.  I guess my DE, Rachel Appel, had texted me “Happy New Years”, because Rachel is that kind of person.  I immediately proceeded to check my email.  I noticed my live account had a hit.  The account I rarely ever use had an email.  I sort of had that sinking suspicion I was going to get Silverlight MVP right?  So I open the email and something out of the blue happens it says “blah blah blah SharePoint Server MVP blah blah…”.  I’m sitting here a little confused what?  Really?  Just about when you give up on something the unexplained happens.  I am grateful for what I have every day. So let me tell you a story.  I was a senior in high school and it was December 31st, 1999.  A couple days prior my grandmother was complaining she had a cold and her assisted living facility was not going to let her see a doctor.  She claimed to be very sick.  New Year’s Eve Day 1999 my grandmother was rushed to the hospital sometime very early in the morning.  My uncle, my little brother, and myself were sitting in the waiting room eagerly awaiting news.  The Sydney Opera House was playing in the background as New Years 2000 for Australia was ringing in.  They come out and they tell us my grandmother has pneumonia.  She is in the ICU in critical condition.  Eventually time passes in the day and my parents take my brother and I home.  So in the car we had a huge fight that ended in the worst new years of my life.  The next 30 days were the worst 30 days of my life.  I went to the hospital every single day to do my homework and watch my grandmother.  Each day was a challenge mentally and physically as my grandmother berated me in her demented state.  On the 30th day my grandmother ended up in critical condition in the ICU maxed out on painkillers.  At approximately 3 am I hear my parents telling me they don’t want to wake me up and that my grandmother had passed away.  I must have cried more collectively that day than any other day in my life.  Every New Years Even since I have cried thinking about who she was and what she represented.  She was human looking back she wasn’t anything great, but she was one of the positive lights in my life.  Her and my dad and my other grandmother constantly tried to make me feel great when my mother was telling me the opposite.  I’d like to think since 2000 the past 11 years have been the best 11 years of my life.  I got out of a bad situation by using the tools that I had in front of me.  Good grades and getting into a college so I could aspire to be the person that I wanted to be.  I had some great people along the way to help me out. So getting to the point I like to help people further there lives somehow in the best way I can possibly help out.  This New Years was one of the great years that helped me forget the past and focus on the present.  It makes me realize how far I’ve come since high school and even since college.  The one thing I’ve been grappling with over the years is how do you feel good about making money while helping others out.  I’d to think I try really hard to give back to my community.  I could not have done what I did without other people’s help.  I sent out an email prior to even announcing I got the award today.  I can’t say I did everything on my own.  It’s not possible.  I had the help of others every step of the way.  I’m not sure if this makes sense but the award can’t just be mine.  This award is really owned by each and everyone who helped me get here.  From my dad to my grandmother to Rachel Appel to Bob Hunt to Jason Gallicchio to Cathy Dew to Mark Rackley to Johnny Ennion to Lee Brandt to Jeff Julian to John Alexander to Lori Gowin and to many others.  Thank you guys for all the help and support. Technorati Tags: SharePoint Community,MVP Award,Microsoft Community

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• The Sound of Two Toilets Flushing: Constructive Criticism for Virgin Atlantic Complaints Department

  - by Geertjan

  I recently had the experience of flying from London to Johannesburg and back with Virgin Atlantic. The good news was that it was the cheapest flight available and that the take off and landing were absolutely perfect. Hence I really have no reason to complain. Instead, I'd like to offer some constructive criticism which hopefully Richard Branson will find sometime while googling his name. Or maybe someone from the Virgin Atlantic Complaints Department will find it, whatever, just want to put this information out there. Arrangement of restroom facilities. Maybe next time you design an airplane, consider not putting your toilets at a right angle right next to your rows of seats. Being able to reach, without even needing to stretch your arm, from your seat to close, yet again, a toilet door that someone, someone obviously sitting very far from the toilets, carelessly forgot to close is not an indicator of quality interior design. Have you noticed how all other airplanes have their toilets in a cubicle separated from the rows of seats? On those airplanes, people sitting in the seats near the toilets are not constantly being woken up throughout the night whenever someone enters/exits the toilet, whenever the light in the toilet is suddenly switched on, and whenever one of the toilets flushes. Bonus points for Virgin Atlantic passengers in the seats adjoining the toilets is when multiple toilets are flushed simultaneously and multiple passengers enter/exit them at the same time, a bit like an unasked for low budget musical of suddenly illuminated grumpy people in crumpled clothes. What joy that brings at 3 AM is hard to describe. Seats with extra leg room. You know how other airplanes have the seats with the extra leg room? You know what those seats tend to have? Extra leg room. It's really interesting how Virgin Atlantic's seats with extra leg room actually have no extra leg room at all. It should have been a give away, the fact that these special seats are found in the same rows as the standard seats, rather than on the cusp of real glory which is where most airlines put their extra leg room seats, with the only actual difference being that they have a slightly different color. Had you called them "seats with a different color" (i.e., almost not quite green, rather than something vaguely hinting at blue), at least I'd have known what I was getting. Picture the joy at 3 AM, rudely awakened from nightmarish slumber, partly grateful to have been released from a grayish dream of faceless zombies resembling one or two of those in a recent toilet line, by multiple adjoining toilets flushing simultaneously, while you're sitting in a seat with extra leg room that has exactly as much leg room as the seats in neighboring rows. You then have a choice of things to be sincerely annoyed about. Food from the '80's. In the '80's, airplane food came in soggy containers and even breakfast, the most important meal of the day, was a sad heap of vaguely gray colors. The culinary highlight tended to be a squashed tomato, which must have been mashed to a pulp with a brick prior to being regurgitated by a small furry animal, and there was also always a piece of immensely horrid pumpkin, as well as a slice of spongy something you'd never seen before. Sausages and mash at 6 AM on an airplane was always a heavy lump of horribleness. Thankfully, all airlines throughout the world changed from this puke inducing strategy around 1987 sometime. Not Virgin Atlantic, of course. The fatty sausages and mash are still there, bringing you flashbacks to Duran Duran, which is what you were listening to (on your walkman) the last time you saw it in an airplane. Even the golden oldie "squashed tomato attached by slime to three wet peas" is on the menu. How wonderful to have all this in a cramped seat with a long row of early morning bleariness lined up for the toilets, right at your side, bumping into your elbow, groggily, one by one, one after another, more and more, fumble-open-door-silence-flush-fumble-open-door, and on and on, while you tentatively push your fork through a soggy pile of colorless mush, fighting the urge to throw up on the stinky socks of whatever nightmarish zombie is bumping into your elbow at the time. But, then again, the plane landed without a hitch, in fact, extremely smoothly, so I'm certainly not blaming the pilots.

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• Extra Life 2012 - The Final Plea ... Until the Next One

  - by Chris Gardner

  I thought I'd share the email stream that my friends and family get about the event.So, here we are again. We scream closer to the event, and the goal is not met.I was approached by the ghost of feral platypii past last night. Well, approached is putting it lightly. I was mugged by the ghost of platypii past last night. He reminded me, in no uncertain terms that I have only reached the midway point of my fundraising goal. He then reminded me, in even less uncertain terms, that we are one week away from the event. There were other reminders past that, but this is a family broadcast. *shudder*Now, let us be serious for a moment. The event organizers claim a personal story helps to tug heart strings, whatever those are...I've been to Children's Hospital of Birmingham. I had to take Spawn, the Latter, there to verify she was not going to die. Instead, she's just a ticking time bomb for the next generation, but I digress.While I was there, I saw things. I saw child after child after child waiting for their appointment. I saw the most sublime displays of children's art juxtaposed with hospital sterilization that I could ever possibly imagine. I saw and heard things that only occur in the nightmares of parents, and I was only in the waiting rooms.But I will never forget the 10-ish year old girl that came in for her regularly scheduled dialysis appointment ... as if it was just another Friday afternoon. She had her school books, a little snack, a book to read for pleasure, and a DVD, in case she finished her homework a little early. You know, everything you'd need for an afternoon hooked up to a huge medical machine that going to clean out all the toxins in your blood. As she entered the secured area, she warmly greeted all the doctors and nurses with the same familiarity that I would greet the staff of my favorite coffee shop as I stopped in for my morning cup of coffee.I don't know the status of that little girl. I don't know if she's healthy or, quite frankly, alive. I don't even know her name, as I only heard it in passing for the 37 seconds our paths crossed. However, I do remember being incredibly moved and touched by her upbeat attitude about the situations, and I hope that my efforts last two Octobers got her, in some way, a little comfort.And, if she is still with us, I hope we can get her a little more.=== PREVIOUS MESSAGE FOLLOWS ===Greetings (Again),If you are receiving this updated message, then you didn't feel generous the first time. Now, I tried to be nice the first time. I tried to send a simple, unobtrusive email message to get you into the spirit. Well, much like the bell ringers that I ignore in front of the Wal-Mart, you ignored me.I probably should have seen that coming...However, unlike those poor souls, I know how to contact you. And I can find out where you live. So, so, so, you better feel lucky that I'm too lazy to terrorize you people, but cause I could do it.Remember, it's not for me, it's for those poor kids... and the feral platypii.  Because, we can make more children, but platypii are hard to come by.=== ORIGINAL MESSAGE FOLLOWS ===It's that time of year again. The time when I beg you for money for charity. See, unlike those bell ringers outside Wal-Mart, I don't do it when you have ten bazillion holiday obligations...Once again, I will be enduring a 24-hour marathon of gaming to raise money for Children Hospital in Birmingham. All the money goes straight to them, and you get to tell Uncie Samuel that you're good for that money. I'd REALLY like to break $1000 this year, as I have come REALLY close for the past 2 year to doing so.This year, the event will take place on October 20th, beginning at 8 A.M. Once again, I will try to provide some web streams, etc, if you want to point and laugh (especially if I have to result to playing Dance Central at 4 AM to stay awake for the last part.)Look at it this way, I'm going to badger you about this for the next month. You might as well donate some money so you can righteously tell me to shut the Smurf up.You can place your bid at the link below. Feel free to spread the word to anyone and everyone.I thank you. The children thank you. Several breeds of feral platypus thank you. Maybe, just maybe, doing so will help you feel the love felt by re-fried beans when lovingly hugged in a warm tortilla.Enjoy your burrito.http://www.extra-life.org/participant/cgardner

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• Yes, I did it - Skydiving in Mauritius

  Finally, I did it or better said we did it. Already back in November last year I saw the big billboard advertisement of Skydive Austral Mauritius near Caudan Waterfront in Port Louis and decided for myself that this is going to be the perfect birthday gift for my wife. Simply out of curiosity I would join her tandem jump with a second instructor. Due to her pregnancy of our son I had to be patient... But then finally, her birthday had arrived and on our midnight celebration session I showed her her netbook with the website preloaded. Actually, it was the "perfect" timing... Recovery from her cesarean is fine, local weather conditions are gorgious and the children were under surveillance of my mum - spending her annual holidays on the island. So, after late wake-up in the morning, we packed our stuff and off we went. According to Google Maps direction indication we had to drive for roughly 50km (only) but traffic here in Mauritius is always challenging. The dropzone is at the Zone Industrielle Mon Loisir Sugar Estate near Riviere du Rempart at the northern east coast. Anyways, we were not in a hurry and arrived there shortly after noon. The access road to the airfield are just small down-driven paths through sugar cane fields and according to our daughter "it's bumpy!". True true true... The facilities at Skydive Austral Mauritius are complete except for food. Enough space for parking, easy handling at the reception and a lot to see for the kids. There's even a big terrace with several sets of tables and chairs, small bar for soft drinks, strictly non-alcoholic. The team over there is all welcoming and warm-hearthy! Having the kids with us was no issue at all. Quite the opposite, our daugther was allowed to discover a lot of things than we adults did. Even visiting the small air plane was on the menu for her. Really great stuff! While waiting for our turn we enjoyed watching other people getting ready in the jump gear, taking off with the Cessna, and finally coming back down on the tandem parachute. Actually, the different expressions on their faces was one of the best parts while waiting. Great mental preparation as my wife was getting more anxious about her first jump... {loadposition content_adsense} First, we got some information about the procedures on the plane about how to get seated, tight up with our instructors and how to get ready for the jump off the plane as soon as we arrive the height of 10.000 ft. All well explained and easy to understand after all.Next, we met with our jumpers Chris and Lee aka "Rasta" to get dressed and ready for take-off. Those guys are really cool and relaxed for their job. From that point on, the DVD session / recording for my wife's birthday started and we really had a lot of fun... The difference between that small Cessna and a commercial flight with an Airbus or a Boeing is astronomic! The climb up to 10.000 ft took us roughly 25 minutes and we enjoyed the magnificent view over the turquoise lagunes near Poste de Flacq, Lafayette and Isle d'Ambre on the north-east coast. After flying through the clouds we sun-bathed and looked over "iced-sugar covered" Mauritius. You might have a look at the picture gallery of Skydive Mauritius for better imagination. The moment of truth, or better said, point of no return came after approximately 25 minutes. The door opens, moving into position on the side on top of the wheel and... out! Back flip and free fall! Slight turns and Wooooohooooo! through the clouds... It so amazing and breath-taking! So undescribable! You have to experience this yourself! Some seconds later the parachute opened and we glided smoothly with some turns and spins back down to the dropzone. The rest of the family could hear and see us soon and the landing was easy going. We never had any doubts or fear about our instructors. They did a great job and we are looking forward to book our next job. I might even consider to follow educational classes on skydiving and earn a license. By the way, feel free to get in touch with Skydive Austral Mauritius. Either via contact details on their website or tweeting a little bit with them. Follow the tweets of Chris and fellows on SkydiveAustral.

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• The Unintended Consequences of Sound Security Policy

  - by Tanu Sood

  v\:* {behavior:url(#default#VML);} o\:* {behavior:url(#default#VML);} w\:* {behavior:url(#default#VML);} .shape {behavior:url(#default#VML);} Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:10.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman";} Author: Kevin Moulton, CISSP, CISM Meet the Author: Kevin Moulton, Senior Sales Consulting Manager, Oracle Kevin Moulton, CISSP, CISM, has been in the security space for more than 25 years, and with Oracle for 7 years. He manages the East Enterprise Security Sales Consulting Team. He is also a Distinguished Toastmaster. Follow Kevin on Twitter at twitter.com/kevin_moulton, where he sometimes tweets about security, but might also tweet about running, beer, food, baseball, football, good books, or whatever else grabs his attention. Kevin will be a regular contributor to this blog so stay tuned for more posts from him. When I speak to a room of IT administrators, I like to begin by asking them if they have implemented a complex password policy. Generally, they all nod their heads enthusiastically. I ask them if that password policy requires long passwords. More nodding. I ask if that policy requires upper and lower case letters – faster nodding – numbers – even faster – special characters – enthusiastic nodding all around! I then ask them if their policy also includes a requirement for users to regularly change their passwords. Now we have smiles with the nodding! I ask them if the users have different IDs and passwords on the many systems that they have access to. Of course! I then ask them if, when they walk around the building, they see something like this: Thanks to Jake Ludington for the nice example. Can these administrators be faulted for their policies? Probably not but, in the end, end-users will find a way to get their job done efficiently. Post-It Notes to the rescue! I was visiting a business in New York City one day which was a perfect example of this problem. First I walked up to the security desk and told them where I was headed. They asked me if they should call upstairs to have someone escort me. Is that my call? Is that policy? I said that I knew where I was going, so they let me go. Having the conference room number handy, I wandered around the place in a search of my destination. As I walked around, unescorted, I noticed the post-it note problem in abundance. Had I been so inclined, I could have logged in on almost any machine and into any number of systems. When I reached my intended conference room, I mentioned my post-it note observation to the two gentlemen with whom I was meeting. One of them said, “You mean like this,” and he produced a post it note full of login IDs and passwords from his breast pocket! I gave him kudos for not hanging the list on his monitor. We then talked for the rest of the meeting about the difficulties faced by the employees due to the security policies. These policies, although well-intended, made life very difficult for the end-users. Most users had access to 8 to 12 systems, and the passwords for each expired at a different times. The post-it note solution was understandable. Who could remember even half of them? What could this customer have done differently? I am a fan of using a provisioning system, such as Oracle Identity Manager, to manage all of the target systems. With OIM, and email could be automatically sent to all users when it was time to change their password. The end-users would follow a link to change their password on a web page, and then OIM would propagate that password out to all of the systems that the user had access to, even if the login IDs were different. Another option would be an Enterprise Single-Sign On Solution. With Oracle eSSO, all of a user’s credentials would be stored in a central, encrypted credential store. The end-user would only have to login to their machine each morning and then, as they moved to each new system, Oracle eSSO would supply the credentials. Good-bye post-it notes! 3M may be disappointed, but your end users will thank you. I hear people say that this post-it note problem is not a big deal, because the only people who would see the passwords are fellow employees. Do you really know who is walking around your building? What are the password policies in your business? How do the end-users respond?

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• Namespaces are obsolete

  - by Bertrand Le Roy

  To those of us who have been around for a while, namespaces have been part of the landscape. One could even say that they have been defining the large-scale features of the landscape in question. However, something happened fairly recently that I think makes this venerable structure obsolete. Before I explain this development and why it’s a superior concept to namespaces, let me recapitulate what namespaces are and why they’ve been so good to us over the years… Namespaces are used for a few different things: Scope: a namespace delimits the portion of code where a name (for a class, sub-namespace, etc.) has the specified meaning. Namespaces are usually the highest-level scoping structures in a software package. Collision prevention: name collisions are a universal problem. Some systems, such as jQuery, wave it away, but the problem remains. Namespaces provide a reasonable approach to global uniqueness (and in some implementations such as XML, enforce it). In .NET, there are ways to relocate a namespace to avoid those rare collision cases. Hierarchy: programmers like neat little boxes, and especially boxes within boxes within boxes. For some reason. Regular human beings on the other hand, tend to think linearly, which is why the Windows explorer for example has tried in a few different ways to flatten the file system hierarchy for the user. 1 is clearly useful because we need to protect our code from bleeding effects from the rest of the application (and vice versa). A language with only global constructs may be what some of us started programming on, but it’s not desirable in any way today. 2 may not be always reasonably worth the trouble (jQuery is doing fine with its global plug-in namespace), but we still need it in many cases. One should note however that globally unique names are not the only possible implementation. In fact, they are a rather extreme solution. What we really care about is collision prevention within our application. What happens outside is irrelevant. 3 is, more than anything, an aesthetical choice. A common convention has been to encode the whole pedigree of the code into the namespace. Come to think about it, we never think we need to import “Microsoft.SqlServer.Management.Smo.Agent” and that would be very hard to remember. What we want to do is bring nHibernate into our app. And this is precisely what you’ll do with modern package managers and module loaders. I want to take the specific example of RequireJS, which is commonly used with Node. Here is how you import a module with RequireJS: var http = require("http"); .csharpcode, .csharpcode pre { font-size: small; color: black; font-family: consolas, "Courier New", courier, monospace; background-color: #ffffff; /*white-space: pre;*/ } .csharpcode pre { margin: 0em; } .csharpcode .rem { color: #008000; } .csharpcode .kwrd { color: #0000ff; } .csharpcode .str { color: #006080; } .csharpcode .op { color: #0000c0; } .csharpcode .preproc { color: #cc6633; } .csharpcode .asp { background-color: #ffff00; } .csharpcode .html { color: #800000; } .csharpcode .attr { color: #ff0000; } .csharpcode .alt { background-color: #f4f4f4; width: 100%; margin: 0em; } .csharpcode .lnum { color: #606060; } This is of course importing a HTTP stack module into the code. There is no noise here. Let’s break this down. Scope (1) is provided by the one scoping mechanism in JavaScript: the closure surrounding the module’s code. Whatever scoping mechanism is provided by the language would be fine here. Collision prevention (2) is very elegantly handled. Whereas relocating is an afterthought, and an exceptional measure with namespaces, it is here on the frontline. You always relocate, using an extremely familiar pattern: variable assignment. We are very much used to managing our local variable names and any possible collision will get solved very easily by picking a different name. Wait a minute, I hear some of you say. This is only taking care of collisions on the client-side, on the left of that assignment. What if I have two libraries with the name “http”? Well, You can better qualify the path to the module, which is what the require parameter really is. As for hierarchical organization, you don’t really want that, do you? RequireJS’ module pattern does elegantly cover the bases that namespaces used to cover, but it also promotes additional good practices. First, it promotes usage of self-contained, single responsibility units of code through the closure-based, stricter scoping mechanism. Namespaces are somewhat more porous, as using/import statements can be used bi-directionally, which leads us to my second point… Sane dependency graphs are easier to achieve and sustain with such a structure. With namespaces, it is easy to construct dependency cycles (that’s bad, mmkay?). With this pattern, the equivalent would be to build mega-components, which are an easier problem to spot than a decay into inter-dependent namespaces, for which you need specialized tools. I really like this pattern very much, and I would like to see more environments implement it. One could argue that dependency injection has some commonalities with this for example. What do you think? This is the half-baked result of some morning shower reflections, and I’d love to read your thoughts about it. What am I missing?

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• Invitation to the Oracle EDGE Applications Partner Roadshow

  - by Hartmut Wiese

  Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 This is a unique opportunity for any Oracle Alliance & Channel Managers & their Partners to connect with the Oracle Edge Sales and Management Team to understand the relevance and value of the entire Oracle Edge Portfolio of Applications in solving complex customer issues and supporting a variety of evolving Partner Go-To-Market business models. Oracle Edge Applications (PLM, VCE, VCP, MDM, GRC, OPA) With strong participation from the key Oracle Edge Applications Sales business leaders, attendees will get the opportunity to hear about the benefits of the Oracle Edge Solutions within three different value-added contexts: Value 1: Oracle Edge Application Strategy Value 2: Oracle Value Chain Transformation Vision Value 3: Individual Application Business Line Differentiators Following on from the morning presentations, Oracle Partners will also get the opportunity in the afternoon to challenge and discuss the value of Oracle Edge Applications in the context of their own Go-To-Market business models. These sensitive discussions will be managed via focused 1-2-1 breakout meetings with the relevant Oracle Edge Applications Sales Business Leaders. Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0cm 5.4pt 0cm 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0cm; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:11.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-ascii-font-family:Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-fareast; mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;} When Where To Register Tuesday, July 09th 2013 09 am to 04 pm Utrecht Register now Tuesday, July 16th 2013 09 am to 04 pm London Register now Wednesday, August 28th 2013 09 am to 04 pm Paris Register now IIMPORTANT NOTE: ONLY 60 ATTENDEE PLACES AVAILABLE PER LOCATION - BOOK NOW TO AVOID MISSING OUT. Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0cm 5.4pt 0cm 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0cm; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:11.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-ascii-font-family:Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-fareast; mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;} There is a strict limit to the number of people who can attend this event based on site logistics for the day. Please note that Partners will be given priority over Oracle personnel registrations. Partners however may only register a maximum of 2 personnel from their company plus the supporting local Oracle Alliance & Channel Manager /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0cm 5.4pt 0cm 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0cm; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:11.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-ascii-font-family:Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-fareast; mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;}

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• SQLIO Writes

  - by Grant Fritchey

  SQLIO is a fantastic utility for testing the abilities of the disks in your system. It has a very unfortunate name though, since it's not really a SQL Server testing utility at all. It really is a disk utility. They ought to call it DiskIO because they'd get more people using I think. Anyway, branding is not the point of this blog post. Writes are the point of this blog post. SQLIO works by slamming your disk. It performs as mean reads as it can or it performs as many writes as it can depending on how you've configured your tests. There are much smarter people than me who will get into all the various types of tests you should run. I'd suggest reading a bit of what Jonathan Kehayias (blog|twitter) has to say or wade into Denny Cherry's (blog|twitter) work. They're going to do a better job than I can describing all the benefits and mechanisms around using this excellent piece of software. My concerns are very focused. I needed to set up a series of tests to see how well our product SQL Storage Compress worked. I wanted to know the effects it would have on a system, the disk for sure, but also memory and CPU. How to stress the system? SQLIO of course. But when I set it up and ran it, following the documentation that comes with it, I was seeing better than 99% compression on the files. Don't get me wrong. Our product is magnificent, wonderful, all things great and beautiful, gets you coffee in the morning and is made mostly from bacon. But 99% compression. No, it's not that good. So what's up? Well, it's the configuration. The default mechanism is to load up a file, something large that will overwhelm your disk cache. You're instructed to load the file with a character 0x0. I never got a computer science degree. I went to film school. Because of this, I didn't memorize ASCII tables so when I saw this, I thought it was zero's or something. Nope. It's NULL. That's right, you're making a very large file, but you're filling it with NULL values. That's actually ok when all you're testing is the disk sub-system. But, when you want to test a compression and decompression, that can be an issue. I got around this fairly quickly. Instead of generating a file filled with NULL values, I just copied a database file for my tests. And to test it with SQL Storage Compress, I used a database file that had already been run through compression (about 40% compression on that file if you're interested). Now the reads were taken care of. I am seeing very realistic performance from decompressing the information for reads through SQLIO. But what about writes? Well, the issue is, what does SQLIO write? I don't have access to the code. But I do have access to the results. I did two different tests, just to be sure of what I was seeing. First test, use the .DAT file as described in the documentation. I opened the .DAT file after I was done with SQLIO, using WordPad. Guess what? It's a giant file full of air. SQLIO writes NULL values. What does that do to compression? I did the test again on a copy of an uncompressed database file. Then I ran the original and the SQLIO modified copy through ZIP to see what happened. I got better than 99% compression out of the SQLIO modified file (original file of 624,896kb went to 275,871kb compressed, after SQLIO it went to 608kb compressed). So, what does SQLIO write? It writes air. If you're trying to test it with compression or maybe some other type of file storage mechanism like dedupe, you need to know this because your tests really won't be valid. Should I find some other mechanism for testing? Yeah, if all I'm interested in is establishing performance to my own satisfaction, yes. But, I want to be able to compare my results with other people's results and we all need to be using the same tool in order for that to happen. SQLIO is the common mechanism that most people I know use to establish disk performance behavior. It'd be better if we could get SQLIO to do writes in some other fashion. Oh, and before I go, I get to brag a bit. Measuring IOPS, SQL Storage Compress outperforms my disk alone by about 30%.

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• What Counts For a DBA: Fitness

  - by Louis Davidson

  If you know me, you can probably guess that physical exercise is not really my thing. There was a time in my past when it a larger part of my life, but even then never in the same sort of passionate way as a number of our SQL friends.  For me, I find that mental exercise satisfies what I believe to be the same inner need that drives people to run farther than I like to drive on most Saturday mornings, and it is certainly just as addictive. Mental fitness shares many common traits with physical fitness, especially the need to attain it through repetitive training. I only wish that mental training burned off a bacon cheeseburger in the same manner as does jogging around a dewy park on Saturday morning. In physical training, there are at least two goals, the first of which is to be physically able to do a task. The second is to train the brain to perform the task without thinking too hard about it. No matter how long it has been since you last rode a bike, you will be almost certainly be able to hop on and start riding without thinking about the process of pedaling or balancing. If you’ve never ridden a bike, you could be a physics professor /Olympic athlete and still crash the first few times you try, even though you are as strong as an ox and your knowledge of the physics of bicycle riding makes the concept child’s play. For programming tasks, the process is very similar. As a DBA, you will come to know intuitively how to backup, optimize, and secure database systems. As a data programmer, you will work to instinctively use the clauses of Transact-SQL DML so that, when you need to group data three ways (and not four), you will know to use the GROUP BY clause with GROUPING SETS without resorting to a search engine.  You have the skill. Making it naturally then requires repetition and experience is the primary requirement, not just simply learning about a topic. The hardest part of being really good at something is this difference between knowledge and skill. I have recently taken several informative training classes with Kimball University on data warehousing and ETL. Now I have a lot more knowledge about designing data warehouses than before. I have also done a good bit of data warehouse designing of late and have started to improve to some level of proficiency with the theory. Yet, for all of this head knowledge, it is still a struggle to take what I have learned and apply it to the designs I am working on.  Data warehousing is still a task that is not yet deeply ingrained in my brain muscle memory. On the other hand, relational database design is something that no matter how much or how little I may get to do it, I am comfortable doing it. I have done it as a profession now for well over a decade, I teach classes on it, and I also have done (and continue to do) a lot of mental training beyond the work day. Sometimes the training is just basic education, some reading blogs and attending sessions at PASS events.  My best training comes from spending time working on other people’s design issues in forums (though not nearly as much as I would like to lately). Working through other people’s problems is a great way to exercise your brain on problems with which you’re not immediately familiar. The final bit of exercise I find useful for cultivating mental fitness for a data professional is also probably the nerdiest thing that I will ever suggest you do.  Akin to running in place, the idea is to work through designs in your head. I have designed more than one database system that would revolutionize grocery store operations, sales at my local Target store, the ordering process at Amazon, and ways to improve Disney World operations to get me through a line faster (some of which they are starting to implement without any of my help.) Never are the designs truly fleshed out, but enough to work through structures and processes.  On “paper”, I have designed database systems to catalog things as trivial as my Lego creations, rental car companies and my audio and video collections. Once I get the database designed mentally, sometimes I will create the database, add some data (often using Red-Gate’s Data Generator), and write a few queries to see if a concept was realistic, but I will rarely fully flesh out the database since I have no desire to do any user interface programming anymore.  The mental training allows me to keep in practice for when the time comes to do the work I love the most for real…even if I have been spending most of my work time lately building data warehouses.  If you are really strong of mind and body, perhaps you can mix a mental run with a physical run; though don’t run off of a cliff while contemplating how you might design a database to catalog the trees on a mountain…that would be contradictory to the purpose of both types of exercise.

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• To refund or not to refund this client?

  - by Mahalia Samuels

  I'd really appreciate your advice on an ongoing project. I presented my client with a proposal and design samples which he approved, and he paid in full instead of the 50% upfront deposit as I'd given him a generous discount. He was then slow in furnishing me with some of the content, but once we did, he expected the website to be finished immediately which was not possible. Because he needed it done urgently, we agreed to try to get it done about 10 working days after the content was provided, but the developer who was helping me let me down. The next week, I completed the website myself and uploaded it to the server on a Friday afternoon. He then calls and texts me on following Sunday while I'm at church to say it's not online (there was probably a problem with his browser). The next morning, I received an email from him demanding a full refund within two days because he couldn't see the website (even though it was live, and I tested it on multiple browsers, a different computer and my phone), and he called me shouting at me because he couldn't access it. Finally when he was able to access it, he was unhappy with a certain detail regarding the slideshow which I began fixing and which was done the next day. He then referred me to another website and said he wanted it to look similar but not identical to it in terms of the layout. He also now wanted to add more features which were not in the original design. I got a designer to work on a new design which I sent to him for review, which if approved would be completed by 15 October, and he approved it last Thursday. He then called me yesterday to say that he wanted to change the design - he only approved it out of impatience. He now wants the website to be more similar to the other website he referred me to and he wants it done before the 15th! Then, he says to me that other people have done websites for him in three days - website's he's complained to me about for lacking dimension because they were just premium themes, whereas we'd designed and coded from scratch. I'm thinking of finishing the website but refunding him in full (or at least the refundable 50%) less domain registration and other non-refundable amounts, just to avoid further escalation of this matter and having him call me next week and say he wants to change it again. These are the applicable terms and conditions as laid out in the agreement: Total amount due for this project is Amount A. Client shall pay Consultant a deposit of Amount B (50% of total amount due for project) in advance before any work commences on the Project. The balance is due within 7 working days of completion of project. Deposit is non-refundable. Should client opt to host elsewhere, applicable transferral fee of Amount C will apply. Estimated project completion time frame is 14 to 30 days from the date Client furnishes Consultant with Brief and all other required media and data, provided that Client has made payment to secure the project. Consultant will make every effort to meet agreed upon due dates. The Client should be aware that failure to submit required information or materials, or last minute changes and excessive changes may cause subsequent delays. Client delays could result in significant delays in delivery of finished work. Major changes in client input or direction or brief will be charged at normal rates. Any work the Client wishes Consultant to create, which is not specified in the attached Proposal will be considered an additional service. Client agrees to pay Consultant for any additional expenses or additional services not included in the attached quotation and proposal if requested by the Client. Web design credit in the name of the Consultant, and link to Consultant’s website shall be placed on the footer of the final Website. Either party may terminate this Agreement by giving 7 days written notice to the other of such termination. In the event that Work is postponed or terminated at the request of the Client, Consultant shall have the right to bill pro rata at full rates for work completed through the date of that request, while reserving all rights under this Agreement. If additional payment is due, this shall be payable within seven days of the Client's written notification to stop work. In the event of termination, the Client shall also pay any expenses incurred by Consultant and the Consultant shall own all rights to the Work. Advice please?

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• A Knights Tale

  - by Phil Factor

  There are so many lessons to be learned from the story of Knight Capital losing nearly half a billion dollars as a result of a deployment gone wrong. The Knight Capital Group (KCG N) was an American global financial services firm engaging in market making, electronic execution, and institutional sales and trading. According to the recent order (File No.3.15570) against Knight Capital by U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission?, Knight had, for many years used some software which broke up incoming “parent” orders into smaller “child” orders that were then transmitted to various exchanges or trading venues for execution. A tracking ‘cumulative quantity’ function counted the number of ‘child’ orders and stopped the process once the total of child orders matched the ‘parent’ and so the parent order had been completed. Back in the mists of time, some code had been added to it  which was excuted if a particular flag was set. It was called ‘power peg’ and seems to have had a similar design and purpose, but, one guesses, would have shared the same tracking function. This code had been abandoned in 2003, but never deleted. In 2005, The tracking function was moved to an earlier point in the main process. It would seem from the account that, from that point, had that flag ever been set, the old ‘Power Peg’ would have been executed like Godzilla bursting from the ice, making child orders without limit without any tracking function. It wasn’t, presumably because the software that set the flag was removed. In 2012, nearly a decade after ‘Power Peg’ was abandoned, Knight prepared a new module to their software to cope with the imminent Retail Liquidity Program (RLP) for the New York Stock Exchange. By this time, the flag had remained unused and someone made the fateful decision to reuse it, and replace the old ‘power peg’ code with this new RLP code. Had the two actions been done together in a single automated deployment, and the new deployment tested, all would have been well. It wasn’t. To quote… “Beginning on July 27, 2012, Knight deployed the new RLP code in SMARS in stages by placing it on a limited number of servers in SMARS on successive days. During the deployment of the new code, however, one of Knight’s technicians did not copy the new code to one of the eight SMARS computer servers. Knight did not have a second technician review this deployment and no one at Knight realized that the Power Peg code had not been removed from the eighth server, nor the new RLP code added. Knight had no written procedures that required such a review.” (para 15) “On August 1, Knight received orders from broker-dealers whose customers were eligible to participate in the RLP. The seven servers that received the new code processed these orders correctly. However, orders sent with the repurposed flag to the eighth server triggered the defective Power Peg code still present on that server. As a result, this server began sending child orders to certain trading centers for execution. Because the cumulative quantity function had been moved, this server continuously sent child orders, in rapid sequence, for each incoming parent order without regard to the number of share executions Knight had already received from trading centers. Although one part of Knight’s order handling system recognized that the parent orders had been filled, this information was not communicated to SMARS.” (para 16) SMARS routed millions of orders into the market over a 45-minute period, and obtained over 4 million executions in 154 stocks for more than 397 million shares. By the time that Knight stopped sending the orders, Knight had assumed a net long position in 80 stocks of approximately $3.5 billion and a net short position in 74 stocks of approximately $3.15 billion. Knight’s shares dropped more than 20% after traders saw extreme volume spikes in a number of stocks, including preferred shares of Wells Fargo (JWF) and semiconductor company Spansion (CODE). Both stocks, which see roughly 100,000 trade per day, had changed hands more than 4 million times by late morning. Ultimately, Knight lost over $460 million from this wild 45 minutes of trading. Obviously, I’m interested in all this because, at one time, I used to write trading systems for the City of London. Obviously, the US SEC is in a far better position than any of us to work out the failings of Knight’s IT department, and the report makes for painful reading. I can’t help observing, though, that even with the breathtaking mistakes all along the way, that a robust automated deployment process that was ‘all-or-nothing’, and tested from soup to nuts would have prevented the disaster. The report reads like a Greek Tragedy. All the way along one wants to shout ‘No! not that way!’ and ‘Aargh! Don’t do it!’. As the tragedy unfolds, the audience weeps for the players, trapped by a cruel fate. All application development and deployment requires defense in depth. All IT goes wrong occasionally, but if there is a culture of defensive programming throughout, the consequences are usually containable. For financial systems, these defenses are required by statute, and ignored only by the foolish. Knight’s mistakes weren’t made by just one hapless sysadmin, but were progressive errors by an  IT culture spanning at least ten years.  One can spell these out, but I think they’re obvious. One can only hope that the industry studies what happened in detail, learns from the mistakes, and draws the right conclusions.

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• Social Engagement: One Size Doesn't Fit Anyone

  - by Mike Stiles

  The key to achieving meaningful social engagement is to know who you’re talking to, know what they like, and consistently deliver that kind of material to them. Every magazine for women knows this. When you read the article titles promoted on their covers, there’s no mistaking for whom that magazine is intended. And yet, confusion still reigns at many brands as to exactly whom they want to talk to, what those people want to hear, and what kind of content they should be creating for them. In most instances, the root problem is brands want to be all things to all people. Their target audience…the world! Good luck with that. It’s 2012, the age of aggregation and custom content delivery. To cope with the modern day barrage of information, people have constructed technological filters so that content they regard as being “for them” is mostly what gets through. Even if your brand is for men and women, young and old, you may want to consider social properties that divide men from women, and young from old. Yes, a man might find something in a women’s magazine that interests him. But that doesn’t mean he’s going to subscribe to it, or buy even one issue. In fact he’ll probably never see the article he’d otherwise be interested in, because in his mind, “This isn’t for me.” It wasn’t packaged for him. News Flash: men and women are different. So it’s a tall order to craft your Facebook Page or Twitter handle to simultaneously exude the motivators for both. The Harris Interactive study “2012 Connecting and Communicating Online: State of Social Media” sheds light on the differing social behaviors and drivers. -65% of women (vs. 59% of men) stay glued to social because they don’t want to miss anything. -25% of women check social when they wake up, before they check email. Only 18% of men check social before e-mail. -95% of women surveyed belong to Facebook vs. 86% of men. -67% of women log in to Facebook once a day or more vs. 54% of men. -Conventional wisdom is Pinterest is mostly a woman-thing, right? That may be true for viewing, but not true for sharing. Men are actually more likely to share on Pinterest than women, 23% to 10%. -The sharing divide extends to YouTube. 68% of women use it mainly for consumption, as opposed to 52% of men. -Women are as likely to have a Twitter account as men, but they’re much less likely to check it often. 54% of women check it once a week compared to 2/3 of men. Obviously, there are some takeaways from this depending on your target. Women don’t want to miss out on anything, so serialized content might be a good idea, right? Promotional posts that lead to a big payoff could keep them hooked. Posts for women might be better served first thing in the morning. If sharing is your goal, maybe male-targeted content is more likely to get those desired shares. And maybe Twitter is a better place to aim your male-targeted content than Facebook. Some grocery stores started experimenting with male-only aisles. The results have been impressive. Why? Because while it’s true men were finding those same items in the store just fine before, now something has been created just for them. They have a place in the store where they belong. Each brand’s strategy and targets are going to differ. The point is…know who you’re talking to, know how they behave, know what they like, and deliver content using any number of social relationship management targeting tools that meets their expectations. If, however, you’re committed to a one-size-fits-all, “our content is for everybody” strategy (or even worse, a “this is what we want to put out and we expect everybody to love it” strategy), your content will miss the mark for more often than it hits. @mikestilesPhoto via stock.schng

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• No More NCrunch For Me

  - by Steve Wilkes

  When I opened up Visual Studio this morning, I was greeted with this little popup: NCrunch is a Visual Studio add-in which runs your tests while you work so you know if and when you've broken anything, as well as providing coverage indicators in the IDE and coverage metrics on demand. It recently went commercial (which I thought was fair enough), and time is running out for the free version I've been using for the last couple of months. From my experiences using NCrunch I'm going to let it expire, and go about my business without it. Here's why. Before I start, let me say that I think NCrunch is a good product, which is to say it's had a positive impact on my programming. I've used it to help test-drive a library I'm making right from the start of the project, and especially at the beginning it was very useful to have it run all my tests whenever I made a change. The first problem is that while that was cool to start with, it’s recently become a bit of a chore. Problems Running Tests NCrunch has two 'engine modes' in which it can run tests for you - it can run all your tests when you make a change, or it can figure out which tests were impacted and only run those. Unfortunately, it became clear pretty early on that that second option (which is marked as 'experimental') wasn't really working for me, so I had to have it run everything. With a smallish number of tests and while I was adding new features that was great, but I've now got 445 tests (still not exactly loads) and am more in a 'clean and tidy' mode where I know that a change I'm making will probably only affect a particular subset of the tests. With that in mind it's a bit of a drag sitting there after I make a change and having to wait for NCrunch to run everything. I could disable it and manually run the tests I know are impacted, but then what's the point of having NCrunch? If the 'impacted only' engine mode worked well this problem would go away, but that's not what I found. Secondly, what's wrong with this picture? I've got 445 tests, and NCrunch has queued 455 tests to run. So it's queued duplicate tests - in this quickly-screenshotted case 10, but I've seen the total queue get up over 600. If I'm already itchy waiting for it to run all my tests against a change I know only affects a few, I'm even itchier waiting for it to run a lot of them twice. Problems With Code Coverage NCrunch marks each line of code with a dot to say if it's covered by tests - a black dot says the line isn't covered, a red dot says it's covered but at least one of the covering tests is failing, and a green dot means all the covering tests pass. It also calculates coverage statistics for you. Unfortunately, there's a couple of flaws in the coverage. Firstly, it doesn't support ExcludeFromCodeCoverage attributes. This feature has been requested and I expect will be included in a later release, but right now it doesn't. So this: ...is counted as a non-covered line, and drags your coverage statistics down. Hmph. As well as that, coverage of certain types of code is missed. This: ...is definitely covered. I am 100% absolutely certain it is, by several tests. NCrunch doesn't pick it up, down go my coverage statistics. I've had NCrunch find genuinely uncovered code which I've been able to remove, and that's great, but what's the coverage percentage on this project? Umm... I don't know. Conclusion None of these are major, tool-crippling problems, and I expect NCrunch to get much better in future releases. The current version has some great features, like this: ...that's a line of code with a failing test covering it, and NCrunch can run that failing test and take me to that line exquisitely easily. That's awesome! I'd happily pay for a tool that can do that. But here's the thing: NCrunch (currently) costs $159 (about £100) for a personal licence and $289 (about £180) for a commercial one. I'm not sure which one I'd need as my project is a personal one which I'm intending to open-source, but I'm a professional, self-employed developer, but in any case - that seems like a lot of money for an imperfect tool. If it did everything it's advertised to do more or less perfectly I'd consider it, but it doesn't. So no more NCrunch for me.

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• The Dreaded Startup Repair Loop on Win 7

  - by HighAltitudeCoder

  For most people, upgrading to Windows 7 has been a relatively painless process.  Not me.  I am in the unlucky 1% or less who had a somewhat less pleasant experience.  First, I cloned my entire onto a larger (and much faster) solid state hard drive, only experiencing minimal problems. Then, I bought the Retail version of Windows 7 Ultimate, took a deep breath and... oh yeah, I almost forgot - BACK UP THE COMPUTER.  The next morning I upgraded to Win 7 and everything seemed fine, until... I rebooted the system, the nice Windows 7 launch graphics come up, it's about to launch and AWWW, are you kidding me?!?!  Back to the BIOS splash screen?  Next comes the sequence of failure - attempt repair - unable to repair - do you want to wipe your hard drive decisions. Because I purchased the retail version, a number is provided where I could call Microsoft Tech support.  When I did, they instructed me to click "Install" from my installation CD, which did not work.  When I tried the "Upgrade" option, it reaches an impasse, telling you that yoiu have a newer version of Win 7, and thus cannot Upgrade.  If you choose "Install" you willl lose everything... files, programs, EVERYTHING.  Or at least this is what it tells you.  I was not willing to take the risk. To make things worse, I had installed a new antivirus software application before I realized my system was unstable (Trend Micro Titanium Internet Security), and this was causing additional problems. One interesting thing, and the only saving grace as it turns out, was that my system WOULD successfully reboot into the OS if I chose to restart it, rather than shut it down.  If I chose to shut down, I would have to go through the loop again until I was given the option to restart. As it turned out, I needed to update my BIOS.  I assumed that since I had updated my BIOS a long time ago to settings that were stable under Windows Vista Ultimate x64, I incorrectly expected Win 7 to adopt the same settings and didn't expect there to be any problems.  WRONG. My BIOS had a setting to halt the boot cycle if various kinds of errors were detected.  Windows Vista didn't care about this, but forget it under Windows 7.  I turned immediately corrected that BIOS setting.  Next, there were the two separate BIOS settings: enable USB mouse and enable USB keyboard.  The only sequence of events that would work were to start my reboot process over from stratch with a hard-wired non-usb keyboard and mouse.  Whent the system booted under these settings, it doesn't detect any errors due to either the mouse or keyboard, and actually booted for the first time in a long while (let me tell ya, that's an amazing experience after fiddling with settings for two entire weekends!) Next step: leave your old mouse and keyboard connected, but also connect your other two devices (mouse, keyboard) that use USB connections.  During the boot cycle, the operating system will not fail due to missing requirements during startup, and it will then pick up the new drivers necessary to use your new hardware. If you think you are in the clear here, you are wrong.  The next VERY IMPORTANT step is to remember to change your settings in the BIOS upon next startup.  Specifically, yoiu will need ot change your BIOS to enable USB mouse and enable USB keyboard input.  If you don't, Windows will detect an incompatibility upon the next startup, and you will be stuck once again in the endless cycle of reboot/Startup Repair/reboot/Startup Repair, without ever reaching a successful boot. Here's the thing - the BIOS and the drivers registered in Win 7 need to match.  If they don't, you're going to lose another weekend worrying and fiddling, all the while wondering if you've permanently damaged your hard drive beyond repair. (Sigh).  In the end, things worked out.  I must note that it is saddening to see how many posts there are out there that recommend just doing a clean install, as if it's the only option.  How many countless poor souls have lost their data, their backups, their pictures and videos, all for nothing other than the fact that the person giving advice just didn't know what to do at that point? My advice to you, try having a look at your BIOS settings first and making sure Win 7 can find your BIOS settings, and also disabling in your BIOS anything that might halt your system boot-up process if it encounters errors.

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• IE9, LightSwitch Beta 2 and Zune HD: A Study in Risk Management?

  - by andrewbrust

  Photo by parl, 'Risk.’ Under Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs License This has been a busy week for Microsoft, and for me as well.  On Monday, Microsoft launched Internet Explorer 9 at South by Southwest (SXSW) in Austin, TX.  That evening I flew from New York to Seattle.  On Tuesday morning, Microsoft launched Visual Studio LightSwitch, Beta 2 with a Go-Live license, in Redmond, and I had the privilege of speaking at the keynote presentation where the announcement was made.  Readers of this blog know I‘m a fan of LightSwitch, so I was happy to tell the app dev tools partners in the audience that I thought the LightSwitch extensions ecosystem represented a big opportunity – comparable to the opportunity when Visual Basic 1.0 was entering its final beta roughly 20 years ago.  On Tuesday evening, I flew back to New York (and wrote most of this post in-flight). Two busy, productive days.  But there was a caveat that impacts the accomplishments, because Monday was also the day reports surfaced from credible news agencies that Microsoft was discontinuing its dedicated Zune hardware efforts.  While the Zune brand, technology and service will continue to be a component of Windows Phone and a piece of the Xbox puzzle as well, speculation is that Microsoft will no longer be going toe-to-toe with iPod touch in the portable music player market. If we take all three of these developments together (even if one of them is based on speculation), two interesting conclusions can reasonably be drawn, one good and one less so. Microsoft is doubling down on technologies it finds strategic and de-emphasizing those that it does not.  HTML 5 and the Web are strategic, so here comes IE9, and it’s a very good browser.  Try it and see.  Silverlight is strategic too, as is SQL Server, Windows Azure and SQL Azure, so here comes Visual Studio LightSwitch Beta 2 and a license to deploy its apps to production.  Downloads of that product have exceeded Microsoft’s projections by more than 50%, and the company is even citing analyst firms’ figures covering the number of power-user developers that might use it. (I happen to think the product will be used by full-fledged developers as well, but that’s a separate discussion.) Windows Phone is strategic too…I wasn’t 100% positive of that before, but the Nokia agreement has made me confident.  Xbox as an entertainment appliance is also strategic.  Standalone music players are not strategic – and even if they were, selling them has been a losing battle for Microsoft.  So if Microsoft has consolidated the Zune content story and the ZunePass subscription into Xbox and Windows Phone, it would make sense, and would be a smart allocation of resources.  Essentially, it would be for the greater good. But it’s not all good.  In this scenario, Zune player customers would lose out.  Unless they wanted to switch to Windows Phone, and then use their phone’s battery for the portable media needs, they’re going to need a new platform.  They’re going to feel abandoned.  Even if Zune lives, there have been other such cul de sacs for customers.  Remember SPOT watches?  Live Spaces?  The original Live Mesh?  Microsoft discontinued each of these products.  The company is to be commended for cutting its losses, as admitting a loss isn’t easy.  But Redmond won’t be well-regarded by the victims of those decisions.  Instead, it gets black marks. What’s the answer?  I think it’s a bit like the 1980’s New York City “don’t block the box” gridlock rules: don’t enter an intersection unless you see a clear path through it.  If the light turns red and you’re blocking the perpendicular traffic, that’s your fault in judgment.  You get fined and get points on your license and you don’t get to shrug it off as beyond your control.  Accountability is key.  The same goes for Microsoft.  If it decides to enter a market, it should see a reasonable path through success in that market. Switching analogies, Microsoft shouldn’t make investments haphazardly, and it certainly shouldn’t ask investors to buy into a high-risk fund that is sold as safe and which offers only moderate returns.  People won’t continue to invest with a fund manager with a track record of over-zealous, imprudent, sub-prime investments.  The same is true on the product side for Microsoft, and not just with music players and geeky wrist watches.  It’s true of Web browsers, and line-of-business app dev tools, and smartphones, and cloud platforms and operating systems too.  When Microsoft is casual about its own risk, it raises risk for its customers, and weakens its reputation, market share and credibility.  That doesn’t mean all risk is bad, but it does mean no product team’s risk should be taken lightly. For mutual fund companies, it’s the CEO’s job to give his fund managers autonomy, but to make sure they’re conforming to a standard of rational risk management.  Because all those funds carry the same brand, and many of them serve the same investors. The same goes for Microsoft, its product portfolio, its executive ranks and its product managers.

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• how to display these text on blackberry and how to show the hyperlinks

  - by Changqi

  <!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Strict//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/strict.dtd"> <html> <head> <meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=UTF-8"> <title>A history of Canoe Cove /</title> </head> <body> <div class="tei"> <p> A History of </p> <p> The General Stores </p> <p> There were several general stores in our <a class="search orgName" target="_blank" href="http://islandlives.net/fedora/ilives_book_search/tei.orgNameTERM:%22Cove%22+AND+dc.type:collection">Cove</a> at different times. The one that lasted longest was at the Corner across from the school and it had many owners. Who established it is unclear but John MacKenzie, the piper, who was also a shoe maker lived there. He was a relative of the present day MacKenzies of <a class="search placeName" target="_blank" href="http://islandlives.net/fedora/ilives_book_search/tei.placeNameTERM:%22Canoe Cove%22+AND+dc.type:collection">Canoe Cove</a>. William MacKay who married Christena MacLean was operating it when it burned down and a store which had belonged to Neil "Cooper" MacLean was moved across to the site. This was later bought by <span class="persName"><a class="search persName" target="_blank" href="http://islandlives.net/fedora/ilives_book_search/tei.persNameTERM:%22MacCannell+Neil%22+AND+dc.type:collection"> Neil MacCannell </a></span> of Long Creek , a schoolteacher who taught in the <a class="search orgName" target="_blank" href="http://islandlives.net/fedora/ilives_book_search/tei.orgNameTERM:%22Cove%22+AND+dc.type:collection">Cove</a> for a few years. <span class="persName"><a class="search persName" target="_blank" href="http://islandlives.net/fedora/ilives_book_search/tei.persNameTERM:%22MacNevin+Hector%22+AND+dc.type:collection"> Hector MacNevin </a></span> from <a class="search placeName" target="_blank" href="http://islandlives.net/fedora/ilives_book_search/tei.placeNameTERM:%22St. Catherines%22+AND+dc.type:collection">St. Catherines</a> operated it for a year while it still belonged to <span class="persName"><a class="search persName" target="_blank" href="http://islandlives.net/fedora/ilives_book_search/tei.persNameTERM:%22MacCannell+Neil%22+AND+dc.type:collection"> Neil MacCannell </a></span> because Neil had accepted a job in <a class="search placeName" target="_blank" href="http://islandlives.net/fedora/ilives_book_search/tei.placeNameTERM:%22Charlottetown%22+AND+dc.type:collection">Charlottetown</a> as clerk of the Court. Later Mrs. John Angus Darrach bought it and she and her son George ran it for years until both had health problems, and had to close the store after which closing it never reopened. After George died and his wife Hazel moved to Montague to live with her family the building was sold to Robert Patterson . Rob lived in it for a few years, making many improvements then sold it to Kirk McAleer. </p> </div>

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• Placing Varibles into an external Sheet

  - by Leslie Peer

  Trying to Build an Online D&d program which stores the character info into Tables my problem is the game works just fine while your playing but as soon as you exit game all varibles are lost which means you have to restart from scratch the next time you log on... So this is a Two Fold Question What is the Best type of External Sheet to save it on... and two How to access sheet for saving and Loading Below are Varibles <SCRIPT> Name1="Tabor Bloomfield"; Name2="Sam Wrightfield"; Name3="Gavin Hartfild"; Name4="Gail Quickfoot"; Name5="Robert Gragorian"; Name6="Peter Shain"; Class1="MagicUser"; Class2="Fighter"; Class3="Fighter"; Class4="Thief"; Class5="Cleric"; Class6="Fighter"; Level1=23; Level2=1; Level3=1; Level4=2; Level5=2; Level6=1; Hpts1=145; Hpts2=14; Hpts3=13; Hpts4=8; Hpts5=12; Hpts6=15; Armor1="Robe of Protection +5"; Armor2="Splinted Armor"; Armor3="Chain Armor"; Armor4="Leather Armor"; Armor5="Chain Armor"; Armor6="Splinted Armor"; Ac1a=5; Ac2a=3; Ac3a=3; Ac4a=4; Ac5a=2; Ac6a=3; Armor1b="Ring of Protection +5"; Armor2b="Small Shield"; Armor3b="Small Shield"; Armor4b="Wooden Shield"; Armor5b="Large Shield"; Armor6b="Small Shield"; Ac1b=5; Ac2b=1; Ac3b=1; Ac4b=1; Ac5b=1; Ac6b=1; Str1=21; Str2=16; Str3=14; Str4=13; Str5=14; Str6=13; Int1=19; Int2=11; Int3=12; Int4=13; Int5=14; Int6=13; Wis1=18; Wis2=12; Wis3=14; Wis4=13; Wis5=14; Wis6=12; Dex1=19; Dex2=14; Dex3=13; Dex4=15; Dex5=14; Dex6=12; Con1=19; Con2=15; Con3=16; Con4=13; Con5=12; Con6=10; Chr1=21; Chr2=14; Chr3=13; Chr4=12; Chr5=14; Chr6=13; </SCRIPT> File name ="gamestats" Path="trellian Webpage/droves E and F/gamestats have tryed html Page,Javascript,Creating a serperate table page and putting the varibles into cells...But at a lost on how to arrive at a solution

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• setting up subreport in ireport using XML datasource

  - by shyam

  can anyone explain in detail(if possible with screen shorts) how to add subreport (one to many relation) this being the xml data source <addressbook> <category name="home"> <person id="1"> <LASTNAME>Davolio</LASTNAME> <FIRSTNAME>Nancy</FIRSTNAME> <hobbies> <hobby>Radio Control</hobby> <hobby>R/C Cars</hobby> <hobby>Micro R/C Cars</hobby> <hobby>Die-Cast Models</hobby> </hobbies> <email>[email protected]</email> <email>[email protected]</email> </person> <person id="2"> <LASTNAME>Fuller</LASTNAME> <FIRSTNAME>Andrew</FIRSTNAME> <email>[email protected]</email> <email>[email protected]</email> </person> <person id="3"> <LASTNAME>Leverling</LASTNAME> <FIRSTNAME>Janet</FIRSTNAME> <hobbies> <hobby>Rockets</hobby> <hobby>Puzzles</hobby> <hobby>Science Hobby</hobby> <hobby>Toy Horse</hobby> </hobbies> <email>[email protected]</email> <email>[email protected]</email> </person> </category> <category name="work"> <person id="4"> <LASTNAME>Peacock</LASTNAME> <FIRSTNAME>Margaret</FIRSTNAME> <hobbies> <hobby>Toy Horse</hobby> </hobbies> <email>[email protected]</email> </person> <person id="5"> <LASTNAME>Buchanan</LASTNAME> <FIRSTNAME>Steven</FIRSTNAME> <hobbies> </hobbies> <email>[email protected]</email> </person> <person id="6"> <LASTNAME>Suyama</LASTNAME> <FIRSTNAME>Michael</FIRSTNAME> </person> <person id="7"> <LASTNAME>King</LASTNAME> <FIRSTNAME>Robert</FIRSTNAME> </person> </category> <category name="Other"> <person id="8"> <LASTNAME>Callahan</LASTNAME> <FIRSTNAME>Laura</FIRSTNAME> <email>[email protected]</email> </person> <person id="9"> <LASTNAME>Dodsworth</LASTNAME> <email>[email protected]</email> </person> </category> </addressbook>

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• Merge Sort issue when removing the array copy step

  - by Ime Prezime

  I've been having an issue that I couldn't debug for quite some time. I am trying to implement a MergeSort algorithm with no additional steps of array copying by following Robert Sedgewick's algorithm in "Algorithm's in C++" book. Short description of the algorithm: The recursive program is set up to sort b, leaving results in a. Thus, the recursive calls are written to leave their result in b, and we use the basic merge program to merge those files from b into a. In this way, all the data movement is done during the course of the merges. The problem is that I cannot find any logical errors but the sorting isn't done properly. Data gets overwritten somewhere and I cannot determine what logical error causes this. The data is sorted when the program is finished but it is not the same data any more. For example, Input array: { A, Z, W, B, G, C } produces the array: { A, G, W, W, Z, Z }. I can obviously see that it must be a logical error somewhere, but I have been trying to debug this for a pretty long time and I think a fresh set of eyes could maybe see what I'm missing cause I really can't find anything wrong. My code: static const int M = 5; void insertion(char** a, int l, int r) { int i,j; char * temp; for (i = 1; i < r + 1; i++) { temp = a[i]; j = i; while (j > 0 && strcmp(a[j-1], temp) > 0) { a[j] = a[j-1]; j = j - 1; } a[j] = temp; } } //merging a and b into c void merge(char ** c,char ** a, int N, char ** b, int M) { for (int i = 0, j = 0, k = 0; k < N+M; k++) { if (i == N) { c[k] = b[j++]; continue; } if (j == M) { c[k] = a[i++]; continue; } c[k] = strcmp(a[i], b[j]) < 0 ? a[i++] : b[j++]; } } void mergesortAux(char ** a, char ** b, int l, int r) { if(r - l <= M) { insertion(a, l, r); return; } int m = (l + r)/2; mergesortAux(b, a, l, m); //merge sort left mergesortAux(b, a, m+1, r); //merge sort right merge(a+l, b+l, m-l+1, b+m+1, r-m); //merge } void mergesort(char ** a,int l, int r, int size) { static char ** aux = (char**)malloc(size * sizeof(char*)); for(int i = l; i < size; i++) aux[i] = a[i]; mergesortAux(a, aux, l, r); free(aux); }

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• Clean Code Developer & Certification in IT - MSCC 21.09.2013

  It was a very busy weekend this time, and quite some hectic to organise the second meetup on a Saturday for the Mauritius Software Craftsmanship Community (MSCC) but it was absolutely fun. Following, I'm writing a brief summary about the topics we spoke about and the new impulses I got. "What a meetup... I was positively impressed. At the beginning I thought that noone would actually show up but then by the time the room got filled. Lots of conversation, great dialogues and fantastic networking between fresh students, experienced students, experienced employees, and self-employed attendees. That's what community is all about!" Above quote was my first reaction shortly after the gathering. And despite being busy during the weekend and yesterday, I took my time to reflect a little bit on things happened and statements made before writing it here on my blog. Additionally, I was also very curious about possible reactions and blogs from other attendees. Reactions from other craftsmen Let me quickly give you some links and quotes from others first... "Like Jochen posted on facebook, that was indeed a 5+ hours marathon (maybe 4 hours for me but still) … Wohoo! We’re indeed a bunch of crazy geeks who did not realise how time flew as we dived into the myriad discussions that sprouted. Yet in the end everyone was happy (:" -- Ish on MSCC meetup - The marathon (: "And the 4hours spent @ Talking drums bore its fruit..I was doing something I never did before....reading the borrowed book while walking....and though I was not that familiar with things mentionned in the book...I was skimming,scanning & flipping...reading titles...short paragraphs...and I skipped pages till I reached home." -- Yannick on Mauritius Software Craftsmanship 1st Meet-up "Hi Developers, Just wanted to share with you the meetups i attended last Saturday - [...] - The second meetup is the one hosted by Jochen Kirstätter, the MSCC, where the attendees were Craftsman, no woman, this time - all sharing the same passion of being a developer - even though it is on different platforms(Windows - Windows Phone - Linux - Adobe(yes a designer) - .Net) - but we manage to sit at the same table - sharing developer views and experience in the corporate world - also talking about good practice when coding( where Jochen initiated a discussion on Clean Coding ) i could not stay till the end - but from what i have heard - the longer you stay the more fun you have till 1600. Developers in the Facebook grouping i invite you to stay tuned about the various developer communities popping up - where you can come to share and learn good practices, develop the entrepreneurial spirit, and learn and share your passion about technologies" -- Arnaud on Facebook More feedback has been posted on the event directly. So, should I really write more? Wouldn't that spoil the impressions? Starting the day with a surprise Indeed, I was very pleased to stumble over the existence of Mobile Monday Mauritius on LinkedIn, an association about any kind of mobile app development, mobile gadgets and latest smartphones on the market. Despite the Monday in their name they had scheduled their recent meeting on Saturday between 10:00 and 12:00hrs. Wow, what a coincidence! Let's grap the bull by its horns and pay them an introductory visit. As they chose the Ebene Accelerator at the Orange Tower in Ebene it was a no-brainer to leave home a bit earlier and stop by. It was quite an experience and fun to talk to the geeks over there. Really looking forward to organise something together.... Arriving at the venue As the children got a bit uneasy at the MoMo gathering and I didn't want to disturb them too much, we arrived early at Bagatelle. Well, no problems as we went for a decent breakfast at Food Lover's Market. Shortly afterwards we went to our venue location, Talking Drums, and prepared the room for the meeting. We only had to take off a repro-painting of the wall in order to have a decent area for the projector. All went very smooth and my two little ones were of great help. Just in time, our first craftsman Avinash arrived on the spot. And then the waiting started... Luckily, not too long. Bit by bit more and more IT people came to join our meeting. Meanwhile, I used the time to give a brief introduction about the MSCC in general, what we are (hm, maybe I am) trying to achieve and that the recent phase is completely focused on creating more awareness that a community like the MSCC is active here in Mauritius. As soon as we reached some 'critical mass' of about ten people I asked everyone for a short introduction and bio, just in case... Conversation between participants started to kick in and we were actually more networking than having a focus on our topics of the day. Quick updates on latest news and development around the MSCC Finally, Clean Code Developer No matter how the position is actually called, whether it is Software Engineer, Software Developer, Programmer, Architect, or Craftsman, anyone working in IT is facing almost the same obstacles. As for the process of writing software applications there are re-occurring patterns and principles combined with some common exercise and best practices on how to resolve them. Initiated by the must-read book 'Clean Code' by Robert C. Martin (aka Uncle Bob) the concept of the Clean Code Developer (CCD) was born already some years ago. CCD is much likely to traditional martial arts where you create awareness of certain principles and learn how to apply practices to improve your style. The CCD initiative recommends to indicate your level of knowledge and experience with coloured wrist bands - equivalent to the belt colours - for various reasons. Frankly speaking, I think that the biggest advantage here is provided by the obvious recognition of conceptual understanding. For example, take the situation of a team meeting... A member with a higher grade in CCD, say Green grade, sees that there are mainly Red grades to talk to, and adjusts her way of communication to their level of understanding. The choice of words might change as certain elements of CCD are not yet familiar to all team members. So instead of talking in an abstract way which only Green grades could follow the whole scenario comes down to Red grade level. Different story, better results... Similar to learning martial arts, we only covered two grades during this occasion - black and red. Most interestingly, there was quite some positive feedback and lots of questions about the principles and practices of the red grade. And we gathered real-world examples from various craftsman and discussed them. Following the Clean Code Developer Red Grade and some annotations from our meetup: CCD Red Grade - Principles Don't Repeat Yourself - DRY Keep It Simple, Stupid (and Short) - KISS Beware of Optimisations! Favour Composition over Inheritance - FCoI Interestingly most of the attendees already heard about those key words but couldn't really classify or categorize them. It's very similar to a situation in which you do not the particular for a thing and have to describe it to others... until someone tells you the actual name and suddenly all is very simple. CCD Red Grade - Practices Follow the Boy Scouts Rule Root Cause Analysis - RCA Use a Version Control System Apply Simple Refactoring Pattern Reflect Daily Introduction to the principles and practices of Clean Code Developer - here: Red Grade As for the various ToDo's we commonly agreed that the Boy Scout Rule clearly is not limited to software development or IT administration but applies to daily life in general. Same for the root cause analysis, btw. We really had good stories with surprisingly endings and conclusions. A quick check about who is using a version control system brought more drive into the conversation. Not only that we had people that aren't using any VCS at all, we also had the 'classic' approach of backup folders and naming conventions as well as the VCS 'junkie' that has to use multiple systems at a time. Just for the records: Git and GitHub seem to be in favour of some of the attendees. Regarding the daily reflection at the end of the day we came up with an easy solution: Wrap it up as a blog entry! Certifications in IT This is kind of a controversy in IT in general. Is it interesting to go for certifications or are they completely obsolete? What are the possibilities to get certified? What are the options we have in Mauritius? How would certificates stand compared to other educational tracks like Computer Science or Web Design. The ratio between craftsmen with certifications like MCP, MSTS, CCNA or LPI versus the ones without wasn't in favour for the first group but there was a high interest in the topic itself and some were really surprised to hear that exam preparations are completely free available online including temporarily voucher codes for either discounts or completely free exams. Furthermore, we discussed possible options on forming so-called study groups on a specific certificates and organising more frequent meetups in order to learn together. Taking into consideration that we have sponsored access to the video course material of Pluralsight (and now PeepCode as well as TrainSignal), we might give it a try by the end of the year. Current favourites are LPIC Level 1 and one of the Microsoft exams 40-78x. Feedback and ideas for the MSCC The closing conversations and discussions about how the MSCC is recently doing, what are the possibilities and what's (hopefully) going to happen in the future were really fertile and I made a couple of mental bullet points which I'm looking forward to tackle down together with orher craftsmen. Eventually, it might be a good option to elaborate on some issues during our weekly Code & Coffee sessions one Wednesday morning. Active discussion on various IT topics like certifications (LPI, MCP, CCNA, etc) and sharing experience Finally, we made it till the end of the planned time. Well, actually the talk was still on and we continued even after 16:00hrs. Unfortunately, we (the children and I) had to leave for evening activities. My resume of the day... It was great to have 15 craftsmen in one room. There are hundreds of IT geeks out there in Mauritius, and as Mauritius Software Craftsmanship Community we still have a lot of work to do to pass on the message to some more key players and companies. Currently, it seems that we are able to attract a good number of students in Computer Science... but we have a lot more to offer, even or especially for IT people on the job. I'm already looking forward to our next Saturday meetup in the near future. PS: Meetup pictures are courtesy of Nirvan Pagooah. Thanks for sharing...

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• CodePlex Daily Summary for Sunday, March 18, 2012

  CodePlex Daily Summary for Sunday, March 18, 2012Popular ReleasesRiP-Ripper & PG-Ripper: RiP-Ripper 2.9.28: changes NEW: Added Support for "PixHub.eu" linksSmartNet: V1.0.0.0: DY SmartNet ?????? V1.0callisto: callisto 2.0.21: Added an option to disable local host detection.Javascript .NET: Javascript .NET v0.6: Upgraded to the latest stable branch of v8 (/tags/3.9.18), and switched to using their scons build system. We no longer include v8 source code as part of this project's source code. Simultaneous multithreaded use of v8 now supported (v8 Isolates), although different contexts may not share objects or call each other. 64-bit .Net 4.0 DLL now included. (Download now includes x86 and x64 for both .Net 3.5 and .Net 4.0.)MyRouter (Virtual WiFi Router): MyRouter 1.0.6: This release should be more stable there were a few bug fixes including the x64 issue as well as an error popping up when MyRouter started this was caused by a NULL valuePulse: Pulse Beta 4: This version is still in development but should include: Logging and error handling have been greatly improved. If you run into an error or Pulse crashes make sure to check the Log folder for a recently modified log file so you can report the details of the issue A bunch of new features for the Wallbase.cc provider. Cleaner separation between inputs, downloading and output. Input and downloading are fairly clean now but outputs are still mixed up in the mix which I'm trying to resolve ...Google Books Downloader for Windows: Google Books Downloader-2.0.0.0.: Google Books DownloaderFinestra Virtual Desktops: 2.5.4501: This is a very minor update release. Please see the information about the 2.5 and 2.5.4500 releases for more information on recent changes. This update did not even have an automatic update triggered for it. Adds error checking and reporting to all threads, not only those with message loopsAcDown????? - Anime&Comic Downloader: AcDown????? v3.9.2: ?? ●AcDown??????????、??、??????，????1M，????，????，?????????????????????????。???????????Acfun、????(Bilibili)、??、??、YouTube、??、???、??????、SF????、????????????。??????AcPlay?????，??????、????????????????。 ● AcDown???????????????????????????，???，???????????????????。 ● AcDown???????C#??，????.NET Framework 2.0??。?????"Acfun?????"。 ????32??64? Windows XP/Vista/7/8 ????????????? ??：????????Windows XP???,?????????.NET Framework 2.0???(x86)，?????"?????????"??? ??????????????，??????????： ??"AcDo...ArcGIS Editor for OpenStreetMap: ArcGIS Editor for OSM 2.0 Release Candidate: Your feedback is welcome - and this is your last chance to get your fixes in for this version! Includes installer for both Feature Server extension and Desktop extension, enhanced functionality for the Desktop tools, and enhanced built-in Javascript Editor for the Feature Server component. This release candidate includes fixes to beta 4 that accommodate domain users for setting up the Server Component, and fixes for reporting/uploading references tracked in the revision table. See Code In-P...C.B.R. : Comic Book Reader: CBR 0.6: 20 Issue trackers are closed and a lot of bugs too Localize view is now MVVM and delete is working. Added the unused flag (take care that it goes to true only when displaying screen elements) Backstage - new input/output format choice control for the conversion Backstage - Add display, behaviour and register file type options in the extended options dialog Explorer list view has been transformed to a custom control. New group header, colunms order and size are saved Single insta...Windows Azure Toolkit for Windows 8: Windows Azure Toolkit for Windows 8 Consumer Prv: Windows Azure Toolkit for Windows 8 Consumer Preview - Preview Release v1.2.1Minor updates to setup experience: Check for WebPI before install Dependency Check updated to support the following VS 11 and VS 2010 SKUs Ultimate, Premium, Professional and Express Certs Windows Azure Toolkit for Windows 8 Consumer Preview - Preview Release v1.2.0 Please download this for Windows Azure Toolkit for Windows 8 functionality on Windows 8 Consumer Preview. The core features of the toolkit include:...Facebook Graph Toolkit: Facebook Graph Toolkit 3.0: ships with JSON Toolkit v3.0, offering parse speed up to 10 times of last version supports Facebook's new auth dialog supports new extend access token endpoint new example Page Tab app filter Graph Api connections using dates fixed bugs in Page Tab appsCODE Framework: 4.0.20312.0: This version includes significant improvements in the WPF system (and the WPF MVVM/MVC system). This includes new styles for Metro controls and layouts. Improved color handling. It also includes an improved theme/style swapping engine down to active (open) views. There also are various other enhancements and small fixes throughout the entire framework.ScintillaNET: ScintillaNET 2.4: 3/12/2012 Jacob Slusser Added support for annotations. Issues Fixed with this Release Issue # Title 25012 25012 25018 25018 25023 25023 25014 25014 Visual Studio ALM Quick Reference Guidance: v3 - For Visual Studio 11: RELEASE README Welcome to the BETA release of the Quick Reference Guide preview As this is a BETA release and the quality bar for the final Release has not been achieved, we value your candid feedback and recommend that you do not use or deploy these BETA artifacts in a production environment. Quality-Bar Details Documentation has been reviewed by Visual Studio ALM Rangers Documentation has not been through an independent technical review Documentation ...AvalonDock: AvalonDock 2.0.0345: Welcome to early alpha release of AvalonDock 2.0 I've completely rewritten AvalonDock in order to take full advantage of the MVVM pattern. New version also boost a lot of new features: 1) Deep separation between model and layout. 2) Full WPF binding support thanks to unified logical tree between main docking manager, auto-hide windows and floating windows. 3) Support for Aero semi-maximized windows feature. 4) Support for multiple panes in the same floating windows. For a short list of new f...Windows Azure PowerShell Cmdlets: Windows Azure PowerShell Cmdlets 2.2.2: Changes Added Start Menu Item for Easy Startup Added Link to Getting Started Document Added Ability to Persist Subscription Data to Disk Fixed Get-Deployment to not throw on empty slot Simplified numerous default values for cmdlets Breaking Changes: -SubscriptionName is now mandatory in Set-Subscription. -DefaultStorageAccountName and -DefaultStorageAccountKey parameters were removed from Set-Subscription. Instead, when adding multiple accounts to a subscription, each one needs to be added ...IronPython: 2.7.2.1: On behalf of the IronPython team, I'm happy to announce the final release IronPython 2.7.2. This release includes everything from IronPython 54498 and 62475 as well. Like all IronPython 2.7-series releases, .NET 4 is required to install it. Installing this release will replace any existing IronPython 2.7-series installation. Unlike previous releases, the assemblies for all supported platforms are included in the installer as well as the zip package, in the "Platforms" directory. IronPython 2...Kooboo CMS: Kooboo CMS 3.2.0.0: Breaking changes: When upgrade from previous versions, MUST reset the all the content type templates, otherwise the content manager might get a compile error. New features Integrate with Windows azure. See: http://wiki.kooboo.com/?wiki=Kooboo CMS on Azure Complete solution to deploy on load balance servers. See: http://wiki.kooboo.com/?wiki=Kooboo CMS load balance Update Jquery and Jquery ui to the lastest version(Jquery 1.71, Jquery UI 1.8.16). Tree style text content editing. See:h...New Projects4sr4ss1: Assignment 1 WDT Due date: 26 March 2012ADLN: Project to ADLNbook2guest: book2guestBundlingTweaks: BundlingTweaks makes it easier for developers to develop ASP.NET MVC 4 projects with Bundling/Minification support. You can now take advantage of Bundling, but still see non-minified JavaScript when debugging.COBOL SCREENSAVER: This project will show how to create a Windows screen saver using 1) an object-oriented isCOBOL GUI application, 2) an OpenCobol Windows native executable wrapper for the isCOBOL GUI, and 3) XML, XSLT, HTML5, and a Java FX 2.0 web browser component. Release 0.1 consists of a Java GUI application, the OpenCobol wrapper, and a README file detailing usage, system requirements, and installation of the recommended OpenCobol binaries for Windows.Colorado Time System Get CTS Results to Text File: This application will query a Colorado Time System 5, retrieve the lane results by event and heat. These can then be written to a text file.CommonEventLog: This project provides a simple means of logging messages and exceptions to a custom event log.ContainerTrack: Application for tracking container locationContent Widgets Orchard module: This Orchard module makes it possible to add arbitrary widgets to content types (with the option to disable per item).Cup of Badminton: This is a application for draw cup of badminton. You can insert, edit and delete player. You can choose many variant of draw.FSGREE: FSGREEKeepSafety: ??、??、?????????LibGrafx: LibGrafix is a C++ DLL that contains several classes useful when developing computer graphics applications, particularly OpenGL applications, in the Windows environment. It also includes a class that loads and displays the ModelX format exported by the XNA Model Viewer program. Linq to SQL code generator for Windows Phone: Linq to SQL code generator for Windows Phone is an add-in for Visual Studio 2010 or later to generate the Linq to SQL classes from a DBML diagram. Offline Navigation for Windows Phone 7: This is a simple implementation of offline navigation for windows phone 7 with map offset adjustment support.PayrollSystemRedux: Payroll case study book Robert Martin (Agile PPP in C#)PhoneFlipMenu Control for Windows Phone: A control that mimics the behaviour of the Email app's reply/reply all/forward menu.QTscenarist: QTscenarist makes it easier for Synfig animation to create Synfig movies. You can write scenaries and create your movie with it. It's developed in QT. recycle: This is a recycle web pageSharePoint 2010 Accordian Launch: SharePoint 2010 and SharePoint Foundation Quick Launch Accordian Solution.SharePoint 2010 JavaScript Registration Panel: The SharePoint 2010 JavaScript Registration Panel allows you to add JavaScript files to a site collection without SharePoint 2010 Designer intervention. This is helpful in scenarios where SharePoint Designer 2010 is disabled globally, but you have to add some JavaScript files (e.g. jQuery) to your site collection for every page load. The aim of this project is to provide following features: - load JavaScript files on every page load of your site collection - define the sequence for loadi...Sistema de Gestion Escolar: Projecto final monografico universidad dominicana O&MSmartNet: DYSmartNet????????????????????????。???TCP??，??????????，??????????... solution: solution team explorerTanmiaGrp: This is the tanmia base project library.VideoMobileSteraming: Will Update soonXNASter: XNASter is a short library that allows beginner developers to create simple XNA games. Right now it is in the very early stages of development. Included are the following parts: * 2D generic sprite-based object that supports movement, acceleration, etc. In the future, we are also planning to support: * KinectSkeleton controller Together with the project, there are also a few sample games that show how to use it.???WP: HateCoWP is Hatena Coco Client.???: ????????????????????。

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• Clean Code Development & Flexible work environment - MSCC 26.10.2013

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

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• Calling a javascript-method causes IE 8 to crash

  - by Andreas Niedermair

  good morning! some basic infos: engine is asp.net (specific version is not relevant) runs on iis (specific version is not relevant) asp-button is hidden why?! wtf?!: this example is used in some modal-confirmation: user clicks delete, ui shows modal-dialog. so, the visible button would be the yes-button, when clicked one, would cause a postback of the original asp-button (as i'm using the jquery-dialog plugin). and i have this html: <!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.1//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml11/DTD/xhtml11.dtd"> <html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"> <head> // head tags go here </head> <body> <div style="display: none;"> <asp:Button runat="server" ID="hiddenBt" /> </div> <button id="visibleBt">Yes</button> <script type="text/javascript"> $(document).ready(function() { var visibleButton = $('#visibleBt'); var hiddenButton = $('#<%= this.hiddenBt.ClientID %>'); visibleButton.click(function() { __doPostBack(hiddenButton.attr('name'); }); }); </script> </body> </html> so ... if i'm running IE8 and non-compatiblity view, hitting the yes-button will crash the ie8-rendering-engine Version=1 EventType=MSHTMLLAYOUTHARDASSERT EventTime=129197590067237499 Consent=1 UploadTime=129197590067257499 ReportIdentifier=4b752ddb-6c79-11df-8bf6-001aa0b266a7 WOW64=1 Response.BucketId=1064991109 Response.BucketTable=5 Response.type=4 Sig[0].Name=AppName Sig[0].Value=iexplore.exe Sig[1].Name=AppVer Sig[1].Value=8.00.7600.16385 (win7_rtm.090713-1255) Sig[2].Name=ModName Sig[2].Value=mshtml.dll Sig[3].Name=ModVer Sig[3].Value=8.00.7600.16385 (win7_rtm.090713-1255) Sig[4].Name=Offset Sig[4].Value=0x002B5031 DynamicSig[1].Name=OS Version DynamicSig[1].Value=6.1.7600.2.0.0.256.48 DynamicSig[2].Name=Locale ID DynamicSig[2].Value=3079 State[0].Key=Transport.DoneStage1 State[0].Value=1 FriendlyEventName=Webpage display problem ConsentKey=MSHTMLLAYOUTHARDASSERT AppName=Internet Explorer AppPath=C:\Program Files (x86)\Internet Explorer\iexplore.exe ReportDescription=A problem displaying a webpage caused Internet Explorer to refresh the page using Compatibility View. any help would be appreciated!

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