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• Passed: Exam 70-480: Programming in HTML5 with JavaScript and CSS3

  First off: Mission accomplished successfully. And it was fun! Using the resources listed in my previous article about Learning Content, I'd like to thank Microsoft Technical Evangelists Jeremy Foster and Michael Palermo for their excellent jump start videos on Channel 9, and the various authors at Pluralsight. Local Prometric testing centre Back in November I chose a local testing centre which was the easiest to access from my office despite the horrible traffic you might experience here on the island. Actually, it was not the closest one. But due to their website, their awards as Microsoft Learning Center, and my general curiosity about the premises, I gave FRCI my priority. Boy, how should I regret this decision this morning... The official Prometric exam guide asks any attendee to show up at least 30 minutes prior to the scheduled time of the test. Well, this should have been the easier part but unfortunately due to heavier traffic than usual I arrived only 20 minutes before time. Not too bad but more to come. The building called 'le Hub' is nicely renovated and provides the right environment for an IT group of companies like FRCI. I think they have currently 5 independent IT departments over there. Even the handling at the reception was straight forward, welcoming and at my ease. But then... first shock: "We don't have any exam registration for today." - Hm, that's nice... Here's my mail confirmation from Prometric. First attack successfully handled and the lady went off again to check their records. Next shock: A couple of minutes later, another guy tries to explain me that "the staff of the testing centre is already on vacation and the centre is officially closed." - Are you kidding me? Here's the official confirmation by Prometric, and I don't find it funny that I take a day off today only to hear this kind of blubbering nonsense. I thought that I'll be on the safe side choosing a company with a good reputation here on the island. Another 40 (!) minutes later, they finally come back to the waiting area with a pre-filled form about the test appointment. And finally, after an hour of waiting, discussing, restarting the testing PC, and lots of talk, I am allowed to sit down and take the exam. Exam details Well, you know the rules. Signing an NDA doesn't allow me to provide you any details about the questions or topics that have been covered. Please check out the official exam description, and you're on the right way. Sorry, guys... ;-) The result "Congratulations! You have passed this Microsoft Certification exam." - In general, I have to admit that the parts on HTML5 and CSS3 were the easiest after all, and that I have to get myself a little bit more familiar with certain Javascript features like class definitions, inheritance and data security. Anyway, exam passed - who cares about the details? Next goal Of course, the journey to Microsoft Certifications continues and my next goal is to pass exams 70-481 - Essentials of Developing Windows Store Apps using HTML5 and JavaScript and 70-482 - Advanced Windows Store App Development using HTML5 and JavaScript. This would allow me to achieve the certification of MCSD: Windows Store Apps using HTML5. I guess, during 2013 I'll be busy with various learning and teaching lessons.

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• Making it GREAT! Oracle Partners Building Apps Workshop with UX and ADF in UK

  - by ultan o'broin

  Yes, making is what it's all about. This time, Oracle Partners in the UK were making great looking usable apps with the Oracle Applications Development Framework (ADF) and user experience (UX) toolkit. And what an energy-packed and productive event at the Oracle UK, Thames Valley Park, location it was. Partners learned the fundamentals of enterprise applications UX, why it's important, all about visual design, how to wireframe designs, and then how to build their already-proven designs in ADF. There was a whole day on mobile apps, learning about mobile design principles, free mobile UX and ADF resources from Oracle, and then trying it out. The workshop wrapped up with the latest Release 7 simplified UIs, Mobilytics, and other innovations from Oracle, and a live demo of a very neat ADF Mobile Android app built by an Oracle contractor. And, what a fun two days both Grant Ronald of ADF and myself had in running the workshop with such a great audience, too! I particularly enjoyed the wireframing and visual design sessions interaction; and seeing some outstanding work done by partners. Of note from the UK workshop were innovative design features not seen before and made me all the happier that developers were bringing their own ideas from the consumer IT world of mobility, simplicity, and social to the world of work apps in a smart way within an enterprise methodology too.  Partner wireframe exercise. Applying mobile design principles and UX design patterns means you've already productively making great usable apps! Next, over to Oracle ADF Mobile with it! One simple example from the design of a mobile field service app was that participants immediately saw how the UX and device functionality of the super UK-based app Hailo app could influence their designs (the London cabbie influence maybe?), as well as how we all use maps, cameras, barcode scanners and microphones on our phones could be used in work. And, of course, ADF Mobile has the device integration solutions there too! I wonder will U.S. workshops in Silicon Valley see an Uber UX influence (LOL)! That we also had partners experienced with Oracle Forms who could now offer a roadmap from Forms to Simplified UI and Mobile using ADF, and do it through through the cloud, really made this particular workshop go "ZING!" for me. Many thanks to the Oracle PartnerNetwork (OPN) team for organizing this event with us, and to the representatives of the Oracle Partners that showed and participated so well. That's what I love out this outreach. It's a two-way, solid value-add for all. Interested? Why would partners and developers with ADF skills sign up for this workshop? Here's why: Learn to use the Oracle Applications User Experience design patterns as the usability building blocks for applications development in Oracle Application Development Framework. The workshop enables attendees to build modern and visually compelling desktop and mobile applications that look and behave like Oracle Cloud Applications, and that can co-exist with partner integrations, new, or existing applications deployments. Partners learn to offer customers and clients more than just coded functionality; instead they can provide a complete user experience with a roadmap for continued ROI from applications that also creating more business and attracts the kudos and respect from other makers of apps as they're wowed by the results. So, if you're a partner and interested in attending one of these workshops and benefitting from such learning, as well as having a platform to show off some of your own work, stay well tuned to your OPN channels, to this blog, to the VoX blog, and to the @usableapps Twitter account too. Can't wait? For developers and partners, some key mobile resources to explore now Oracle ADF Mobile UX Patterns and Components Wiki Oracle ADF Academy (Mobile) Oracle ADF Insider Essentials Oracle Applications Mobile User Experience Design Patterns and Guidance

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• Move over DFS and Robocopy, here is SyncToy!

  - by andywe

  Ever since Windows 2000, I have always had the need to replicate data to multiple endpoints with the same content. Until DFS was introduced, the method of thinking was to either manually copy the data location by location, or to batch script it with xcopy and schedule a task. Even though this worked (and still does today), it was cumbersome, and intensive on the network, especially when dealing with larger amounts of data. Then along came robocopy, as an internal tool written by an enterprising programmer at Microsoft. We used it quite a bit, especially when we could not use DFS in the early days. It was received so well, it made it into the public realm. At least now we could have the ability to determine what files had changed and only replicate those. Well, over time there has been evolution of this ideal. DFS is obviously the Windows enterprise class service to do this, along with BrancheCache..however you don’t always need or want the power of DFS, especially when it comes to small datacenter installations, or remote offices. I have specific data sets that are on closed or restricted networks, that either have a security need for this, or are in remote countries where bandwidth is a premium. FOr this, I use the latest evolution for one off replication names Synctoy. Synctoy is from Microsoft, seemingly released in 2009, that wraps a nice GUI around setting up a paired set of folders (remember the mobile briefcase from Windows 98?), and allowing you the choice of synchronization methods. 1 way, or 2 way. Simply create a paired set of folders on the source and destination, choose your options for content, exclude any file types you don’t want to replicate, and click run. Scheduling is even easier. MS has included a wrapper for doing just this so all you enter in your task schedule in the SynToyCMD.exe, a –R as an argument, and the time schedule. No more complicated command lines or scripts.   I find this especially useful when I use MS backup to back up a system volume, but only want subsets of backup information of a data share and ONLY when that dataset has changed. Not relying on full backups and incremental. An example of this is my application installation master share. I back this up with SyncToy because I do not need multiple backup copies..one copy elsewhere suffices to back it up. At home, very useful for your pictures, videos, music, ect..the backup is online and ready to access, not waiting for you to restore a backup file, and no need to institute a domain simply to have DFS.'   Do note there is a risk..if you accidently delete a file and do not catch this before the next sync, then depending on your SyncToy settings, you can indeed lose that file as the destination updates..so due diligence applies. I make it a rule to sync manly one way…I use my master share for making changes, and allow the schedule to follow suit. Any real important file I lock down as read only through file permissions so it cannot be deleted unless I intervene.   Check out the tool and have some fun! http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?DisplayLang=en&id=15155

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• The Social Enterprise: Gangnam Style

  - by Mike Stiles

  Are only small and medium businesses able to put social strategies in place, generate consistent, compelling content for customers, and be nimble enough to listen and respond to the social communities they build? Or are enterprise organizations eagerly and effectively adopting social as well? It depends on whom inside the organization you ask. A study from Attensity looked at who “gets” social inside enterprise organizations. The results were unsurprising. Mostly, Generation X and Y employees who came of age with social as part of their lives and as a key communications vehicle understand it. Imagine being a 25-year-old at a company that bans employees from accessing Facebook at work. You may as well tell them they can’t use phones and must do all calculations on an abacus. To them, such policy is absent of real-world logic and signals to them the organization is destined to be the victim of an up-and-comer. After that, it’s senior management that gets social. You don’t get to be in senior management without reading a few things and paying attention. Most senior managers are well aware of the impact social has had and will have, though they may be unsure of what to do about it. The better ones will utilize those on the inside who do inherently know how to communicate and build virtual relationships using social. The very best will get the past out of the way for these social innovators, so the new communications can be enacted minus counterproductive dictums, double-clutching, meeting-creep, and all the other fading internal practices that water down content and impede change. Organizationally, the Attensity study found 81% of enterprise companies believe failing to embrace social will result in their being left behind. Yet our old friend fear still has many captive in its clutches. 79% feel overwhelmed by the volume of social data available, something a social technology partner with goal-oriented analytics expertise could go a long way toward alleviating. Then there’s the fear of social having a negative impact. This comes from a lack of belief in the product, the customer service, or both. The public uses social not to go out and slay brands. They’re using it to be honest. If the fear is that honesty will reflect badly on the brand, the brand has much bigger, broader problems than what happens on Facebook. Sadly, most enterprise organizations still see social as a megaphone, a one-way channel with which to hit people with ads. They either don’t understand social relationships, or don’t want any. The truly unenlightened manager will always say, “We help them by selling them our stuff.” “Brand affinity” is a term, it’s just not one assigned much value in enterprise organizations. Which brings us to Psy, the Korean performer whose Internet video phenom “Gangnam Style,” as of this writing, has been viewed 438,550,238 times on YouTube. It’s bigger than anything a brand will probably ever publish. Most brands would never have seen the point of making or publishing it. But a funny thing happened on the way to Internet success. The video literally doubled the stock price of Psy’s father’s software firm. NH Investment and Securities said, "The positive sentiment has attracted investors just because of the fact the company is owned by Psy's father and uncle.” The company wasn’t mentioned or seen in the video in any way, yet reaped tangible rewards just for being tangentially associated with it. Imagine your brand being visibly and directly responsible for such a smash and tell me it’s worthless. When enterprise organizations embrace the value of igniting passions, making people happier, solving their problems, informing them, helping them have fun, etc., then they will have fully embraced social, and will reap the brand affinity rewards of heightened awareness, brand loyalty and yes, sales.

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• The best computer ever

  - by Jeff

  (This is a repost from my personal blog… wow… I need to write more technical stuff!) About three years and three months ago, I bought a 17" MacBook Pro, and it turned out to be the best computer I've ever owned. You might think that every computer with better specs is automatically better than the last, but that hasn't been my experience. My first one was a Sony, back in the Pentium III days, and it cost an astonishing $2,500. That was even more ridiculous in 1999 dollars. It had a dial-up modem, and a CD-ROM, built-in! It may have even played DVD's. A few years later I bought an HP, and it ended up being a pile of shit. The power connector inside came loose from the board, and on occasion would even short. In 2005, I bought a Dell, and it wasn't bad. It had a really high resolution screen (complete with dead pixels, a problem in those days), and it was the first laptop I felt I could do real work on. When 2006 rolled around, Apple started making computers with Intel CPU's, and I bought the very first one the week it came out. I used Boot Camp to run Windows. I still have it in its box somewhere, and I used it for three years. The current 17" was new in 2009. The goodness was largely rooted in having a big screen with lots of dots. This computer has been the source of hundreds of blog posts, tens of thousands of lines of code, video and photo editing, and of course, a whole lot of Web surfing. It connected to corpnet at Microsoft, WiFi in Hawaii and has presented many a deck. It has traveled with me tens of thousands of miles. Last year, I put a solid state drive in it, and it was like getting a new computer. I can boot up a Windows 7 VM in about 19 seconds. Having 8 gigs of RAM has always been fantastic. Everything about it has been fast and fun. When new, the battery (when not using VM's) could get as much as 10 hours. I can still do 7 without much trouble. After 460 charge cycles, the battery health is still between 85 and 90%. The only real negative has been the size and weight. It's only an inch thick, but naturally it's pretty big with a 17" screen. You don't get battery life like that without a huge battery, either, so it's heavy. It was never a deal breaker, but sometimes a long haul across a large airport, you know you're carrying it. Today, Apple announced a new, thinner and lighter 15" laptop, with twice the RAM and CPU cores, and four times the screen resolution. It basically handles my size and weight issues while retaining the resolution, and it still costs less than my 17" did. So I ordered one. Three years is an excellent run, but I kind of budgeted for a new workhorse this year anyway. So if you're interested in a 17" MacBook Pro with a Core 2 Duo 2.66 GHz CPU, 8 gigs of RAM and a 320 gig hard drive (sorry, I'm keeping the SSD), I have one to sell. They've apparently discontinued the 17", which is going to piss off the video community. It's in excellent condition, with a few minor scratches, but I take care of my stuff.

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• Finalists for Community Manager of the Year Announced

  - by Mike Stiles

  For as long as brand social has been around, there’s still an amazing disparity from company to company on the role of Community Manager. At some brands, they are the lead social innovators. At others, the task has been relegated to interns who are at the company temporarily. Some have total autonomy and trust. Others must get chain-of-command permission each time they engage. So what does a premiere “worth their weight in gold” Community Manager look like? More than anyone else in the building, they have the most intimate knowledge of who the customer is. They live on the front lines and are the first to detect problems and opportunities. They are sincere, raving fans of the brand themselves and are trusted advocates for the others. They’re fun to be around. They aren’t salespeople. Give me one Community Manager who’s been at the job 6 months over 5 focus groups any day. Because not unlike in speed dating, they must immediately learn how to make a positive, lasting impression on fans so they’ll want to return and keep the relationship going. They’re informers and entertainers, with a true belief in the value of the brand’s proposition. Internally, they live at the mercy of the resources allocated toward social. Many, whose managers don’t understand the time involved in properly curating a community, are tasked with 2 or 3 too many of them. 63% of CM’s will spend over 30 hours a week on one community. They come to intuitively know the value of the relationships they’re building, even if they can’t always be shown in a bar graph to the C-suite. Many must communicate how the customer feels to executives that simply don’t seem to want to hear it. Some can get the answers fans want quickly, others are frustrated in their ability to respond within an impressive timeframe. In short, in a corporate world coping with sweeping technological changes, amidst business school doublespeak, pie charts, decks, strat sessions and data points, the role of the Community Manager is the most…human. They are the true emotional connection to the real life customer. Which is why we sought to find a way to recognize and honor who they are, what they do, and how well they have defined the position as social grows and integrates into the larger organization. Meet our 3 finalists for Community Manager of the Year. Jeff Esposito with VistaprintJeff manages and heads up content strategy for all social networks and blogs. He also crafts company-wide policies surrounding the social space. Vistaprint won the NEDMA Gold Award for Twitter Strategy in 2010 and 2011, and a Bronze in 2011 for Social Media Strategy. Prior to Vistaprint, Jeff was Media Relations Manager with the Long Island Ducks. He graduated from Seton Hall University with a BA in English and a minor in Classical Studies. Stacey Acevero with Vocus In addition to social management, Stacey blogs at Vocus on influential marketing and social media, and blogs at PRWeb on public relations and SEO. She’s been named one of the #Nifty50 Women in Tech on Twitter 2 years in a row, as well as included in the 15 up-and-coming PR pros to watch in 2012. Carly Severn with the San Francisco BalletCarly drives engagement, widens the fanbase and generates digital content for America’s oldest professional ballet company. Managed properties include Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, Pinterest, Instagram, YouTube and G+. Prior to joining the SF Ballet, Carly was Marketing & Press Coordinator at The Fitzwilliam Museum at Cambridge, where she graduated with a degree in English. We invite you to join us at the first annual Oracle Social Media Summit November 14 and 15 at the Wynn in Las Vegas where our finalists will be featured. Over 300 top brand marketers, agency executives, and social leaders & innovators will be exploring how social is transforming business. Space is limited and the information valuable, so get more info and get registered as soon as possible at the event site.

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• Squibbly: LibreOffice Integration Framework for the Java Desktop

  - by Geertjan

  Squibbly is a new framework for Java desktop applications that need to integrate with LibreOffice, or more generally, need office features as part of a Java desktop solution that could include, for example, JavaFX components. Here's what it looks like, right now, on Ubuntu 13.04: Why is the framework called Squibbly? Because I needed a unique-ish name, because "squibble" sounds a bit like "scribble" (which is what one does with text documents, etc), and because of the many absurd definitions in the Urban Dictionary for the apparently real word "squibble", e.g., "A name for someone who is squibblish in nature." And, another e.g., "A squibble is a small squabble. A squabble is a little skirmish." But the real reason is the first definition (and definitely not the fourth definition): "Taking a small portion of another persons something, such as a small hit off of a pipe, a bite of food, a sip of a drink, or drag of a cigarette." In other words, I took (or "squibbled") a small portion of LibreOffice, i.e., OfficeBean, and integrated it into a NetBeans Platform application. Now anyone can add new features to it, to do anything they need, such as create a legislative software system as Propylon has done with their own solution on the NetBeans Platform: For me, the starting point was Chuk Munn Lee's similar solution from some years ago. However, he uses reflection a lot in that solution, because he didn't want to bundle the related JARs with the application. I understand that benefit but I find it even more beneficial to not need to require the user to specify the location of the LibreOffice location, since all the necessary JARs and native libraries (currently 32-bit Linux only, by the way) are bundled with the application. Plus, hundreds of lines of reflection code, as in Chuk's solution, is not fun to work with at all. Switching between applications is done like this: It's a work in progress, a proof of concept only. Just the result of a few hours of work to get the basic integration to work. Several problems remain, some of them potentially unsolvable, starting with these, but others will be added here as I identify them: Window management problems. I'd like to let the user have multiple LibreOffice applications and documents open at the same time, each in a new TopComponent. However, I haven't figured out how to do that. Right now, each application is opened into the same TopComponent, replacing the currently open application. I don't know the OfficeBean API well enough, e.g., should a single OfficeBean be shared among multiple TopComponents or should each of them have their own instance of it? Focus problems. When putting the application behind other applications and then switching back to the application, typing text becomes impossible. When closing a TopComponent and reopening it, the content is lost completely. Somehow the loss of focus, and then the return of focus, disables something. No idea how to fix that. The project is checked into this location, which isn't public yet, so you can't access it yet. Once it's publicly available, it would be great to get some code contributions and tweaks, etc. https://java.net/projects/squibbly Here's the source structure, showing especially how the OfficeBean JARs and native libraries (currently for Linux 32-bit only) fit in: Ultimately, would be cool to integrate or share code with http://joeffice.com!

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• Criminals and Other Illegal Characters

  - by Most Valuable Yak (Rob Volk)

  SQLTeam's favorite Slovenian blogger Mladen (b | t) had an interesting question on Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/MladenPrajdic/status/347057950470307841 I liked Kendal Van Dyke's (b | t) reply: http://twitter.com/SQLDBA/status/347058908801667072 And he was right!  This is one of those pretty-useless-but-sounds-interesting propositions that I've based all my presentations on, and most of my blog posts. If you read all the replies you'll see a lot of good suggestions.  I particularly like Aaron Bertrand's (b | t) idea of going into the Unicode character set, since there are over 65,000 characters available.  But how to find an illegal character?  Detective work? I'm working on the premise that if SQL Server will reject it as a name it would throw an error.  So all we have to do is generate all Unicode characters, rename a database with that character, and catch any errors. It turns out that dynamic SQL can lend a hand here: IF DB_ID(N'a') IS NULL CREATE DATABASE [a]; DECLARE @c INT=1, @sql NVARCHAR(MAX)=N'', @err NVARCHAR(MAX)=N''; WHILE @c<65536 BEGIN BEGIN TRY SET @sql=N'alter database ' + QUOTENAME(CASE WHEN @c=1 THEN N'a' ELSE NCHAR(@c-1) END) + N' modify name=' + QUOTENAME(NCHAR(@c)); RAISERROR(N'*** Trying %d',10,1,@c) WITH NOWAIT; EXEC(@sql); SET @c+=1; END TRY BEGIN CATCH SET @err=ERROR_MESSAGE(); RAISERROR(N'Ooops - %d - %s',10,1,@c,@err) WITH NOWAIT; BREAK; END CATCH END SET @sql=N'alter database ' + QUOTENAME(NCHAR(@c-1)) + N' modify name=[a]'; EXEC(@sql); The script creates a dummy database "a" if it doesn't already exist, and only tests single characters as a database name.  If you have databases with single character names then you shouldn't run this on that server. It takes a few minutes to run, but if you do you'll see that no errors are thrown for any of the characters.  It seems that SQL Server will accept any character, no matter where they're from.  (Well, there's one, but I won't tell you which. Actually there's 2, but one of them requires some deep existential thinking.) The output is also interesting, as quite a few codes do some weird things there.  I'm pretty sure it's due to the font used in SSMS for the messages output window, not all characters are available.  If you run it using the SQLCMD utility, and use the -o switch to output to a file, and -u for Unicode output, you can open the file in Notepad or another text editor and see the whole thing. I'm not sure what character I'd recommend to answer Mladen's question.  I think the standard tab (ASCII 9) is fine.  There's also several specific separator characters in the original ASCII character set (decimal 28-31). But of all the choices available in Unicode whitespace, I think my favorite would be the Mongolian Vowel Separator.  Or maybe the zero-width space. (that'll be fun to print!)  And since this is Mladen we're talking about, here's a good selection of "intriguing" characters he could use.

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• Pinterest and the Rising Power of Imagery

  - by Mike Stiles

  If images keep you glued to a screen, you’re hardly alone. Countless social users are letting their eyes do the walking, waiting for that special photo to grab their attention. And perhaps more than any other social network, Pinterest has been giving those eyes plenty of room to walk. Pinterest came along in 2010. Its play was that users could simply create topic boards and pin pictures to the appropriate boards for sharing. Yes there are some words, captions mostly, but not many. The speed of its growth raised eyebrows. Traffic quadrupled in the last quarter of 2011, with 7.51 million unique visitors in December alone. It now gets 1.9 billion monthly page views. And it was sticky. In the US, the average time a user spends strolling through boards and photos on Pinterest is 15 minutes, 50 seconds. Proving the concept of browsing a catalogue is not dead, it became a top 5 referrer for several apparel retailers like Land’s End, Nordstrom, and Bergdorfs. Now a survey of online shoppers by BizRate Insights says that Pinterest is responsible for more purchases online than Facebook. Over 70% of its users are going there specifically to keep up with trends and get shopping ideas. And when they buy, the average order value is $179. Pinterest is also scoring better in terms of user engagement. 66% of pinners regularly follow and repin retailers, whereas 17% of Facebook fans turn to that platform for purchase ideas. (Facebook still wins when it comes to reach and driving traffic to 3rd-party sites by the way). Social posting best practices have consistently shown that posts with photos are rewarded with higher engagement levels. You may be downright Shakespearean in your writing, but what makes images in the digital world so much more powerful than prose? 1. They transcend language barriers. 2. They’re fun and addictive to look at. 3. They can be consumed in fractions of a second, important considering how fast users move through their social content (admit it, you do too). 4. They’re efficient gateways. A good picture might get them to the headline. A good headline might then get them to the written content. 5. The audience for them surpasses demographic limitations. 6. They can effectively communicate and trigger an emotion. 7. With mobile use soaring, photos are created on those devices and easily consumed and shared on them. Pinterest’s iPad app hit #1 in the Apple store in 1 day. Even as far back as 2009, over 2.5 billion devices with cameras were on the streets generating in just 1 year, 10% of the number of photos taken…ever. But let’s say you’re not a retailer. What if you’re a B2B whose products or services aren’t visual? Should you worry about your presence on Pinterest? As with all things, you need a keen awareness of who your audience is, where they reside online, and what they want to do there. If it doesn’t make sense to put a tent stake in Pinterest, fine. But ignore the power of pictures at your own peril. If not visually, how are you going to attention-grab social users scrolling down their News Feeds at top speed? You’re competing with every other cool image out there from countless content sources. Bore us and we’ll fly right past you.

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• SSMS Tools Pack 2.7 is released. New website, improved licensing and features.

  - by Mladen Prajdic

  New website Nice, isn't it? Cleaner, simpler, better looking and more modern. If you have any suggestions for further improvements I'd be glad to hear them. Simpler licensing With SSMS tools Pack 2.7 the licensing is finally where it should be. It is now based on the activate/deactivate model. This way you can move a license from machine to machine with simple deactivation on one and reactivation on another machine. Much better, no? Because of very good feedback I have added an option for 6 machines and lowered the 4 machines option to 3 machines. This should make it much simpler for you to choose the right option for yourself. Improved features Version 2.5.3 was already extremely stable and 2.7 continues with that tradition. Because of that I could fully focus on features and why 3.0 will rock even more that 2.7! ;) In version 2.7 I have addressed quite a few improvements you were requesting for a while now. SQL History This is probably the biggest time saver out there, therefore it's only fair it gets a few important updates. If you have an existing .sql file opened, the Window Content History now saves your code to that existing file and also makes a backup in the SQL History log default location. Search is still done through the SQL History log but the Tab Sessions Restore opens your existing .sql file. This way you don't have to remember to save your existing files by yourself anymore. A bug when you couldn't search properly if you copied the log files to a new location was fixed. Unfortunately this removed the option to filter a search with the time component. The smallest search interval is now one day. The SSMS Tools Pack now remembers the visibility of the Current Window History window when you exit SSMS. SQL Snippets You can now set the position of the cursor in your snippets by placing {C} somewhere in your snippet. It's a small improvement but can be a huge time saver since you don't have to move through the snippet to the desired location anymore. Run script on multiple databases Database choices can now be saved with a name and then loaded again next time. You can also choose to run the script in a new window for each chosen database. Search through grid results You can now go previous/next search result with the Prev/Next control inside the search window. This is extremely useful if you have a large resultset. IT saves you the scrolling. CRUD generator Four new variables have been added: |CurrentDate| writes current date in format yyyy-MM-dd to your script |CurrentTime| writes current time in 24h format HH:mm:ss to your script |CurrentWinUser| writes current Windows logged on user to your script |CurrentSqlUser| writes current SQL logged on login to your script This was actually quite a requested feature so if you have any other ideas for extra variables, do let me know. That's about it. I hope you're going to enjoy this version as much as the previous ones. Have fun!

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• Upgrade to Xubuntu 13.10 - Saucy Salamander

  As a common 'fashion' it is possible to upgrade an existing installation of Ubuntu or one of its derivates every six months. Of course, you might opt-in for the adventure and directly keep your system always on the latest version (including alphas and betas), or you might like to play safe and stay on the long-term support (LTS) versions which are updated every two years only. As for me, I'd like to jump from release to release on my main desktop machine. And since 17th October Saucy Salamander or also known as Ubuntu 13.10 has been released for general use. The following paragraphs document the steps I went in order to upgrade my system to the recent version. Don't worry about the fact that I'm actually using Xubuntu. It's mainly a flavoured version of Ubuntu running Xfce 4.10 as default X Window manager. Well, I have Gnome and LXDE on the same system... just out of couriosity. Preparing the system Before you think about upgrading you have to ensure that your current system is running on the latest packages. This can be done easily via a terminal like so: $ sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get -y dist-upgrade --fix-missing Next, we are going to initiate the upgrade itself: $ sudo update-manager As a result the graphical Software Updater should inform you that a newer version of Ubuntu is available for installation. Ubuntu's Software Updater informs you whether an upgrade is available Running the upgrade After clicking 'Upgrade...' you will be presented with information about the new version. Details about Ubuntu 13.10 (Saucy Salamander) Simply continue with the procedure and your system will be analysed for the next steps. Analysing the existing system and preparing the actual upgrade to 13.10 Next, we are at the point of no return. Last confirmation dialog before having a coffee break while your machine is occupied to download the necessary packages. Not the best bandwidth at hand after all... yours might be faster. Are you really sure that you want to start the upgrade? Let's go and have fun! Anyway, bye bye Raring Ringtail and Welcome Saucy Salamander! In case that you added any additional repositories like Medibuntu or PPAs you will be informed that they are going to be disabled during the upgrade and they might require some manual intervention after completion. Ubuntu is playing safe and third party repositories are disabled during the upgrade Well, depending on your internet bandwidth this might take something between a couple of minutes and some hours to download all the packages and then trigger the actual installation process. In my case I left my PC unattended during the night. Time to reboot Finally, it's time to restart your system and see what's going to happen... In my case absolutely nothing unexpected. The system booted the new kernel 3.11.0 as usual and I was greeted by a new login screen. Honestly, 'same' system as before - which is good and I love that fact of consistency - and I can continue to work productively. And also Software Updater confirms that we just had a painless upgrade: System is running Ubuntu 13.10 - Saucy Salamander - and up to date See you in six months again... ;-) Post-scriptum In case that you would to upgrade to the latest development version of Ubuntu, run the following command in a console: $ sudo update-manager -d And repeat all steps as described above.

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• Create Custom Speech Bubbles in Silverlight.

  - by mbcrump

  I had a reader email me the following question: “How do you create Speech Bubbles in Silverlight/WPF without adding any extra .dlls? Right off the bat, I know at least two ways to create the speech bubbles that look just like the ones in comic books. Using the Callout Shapes included with Blend 4. Using the free 3rd party control named FreeBubbles (I used this before Blend 4). Unfortunately, we cannot use either of these as they will both add extra .dll’s to the project. So why wouldn’t you want to use one of those? I can think of a few reasons: You do not want to increase the size of your .XAP by including extra .dll’s. You do not have Expression Blend or the license to the use the .dll’s. You want a custom Speech Bubble that is not included in the four “Callout” Controls with Blend. Instead of using one of these methods, we will create a Speech Bubble in Blend 4 using Path element and a TextBlock. Before we get started, lets look at the Callout Shapes included with Blend 4. Using Blend 4 you can simply drag/drop these controls onto your Silverlight application and you are ready to go. We can create all of these Speech Bubbles and even some of the modern bubbles used in recent comic books. Lets get started. Start up Expression Blend 4 and select the Pen Tool. On the Art Board, start connecting the dots like I did below. You can add a color if you wish. …keep going …complete Let’s go ahead and add some text to the Speech Bubble. Drag a TextBlock from the Panel and put it directly inside the Speech Bubble. Go ahead and set the TextAlignment to Center for the TextBlock. and give it some text. At this point, you could go ahead and create a user control if you want to reuse the Speech Bubble you created. Select both the Path and the TextBlock by clicking then while holding down CTRL and then Right Click them. Select Make Into User Control. Give it a name and then Build your project. Lets create another one using the Ellipse for the older comic book style of Speech Bubbles. Drag an Ellipse to the Artboard and give it a color. Now, grab the Pen and drag a triangle like I did below. Simply drag it over a corner of the Ellipse. Select Combine then Unite and you will have a Path. At this point, you can go ahead and add a TextBlock like we did earlier. Lets go ahead and create a rounded rectangle one by adding a Rectangle to the Artboard. Go ahead and set the RadiuX and RadiusY to 25 to give it rounded edges. Let’s create another path and drag it right on top of our rounded rectangle like we did earlier. …looking good Select Combine then Unite and you will have a Path. At this point, you can go ahead and add a TextBlock like we did earlier. So let’s look at what we’ve created today using the path element and TextBlock. As you can tell, it required more work but meets the requirements. This was actually fun to do and I encourage anyone that visits my blog to send in request like this.  Subscribe to my feed

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• The new direction of the gaming industry

  - by raccoon_tim

  Just recently I read a great blog post by David Darling, the founder of Codemasters: http://www.develop-online.net/blog/347/Jurassic-consoles-could-become-extinct. In the blog post he talks about how traditional retail games are experiencing a downfall thanks to the increasing popularity of digital distribution. I personally think of retail games as being relics of the past. It does not really make much sense to still keep distributing boxed games when the same game can be elegantly downloaded and updated over the air through a digital distribution channel. The world is not all rainbows, however. One big issue with mixing digital distribution with boxed retail games is that resellers will not condone you selling your game for 10€ digitally while their selling the same game for 70€. The only way to get around this issue is to move to full digital distribution. This has the added benefit of minimizing piracy as the game can be tightly bound to the service you downloaded the game from. Many players are, however, complaining about not being able to play the games offline. Having games tightly bound to the internet is a problem when games are bought from a retailer as we tend to expect that once we have the product we can use it anywhere because we physically own it. The truth is that we don’t actually own the product. Instead, the typical EULA actually states that we only have a license to use the product. We’re not, for instance, allowed to disassemble the product, which the owner is indeed permitted to do. Digital distribution allows us to provide games as services, instead of selling them as standalone products. This means that for a service to work you have to be connected to the internet but you still have the same rights to use the product. It’s really straightforward; if you downloaded a client from the internet you are expected to have an internet connection so you’re able to connect to the server. A game distributed digitally that is built using a client-server architecture has the added benefit of allowing you to play anywhere as long as you have the client installed and you are able to log in with your user information. Your save games can be backed up and your game can continue anywhere. Another development we’re seeing in the gaming industry is the increasing popularity of free-to-play games. These are games that let you play for free but allow you to boost your gaming experience with real world money. The nature of these games is that players are constantly rewarded with new content and the game can evolve according to their way of playing and their wishes can be incorporated into the product. Free-to-play games can quickly gain a large player basis and monetization is done by providing players valuable things to buy making their gaming experience more fun. I am personally very excited about free-to-play games as it’s possible to start building the game together with your players and there is no need to work on the game for 5 years from start to finish and only then see if it’s actually something the players like. This is a typical problem with big movie-like retail games and recent news about Radical Entertainment practically closing its doors paints a clear picture of what can happen when the risk does not pay off: http://news.teamxbox.com/xbox/25874/Prototype-Developer-Radical-Entertainment-Closes/.

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• Why is 0 false?

  - by Morwenn

  This question may sound dumb, but why does 0 evaluates to false and any other [integer] value to true is most of programming languages? String comparison Since the question seems a little bit too simple, I will explain myself a little bit more: first of all, it may seem evident to any programmer, but why wouldn't there be a programming language - there may actually be, but not any I used - where 0 evaluates to true and all the other [integer] values to false? That one remark may seem random, but I have a few examples where it may have been a good idea. First of all, let's take the example of strings three-way comparison, I will take C's strcmp as example: any programmer trying C as his first language may be tempted to write the following code: if (strcmp(str1, str2)) { // Do something... } Since strcmp returns 0 which evaluates to false when the strings are equal, what the beginning programmer tried to do fails miserably and he generally does not understand why at first. Had 0 evaluated to true instead, this function could have been used in its most simple expression - the one above - when comparing for equality, and the proper checks for -1 and 1 would have been done only when needed. We would have considered the return type as bool (in our minds I mean) most of the time. Moreover, let's introduce a new type, sign, that just takes values -1, 0 and 1. That can be pretty handy. Imagine there is a spaceship operator in C++ and we want it for std::string (well, there already is the compare function, but spaceship operator is more fun). The declaration would currently be the following one: sign operator<=>(const std::string& lhs, const std::string& rhs); Had 0 been evaluated to true, the spaceship operator wouldn't even exist, and we could have declared operator== that way: sign operator==(const std::string& lhs, const std::string& rhs); This operator== would have handled three-way comparison at once, and could still be used to perform the following check while still being able to check which string is lexicographically superior to the other when needed: if (str1 == str2) { // Do something... } Old errors handling We now have exceptions, so this part only applies to the old languages where no such thing exist (C for example). If we look at C's standard library (and POSIX one too), we can see for sure that maaaaany functions return 0 when successful and any integer otherwise. I have sadly seen some people do this kind of things: #define TRUE 0 // ... if (some_function() == TRUE) { // Here, TRUE would mean success... // Do something } If we think about how we think in programming, we often have the following reasoning pattern: Do something Did it work? Yes -> That's ok, one case to handle No -> Why? Many cases to handle If we think about it again, it would have made sense to put the only neutral value, 0, to yes (and that's how C's functions work), while all the other values can be there to solve the many cases of the no. However, in all the programming languages I know (except maybe some experimental esotheric languages), that yes evaluates to false in an if condition, while all the no cases evaluate to true. There are many situations when "it works" represents one case while "it does not work" represents many probable causes. If we think about it that way, having 0 evaluate to true and the rest to false would have made much more sense. Conclusion My conclusion is essentially my original question: why did we design languages where 0 is false and the other values are true, taking in account my few examples above and maybe some more I did not think of? Follow-up: It's nice to see there are many answers with many ideas and as many possible reasons for it to be like that. I love how passionate you seem to be about it. I originaly asked this question out of boredom, but since you seem so passionate, I decided to go a little further and ask about the rationale behind the Boolean choice for 0 and 1 on Math.SE :)

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• Unable to install SQL 2008 on Windows 7

  - by Axel

  SQL 2008 install hangs on Windows 7 The story: Trying to install SQL2008 on Windows 7 hangs on SqlEngineDBStartconfigAction_install_configrc_Cpu32. What I Tried: Uninstall hangs on validation Manual uninstall using msiinv.exe and msiexec /x works Added SQL service accounts to local admins no help Turn of UAC no help Last lines in setup log: 2010-04-01 16:18:05 SQLEngine: : Checking Engine checkpoint 'GetSqlServerProcessHandle' 2010-04-01 16:18:05 SQLEngine: --SqlServerServiceSCM: Waiting for nt event 'Global\sqlserverRecComplete' to be created 2010-04-01 16:18:07 SQLEngine: --SqlServerServiceSCM: Waiting for nt event 'Global\sqlserverRecComplete' or sql process handle to be signaled 2010-04-01 16:18:07 SQLEngine: : Checking Engine checkpoint 'WaitSqlServerStartEvents' 2010-04-01 16:18:53 Slp: Sco: Attempting to initialize script 2010-04-01 16:18:53 Slp: Sco: Attempting to initialize default connection string 2010-04-01 16:18:53 Slp: Sco: Attempting to set script connection protocol to NotSpecified 2010-04-01 16:18:53 Slp: Sco: Attempting to set script connection protocol to NamedPipes 2010-04-01 16:18:53 SQLEngine: --SqlDatabaseServiceConfig: Connection String: Data Source=\.\pipe\SQLLocal\MSSQLSERVER;Initial Catalog=master;Integrated Security=True;Pooling=False;Network Library=dbnmpntw;Application Name=SqlSetup 2010-04-01 16:18:53 SQLEngine: : Checking Engine checkpoint 'ServiceConfigConnect' 2010-04-01 16:18:53 SQLEngine: --SqlDatabaseServiceConfig: Connecting to SQL.... 2010-04-01 16:18:53 Slp: Sco: Attempting to connect script 2010-04-01 16:18:53 Slp: Connection string: Data Source=\.\pipe\SQLLocal\MSSQLSERVER;Initial Catalog=master;Integrated Security=True;Pooling=False;Network Library=dbnmpntw;Application Name=SqlSetup And now comes the fun part: When I open conf mgr I can see the service running, I enabled named pipes and TCP/IP, restarted the service I'm able to connect to the server using an OLE DB connection but not with the Native Client. And what I find suspicious is the following error in my app log: .NET Runtime Optimization Service (clr_optimization_v2.0.50727_32) - Failed to compile: C:\Program Files\Microsoft SQL Server\100\Tools\Binn\VSShell\Common7\Tools\VDT\DataProjects.dll . Error code = 0x8007000b In MS connect this is reported as a bug but MS is unable to reproduce the problem altough when you search the fora I'm not the only one with this problem. So any help is appreciated.

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• Gomoku array-based AI-algorithm?

  - by Lasse V. Karlsen

  Way way back (think 20+ years) I encountered a Gomoku game source code in a magazine that I typed in for my computer and had a lot of fun with. The game was difficult to win against, but the core algorithm for the computer AI was really simply and didn't account for a lot of code. I wonder if anyone knows this algorithm and has some links to some source or theory about it. The things I remember was that it basically allocated an array that covered the entire board. Then, whenever I, or it, placed a piece, it would add a number of weights to all locations on the board that the piece would possibly impact. For instance (note that the weights are definitely wrong as I don't remember those): 1 1 1 2 2 2 3 3 3 444 1234X4321 3 3 3 2 2 2 1 1 1 Then it simply scanned the array for an open location with the lowest or highest value. Things I'm fuzzy on: Perhaps it had two arrays, one for me and one for itself and there was a min/max weighting? There might've been more to the algorithm, but at its core it was basically an array and weighted numbers Does this ring a bell with anyone at all? Anyone got anything that would help?

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• How to draw an Arc in OpenGL

  - by rpgFANATIC

  While making a little Pong game in C++ OpenGL, I decided it'd be fun to create arcs (semi-circles) when stuff bounces. I decided to skip Bezier curves for the moment and just go with straight algebra, but I didn't get far. My algebra follows a simple quadratic function (y = +- sqrt(mx+c)). This little excerpt is just an example I've yet to fully parameterize, I just wanted to see how it would look. When I draw this, however, it gives me a straight vertical line where the line's tangent line approaches -1.0 / 1.0. Is this a limitation of the GL_LINE_STRIP style or is there an easier way to draw semi-circles / arcs? Or did I just completely miss something obvious? void Ball::drawBounce() { float piecesToDraw = 100.0f; float arcWidth = 10.0f; float arcAngle = 4.0f; glBegin(GL_LINE_STRIP); for (float i = 0.0f; i < piecesToDraw; i += 1.0f) // Positive Half { float currentX = (i / piecesToDraw) * arcWidth; glVertex2f(currentX, sqrtf((-currentX * arcAngle)+ arcWidth)); } for (float j = piecesToDraw; j > 0.0f; j -= 1.0f) // Negative half (go backwards in X direction now) { float currentX = (j / piecesToDraw) * arcWidth; glVertex2f(currentX, -sqrtf((-currentX * arcAngle) + arcWidth)); } glEnd(); } Thanks in advance.

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• Calling Matlab's MLApp.MLAppClass.FEval from F#

  - by Matthew

  Matlab provides a COM interface that supports remote execution of arbitrary functions (and code snippets). In particular, it has an Feval method that calls a given Matlab function. The third parameter to this method, pvarArgOut, has COM type VARIANT*, and appears in the Visual Studio F# editor as an argument of type: pvarArgOut: byref<obj> The following code calls interp1, which in Matlab returns a matrix (i.e. 2D double array) result, as is normal for most Matlab functions. let matlab = new MLApp.MLAppClass() let vector_to_array2d (v : vector) = Array2D.init v.Length 1 (fun i j -> v.[i]) let interp1 (xs : vector) (ys : vector) (xi : vector) = let yi : obj = new obj() matlab.Feval("interp1", 1, ref yi, vector_to_array2d xs, vector_to_array2d ys, vector_to_array2d xi) yi :?> float[,] This code compiles fine, but when calling interp1, I get a COM exception: A first chance exception of type 'System.Reflection.TargetInvocationException' occurred in mscorlib.dll A first chance exception of type 'System.Runtime.InteropServices.COMException' occurred in mscorlib.dll An unhandled exception of type 'System.Runtime.InteropServices.COMException' occurred in mscorlib.dll Additional information: Invalid callee. (Exception from HRESULT: 0x80020010 (DISP_E_BADCALLEE)) I get the same error whether initialize yi with a new obj, a new Array2D, or null. How does F# translate VARIANT output arguments?

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• F# Powerpack's Metadata doesn't recognize FSharp.Core as an F# library

  - by Nathan Sanders

  Here's my test code to isolate the problem: open Microsoft.FSharp.Metadata [<EntryPoint>] let main args = let core = FSharpAssembly.FromFile @"C:\Program Files\FSharp-2.0.0.0\\bin\FSharp.Core.dll" let core2 = FSharpAssembly.FSharpLibrary let core3 = System.AppDomain.CurrentDomain.GetAssemblies() |> Seq.find (fun a -> a.FullName.Contains "Core") |> FSharpAssembly.FromAssembly core.Entities |> Seq.iter (printfn "%A") 0 All three lets should give me the same FSharpAssembly. Instead, all 3 throw an exception that FSharp.Core is not an F# assembly (details below, re-formatted for readability). Two more clues: Using the core3 method, I get the same error for the test F# assembly itself I don't get the error at FSI after doing #r "@C:\Program Files...\FSharp.Powerpack.Metadata.dll". Any ideas? I'm using Visual Studio 2008, F# 2.0 and F# Powerpack 2.0.0.0 (May 20, 2010) release on an oldish XP VM, I think it's updated to SP3 though. (I got the error this morning with Powerpack 1.9.9.9, so I upgraded to 2.0.0.0. I thought that if 1.9.9.9 doesn't recognise F#'s 2.0.0.0's assemblies, then maybe bugfixes in Powerpack 2.0.0.0 would help.) Unhandled Exception: System.TypeInitializationException: The type initializer for 'Microsoft.FSharp.Metadata.AssemblyLoader' threw an exception. ---> System.TypeInitializationException: The type initializer for '<StartupCode$FSharp-PowerPack-Metadata>.$Metadata' threw an exception. ---> System.ArgumentException: could not produce an FSharpAssembly object for the assembly 'FSharp.Core' because this is not an F# assembly Parameter name: name at Microsoft.FSharp.Metadata.AssemblyLoader.Add(String name,Assembly assembly) at <StartupCode$FSharp-PowerPack-Metadata>.$Metadata..cctor() --- End of inner exception stack trace --- at Microsoft.FSharp.Metadata.AssemblyLoader..cctor() --- End of inner exception stack trace --- at Microsoft.FSharp.Metadata.AssemblyLoader.Get(Assembly assembly) at Microsoft.FSharp.Metadata.FSharpAssembly.FromAssembly(Assembly assembly) at Program.main(String[] args) in C:\Documents an...\FSMetadataTest\Program.fs:line 11 Press any key to continue . . .

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• Losing sessions with window.open and cakephp redirection in PHP with cakephp

  - by vsecades

  Hi guys, Ok, here goes a very strange problem... Our team is using cakephp to develop a large application. Everything session related is working properly so far. The only issues we've had so far are related to iframes and opening windows in other subdomains. I'll explain: User opens up site A and logs into it, creation a User in a session. Cookies are set, everything works as expected. The user clicks a link that opens up Site B via Javascript. When they go to that site, they are automatically logged in by a backend mechanism and infrastructure. Site B is a subdomain of Site A. On that site there is another mechanism to go back to the first page (a link rather) that logs them back in to site A. The fun part about this whole process is the following, and that on step 3, when we click on the link, the session on Site A has been lost. I know it's lost because it is forcing login again. I am a bit lost, as the rest of the application that work with AJAX and uses iframes and stuff works flawlessly, just this one item does not work as one would expect. Any assistance would be appreciated. Cheers, Valentin

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• jQuery DataTables: Problems with POST Server Side JSON output

  - by Tim

  Hello Everyone, I am trying to get my datatable to take a POST JSON output from my server. This is my client side code <script> $(document).ready(function() { $('#example').dataTable( { "bProcessing": true, "bServerSide": true, "sAjaxSource": "http://localhost/staff/jobs/my_jobs", "fnServerData": function ( sSource, aoData, fnCallback ) { $.ajax( { "dataType": 'json', "type": "POST", "url": sSource, "data": aoData, "success": fnCallback } ); } } ); } ); </script> Now I have copied and pasted the server side code found in the DataTables examples found here. When I change my sAjaxSource to view this page the table doesn't move beyond 'processing'. When I view the JSON directly I see this output. {"sEcho": 1, "iTotalRecords": 1, "iTotalDisplayRecords": 1, "aaData": [ ["Trident","First Ever Job"]] } Just for fun I went to the POST server-side example and copied some of the JSON they are using for their example and just PHP echoed it straight out of another page. This is the output of that page. {"sEcho": 1, "iTotalRecords": 1, "iTotalDisplayRecords": 1, "aaData": [ ["Trident","Internet Explorer 4.0"]] } Here is where it gets interesting. The JSON that has been processed by the server fails to work yet the JSON simply echo'd by the same server on a different page does work... yet both are almost identical in outputs. I hope someone can shed some light on this because as the tree said to the lumberjack... I'm stumped. Thanks, Tim

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• Javascript - jquery ajax post error driving me mad

  - by Exception Duck

  Can't seem to figure this one out. I have a web service defined as (c#,.net) [WebMethod] public string SubmitOrder(string sessionid, string lang,int invoiceno,string email,string emailcc) { //do stuff. return stuff; } Which works fine, when I test it from the autogenerated test thingy in Vstudio. But when I call it from jquery as $j.ajax({ type: "POST", url: "/wservice/baby.asmx/SubmitOrder", data: "{'sessionid' : '"+sessionid+"',"+ "'lang': '"+usersettings.Currlang+"',"+ "'invoiceno': '"+invoicenr+"',"+ "'email':'"+$j(orderids.txtOIEMAIL).val()+"',"+ "'emailcc':'"+$j(orderids.txtOICC).val()+"'}", contenttype: "application/json; charset=utf-8", datatype: "json", success: function (msg) { submitordercallback(msg); }, error: AjaxFailed }); I get this fun error: responseText: System.InvalidOperationException: Missing parameter: sessionid. at System.Web.Services.Protocols.ValueCollectionParameterReader.Read(NameValueCollection collection) at System.Web.Services.Protocols.HtmlFormParameterReader.Read(HttpRequest request) at System.Web.Services.Protocols.HttpServerProtocol.ReadParameters() at System.Web.Services.Protocols.WebServiceHandler.CoreProcessRequest() data evaluates to: {'sessionid' : 'f61f8da737c046fea5633e7ec1f706dd','lang': 'SE','invoiceno': '11867','email':'[email protected]','emailcc':''} Ok, fair enough, but this function from jquery communicates fine with another webservice. Defined: c#: [WebMethod] public string CheckoutClicked(string sessionid,string lang) { //*snip* //jquery: var divCheckoutClicked = function() { $j.ajax({ type: "POST", url: "/wservice/baby.asmx/CheckoutClicked", data: "{'sessionid': '"+sessionid+"','lang': '"+usersettings.Currlang+"'}", contentType: "application/json; charset=utf-8", dataType: "json", success: function (msg) { divCheckoutClickedCallback(msg); }, error: AjaxFailed }); }

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• Quantis Quantum Random Number Generator (QRNG) - any reviews?

  - by Tim Post

  I am thinking about getting one of these (PCI) to set up an internal entropy pool similar to this service who incidentally brought us fun captcha challenges. Prior to lightening my wallet, I'm hoping to gather feedback from people who may be using this device. As there is no possible 'correct' answer, I am making this CW and tagging it as subjective. I'm undertaking a project to help write Monte Carlo simulations for a non profit that distributes mosquito nets in Malaria stricken areas. The idea is to model areas to determine the best place to distribute mosquito nets. During development, I expect to consume gigs if not more of the RNG output. We really need our own source. Is this device reliable? Does it have to be re-started often? Is its bandwidth really as advertised? It passes all tests, as far as randomness goes (i.e. NIST/DIEHARD). What I don't want is something in deadlock due to some ioctl in disk sleep that does nothing but radiate heat. This is not a spamvertisement, I'm helping out of pocket and I really, really want to know if such a large purchase will bear fruit. I can't afford to build a HRNG based on radioactive decay, this looks like the next best thing. Any comments are appreciated. I will earn zero rep for this, please do not vote to close. This is no different than questions regarding the utilization of some branded GPU for some odd purpose. Answers pointing to other solutions will be gladly accepted, I'm not married to this idea.

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• ASP MVC2 model binding issue on POST

  - by Brandon Linton

  So I'm looking at moving from MVC 1.0 to MVC 2.0 RTM. One of the conventions I'd like to start following is using the strongly-typed HTML helpers for generating controls like text boxes. However, it looks like it won't be an easy jump. I tried migrating my first form, replacing lines like this: <%= Html.TextBox("FirstName", Model.Data.FirstName, new {maxlength = 30}) %> ...for lines like this: <%= Html.TextBoxFor(x => x.Data.FirstName, new {maxlength = 30}) %> Previously, this would map into its appropriate view model on a POST, using the following method signature: [AcceptVerbs(HttpVerbs.Post)] public ActionResult Registration(AccountViewInfo viewInfo) Instead, it currently gets an empty object back. I believe the disconnect is in the fact that we pass the view model into a larger aggregate object that has some page metadata and other fun stuff along with it (hence x.Data.FirstName instead of x.FirstName). So my question is: what is the best way to use the strongly-typed helpers while still allowing the MVC framework to appropriately cast the form collection to my view-model as it does in the original line? Is there any way to do it without changing the aggregate type we pass to the view? Thanks!

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• Reverse engineering and patching a DirectX game?

  - by yodaj007

  Background I am playing Imperishable Night, one of the Touhou series of games. The shoot button is 'z', moving slower is 'shift', and the arrow keys move. Unfortunately for me, using shift-z ghosts my right arrow key, so I can't move to the right while shooting. This ghosting happens in all applications, and switching keyboards fixes it. Goal I want to locate in the disassembled code the directx function that gets the keyboard input and compares it against the 'z' key, and change that key to 'a'. I'm considering this a fun project. Assuming the size of the scan codes are the same, this should be fairly simple. And because the executable is only 400k, maybe this will provide a unique opportunity for me to explore the dark side of the computing underworld (kidding). Relevant experience I have some experience with coding in assembly, but not in the disassembly of such. I have no experience with the DirectX apis. Question I need some guidance. I've found a listing of directx keyboard scan codes, and a program called PEExplorer that looks like it will do what I need. Is there a means by which I can turn some of the assembly with C function calls so it's more easily read? I will need to locate where the game retrieves the currently pressed keys, compares those against a list, and it's that list I need to modify. Any input would be greatly appreciated.

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