That checklist is important, as it is easy to get things wrong and dissatisfy your users without reason (heck, they get worse than mediocre RDP performance experience, so you could’ve saved you the work of PCoIP in the first place).

So please do read the “PCoIP Protocol Virtual Desktop Network Design Checklist“.

It starts with

The PCoIP protocol provides a real-time delivery of a rich user desktop experience in virtual desktop and remote workstation environments.

To ensure a responsive desktop, the PCoIP protocol must be deployed across a properly architected virtual desktop network infrastructure that meets bandwidth, QoS, latency, jitter, and packet loss requirements.

CheckPoint VPN sometimes can be a dork combined with PCoIP. and at least make sure UDP works well over your VPN.

–jeroen

via: ”PCoIP Protocol Virtual Desktop Network Design Checklist“

(Some more backgorund reading and even more)

(fixed typo: one of the PCoIP occurances was PCiOP, luckily, Google knows better

One class of systems involved in the migration is SQL Server 2000 databases (yes, I know that SQL Server 2000 has been in Extended Support mode since April 8, 2008, that’s one of the grounds for migration).

Sometimes, you need SQL Server Enterprise Manager (a plugin to the Microsoft Management Console) to work on those databases to see what needs to be migrated (yes, this should be in the documentation, of which the ultimate form is the system itself .

SQL Server Enterprise Manager has a nice feature that you can group SQL Server registration into SQL Server Groups.

However, it also has a limitation: you cannot add the same SQL Server to multiple SQL Server Groups. That is: unless you create an alias on the SQL Server, as aliases are not counted in the “unique” criterion.

Below are the top 2 links I found using “multiple databases” “sql server”  ”enterprise manager”. Since I’m not sure the content of those will last, below are the full quotes.

Besides adding a SQL Server Alias (which has other uses as well), the most important steps are “6″ in the first quote, and “1.6″ in the second quote: your alias needs to point to the same IP address (or hostname) as your regular server.

How do I register multiple databases with MS SQL Enterprise Manager?

MS Enterprise Manager does not allow you to register the same database server multiple times. It is sometimes useful to create multiple registrations, if you want to connect to different databases on the same server. To workaround this, follow the steps below.

1. Go to Start – Programs – Microsoft SQL Server – Select “SQL Server Client Network Utility”
2. Go to Alias Tab
3. Click “Add”
4. In the “Server alias:” text box, enter a name you want to use to distinguish this database server
5. In the “Network libraries:” section, select “TCP/IP”
6. In the “Connection parameters” section, change the “Server name:” to your database server, i.e.; mssql01.discountasp.net
7. Click OK

Once the Alias is created, you can register it using the same method described in this Knowledge Base article.

How can I open multiple databases in SQL Server Enterprise Manager?

1. Create SQL Server Alias
   (Please repeat the following steps if you want to open mutiple databases)
   1. Open SQL Server Client Network Utility.
   2. When Client Network Utility opens, click on the Alias tab.
   3. Click on the Add button.
   4. In the Server Alias text box enter a name for your SQL connection.
   5. Select TCP/IP under Network libraries
   6. Enter the IP address of the Server your SQL database is located on, in the Server name text box.
   7. Click on the OK button.
   8. Your Server alias will now be configured, click on the Apply button.
   9. Click on the OK button.
2. Create SQL Server Connection in Enterprise Manager
   (Please repeat following  steps if you want to open mutiple databases)
   1. Open SQL Server Enterprise Manager.
   2. When Enterprise Manager opens, right click SQL Server Group and select New SQL Server Registration.
   3. The Register SQL Server wizard will now open.
   4. Click on the Next button.
   5. From the Available Servers drop down menu, select the server alias you created earlier.
   6. Click on the Add button.
   7. The server should now be listed under Added servers, click on the Next button.
   8. When the next dialog box appears select The SQL Server login information that was assigned to me by the system administrator see above.
   9. Click on the Next button.
   10. Enter your Login name and Password ? this will be used every time you connect to your SQL server.
   11. Click on the Next button.
   12. Ensure that Add the SQL Servers to an existing SQL Server group is selected and SQL Server Group is selected for Group name.
   13. Click on the Next button.
   14. When the next dialog box opens you can click on the Finish button.
   15. Your SQL Connection will now be created.

–jeroen

via:

• How can I open multiple databases in SQL Server Enterprise Manager?.
• How do I register multiple databases with MS SQL Enterprise Manager?.

I tried posting this question, but as you can see it is marked as ‘Topic Closed, This topic has been closed to new replies’, and looks empty on your forums’:

Please stop deleting the XML from my

</h1>
Since WordPress deletes anything but the most basic XML from [sourcecode language='xml']

tags:

See http://wiert.files.wordpress.com/2012/02/wordpress-html.doc

When I put that in a WordPress post, it deletes the XML.
It does this for anything but the most basic XML.

Please fix that!

–jeroen

Thanks in advance!

–jeroen

Doing the math from your head is hard, and I usually used some subnet calculator web pages, but recently stumbled over the great Bitcricket IP Subnet Calculator.

IP Subnet Calculators … pioneered byby Bitcricket founder J. Scott Haugdahl …  rewrite of this tool, improving upon the precedent set by the original with a refreshed GUI, native Windows or Mac operation, and support for IPv6.

As the quote tells, it is running on both Windows and Mac, so I took a quick look and found that the underlying technology is Qt with a C++ application layer. That reminds me of the old Kylix days

–jeroen

via: IP Subnet Calculator – Overview.

Some classes are user error, others are fatal, etc.

This extension class will help you:

using System;
using System.Data.SqlClient;

namespace bo.MsSql
{
    /// <summary>
    /// see http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms164086.aspx
    /// </summary>
    public static class SqlExceptionSeverety
    {
        public static bool IsInformational(this SqlException sqlException)
        {
            return sqlException.Class < 10;
        }

        public static bool IsUserCorractable(this SqlException sqlException)
        {
            return (sqlException.Class >= 10) && (sqlException.Class < 17);
        }

        public static bool IsSoftwareError(this SqlException sqlException)
        {
            return (sqlException.Class >= 17) && (sqlException.Class < 20);
        }

        public static bool IsFatalSystemProblem(this SqlException sqlException)
        {
            return sqlException.Class >= 20;
        }
    }
}

–jeroen

• Jed Software on a Select Directory method on OS X (they have an OS X category)
• iOS demos applications by Anders Ohlsson shown on CodeRage 6
• Russian FireMonkey sample app submissions that won prizes
• 3D interactive FireMonkey app for displaying models imported from COLLADA files using Delphi IDE build-events to automatically compile HLSL shaders with a custom camera class, and example how to export COLLADA models from 3D Studio Max
• Changing style colors on the fly
• The MonkeyStyler blog
• Visualizing Math Functions in 3D and Visualizing Interference in 3D

–jeroen

Download: DirectX Redist (June 2010) – Microsoft Download Center …

www.microsoft.com/download/en/details.aspx?id=8109

29 Sep 1974 – The DirectX redist installation includes all the latest and previous released DirectX runtime. This includes D3DX, XInput, and Managed DirectX …

I almost skipped that search result, as the date was from 1974, but since back then DirectX didn’t even exist, I became curious.

This is the original text from the page that Google tried to interpret:

DirectX End-User Runtime Web Installer Subscribe

The Microsoft DirectX® End-User Runtime provides updates to 9.0c and previous versions of DirectX — the core Windows® technology that drives high-speed multimedia and games on the PC.

Quick details - Version: 9.29.1974 Date Published: 4/18/2011

Google Search totally missed the “Date published” part that has US-style slashes in the date, and took the “Version” as a date.

And all I wanted was the DirectX 9.0c web installer executable (which is the June 2010 version) because Media Player Classic HC requires it:

---------------------------
Setup
---------------------------
The latest DirectX runtime is not installed!
Please download and install the latest DirectX runtime (June 2010) regardless of your operating system.
---------------------------
OK
---------------------------

–jeroen

via: directx runtime – Google Search.

• http://stackexchange.com/
• http://stackoverflow.com/
• http://serverfault.com/
• http://superuser.com/
• http://blog.serverfault.com/ (this is bad, as no nobody knows why they are down, see below on how the blog outage looked like for a long time; the blog was one of the latest to get back online).

Later I will amend this post with the HTML and try to get some site previews too.

A bit later I got this kind of message from Chrome, that tried to protect one of the sites:

Error 139 (net::ERR_TEMPORARILY_THROTTLED): Requests to the server have been temporarily throttled.

Note that http://askubuntu.com/ is up and running

Well, this turned out to be easier, as from the HTML below and the JavaScript at http://cdn.sstatic.net/error-director.js you can reconstruct a complete list of static “We are Offline” pages for all StackExchange sites:

(Yes, I always forget the html th entries, so I used this tutorial, as I did not have a proper html editor available when posting).

Note that some of the “main” sites (like serverfault.com) are slowly coming up just as the stackexchange sites did.

–jeroen

Edits:

HTML and scripts

The HTML:

...
<script type="text/javascript" src="http://cdn.sstatic.net/error-director.js"></script><script type="text/javascript">// <![CDATA[
if (top == self && directory) {
            document.getElementById('pageFrame').src = 'http://cdn.sstatic.net/' + directory + '/app_offline.htm';
        } else {
            // if we get here, that means even the offline pages on sstatic are offline
            document.getElementById('pageFrame').style.height = "0px";
            document.write("
...

The JavaScript:

var hosts = [];
// x.stackexchange.com sites
hosts.push({ dir: 'android',        host: 'android\.stackexchange' });
hosts.push({ dir: 'apple',          host: 'apple\.stackexchange' });
hosts.push({ dir: 'bicycles',       host: 'bicycles\.stackexchange' });
hosts.push({ dir: 'cooking',        host: 'cooking\.stackexchange' });
hosts.push({ dir: 'cstheory',       host: 'cstheory\.stackexchange' });
hosts.push({ dir: 'dba',            host: 'dba\.stackexchange' });
hosts.push({ dir: 'diy',            host: 'diy\.stackexchange' });
hosts.push({ dir: 'drupal',         host: 'drupal\.stackexchange' });
hosts.push({ dir: 'electronics',    host: 'electronics\.stackexchange' });
hosts.push({ dir: 'english',        host: 'english\.stackexchange' });
hosts.push({ dir: 'gamedev',        host: 'gamedev\.stackexchange' });
hosts.push({ dir: 'gaming',         host: 'gaming\.stackexchange' });
hosts.push({ dir: 'gis',            host: 'gis\.stackexchange' });
hosts.push({ dir: 'math',           host: 'math\.stackexchange' });
hosts.push({ dir: 'photo',          host: 'photo\.stackexchange' });
hosts.push({ dir: 'physics',        host: 'physics\.stackexchange' });
hosts.push({ dir: 'programmers',    host: 'programmers\.stackexchange' });
hosts.push({ dir: 'scifi',          host: 'scifi\.stackexchange' });
hosts.push({ dir: 'security',       host: 'security\.stackexchange' });
hosts.push({ dir: 'sharepoint',     host: 'sharepoint\.stackexchange' });
hosts.push({ dir: 'stats',          host: 'stats\.stackexchange' });
hosts.push({ dir: 'tex',            host: 'tex\.stackexchange' });
hosts.push({ dir: 'askubuntu',      host: 'ubuntu\.stackexchange|askubuntu' });
hosts.push({ dir: 'unix',           host: 'unix\.stackexchange' });
hosts.push({ dir: 'ux',             host: 'ux\.stackexchange' });
hosts.push({ dir: 'webapps',        host: 'webapps\.stackexchange' });
hosts.push({ dir: 'webmasters',     host: 'webmasters\.stackexchange' });
hosts.push({ dir: 'wordpress',      host: 'wordpress\.stackexchange' });
// named sites
hosts.push({ dir: 'skins/careers',       host: 'careers\.stackoverflow' });
hosts.push({ dir: 'skins/stackexchange', host: '^stackexchange\.com' });
hosts.push({ dir: 'stackoverflowmeta',   host: 'meta\.stackoverflow|local.mso.com' });
hosts.push({ dir: 'stackoverflow',       host: 'stackoverflow' });
hosts.push({ dir: 'serverfault',         host: 'serverfault' });
hosts.push({ dir: 'superuser',           host: 'superuser' });
hosts.push({ dir: 'stackapps',           host: 'stackapps' });
hosts.push({ dir: 'skins/sketchy',       host: 'stackexchange|.*' }); //catch all

if (top == self) {
    for (var i = 0, l = hosts.length; i < l; i++) {
        var regEx = new RegExp(hosts[i].host);

        if (regEx.test(hostName)) {
            directory = hosts[i].dir;
            break;
        }
    }
}

Stackoverflow We are Offline html

    Offline - Stack Overflow

</pre>
<div style="width: 950px; margin: 0 auto; text-align: left;">
<div style="margin-bottom: 10px;"><img src="http://sstatic.net/stackoverflow/img/logo.png" alt="Stack Overflow" width="250" height="61" /></div>
<div class="subheader">
<h1>Stack Overflow is currently offline for maintenance</h1>
</div>
Routine maintenance usually takes less than an hour. If this turns into an extended outage, we will <strong>post details on the <a href="http://blog.serverfault.com/" target="_parent">blog</a></strong>.

 <img title="stack overflow" src="http://sstatic.net/stackoverflow/img/offline-ide-1.png" alt="stack overflow" width="548" height="346" />

 <img title="stack overflow" src="http://sstatic.net/stackoverflow/img/offline-ide-2.png" alt="stack overflow" width="548" height="343" />

 <img title="stack overflow" src="http://sstatic.net/stackoverflow/img/offline-ide-3.png" alt="stack overflow" width="549" height="340" />

 <img title="stack overflow" src="http://sstatic.net/stackoverflow/img/offline-ide-4.png" alt="stack overflow" width="548" height="346" />

 <img title="stack overflow" src="http://sstatic.net/stackoverflow/img/offline-ide-5.png" alt="stack overflow" width="548" height="346" />

 <img title="stack overflow" src="http://sstatic.net/stackoverflow/img/offline-ide-6.png" alt="stack overflow" width="548" height="346" /></div>
<pre>

</pre>
<div style="width: 950px; margin: 0 auto; text-align: left;">
<div style="margin-bottom: 10px;">
 <img src="http://sstatic.net/serverfault/img/logo.png" alt="Server Fault" width="227" height="45" /></div>
<div class="subheader">
<h1>Server Fault is currently offline for maintenance</h1>
</div>
Routine maintenance usually takes less than an hour. If this turns into an extended outage, we will <strong>post details on the <a href="http://blog.serverfault.com/" target="_parent">blog</a></strong>.

 <img title="Blue Screen of Death" src="http://sstatic.net/serverfault/img/offline-bsod.png" alt="Blue Screen of Death" width="640" height="480" />

 <img title="Kernel Panic" src="http://sstatic.net/serverfault/img/offline-kernel-panic.png" alt="Kernel Panic" width="720" height="400" /></div>
<pre>

–eof–

JustDecompile is a new, free developer productivity tool for easy .NET assembly browsing and decompiling.

–jeroen

via: Free .NET Decompiler – JustDecompile.

/* Sent by Muriel Godoi */

Programmer: I developed a new way to generate random strings…

A. P.: How? It’s based on processor’s clock?

Programmer? No… Just let the trainee using the “VI” and asked him to close it…

A. P.: Effective…

–jeroen

via: A Programmer’s Life | /* Code lines of a programmer’s life */

A Programmer's Life | /* Code lines of a programmer's life */

.

Karateka cover art

I remember playing Karateka for ages when I was at high school (yes, I’m 42 and counting <g>). Even with the bad eye-hand coordination I have, it was still fun to play (as was Lode Runner). Now it looks like there is going to be a remake of Karateka:

After a stint in film, Jordan Mechner, a legendary game developer who created The Prince of Persia blockbuster video game series, is coming back into video games to remake his 1980s hit Karateka.

…

Mechner created Karateka in 1984 on the Apple II computer. He made the game while attending Yale University and won kudos for the title’s realistic animations. The game sold more than 500,000 units, which is outstanding for the early days of video games.

“It is amazing to me how many people still remember Karateka and talk about it after all these years,” Mechner said in an email. “Somehow, the 1980s seem to be in the air again. People ask me about Karateka on my website all the time, and I keep seeing videos and retrospectives of the original game posted online. I was astonished when I was in Moscow at a press conference for the Prince of Persia movie opening in 2010, and Russian journalists asked questions about Karateka.”

–jeroen

via: Prince of Persia creator returns to games with remake of Karateka | VentureBeat.

I’ve manually catched mails from these domains:

• ns.nl
• barnsten.com
• malwarebytes.org
• apple.com
• linkedin.com

So: if you are awaiting mail from me, please send me an SMS or tweet me.

Note I am still glad with the Google Mail SPAM filtering, as it catched very authentic looking fake messages from ING Bank, ABN AMRO Bank, xs4all internet, and numerous others.

–jeroen

I thought I had a webhp rootkit issue, possibly related to Avast, but it wasn’t (I posted at the Avast forums, and later replied the issue had solved itself, but I still wonder about the real cause).

What happened was that some page I had open in Google Chrome (all other web browsers were fine) forced the redirect.

I can only reproduce this on one system (that has both Avast! Antivirus installed, and Chrome open with the page http://www.eggheadcafe.com/searchform.aspx?search=Cross+Join+Excel) but not on other machines.

So far, it took me about a day of work (quarantining the machine, investigating if it was a virus, rootkit or otherwise, trying to verify this is a one off), and I still feel I don’t have the complete answer yet.

I still wonder if others have seen similar issues.

This is how it redirected

The defaults have a truckload of junk around them, but come down to the URLs below (lmgtfy is the search phrase)

It used to be of this form (which now again works, after I closed all Google Chrome pages)

• https://www.google.com/search?q=lmgtfy

The redirect made it into a longer webhp form:

• https://www.google.com/webhp?ion=1#sclient=psy&q=lmgtfy

The fun thing is, that if you enter the form

• https://www.google.com/webhp?q=lmgtfy

then you will end at the Google Search home page with the search phrase pre-filled in.
Now that is a pretty nifty “let me Google that for you”

–jeroen

via: Google.

Jason Southwell (from arcana) just published DuckDuckDelphi: a unit to do Duck typing in Delphi XE2 (not XE):

Duck Duck Delphi

DuckDuckDelphi is an Open Source (MIT License) unit for Delphi XE2 which adds duck typing functionality to a normally strongly typed language.

Great stuff that makes a truckload of my code so much easier to maintain.

–jeroen

via arcana – DuckDuckDelphi.

(Edit: 1400 UTC+1 Sorry, wrong boolean; wrote “and” but should be “not” XE).

Like Apple’s iOS Human Interface Guidelines and Microsoft’s User Experience Design Guidelines for Windows Phone they are a must for any mobile developer.

Together with sites like Android UI Design Patterns, and mockup stencil tools, more Android UI mockup sketch tools and stencils allow you to give prospective users an impression on how an app might be looking like when developed.

What is lacking is a set of real Android GUI design tools. The kind of tools like the Xcode Interface Builder for iOS, or Expression Blend for Windows Phone that – together with iOS PSD templates or Windows Phone design templates (and more templates) – give you a killer start.

Also note Delphi XE2 that has a great UI designer which has consistently covered Windows UI design for 15+ years, including multi-touch and gesture support, and now covers Mac OS X and iOS for HD and 3D apps (but not yet with multi-touch or gesture support).

The only design tool for Android I could find is DroidDraw that emits the XML needed for Android UIs. It is painfully slow and lacks basic things like a property window to edit properties of UI elements.

Given the number of Android app developers, there is much room for improvement.

• Am I missing something here?
• What kind of tools are you using?

–jeroen

via: Android Design – UI Overview.

Jouni Heikniemi originally posted “What’s new in .NET Framework 4.5 [poster]” on 20111029, then updated the poster on 20111116.

His original poster is Finnish, and his English poster contains a small translation glitch ”Async ja Await equal to C#” (“ja” is Finnish for “and”).

Both posters are PNG filess, so msguy Anil made it into a textual document, including the translation glitch.

I love that, as it shows we are all humans

–jeroen

via: Bruno Leonardo Michels – Google+.

 Install Philips SimplyShare on the Android device

1. Make sure that you have connected the Android device to the Internet. EN 25
   [ Consult the user manual of your Android device for information.
2. On the Android device, install  SimplyShare:
   a  Go to the Android Market;
   b  Search for, download, and install  SimplyShare.

Play media from the Android device

1. Make sure that you have connected the player to the same Wi-Fi network as your Android device.
2. On the Android device, go to  SimplyShare from the Home screen:
   SimplyShare, enter the activation code 74963893 as prompted.

Thanks Toengel for this info.

–jeroen

via: Philips HMP7001 User manual

Karsten Liljegren about 24 hours ago

I was one of the Boeing pilots on this record setting flight. 19 hours and 22 minutes block to block (and 10408 Nautical Miles)… The longest ETOPS endurance test flight ever!

Air Traffic Control was fantastic and very accommodating. – Thank you!

The airplane performed flawlessly. As a matter of fact – we didn’t even top off the fuel tanks.

Karsten
Boeing Test and Evaluation

A few days after it flew from KPAE to KBFI, it took a 19+ hour ETOPS test flight from KBFI to KBFI and adding a new drawing to the list of previous drawings by other aircrafts.

Some links:

• The FlightAware blog post and comment thread
• The FlightAware tracking of the 787 flight
• The flight when it was about half way (so you can see the flight pattern and the flight plan)
• The flight about halfway, but now with an “earth” background
• The flight log
• The Boeing blogs post on the 787
• The Boeing blogs post on the 747 last august
• The FlightAware tracking of the 747 last augusts
• The Reddit coverage is thin
• The FlightAware tracking of a Gullwing doing a similar thing in 2007
• The FlightAware tracking of a Cessna doing a similar thing in 2008

–jeroen:

via: FlightAware > BOE236 787 drawing a Boeing logo on FlightAware.

BOE236 787 drawing a Boeing logo on FlightAware

Opgericht in 1979, is er nu alleen nog een door Mensys gerunde webshop  (op dit moment nog steeds in houde stijl, zou dat ooit gaan wijzigen)

Dit is een stukje van me uit hun nieuwsbrief van september 1997, toen het “internet” zoals we nu kennen net een paar jaar begonnen waren en de eerste zoekmachines nog in de kinderschoenen stonden.

Toen was ik al een power user en life hacker, en zaten er meer taalvauwdten in mijn teksten dan nu

Even een paar puntjes die ik bij mijn zoektochten op het internet gebruik:

• zoeken valt vaak tegen; het duurt meestal vrij lang en het is niet eenvoudig te vinden wat je zoekt
• de ‘traditionele’ zoek-engines (yahoo, alta-vista, etc) zijn goed voor het vinden van bedrijven en dergelijke, maar niet voor het vinden van personen, technische vraagstukken, etc
• www.dejanews.com is een zoek-engine op (bijna) alle newsgroups. Deze werkt vaak veel beter dan de traditionele zoek engines. Je zoekt hier een paar threads die over je onderwerp gaan. Vaak staan hier al genoeg verwijzingen naar sites/personen/informatie die je zoekt.
• hou een goede favourites list bij van sites waarvan je weet dat ze voor jou waardevolle informatie hebben. Loop de lijst af en toe door om te kijken of de sites niet verhuisd zijn en zo.
• neem een abonnement op een paar goede nieuwsbrieven en kijk eens rond op news-sites (ik heb zelf een abonnement op onder meer de nieuwsbrieven comcol, broekhuis update, web-wereld nieuws, dutchmedia, daily planet en news-sites www.webwereld.nl, www.news.com, www.techweb.com, www.pcweek.com).
• er zijn informatieleveranciers (bijvoorbeeld Encyclopedia Britannica) waar je een abonnement op kunt nemen. Kan erg handig zijn.

De praktijk leert dat het je zo een paar uur tijd kost om iets te vinden wat je zoekt. Vraag je van te voren af of het je die tijd wel waard is en alternatieven niet beter zijn (telefoontje naar iemand waarvan je weet dat ie het weet doet ook vaak wonderen).

Niet alle bovenstaande links bestaan meer, en ook niet alle bedrijven bestaan nog in hun oude vorm. Zo heet PC Week tegenwoordig eWeek, Deja news is tegenwoordig Google Groups, en Alta Vista is van Yahoo.

–jeroen

via: Tips en commentaar 290997.

Some clients make heavy use of VMware VDI (Virtual Desktop Infrastructure) which moves the desktop into the VMs in the data center.

A while ago I spent most of the day tracking down a “Connect Desktop Failed” error with VMware View Client running on a Windows 7 x64 workstation to connect to a VDI VM. It would connect to the VDI server, authenticate, start the Desktop, but could not connect to the Desktop.

The amazing thing is that the VMware view client worked fine on an XP VM workstation (with and without SNX) XP physical machine with SNX, and another Windows 7 x64 VM workstation (also with and without SNX) and Windows 7 x64 physical machine with SNX.

Clearly something was wrong with this particular Windows 7 x64 workstation that is host of most of my development VMs so I didn’t want to do a re-install.

I tried many obvious things on the Windows 7 x64 workstation:

1. reboot
2. disable firewall
   (that would have indicated some of the ports required by VMware view were not open: in practice not all ports mentioned in the list are used)
3. uninstall software from various vendors that might interfere with network activity
4. disabled virus scanner
5. step down from VMware View Manager 5 client to VMware View Manager 4.6 client
6. circumvented SNX (CheckPoint SSL VPN extender) making sure I was on the same WAN and later LAN of the VDI
7. verified twice I had indeed Windows 7 SP1 applied
8. laughed about the SSE support required by VMware view client

Since the “Connect desktop failed” does not return many English search results, I started browsing the Russian ones.

This particular Google translated Russion article on SSE got me started: it mentioned that the VMware view client would log errors in the eventlog.

So I started eventvwr.msc, and almost fainted: it could not show my eventlog!

This was the error message: “The Event log service is unavailable. Verify that the service is running.”

So I ran services.msc, found out the eventlog service was not started, and tried to start it manually getting this error message:

[Services]
Windows could not start the Windows Event Log service on Local Computer.
Error 5: Access is denied.
[OK]

I don’t normally look in the eventlog often, but it appeared the eventlog hadn’t been running for a a few months.
The last event log entries back then were from a regular shutdown of the machine. Right before that, a Windows Defender Update KB915597 was applied, but I doubt this combination is the real cause.

There are many search results for “Windows 7″ “Windows could not start the Windows Event Log service on Local Computer.” “Error 5: Access is denied.”.

I was looking for a security related solution as my experience with Access Denied errors usually comes down to either of these:

• a process (might even be on a remote machine) is still active keeping a handle open
• wrong Access Control List
• wrong object ownership

When the eventlog service cannot start, there is not much to log, but Process Monitor came to the rescue: it showed that accessing files in this directory failed:

%SystemRoot%\System32\winevt\logs

That lead me to a Sysinternals forum thread and this Windows Server 2008 support article (Windows 2008 R2 is the server variant of Windows 7) explaining the correct rights of the logs directory.

Somehow the “NT SERVICE\EventLog” didn’t have full control on that directory any more. As soon as I gave it full control, I could start the Windows Event Log service (I didn’t have to rename the log files), view them with the Event Viewer, and – finally – the VMware view client could connect!

In retrospect, the error message somewhat made sense. Just before trying to connect, it wanted to write to the eventlog, but couldn’t, and therefore not setup the right connection. The classic “something is at fault, lets post a wrong error message”.

Now that I finally could use the VMware view client, I also created a shortcut for this particular client that starts the VMware view client with the right parameters:

"%ProgramFiles%\VMware\VMware View\Client\bin\wswc.exe" -serverURL FullyQualifiedDomainName -userName AWindowsUser -domainName SomeWindowsDomain

–jeroen

PS:

1. If you have never used VDI, watch this very nice VDI video (based on VMware Infrastructure 3, but the basic idea is still the same). The VMware View article on Wikipedia is a bit outdated.
2. I noticed that the SNX applet has a hint text in the icon tray containing phrases like “EGG ANEW UP DART FOIL ONTO WELD HUM MUFF NEW ADEN SONG” which looks a lot like the 6-word (64 bit) S/KEY One-Time Password System, but now using 12 words (and 128 bits).

Languages issues are always important to watch for. The Dutch Windows XP returns Microsoft Windows XP [versie 5.1.2600] which is just one word different from the English Microsoft Windows XP [Version 5.1.2600]. Other languages may differ even more.

This batch file tries to circumvent the language differences, uses VER and works at least with Dutch and English Windows versions of XP and 7, most likely with many other languages and versions as well.

On a Windows XP SP3 machine, it lists WindowsVersion=5.1.2600 and on a Windows 7 SP1 machine it lists WindowsVersion=6.1.7601.

One possible addition would be to detect x64 or x86.

The detection assumes that VER will emit the version in [angle] brackets, and uses two batch file for loops to get the text in between them using the tokens and delims for loop parameters in the first for loop right behind the begin label and the second for loop right after the parse1 label.

Then it splits the remaining text using spaces at the parse2 label, and takes the right most portion using the shift command at the parse3 label.

Many thanks to Rob van der Woude for a lot of interesting batch file documentation. The Wikipedia page on VERlists the Windows versions that you can see. This is a summary starting at Windows 2000 [the first using angle brackets]:

• Windows 2000 Microsoft Windows 2000 [Version 5.00.2195]
• Windows XP Microsoft Windows XP [Version 5.1.2600]
• Windows XP 64bit Microsoft Windows [Version 5.2.3790]
• Windows Server 2003 Microsoft Windows [Version 5.2.3790]
• Windows Vista Microsoft Windows [Version 6.0.6001]
• Windows Server 2008 Microsoft Windows [Version 6.0.6002]
• Windows Server 2008 R2 Microsoft Windows [Version 6.1.7600]
• Windows 7 Microsoft Windows [Version 6.1.7600]
• Windows 7 SP1 Microsoft Windows [Version 6.1.7601]

And here is the batch file:

@echo off
:begin
  :: get everything from "ver" starting after the first [
  setlocal enableextensions
    for /f "tokens=2 delims=[" %%a in ('ver') do (call :parse1 %%a)
    echo WindowsVersion=%WindowsVersion%
  endlocal
goto :end

:parse1
  :: strip everything from the last [
  ::DEBUG echo %*
  for /f "tokens=1 delims=]" %%a in ("%*") do (call :parse2 %%a)
goto :end

:parse2
  :: get all
  ::DEBUG echo %*
  for /f "tokens=* delims= " %%a in ("%*") do (call :parse3 %%a)
goto :end

:parse3
  ::DEBUG echo %*
  set WindowsVersion=%1
  shift
  if !!==!%1! goto :WindowsVersion
  goto :parse3
:WindowsVersion
  ::DEBUG echo WindowsVersion=%WindowsVersion%
goto :end

:end

–jeroen

They mix environment keys like UserName, UserProfile, but should use AppData as that has been the base since at least Windows XP.

This is the correct folder for any Outlook version (2003, 2010, etc): %appdata%\Microsoft\Signatures

Making sure you use the right environment variable is very important, especially in large Windows based environments that often use roaming profiles and a mix of Windows environments.

For instance, at a client they have a mixed environment of Windows XP and Windows 7, with separate AppData locations for the two on a LAN:

• Windows XP:
  \\server\DFS\share\Application Data
• Windows 7:
  \\server\DFS\share\Application Data.v2

There is a very nice Wikipedia article on the Windows Environment variable that explains this situation in the synopsis.

–jeroen

Software updates – MediaPortal 1.2.2 | Electronics | Tweakers.net Meuktracker.

Software updates – XBMC Media Center 11.0 bèta 1 | Electronics | Tweakers.net Meuktracker.

After doing some playing around, I figured out it would not connect to a monitor or projector that did not send EDID or DDC2 info.

Lesson learned: if you run a Windows 7 laptop other than a Mac, and the laptop has a Mini DisplayPort adapter (like a Dell XPS L502X) and want it to connect to a VGA monitor, then get the StarTech model MDP2VGA adapter. It just always works, whereas a Mac Mini DisplayPort to VGA adapter won’t work on systems not providing EDID or DDC2 info.

–jeroen

via Mini-DisplayPort on New Dells: Resolving issues with output to projectors in Windows 7.

HTML Tags Stripper is designed to strip HTML tags from the text. It will also strip embedded JavaScript code, style information (style sheets), as well as code inside php/asp tags ()

Edit:

John Kaster indicated that http://ckeditor.com/demo works nicely too, but I could not get their “paste from word” to emit nice clean un-styled HTML for me.

WordOff does work, and cleans away all the HTML tags (I with it didn’t clean structure tags and anchor tags, which you can keep with HTML Tags Stripper).

–jeroen

via :: Strip HTML Tags :: Online Tools.

Wij hebben in de nieuwsbrief van 19 januari j.l. aan Jaarkaarthouders en contactpersonen van NS Zakelijk onjuiste informatie vermeld over in- en uitchecken in bus, tram en metro.
Hierdoor is verwarring ontstaan. Onze excuses hiervoor.
U treft in deze nieuwsbrief de correcte informatie aan over in- en uitchecken in bus, tram en metro.
Tevens hebben wij deze juiste informatie op onze site gezet.

Wanneer niet in- en uitchecken maar uw abonnement tonen
Veel vervoerders (bus, tram en metro) hebben het reizen via in- en uitchecken ingevoerd. Het kan echter zijn dat de OV-Chipkaartlezer het aanvullende stad- en streekabonnement bij het Jaartrajectabonnement of het OV-deel bij het OV-Jaarabonnement, niet herkent. Daardoor kan mogelijk onterecht saldo afgeschreven worden.
In dat geval kan de vervoerder het in- en uitchecken niet verplicht stellen en moet het NS-abonnement als zichtkaart worden gebruikt (dus tonen aan de bestuurder of controleur en niet in- en uitchecken via de kaartlezer).
Bij de volgende vervoerders is in- en uitchecken met een Jaartraject-abonnement, OV-Jaarabonnement nog niet mogelijk zonder dat er saldo wordt afgeschreven. U dient hier uw kaart te tonen aan de bestuurder of controleur:

• Limburg, gehele provincie / Veolia Transport
• Brabant, gehele provincie / Veolia Transport (Brabantliner)
• Gelderland “Achterhoek” / Arriva
• Gelderland “Rivierenland” / Arriva
• Gelderland “Veluwe” / Syntus
• Overijssel “Twente” / Syntus
• Overijssel “Midden Overijssel” / Syntus
• Zuid-Holland “Drechtsteden en Alblasserwaard” / Arriva
• Zuid-Holland “Hoekse Waard” / Arriva
• Stadsregio Amsterdam “Waterland” / EBS

Indien er een negatief saldo ontstaat, kan het NS-abonnement niet gebruikt worden in bus, tram en metro. Reizen met de trein blijft echter wel gewoon mogelijk. Door het saldo aan te vullen tot een positieve geldwaarde wordt een mogelijke blokkade voor reizen in bus, tram en metro weer opgeheven.

Het gamek van de OV Chipkaart wordt weer eens teniet gedaan doordat een aantal use cases van te voren niet bedacht, ontwikkeld en getest zijn.

Dit nog afgezien van het omslachtige bijboeken van een incidentele Fyra toeslag.

Stel je voor dat het leven er met de OV Chipkaart echt makkelijk op was geworden, dan hadden we hier niets meer over te klagen, en dat kan toch niet

–jeroen

I recently found out that a PDF and XPS of that sheet is available.

Here is the English translation of the German download page (I did some editing on the Google Translate result):

Free: HTML5 Cheat Sheet

Know-how | 06/27/2011

MSDN Germany has put on line a cheat sheet with the most important new HTML5 tags and attributes. The handy two-page information informs web developers about how to use the audio, video and canvas element through JavaScript, what CSS3, and geolocation can provide you with and how websites with “Pinned Sites” can become even more useful. Simply download the free PDF (2.17 MB) or XPS file (601 KB), print it, and place it next to your keyboard!

Note that the PDF and XPS are German, but very handy even though your German is not perfect.

–jeroen

via: Google Translate.

He’s much better at writing and narrating than I am, but lets give it a try to see how his posts reminded me of my high school days, what calculators I used back then and how it got me into computing.

Back since I learned to count, math related subjects always worked better for me than for instance language related ones.

It might have to do with my dad. He was a financial economist, so in his job he was juggling with numbers. At home there were ledgers for bookkeeping, slide rules (I inherited his old slide rule, which I still have somewhere in our basement), and over time various types of calculators. He used calculators in the 70s, programmable calculators and a HP 12C programmable financial calculator in the early 80s and small handheld computers in the mid 80s. I remember teaching him both Lotus 1-2-3 and Microsoft Excel later on (at work they didn’t have Visicalc, as they had an Exidy Sorcerer at work that didn’t do spreadsheets).

I have a slightly younger brother with an IQ of almost 50, so my dad bought him a Little Professor in the early 80s to see if his counting skills improved. It didn’t work; he still cannot calculate beyond 20 most of the times and rarely beyond 100. But it was a nice experiment. And he has skills other people don’t have.

Back then, my father worked for the Dutch Ministry of Economic Affairs in working on the subject of consumer loans (he was a strong proponent of legislation protecting individuals from getting bad loans, and very much in favour of publishing netto costs for consumer credit; in fact he was among the first to notice that Dirk Scheringa was trying to lure people in way too much debt against way too high interest rates).

In his department, they standardized on Texas Instruments financial calculators. He had a Texas Instruments TI-59. It was programmable, and took him forever to program, but he was very handy at it. The TI-59 had off-line storage through magnetic cards (which was quite unique, the HP 65 - which was also programmable – had it first, but was twice as expensive). One of the cool programmability features was that it could record keystrokes like they were macros. That alone could speed up work a lot. Finally you could fit TI-59 ROM modules, including one with extra math functions. Thad one made his life a lot easier.

I found the TI-59 interesting, but my English wasn’t good enough yet to be able to learn programming with it. Back then in The Netherlands, you didn’t learn English at primary school, so the first time I got taught English was at age 12, and the first time I got German and French was at age 14.

Ever since I was a little kid, we would go to Germany on holidays (it’s a long but and nice story, maybe in a later blog), with almost yearly camping near Almensee, Bad Dürkheim. The result was that – unlike my school mates – I spoke German when going to high school, and learned that super markets – like hit.de – in Germany would sell way outside the range of grocery shops did in The Netherlands: magazines, music on LP/EP/Single/Casette, household tools, etc.

One of the things back then was that technical literature was either German or English. And tech stuff was way cheaper and abundant in Germany than in The Netherlands.

So when going to high school, I spoke German, and when entering the second class, I needed an electronic calculator. When I saw what they offered at the school and Dutch shops and the price they asked for calculators, I quickly decided I wanted to buy my own calculator during the next summary holiday in Germany.
Most kids getting their calculator from school either had calculators with VFD displays (which ate batteries like crazy) like the the Casio FX-20 or “simple” scientific LCD calculators like the Texas Instruments TI-30LCD (with an ugly hard plastic enclosure and nasty click type buttons). Both had basic scientific calculations, like Sin, Cos, Tan, Log, Ln (and their inverse), square, square root, one over, y powered by x, one memory and a few other bits. But only 8 displayable digits (which sucks when you loose 2 because of exponential notation). Lots of functionality was lacking of which I didn’t know the details back then, but I saw people in senior years struggling with them like mad working around the limitations.

I wanted something better, which was tough to get, as the best you could buy in The Netherlands were the Casio FX-82 and Casio FX-100, which were at least twice as expensive as the FX-20 and just as cluncky. So only the kids with rich parents had them. On top of the FX-20 they had some compelling features like fractions (only the FX-100), representations (scientific, fixed decimal, engineering, normal), trigonometric functions in degrees and radians, 6 levels of parentheses, statistics functions, polar to rectangular conversion and back, and a bunch more smaller things. They had either 8+2 (FX-82) or 10+2 (FX-100) digits which was neat: finally you could see the precision in which they were operating. In fact they internally operated at 12 digits which you could see by multiplying with 10, then subtracting the integer part.

I recently found out that the successors of these machines (FX-260 at CasioEducation.com) are still being sold, including a manual describing the FX-82Solar, FX-85B, FX-260Solar and FX-280 which basically says there is almost no changed functionality since the FX-82. How’s that for 30 years of progress

The next summer holiday, I did a price comparison. Casio calculators in Germany were at least 30 percent cheaper than in The Netherlands, and there were even more choices than the summer before especially in department stores like Karstadt (now Arcandor and in bankruptcy). I was like a kid in a candy store, just the candies were a bit more expensive.

So I used some of the money I earned the summer before (peeling flower bulbs) in Germany during our holiday to buy a Casio FX 550 (on the left), which had 10+2 digits, whereas the Casio FX 350 (on the right) had 8+2. They had almost identical functionality to the FX-82 and FX-100 with one tiny addition: hyperbolic trigonometric functions. Buth they didn’t use AAA batteries, so they were not as clunky. And both had fractions (which the FX-82 hadn’t).

In the mean time, they department where my dad worked had switched from his Texas Instruments TI-59 to a Sharp PC-1210, which was the predecessor of the Sharp PC-1211 and shared the same peripherals (casette interface – which my dad had – and printer – which my dad didn’t have). The  TRS-80 PC1 was in fact a Sharp PC-1211 with a different label. Radio Shack was very popular in the UK and US, whereas Sharp was very popular in the rest of the world. Note that the TRS-80 pocket computer is very different from the TRS-80 Model I micro computer system from 1977.

I was 13 now, and my English was slightly better than non existent, so I could help my dad program his Sharp PC 1210 pocket computer. It was fun, as I learned the BASIC programming language, and how to cram things like a small trinangle calculation program (input 3 properties of a triangle, then calculate the other 3) into 400 bytes of programmable memory.

Since it was my first experience to programming, it was also my first encounter to bugs, both of my own and of the PC-1210 itself. For instance, it could overflow its programmable memory, thereby changing some of the variables (that were somehow overlapping in storage), allowing you to display symbols that could not be entered by keyboard, nor converted by functions.

In the mean time, we were getting more advanced math (with a bit of statistics), and started with economics (both business economics and general economics), chemistry (which I later tried to study at university) and physics. That with my exposure to binary and hexadecimal got me to buy another calculator: a Casio FX-115. Next to decimal, it did binary, octal and hexadecimal including conversions between them and the operators AND, OR, XOR, NOT, XNOR and negation. The big drawback was that it was solar only, and would not work in low light conditions.

At high school we had only a few really good match teachers. One of them taught me that 22/7 and 355/113 are continuous fractions estimating pi, and how to approach problems in a structural approach (analyze, deduce, etc). Another one introduced me into the computer lab (originally meant for the 2 senior years, but they let me in anyway).

There they had Apple ][ Europlus machines: a whopping 10 of them for a school with 1000 students was magnificent in the early 80s. 2 of them had a Z80 They ran Applesoft BASIC and Integer BASIC from ROM so my BASIC knowledge from the Sharp PC-1210 came in handy. Also two of the machines had a Z-80 Softcard in it that not only allowed it to display 80 columns, but also supported 16k of bank switched memory, and a Zilog Z80 processor that ran CP/M. There was a Turbo Pascal 1.0 for it that was way better than the optional Apple Pascal (which was based on UCSD Pascal and much slower than Turbo Pascal). That really got me into programming, on which I will write later (probably much later <g>) and gave me a big Deja Vu when seeing virtual machine based programming environments like the Java VM and .NET CLR that are essentially based on the p-code systems on which UCSD Pascal was based.

After lending the Casio 115M to a school mate, it disappeared (getting the money back through insurance was a difficult thing because you could not get them in The Netherlands, and the hoopla of having them accept a Germany cash receipt in stead of a full written receipt was a pain) led me to my final calculator which I got during the autumn break: a Casio 415M dual power calculator: both solar and a battery. It was almost identical to the Casio 415, I think the only difference was the dual power. As you can see on a more elaborate Casio 415M page, it had extra keys in the cover that added many functions: all kinds of conversions (temperature, volume, weight, pressure, etc), physical constants (gravity, lightspeed, Avogadros number, etc). I only recently disposed of it, as the flat cable between the cover and the machine broke. How’s that for a 25 year old piece of equipment!

Oh while on the Casio topic: high school was also the place where I met a lot of international people that followed International Baccalaureate, and where I read The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy just two years after I bought a neat Casio Universal Calendar digital watch. My first and last

–jeroen

via: calculators : Algorithms for the masses – julian m bucknall.

calculator research sources:

• Pocket computers & Casio Calculators – PB FX CFX SL SF : Presentation-Presentation-Presentation-Presentation.
• Voidware Calculators Home Page.
• Old Computers – rare, vintage, and obsolete computers.
• Vintage Calculators Web Museum.
• Casio Calculator Collector Website.
• Welcome in the pocket computer museum.
• MyCalcDB : Pocket Calculators Database/Museum.

It is a great bag, and the DryZone works really well, provided you lubricated the TIZIP watertight zipper before you use the bag a couple of times, and keep doing that regularly.

The little piece of paper that guides you through it is not that well written, but luckily there are a few on-line guides how to do this properly.

Make sure you always close the TIZIP zipper to the end, that is the only way it will be completely watertight.

There are many reviews of this bag (for instance here and here), so I will keep it short:

• It is watertight
• Carrying it by hand and on your back for a full day is a breeze, even when it is completely full
• Grabbing your stuff is a bit time consuming: opening the TIZIP takes a while
• It fits an awful lot of equipment
• It won’t tip over when you put on the ground in the upright position

My recommendation is to buy the yellow/black color combination, not the grey/black color combination.
Yellow is easier to find when you drop it in the water.
Though on our antarctic trip, anything other than white was easy to find

This is what Nikon stuff I took to the Antarctic in this bag:

• D700 body with MB-D10 grip/battery pack and 16-35mm f/4 VR lens
• D300 body with MB-D10 grip/battery pack and 18-200mm VR lens
• 80-400mm f/4.5-5.6D VR
• 70-200mm f/2.8 ED IF VR G AF-S (yeah, I know, there is a VR II now, see the 80-200 history)
• 50mm f/1.8 D
• SB-900 flash with diffuser and sets of spare batteries
• a few spare EN-EL3e batteries, filters, a Easytag wired GPS module, etc

(Thanks Ken Rockwell for all the nice reviews of all these bodies and lenses.
Yes I know there are better lenses and better bodies, and an easier Easytag bluetooth GPS module that pairs with receivers on multiple cameras, but this is what I wanted to afford when I bought them piece by piece).

At the time I bought the DZ100 backpack, you could not get the DZ200 in The Netherlands. The DZ200 is about 30% bigger (volume wise).

–jeroen

via: An expedition camera backpack, the LowePro DZ100 « Stephen’s Stuff.

This was a bit more tricky than just reading How to turn on automatic logon in Windows and following these steps:

To use Registry Editor (Regedt32.exe) to turn on automatic lsogon, follow these steps:

1. Click Start, and then click Run.
2. In the Open box, type Regedt32.exe, and then press ENTER.
3. Locate the following subkey in the registry:
   HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Winlogon
4. Double-click the DefaultUserName entry, type your user name, and then click OK.
5. Double-click the DefaultPassword entry, type your password, and then click OK.NOTE: If the DefaultPasswordvalue does not exist, it must be added. To add the value, follow these steps:
   1. On the Edit menu, click New, and then point to String Value.
   2. Type DefaultPassword, and then press ENTER.
   3. Double-click DefaultPassword.
   4. In the Edit String dialog, type your password and then click OK.

   NOTE: If no DefaultPassword string is specified, Windows automatically changes the value of the AutoAdminLogon key from 1 (true) to 0 (false), disabling the AutoAdminLogon feature.

6. On the Edit menu, click New, and then point to String Value.
7. Type AutoAdminLogon, and then press ENTER.
8. Double-click AutoAdminLogon.
9. In the Edit String dialog box, type 1 and then click OK.
10. Quit Registry Editor.
11. Click Start, click Shutdown, and then type a reason in the Comment text box.
12. Click OK to turn off your computer.
13. Restart your computer. You can now log on automatically.

Since this depends on some registry settings, you need to make sure they are actually set.
And logging on as someone else will reset the DefaultUserName registry setting.

The article points to another article on “AutoAdminLogon looses DefaultUserName” to solve this using REGINI (and optionally REGDMP which can provide sample output for REGINI), but there is a much easier solution using RegEdit which – as Rob van der Woude points out – can be used unattended as well (besides: REGDMP cannot be downloaded any more, and REGINI requires an additional download).

This is how to do force the DefaultUserName to be reset after logon using RegEdit:

1. Open an explorer Window in “%ALLUSERSPROFILE%\Start Menu\Programs\Startup”
2. Create a batch file “run-RegEdit-DefaultUserName.bat” there with this content:
   regedit /s Administrator-DefaultUserName.bat
3. Create a text file “Administrator-DefaultUserName.reg” in the same directory with content like this:
   Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Winlogon]
"DefaultUserName"="Administrator"

Replace “Administrator” with the username you are acutally using.

–jeroen

Via: How to turn on automatic logon in Windows.

You use the code below like this:

        private void myMethod()
        {
            // set busy cursor
            using (IDisposable waitCursor = new TemporaryCursor(this, System.Windows.Forms.Cursors.WaitCursor))
            {
                // logic that takes a long while
            }
        }

The code below implements the TemporaryCursor class; you can assign any System.Windows.Forms.Cursors item you want.

It restores the cursor upon these three “events”:

• The Dispose method either called directly on the class, or through the IDisposable.Dispose via for instance a using statement
• The ~TemporaryCursor desctructor syntax implementing the finalizer
• The HandleDestroyed event on the Control

Most often the IDispose pattern is being used to make sure that resources get cleaned up. If you think of a wait cursor as a temporary resource, this example becomes much easier to remember.

Of course this is not limited to the System.Windows.Forms realm, you can just as well use this for non-visual temporaries, and other kinds of UIs like ASP.NET, WPF or SilverLight.

using System.Windows.Forms;

namespace bo.Windows.Forms
{
    public class TemporaryCursor : IDisposable
    {
        private Control targetControl;
        private Cursor savedCursor;
        private Cursor temporaryCursor;
        private bool disposed = false;

        public TemporaryCursor(Control targetControl, Cursor temporaryCursor)
        {
            if (null == targetControl)
                throw new ArgumentNullException("targetControl");
            if (null == temporaryCursor)
                throw new ArgumentNullException("temporaryCursor");
            this.targetControl = targetControl;
            this.temporaryCursor = temporaryCursor;
            savedCursor = targetControl.Cursor;
            targetControl.Cursor = temporaryCursor;
            targetControl.HandleDestroyed += new EventHandler(targetControl_HandleDestroyed);
        }

        void targetControl_HandleDestroyed(object sender, EventArgs e)
        {
            if (null != targetControl)
                if (!targetControl.RecreatingHandle)
                    targetControl = null;
        }

        // public so you can call it on the class instance as well as through IDisposable
        public void Dispose()
        {
            Dispose(true);
            GC.SuppressFinalize(this);
        }

        protected virtual void Dispose(bool disposing)
        {
            if (!disposed)
            {
                if (null != targetControl)
                {
                    targetControl.HandleDestroyed -= new EventHandler(targetControl_HandleDestroyed);
                    if (temporaryCursor == targetControl.Cursor)
                        targetControl.Cursor = savedCursor;
                    targetControl = null;
                }
                disposed = true;
            }
        }

        // Finalizer
        ~TemporaryCursor()
        {
            Dispose(false);
        }
    }
}

–jeroen

I based my code on the C# Tee filter and the StackOverflow example of C# deduping based on split.

It is a bit more extensive than strictly needed, as it has a few more commandline arguments that come in handy when processing files on the console:

DeDupe - Dedupes a file into unique lines (only the first occurance of a line is kept) standard output
Lines are terminated by CRLF sequences
C# implementation januari 5th, 2012 by Jeroen Wiert Pluimers (http://wiert.wordpress.com),

DeDupe [-i | --ignore] [-t | --trim] [-f | --flush] [-l | --literal] [-? | --h | --help | /?] [file0] [...]
   Example:
 DeDupe --trim file0.txt file1.txt
   Dedupes the appended content of file0.txt and file1.txt into standard output

-t | --trim                  Will trim the lines before considering duplicates
-f | --flush                 Flushes files every CRLF
                               (setting is per tee instance)
-i | --ignore                Ignore cancel Ctrl+C keypress: see UnixUtils tee
-l | --literal               Stop recognizing flags, force all following filenames literally
-? | --h  | /? | --help      Displays this message and immediately quits

Duplicate filenames are quietly ignored.
If no input filenames are specified, then standard input is used
Press Ctrl+Z (End of File character) then Enter to abort.

Here is the source code:

using System;
using System.IO;
using System.Collections.Generic;

namespace DeDupe
{
    class Program
    {
        static void help()
        {
            Console.Error.WriteLine("DeDupe - Dedupes a file into unique lines (only the first occurance of a line is kept) standard output");
            Console.Error.WriteLine("Lines are terminated by CRLF sequences");
            Console.Error.WriteLine("C# implementation januari 5th, 2012 by Jeroen Wiert Pluimers (http://wiert.wordpress.com),");
            Console.Error.WriteLine("");
            Console.Error.WriteLine("DeDupe [-i | --ignore] [-t | --trim] [-f | --flush] [-l | --literal] [-? | --h | --help | /?] [file0] [...]");
            Console.Error.WriteLine("   Example:");
            Console.Error.WriteLine(" DeDupe --trim file0.txt file1.txt");
            Console.Error.WriteLine("   Dedupes the appended content of file0.txt and file1.txt into standard output");
            Console.Error.WriteLine("");
            Console.Error.WriteLine("-t | --trim                  Will trim the lines before considering duplicates");
            Console.Error.WriteLine("-f | --flush                 Flushes files every CRLF");
            Console.Error.WriteLine("                               (setting is per tee instance)");
            Console.Error.WriteLine("-i | --ignore                Ignore cancel Ctrl+C keypress: see UnixUtils tee");
            Console.Error.WriteLine("-l | --literal               Stop recognizing flags, force all following filenames literally");
            Console.Error.WriteLine("-? | --h  | /? | --help      Displays this message and immediately quits");
            Console.Error.WriteLine("");
            Console.Error.WriteLine("Duplicate filenames are quietly ignored.");
            Console.Error.WriteLine("If no input filenames are specified, then standard input is used");
            Console.Error.WriteLine("Press Ctrl+Z (End of File character) then Enter to abort.");
        }

        static void OnCancelKeyPressed(Object sender, ConsoleCancelEventArgs args)
        {
            // Set the Cancel property to true to prevent the process from
            // terminating.
            args.Cancel = true;
        }

        static List<String> filenames = new List<String>();

        static void addFilename(string value)
        {
            if (-1 == filenames.IndexOf(value))
                filenames.Add(value);
        }

        static bool trimLines = false;
        static bool flushFiles = false;
        static bool stopInterpretingFlags = false;
        static bool ignoreCtrlC = false;

        static int Main(string[] args)
        {
            try
            {

                foreach (string arg in args)
                {
                    //Since we're already parsing.... might as well check for flags:
                    if (stopInterpretingFlags)  //Stop interpreting flags, assume is filename
                    {
                        addFilename(arg);
                    }
                    else if (arg.Equals("/?") || arg.Equals("-?") || arg.Equals("-h") || arg.Equals("--help"))
                    {
                        help();
                        return 1; //Quit immediately
                    }
                    else if (arg.Equals("-t") || arg.Equals("--trim"))
                    {
                        trimLines = true;
                    }
                    else if (arg.Equals("-f") || arg.Equals("--flush"))
                    {
                        flushFiles = true;
                    }
                    else if (arg.Equals("-i") || arg.Equals("--ignore"))
                    {
                        ignoreCtrlC = true;
                    }
                    else if (arg.Equals("-l") || arg.Equals("--literal"))
                    {
                        stopInterpretingFlags = true;
                    }
                    else
                    {	//If it isn't any of the above, it's a filename
                        addFilename(arg);
                    }
                    //Add more flags as necessary, just remember to SKIP adding them to the file processing stream!
                }

                if (ignoreCtrlC) //Implement the Ctrl+C fix selectively (mirror UnixUtils tee behavior)
                    Console.CancelKeyPress += OnCancelKeyPressed;

                HashSet<string> keys = new HashSet<string>();
                Int64 index = 0;

                using (StreamWriter writer = new StreamWriter(Console.OpenStandardOutput()))
                {
                    if (filenames.Count == 0)
                        using (StreamReader reader = new StreamReader(Console.OpenStandardInput()))
                        {
                            processInputFileReader(keys, writer, reader, ref index);
                        }
                    else
                        foreach (String filename in filenames)
                        {
                            using (StreamReader reader = new StreamReader(filename))
                            {
                                processInputFileReader(keys, writer, reader, ref index);
                            }
                        }
                    writer.Flush();
                }

            }
            catch (Exception ex)
            {
                Console.Error.WriteLine(String.Concat("DeDupe: ", ex.Message));  // Send error messages to stderr
            }

            return 0;
        }

        private static void processInputFileReader(HashSet<string> keys, StreamWriter writer, StreamReader reader, ref Int64 index)
        {
            string line = readLine(reader);
            while (!string.IsNullOrEmpty(line))
            {
                string candidate = line;
                if (keys.Add(candidate))
                {
                    writer.WriteLine(line);
                    index += line.Length + Environment.NewLine.Length;
                    if (flushFiles)
                        writer.Flush();
                }

                line = readLine(reader);
            }
        }

        private static string readLine(StreamReader reader)
        {
            string line = reader.ReadLine();
            if (null != line)
                if (trimLines)
                    line = line.Trim();
            return line;
        }
    }
}

–jeroen

via: C# text file deduping based on split – Stack Overflow.

In case of Visual Studio 2005, the Windows Update and Microsoft Update will get you into a condition where it cannot install ”Security Update for Microsoft Visual Studio 2005 Service Pack 1 XML Editor (KB2251481)“. Not even the direct download will install.

The search for ”some updates were not installed” “Security Update for Microsoft Visual Studio 2005 Service Pack 1 XML Editor (KB2251481)” pointed me to the solution:

There are two versions of KB2251481 June and August. When the June version is installed, the August version refuses to install.

Uninstall the original KB2251481 from the Control Panel. Then reinstall the August version.

The KB2251481 article mentions this only for the “Microsoft Visual Studio 2005 Premier Partner Edition SP1″, but it happens with other Visual Studio 2005 editions as well.

–jeroen

via: KB2251481 Security Update for Microsoft Visual Studio 2005 Service – Microsoft Answers.

Dilbert comic 2011-01-22: Dogbert's Tech Support: How may I abuse you (Image courtesey of Dilbert.com)

It is great to see that since 1998, not much has changed

–jeroen

via: Dilbert comic of 2011-01-22: Dogbert’s Tech Support

Note: it is always a good idea to have a local passphrase for protecting the private key.

–jeroen

ssh-keygen: password-less SSH login script | Novell User Communities.

Just in case you haven’t, Rob van der Woude has a nice example on his batch file Wait page using the Choice command.

The bummer is: choice is available on almost all Windows versions (actually since DOS 6.x), but not on Windows XP, and not on Windows 2000, but it is there in Windows Vista and up where you can use the timeout command

Alternatives can be found in the other examples on Rob’s wait page.

CHOICE – Wait.bat: Uses CHOICE to wait for a specified number of seconds.

By using REM | before the CHOICE command, the standard input to CHOICE is blocked, so the only “way out” for CHOICE is the time-out specified by the /T parameter.

The idea was borrowed from Laurence Soucy, I added the /C parameter to make it language independent.

@ECHO OFF
IF "%1"=="" GOTO Syntax
ECHO.
ECHO Waiting %1 seconds
ECHO.
REM | CHOICE /C:AB /T:A,%1 > NUL
IF ERRORLEVEL 255 ECHO Invalid parameter
IF ERRORLEVEL 255 GOTO Syntax
GOTO End
:Syntax
ECHO.
ECHO WAIT for a specified number of seconds
ECHO.
ECHO Usage: WAIT n
ECHO.
ECHO Where: n = the number of seconds to wait (1 to 99)
ECHO.
:End

–jeroen

via: Batch file examples – Wait.

When logging in to CodePlex using TFS, then you need to prefix your username with “snd\” and suffix it with “_cp“.

So if your CodePlex username is wiert, then your login becomes snd\wiert_cp.

Somehow, this used to be more prominently on the codeplex site, but it isn’t any more.

–jeroen

via: TFS2010 « Ahmed Al-Asaad’s Blog.

So you will have to insert those carriage return line feed combo’s manually.

Well, mr Jones points out that:

there’s actually an easy way to simply echo a carriage return and line feed instead, by just issuing an echo command followed immediately by a period (no space in between), like this:

echo. >> somefile.txt

Thanks Jared!

–jeroen

via: Dear Mister Jones » How to insert a carriage return with batch.

–jeroen

Via: Organize anything, together. | Trello.

• Technically very knowledgeable
• Very stable connection
• Highly much aware of privacy

Back in December 1998, when xs4all was sold sold to the Dutch Telcom (KPN), lots of people were afraid that xs4all would start scoring less points one ore more of the above points.
They didn’t, and that is the main reason I’m still client with them.

This despite the  fact that I can get faster internet where I live.
My ADSL connection is quite a long distance from the telco DSLAM, so I can’t get a very high ADSL speed.
As some of the ADSL versus distance speed graphs show, your ADSL connection needs to be close to the telco’s DSLAM.
I’m not, so my maximum ADSL1 speed is slightly less than 8 megabit, and my current ADSL2+ speed is less than 16 megabit, so xs4all light is the best I can get.

BTW: If you live in The Netherlands, here you can calculate that distance (which is called “afstand tot de centrale” in Dutch).
I wish they ran the telco cables under the canal to the neighboaring village: I’m about 500 meter away from their DSLAM, in stead of the 2700 meters I’m from my own DSLAM.
Oh well

For high speed things, I now also have a cable connection.
Even though they are deregulating that part of the broadband market, currently cable internet is bound to your cable TV provider.
In my case, that is UPC, and their high speed internet is marketed as Fiber Power.
I started with a 60 over 6 megabit service, that they increased to 120 over 10 megabit about a year ago while reducing the price (because they were merging their packages and wanted to increase their competetiveness).

While writing this, I’m still searching for a good dual gigabit WAN router to combine the two connections in one.

Over time, xs4all increased the ADSL bandwidth from a meager 1 megabit over 256 kilobit to 8 megabit over 1 megabit.
They increased mailbox and storage sizes too.
And finally, they were among the first to support IPv6.

So all in all, I’m still very happy for staying with xs4all.

A bit of history

xs4all was not where the internet started for me.I started using internet in the late 80s even before it was called the internet.

One of the earliest things from my I found on the internet was this 1991 interrupt list showing my TBSCANX antitivirus involvementin the early 90s.
Slightly more than a year ago, I even found an older online message from me.

Some of my old email addresses are still in the internet archive:

• pluimers@hlerul5.bitnet
• pchpapl@hlerul52.bitnet (this gives better results)
• jeroenp@rulfc1.leidenuniv.nl
• fidonet 2:281/256
• fidonet 2:281/521
• fidonet 2:281/515.3
• jeroenp@dragons.nest.nl (member of the NEST: de Nederlandse Email Stichting)
• 100013.1443@compuserve.com and CompuServe 100013,1443

So fidonet wasn’t the first connection I had to the internet: it was at the university; I even helped their department to connect to the internet.

During and after university, I also started to work, so I needed dial-up internet.
xs4all then became my ISP of choice, for the above reasons and because they allowed multiple incoming connections at the same time.

After university and fidonet, when I got ISDN at my rental home, I got two connections: one for voice, and one for data.
On the data ISDN, I could bundle two connections to get 128 kilobit internet.
Though I loved dial-up through xs4all, it was time to get a more permanent solution: running my own domain from home.

Back then you needed one IP address per domain, so I needed an internet provider that could provide me those over ISDN.
The Dutch branch of Demon Internet did, so I got my first permanent subdomain: pluimers.demon.nl.

Soon after that, I got my first two own domains: pluimers.com and 4delphi.com, both registered through domainit with InterNIC.

Not long after that, I decided to team up with a few friends to be secondary/backup MX and secondary DNS for each other.

Broadband internet also started with another provider.
It wasn’t because I disliked xs4all (I liked it very much), it was because at my new home there was no ISP providing broadband internet access.

The neighborhood where I live was built in the mid 90s of last century.
Back then, both the telco and the cable company forgot to dig high-speed cables in the ground.

So when I bought the house in 1998, both the ADSL and  cable provider were not prepared for high-speed internet.

An in fact, they did not start in our neighborhood, even though it consists of above average priced houses.
They started in the high-density areas because there they thought they had the best ROI.

So, A2000 (now UPC) was the first one to provide broadband internet.
It wasn’t very stable, but way faster than ISDN.
It had a drawback too: a single (DCHP) IP address.
Since the machine behind it was always on-line, the DHCP was pretty much fixed.

Having only one IP adress kept being problematic, so I was glad that in 2000, finally ADSL became available on my phone line.
It first started as KPN MXStream for the ADSL connection, with xs4all as the ISP.
I was very happy with that, finally I could use xs4all for everything,
What made me even more happy, is that I got 4 IP adresses.

Though KPN reorganized their ADSL product names, the www.MXstream.nl domain still exists.

I ran ADSL and cable alongside for a while, but since the cable connection speed and stability didn’t improve, I ditched the cable.
Boy, didn’t I know that cable speeds would improve so much over time

The only bad thing that ever happened to me on ADSL was that KPN (not xs4all, this was before xs4all was bought by KPN!) decided to stop serving 4 IP adresses over ADSL.
That was in 2003, and even though I protested, they moved me to one IP address.

On the other hand: port forwarding on routers had improved a lot over time, so now it was easier to do with only one IP address than a few years earlier.

The xs4all welcome email

Back to xs4all: clearly my ISP of choice.

Finally, let’s end with the original xs4all welcome email (it is in Dutch, use Google Translate to view it in English):

Received: from /dev/fd/3 by magigimmix with perl 5.003
Date: Wed, 15 Jan 14:49:48 1997 +0000 GMT
From: account@xs4all.nl (XS4ALL Accounting)
To: jp@xs4all.nl
Subject: Welkom
Message-Id: <19970115154948-NEW23292@magigimmix>

Beste Xs4all-gebruiker,

Van harte welkom bij Xs4all.

Xs4all is voortgekomen uit de alternatieve computerscene en de
mensen van en rond het inmiddels opgeheven tijdschrift Hack-Tic.
In mei 1993 is Xs4all als eerste organisatie in Nederland
begonnen met het bieden van Internettoegang aan iedereen. Daarmee
kwam een einde aan het tijdperk waarin Internettoegang in
Nederland het privilege was van slechts een handjevol gelukkigen.
Internet kwam binnen bereik van de gewone man (v/m): Access for All.

Met uw Xs4all-account kunt u gebruik maken van alle mogelijkheden
die het Internet te bieden heeft. Via e-mail kunt u berichten
versturen over de hele wereld, in de news groups kunt u
diskussies voeren, van lokaal tot internationaal nivo. U kunt
databanken raadplegen en programma's naar uw eigen computer
downloaden.

Xs4all heeft een eigen Internetkit samengesteld. In deze kit
treft u een aantal programma's waarmee u ook de grafische
mogelijkheden (WWW) van Internet kunt benutten. De Internetkit
draait op een pc onder MS-Windows. U kunt hem downloaden door op
de prompt het commando 'winsoft' in te tikken.  Beschikt uw terminal-
programma niet over Zmodem, tik dan 'winsoftx' op de prompt om het
met Xmodem te proberen.

Verdere informatie over Xs4all vindt u op de volgende plaatsen:

In de Message of the Day.

Telkens wanneer u inlogt verschijnt de 'Message of the Day' op uw
scherm. In de Message of the Day vindt u beknopte informatie over
aktuele zaken betreffende Xs4all. Bij het inloggen flitst deze
boodschap over uw scherm. U kunt hem echter nog eens rustig lezen
wanneer u op de prompt het kommando 'motd' intypt.

In de news group xs4all.announce

In de news group xs4all.announce worden mededelingen gedaan door
het beheer van Xs4all. Lees deze news group om op de hoogte te
blijven van alle belangrijke ontwikkelingen omtrent Xs4all.

Bij de Xs4all-helpdesk

Heeft u vragen over Xs4all? De medewerkers van onze helpdesk
staan u graag te woord. U kunt hen bereiken per e-mail, telefoon
en fax.
e-mail : helpdesk@xs4all.nl
tel    : 020 - 6200294
fax    : 020 - 6222753

Uw account

Uw account is geaktiveerd naar aanleiding van uw betaling voor de komende 2
maanden of een jaarbetaling. De vooruitbetaalde periode gaat per heden in.
We verzoeken u om voor het aflopen van deze periode te laten weten of u uw
account al dan niet wenst te verlengen. Bij voorkeur via email naar het
adres account@xs4all.nl.

Indien wij niets van u vernemen, dan gaan we er ook van uit dat u op het
Internet wilt blijven. We sturen u dan een acceptgiro thuis voor de
vervolgbetalingen. U hoeft dus geen eigen iniatief te nemen voor de
overboekingen.

Wij wensen u veel Internet-plezier!

–jeroen

A big drawback from a MacBook Air is that it only have wireless LAN/WiFi (in the form of Integrated AirPort Extreme 802.11 a/b/n/n), no physical ethernet.

Transferring large amounts of data over any WiFi is can be a pain (being slow, suffer from signal quality) and for the MacBook Air: it makes the built-in fan swirl like crazy.

Since the MacBook Air does not have USB 3.0, I went looking for a 100 Mbps USB Ethernet dongle for it, and fone the DealExtreme product #34691: USB 2.0 10/100Mbps RJ45 LAN Ethernet Network Adapter Dongle.

At a price of about USD 7 including shipping, it comes in an Apple compatible shiny white color too, nicely fitting the 4 port USB hub (DealExtreme # 45773) on the right  :)

Even better: it works like a charm!

Note that first need to download and install the ASIX AX88772B drivers first. Choose the Apple Mac OSX 10.4 to 10.7 Driver for x86 and Power PC download package labelled “For Apple x86/Power PC, 32-bit/64-bit platforms”.

The install tells you to reboot at the end, but no need for that: as soon as the install finishes, the USB Ethernet dongle works. And it is fast too: 12 megabyte/second over a 100 megabit cable is fast!

In the readme of those drivers, it also mentions the AX88178, which is capable of gigabit (there is a separate AX88178 driver download page and Mac OS X download package).

NB: the cool thing about both these ASIX chipsets is that they are supported on a broad range of platforms (Mac, Linux, Windows CE, Windows 7/Vista/XP/2003/2000) and bit sizes (32-bit and 64-bit).

For even faster transfers, I might try the DealExtreme product #15336: Arkview USB 2.0 1000Mbs Gigabit Ethernet LAN Network Adapter.

It is slightly less than USD 20, and  user Janipro indicates it is based on the ASIX AX88178 chip at the DealExtreme forum.

On the other hand: I might not, as for more than twice the price, user cyberic mentions in the same forum thread it is only about twice as fast: 23 megabytes per second, about half the maximum USB 2.0 speed of 480 Mbps. And it is not Apple white

–jeroen

Via: USB 2.0 10/100Mbps RJ45 LAN Ethernet Network Adapter Dongle – Free Shipping – DealExtreme.

When adding the same UserName entries to a new server that already has the databases restored, you get error messages like these:

Error 21002 [SQL-DMO] User ‘account’ already exists

When adding the same UserName  entries, then restoring the databases, it won’t work, because the matching SIDs don’t exist.

There are many sites explaining the “Error 21002″ and pointing to sp_change_users_login.

But sp_change_users_login (and the ALTER USER UserName WITH LOGINI = UserName2 in SQL Server 2005 and higher) is not the actual fix to the problem: it will re-add the user with a new SID, then correct the SID in the database currently in use.

Actually you are after “Orphaned” users: users that are defined in the various databases, but not present in the user list on the SQL Server instance. Running sp_change_users_login with the “Report’ parameter on the “new” server will show a list of orphaned users.

An even better way to show Orphaned Users is by running the ShowOrphanUsers script. In my own version (sourcecode is below), I have added an extra UserSID column of type varbinary(85).

In order to transfer users to a new server, you need a sp_help_revlogin stored procedure. Depending on the version of your SQL Server (7/2000/2005/2008), you need a slightly different version of a script that creates sp_help_revlogin for you. All versions are available at NetNerds.net.

–jeroen

via: Migrate/Transfer SQL Server 2008/2005/2000/7 Logins to SQL Server 2008.

USE master;
GO
IF OBJECT_ID ('dbo.ShowOrphanUsers') IS NOT NULL
  DROP PROCEDURE dbo.ShowOrphanUsers
GO
CREATE PROC dbo.ShowOrphanUsers
AS
BEGIN
	CREATE TABLE #Results
	(
		[Database Name] sysname COLLATE Latin1_General_CI_AS,
		[Orphaned User] sysname COLLATE Latin1_General_CI_AS,
                [UserSID]  varbinary(85)
	)

	SET NOCOUNT ON

	DECLARE @DBName sysname, @Qry nvarchar(4000)

	SET @Qry = ''
	SET @DBName = ''

	WHILE @DBName IS NOT NULL
	BEGIN
		SET @DBName =
				(
					SELECT MIN(name)
					FROM master..sysdatabases
					WHERE 	name NOT IN
						(
						 'master', 'model', 'tempdb', 'msdb',
						 'distribution', 'pubs', 'northwind'
						)
						AND DATABASEPROPERTY(name, 'IsOffline') = 0
						AND DATABASEPROPERTY(name, 'IsSuspect') = 0
						AND name > @DBName
				)

		IF @DBName IS NULL BREAK

		SET @Qry = '	SELECT ''' + @DBName + ''' AS [Database Name],
				CAST(name AS sysname) COLLATE Latin1_General_CI_AS  AS [Orphaned User],
                                SID AS [UserSID]
				FROM ' + QUOTENAME(@DBName) + '..sysusers su
				WHERE su.islogin = 1
				AND su.name <> ''guest''
				AND NOT EXISTS
				(
					SELECT 1
					FROM master..sysxlogins sl
					WHERE su.sid = sl.sid
				)'

		INSERT INTO #Results EXEC (@Qry)
	END

	SELECT *
	FROM #Results
	ORDER BY [Database Name], [Orphaned User]
END
GO

Mozilla Labs engineer and TC39 representative Dave Herman joined us at YUIConf 2011 to give this keynote talk on the future of JavaScript, covering many of the new features currently under consideration for ES6, the next edition of the ECMAScript standard.

Many wonderful new features. Now it just need some great tooling.

–jeroen

via: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u4IdoBU1uKE

This one is by Remy Lebeau, who is part of TeamB:

You don’t need to enumerate running explorer.exe processes, you can use WTSGetActiveConsoleSessionId() instead, and then pass that SessionId to WTSQueryUserToken(). Note that WTSQueryUserToken() returns an impersonation token but CreateProcessAsUser() needs a primary token, so use DuplicateTokenEx() for that conversion.

You should also use CreateEnvironmentBlock() so the spawned process has a proper environment that is suited to the user account that is being used.

Lastly, set the STARTUPINFO.lpDesktop field to ‘WinSta0\Default’ instead of nil so the spawned UI can be made visible correctly.

I have been using this approach for several years now and have not had any problems with it. For example:

… code sample is in the answer …

–jeroen

via: windows – CreateProcessAsUser doesn’t work when “change user” – Stack Overflow.

Anyway: over time I observed that the fan was running fast without much CPU/GPU/memory/disk activity.

Resetting the SMC like the answer below, followed by resetting the PRAM and NVRAM solved my issue.

I had exactly these issues with my new Macbook Air 13.  Having read this forum I downloaded istat pro and discovered that my fan was always running at over 4000 rpm and the top left part of my case was quite warm.  I then followed the instructions here…resetting the SMC and after this the problem was fixed!

–jeroen

via MacBook Air Fan Noise With Lion: Apple Support Communities.

Often that is not convenient: slow or no network connection, repeated installs in a test environment, etc.

Luckily, a lot of software does have an offline installer (a.k.a. standalone installer).

Being no exception Google Chrome has two offline installers: one single user install, and one for all users on the same Windows machine.

–jeroen

via: Alternate (offline) Google Chrome installer (Windows) – Google Help.

Here is a quote from Cosmin Prund describing on how Delphi implements anonymous methods using a TInterfacedObject descendant:

When you have a function like the one in the question, where you have an anonymous method accessing a local variable, Delphi appears to create one TInterfacedObject descendant that captures all the stack based variables as it’s own public variables. Using Barry’s trick to get to the implementing TObject and a bit of RTTI we can see this whole thing in action.

Read his full answer for the complete description including sample code.

I stumbled on this great answer trough the question Is it possible for a managed local variable to transparently “travel to” another local scope? which might sound like an odd question, but it is not: StackOverflow is about learning, and some people do that by asking questions on solving problems in a very uncommon way, just to learn there are far better ways of obtaining what they want.

–jeroen

via: How and when are variables referenced in Delphi’s anonymous methods captured? – Stack Overflow.

Especially when a shortened URL breaks, and you want to find out if the underlying URL got moved to a different place.

–jeroen

via: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/6500721/find-where-a-t-co-link-goes-to

Here is a nice example:

You also see this anti-pattern used in real life: “What flavors do you have?” and then after the list of flavors is recited, “I was hoping you had raspberry.” -Raymond

And he is right, in real life, lots of people have stopped to actively think, expecing others (very often the government) to solve their problems.

It reminds me of one our kitchen magnets: “If it’s called common sense, then why is it so rare?”.

So: why do you think it is so rare?

–jeroen

via: Introducing the for-if anti-pattern – The Old New Thing – Site Home – MSDN Blogs.

The last few months, I observe more and more ASCII art, especially on social media like FaceBook, Twitter, etc.

The most recent was this one from our neighbours  - thanks guys – (it doesn’t do very good justice to the original, as it needs less linespacing, and works best with an Arial font):

°.˛*.˛.°★。˛°.★**Fijne Kerstdagen en *★* *˛.

˛ °_██_*。*./ ♥ \ .˛* .˛.*.★een geweldig 2012**★ 。

˛. (´• ̮•)*˛°*/.♫.♫\*˛.* ˛_Π_____. ***★toegewenst 。

.°( . • . ) ˛°./• ‘♫ ‘ •\.˛*./______/~＼.˛* .。˛* *★* Some  &

*(…’•’.. ) *˛╬╬╬╬╬˛°.｜田田 ｜門｜╬╬╬╬╬*★★*★ ★ Someone

¯˜”*°••°*”˜¯`´¯˜”*°••°*”˜¯ ` ´¯˜”*°´¯˜”*°••°*”˜¯`´¯˜” *

Since many chacaters are not ASCII at all, maybe Typewriter Art fits better.

Anyway: I like the new revival of these kinds of arts.

They remind being a lot younger and playing around with characters to see what graphical information I could put in a limited space. You can use this to present information too, as this progress bar shows how busy the public traffic is.

They also remind me how much real artists can do in little space. Given the limited space especially on Twitter and Mobile Systems, and the common feature among those is still text, ASCII art makes a lot of sense again

Some references to give you an idea how bad I was at it, and how good others

Check out http://cd.textfiles.com/hackchronii/VIRUSL4/VIRUSL4.46 and search for “Pluimers” (sitenote: I was nicknamed by the chinese cook in the restaurant kitchen I worked a few years before that, though the cook pronounced “Charlie”  as “Cha-li”, and I nicked it to Charly to avoid conflicts).

A bit later I condensed it a bit (look for “rulfc1″ at http://www.nic.funet.fi/pub/msdos/Info/info-ibmpc). Others were way better at Email Art and Signature Art than I was.

Those were days where you would mostly communicate with text. And even that wasn’t a long time ago when you imagine that the oldest known form of Typewriter Art is from 1898!

–jeroen

So I grabbed an external USB DVD player, booted from the Snow Leopard Server install DVD, and restored the Time Machine backup from my external USB HDD.

Somehow, after the restore, Spotlight wouldn’t work: only the search bar was visible, but nothing else.

I tried various tips all having to do with erasing Spotlight for my root volume (so it would be automatically be reindexed), or many-part steps including killing SystemUIServer, Clearing Caches and Rebooting.

In the end the most simple one worked: just “turn Spotlight indexing on”.

My assumption is that Spotlight information is not backed up, and during restore Spotlight is turned off because continuously reindexing during restore will make the restore slower.

If someone can confirm this (or deny and explain the real reason), please post a comment.

This was what user nkt00 had posted as solution on the Apple forum:

I figured it out. In the man page for “mdutil” (type: “man mdutil” at the terminal shell prompt), it describes the option “-i”, which turns indexing on or off for the specified volume. I just typed:

sudo mdutil -i on /

and away it went

This was the screen output:

Last login: Mon Oct 31 19:31:01 on ttys000
macminiserver01:~ jeroenp$ mdutil -s /
/:
No index.
macminiserver01:~ jeroenp$ sudo mdutil -i on /
Password:
/:
Indexing enabled.
macminiserver01:~ jeroenp$

Now I’m happily using my Mac Mini Server again.

–jeroen

via No results from Spotlight: Apple Support Communities.

The WordPress.com stats helper monkeys prepared a 2011 annual report for this blog.

Here’s an excerpt:

The Louvre Museum has 8.5 million visitors per year. This blog was viewed about 220,000 times in 2011. If it were an exhibit at the Louvre Museum, it would take about 9 days for that many people to see it.

Click here to see the complete report.

with the Mac RDC client, you can connect to a servers console by adding “/CONSOLE” to the end of the computer name

–jeroen

via MacUpdate: Member Profile – Nate Silva.

This is a summary of the vulnerabilities. Please read the full MS11-100 bulletin for more details and how to download and install the patches.

The CVE-2011-3415 is N/A in .NET 1.1, and Moderate in all other .NET versions.

–jeroen

via Microsoft Security Bulletin MS11-100 – Critical : Vulnerabilities in .NET Framework Could Allow Elevation of Privilege (2638420).

I was right, this posting on perlmonks direct me to a /. posting in 2003 pointing me to the research paper on low-bandwidth attacks based on hash collisions (pdf version) that I had seen before. Perl 5.8.1 fixed it September 2003 (search for “hash” in that link).

The attack can be used for DoS because a normal distributed hash table insert of n elements will be running O(n), but a carefully crafted insert of those elements will run O(n^2).

Carefully crafting a worst case scenario depends on how well you can predict collisions in the underlying hash table implementation, which - apparently - is not too difficult, and requires little bandwidth.

Many platforms and languages are vulnerable, including those based on Java, Tomcat, .NET, Ruby, PHP and more in greater or lesser extent. I have the impression that the list only includes big names, but presume platforms based on smaller names (ASP, Delphi, Objective C) are equally vulnerable.

Just read the articles on CERT 903934, oCERT 2011-003, Arstechnica, Cryptanalysis.eu, Heise (German), Hackillusion and the research paper published at 28C3.

a few quotes:

“This attack is mostly independent of the underlying Web application and just relies on a common fact of how Web application servers typically work,” the team wrote, noting that such attacks would force Web application servers “to use 99% of CPU for several minutes to hours for a single HTTP request.”

“Prior to going public, Klink and Wälde contacted vendors and developer groups such as PHP, Oracle, Python, Ruby, Google, and Microsoft. The researchers noted that the Ruby security team and Tomcat have already released fixes, and that “Oracle has decided there is nothing that needs to be fixed within Java itself, but will release an updated version of Glassfish in a future CPU (critical patch update).”

“The algorithmic complexity of inserting n elements into the
table then goes to O(n**2), making it possible to exhaust hours of CPU time using a single HTTP request”

“We show that PHP 5, Java, ASP.NET as well as v8 are fully vulnerable to this issue and PHP 4,
Python and Ruby are partially vulnerable, depending on version or whether the server
running the code is a 32 bit or 64 bit machine.”

Microsoft seems to have been notified pretty late in the cycle, I presume because the researchers started with a some platforms and finally realized the breath of platforms involved.

The ultimate solution is to patch/fix the platforms using for instance a randomized hash function a.k.a. universal hashing.

Microsoft will provide a patch for ASP.NET later today, Ruby already patched and other vendors will soon or have already (please comment if you know of other platforms and patches).

The links this morning indicated there were no known attacks. That is (maybe was) true for ASP.NET, but for PHP a public proof of concept of such a DoS is has been published by Krzysztof Kotowicz (blog) with sources at github and a demo html page.

Temporary workarounds (based on the some of the links in this and the prior blog post, and the workarounds mentioned here and here):

1. If you can: replace hash tables by more applicable data structures
   (I know this falls in the for-if anti-pattern category, but lots of people still use a hammer when a different tool works much better)
2. Limit the request size
3. Limit the maximum number of entries in the hash table
4. Limit form requests only for sites/servers/etc that need it.
5. Limit the CPU time that a request can use
6. Filter out requests with large number of form entries

Some platforms already have applied temporary workarounds (I know of Tomcat (default max 10000 parameters), and PHP (default max_input_vars = 1000) did, and looks like the ASP.NET fix will do too).

Other platforms (like JRuby 1.6.5.1, CRuby 1.8.7 (comments) and Perl 5.8.1 in September 2003 ) fixed it the proper way.

Note: workarounds are temporary measures that will also deny legitimate requests. The only solution is to apply a fix or patch.

A major lesson learned today for a few people around me: when vendors start publishing “out of band” updates, do not trust a single 3rd party assessment with state “initial investigation”, but be diligent and do some further research.

–jeroen

PS: Just found out that most Azure users won’t need to manually apply a fix: just make sure your Hosted Service OS servicing policy is set to “Auto”.

The security update we are releasing resolves a publicly disclosed Denial of Service issue present in all versions of ASP.NET.  We’re currently unaware of any attacks on ASP.NET customers using this exploit, but we strongly encourage customers to deploy the update as soon as possible.

Attacks such as these are not specific to any particular language or operating system. Presenters at the security conference discussed how to cause them using standard HTTP form posts against several different web frameworks (including ASP.NET). Because these attacks on web frameworks can create Denial of Service issues with relatively few HTTP requests, there is a high likelihood of attacks happening using this approach. We strongly encourage customers to deploy the update as soon as possible.

The security update we are releasing on Thursday, December 29th updates ASP.NET so that attackers can no longer perform these attacks. The security update does not require any code or application changes.

During the 28e Chaos Communication Congress in Germany, on December 28, 2011 a security vulnerability was showed that potentially can DOS many types of web servers (including ASP.NET) with a carefully crafted 100 kilobyte plain HTTP form post request.

Information on the ASP.NET vulnerability was published by Microsoft on December 27, 2011.

ASP.NET on all supported .NET versions (1.0 SP3, 1.1 SP1, 2.0 SP2, 3.5 SP1, 4.0) on all supported Windows versions (XP, Server 2003 and R2, Vista, 7, Server 2008 and R2) are affected.

Since the vulnerability as being very severe, Microsoft will publish an out of band fix today (December 29, 2011) at around 10 AM Pacific time (during winter, this 1800 UTC) on Windows Update, Windows Server Update and the Microsoft Download Center followed 3 hours later by a webcast at 01 PM Pacific time (2100 UTC).

More about about 28C3 in German.

–jeroen

via: ASP.NET Security Update Shipping Thursday, Dec 29th – ScottGu’s Blog.

For parsing them left to right, the shift command comes in handy.

But there is no “shift-reverse” command, so you need some trick.

StackOverflow to the rescue: user Joey provides this really nice answer:

The easiest and perhaps most reliable way would be to just use cmds own parsing for arguments and shift then until no more are there.Since this destroys the use of %1, etc. you can do it in a subroutine

@echo off
call :lastarg %*
echo Last argument: %LAST_ARG%
goto :eof
:lastarg
set "LAST_ARG=%~1"
shift if not "%~1"=="" goto :lastarg
goto :eof
:eof


–jeroen

via: Get last command line argument in windows batch file – Stack Overflow.

• Delphi tools
  ModelMaker Code Explorer
  GExperts with experimental find extension
• CodeRush
• Visual Studio 2010 Power Tools (all from the VS2010 tools gallery):
  - Productivity Power Tools (download)
  - Spec Explorer 2010 Visual Studio Power Tool (download)
  - Team Foundation Server Power Tools (download)
• Visual Studio 2008 Power Tools:
  - VSTS 2008 TFS Power Tools(download)
  - Visual Studio 2008 PowerCommands (download)
• Team Foundation Server Sidekicks (download 2.4 for TFS 2008, and 3.0 for TFS 2010)
• SourcePad

–jeroen

Daarmee geeft de NS haar eigen site dus een concurrentievoordeel tegen apps.

Inmiddels is er voor de Sneltrein Android app een update geweest en kun je daar toch Station Sassenheim kiezen. Dank Jouke!

Nu nog een iOS versie van de Sneltrein App

–jeroen

via: De NS en UserExperience: er valt nog veel te leren, ook door @NS_Online en @NS_Stations #UX « The Wiert Corner – irregular stream of Wiert stuff.

1. Deselect all calendars but one
2. Quick Add an event
3. The event gets added to this one selected calendar

Now all events always get added to your default calendar. I remember this worked somewhere in 2010. But now it fails when adding about 200 events by hand on a secondary calendar

See this discussion thread:

tiburon200; 3/21/09

When using quick add, is it possible to place the new event on a specific calendar (ie, home, work) or is that only an option through the regular “Create Event” method?

Thanks for any insight… seems like it should be pretty easy, but I can’t find the right syntax.

rmorales2005; 8/17/11

This used to be possible by just hiding all other calendars, but this got broken some time ago…

–jeroen

via Quick Add to specific calendar? – Calendar Help.

Thanks Philip Brechler for announcing and posting this video, your interesting youtube video channel and your blog.

–jeroen

At about 0900 it was still wonderfully silent outside, what a change to the last few days!

With the Christmas tree snowing – my brother was very proud he could help assembling it a few days ago – its tiny polystyrene snow perls.

Listening and watching (asx) the Top 2000 has become a tradition, and we’re really looking forward for our astronaut André Kuipers to open this years edition at noon today live from the ISS International Space Station where he is part of Expedition 30.

Tonight, a lovely dinner, and tomorrow a dinner we will be at my brothers place with my mom setting up a bouillon fondue (he will get an electric fondue pot as a present, so no chance he will set his house on fire by accident) and using the ingredients in the kerstpakket he got from his company to make really nice salad.

Wishing you all a very nice Christmas!

–jeroen

http://livestreams.omroep.nl/3fm/sr2011_mainview

You can open this directly in Windows Media Player; will check the Mac shortly.

Sources:

• http://www.upc.nl/upclive/3fmseriousrequest/2098/20982604.html
  via http://www.upc.nl/upclive/3fmseriousrequest/
• http://seriousrequest.3fm.nl/live

–jeroen

etc of course includes memory cards (XQD anyone?), USB and FireFire cables, audio and video connectors, software development and many more

–jeroen

via: xkcd: Standards.

For end-users the fastest way is to start Winver, it will give you dialogs like these (left: XP with SP3, right: Windows 7 without any SP):

For command-line lovers, the one I like this most is this:

systeminfo | findstr /B /C:"OS Name" /C:"OS Version"

systeminfo can show a truckload of information, and findstr condenses this to what I need.

On Windows XP SP3, it shows this:

OS Name: Microsoft Windows XP Professional
OS Version: 5.1.2600 Service Pack 3 Build 2600


On vanilla Windows 7, it shows this:

OS Name: Microsoft Windows 7 Ultimate
OS Version: 6.1.7600 N/A Build 7600


–jeroen

via: windows command line: can I tell Service pack number? – Super User.

1. not fast
2. eats a lot of Mac resources
   (it would get the fan of my MacBook Air running like mad when copying about 1Gigabyte of files – about 20-thousand files total; a robocopy /mir sync when nothing is changes takes a whopping 5 minutes)

This is how you do it:

To configure a shared folder in a Windows virtual machine:

1. Launch VMware Fusion.
2. Power on the virtual machine.
3. Click Virtual Machine > Settings.
4. Click Sharing.
5. Select Share folders on your Mac.
6. Click the + button.
7. Browse to the folder on the Mac that will be shared with the virtual machine and click Add.

Shared folders can be accessed via the VMware Shared Folders shortcut on the Windows desktop or the mapped network drive Z:.

–jeroen

via VMware KB: Sharing a folder from your Mac to a virtual machine.

In this case, the below quote from the Release Notes for XE2 Update 3 was very important for me, as I use the IDE Fix Pack:

IDE Fix Pack Is Not Compatible with Update 3

The IDE Fix Pack for XE2 is incompatible with XE2 Update 3. If you have the IDE Fix Pack for XE2, you should uninstall the IDE Fix Pack for XE2 before installing Update 3. A revised version of the IDE Fix Pack for XE2 will be made available at http://andy.jgknet.de/fixpack/ .

The cool thing is, on the same day that Delphi XE2 Update 3 got released, Andy also released the new FixPack 4.6 last week and also explained the cause of the incompatibility.

Note that because of the same reason, more products will need to be updated. EurekaLog also released an update, and I expect more vendors to release updates soon.

Update 3 breaks the monthly release cycle, but for a reason. This update contains way more fixes than the previous ones, in a much wider area and with short turnarounds between reporting and fixing (yes, it does pay to report bugs through QualityCentral). Just read the list of fixes. It is similar to the big updates we used to have for previous Delphi versions.

It also requires a lot more disk space, so make sure you have at least 5 gigabytes of free disk space.

Not related to Update 3, but still nice is that Thomas Müller made available for download the Expertimental GExperts version 1.35-2011-12-18 that is compatible with Delphi XE2. It includes a code formatter that has different bugs than the Delphi XE2 one, but for me usually works better.

–jeroen

via: Release Notes for XE2 Update 3 – RAD Studio XE2.

Het CAK belt, net als veel telefonische verkopers, zonder nummerherkenning, dus was het eigenlijk toeval dat ze me zo te pakken kregen: normaal gaan anonieme telefoontjes door naar voicemail, maar deze keer zat ik te wachten op een ander telefoontje waarvan ik wist dat die anoniem binnen zou kunnen komen.

Terug naar het CAK: Jaren geleden heb ik al met hun correspondentie gevoerd dat ze foute adressen gebruiken, en over foute berekeningen van hun eigen bijdragen. Het is een heel bureaucratische organisatie waar het moeilijk is je weg te vinden, die van hun “klanten” een snelle en accurate reactie verwachten, maar omgekeerd geldt dat niet zo.

Telkens als er iets is waar CAK en ik het oneens over zijn verwijst het CAK mij door naar “het ministerie” om mijn beklag te doen: het CAK vindt zichzelf “uitvoerder” en voor de regeltjes (ook niet voor hun eigen interpretatie daarvan) moet je bij “het ministerie” zijn.

Het CAK blijft echter post van verschillende afdelingen naar het oude adres van mijn broer sturen (waar hij pakweg al een jaar of 12 niet meer woont: het GBA is op de hoogte dat postadres en verblijfadres verschillend zijn, en ook de belastingdienst – waar het CAK veel van haar gegevens uit put – kent het postadres).

Daarom heb ik in 2010 met als kenmerk het BSN van mijn broer een brief naar het CAK gestuurd met de vraag om alle post voor mijn broer (dus onafhankelijk van afdeling!) te sturen aan mijn postadres.

Deze keer hebben ze weer een nieuwe reden verzonden “de brief die u stuurde, was naar een andere afdeling binnen het CAK, en daar mogen we geen gegevens opvragen over curatele vanwege de wet bescherming persoonsgegevens“.

Kennelijk moet je zelf uit de context van elke brief van het CAK (en die brieven zijn nogal gelijkvormig) opmaken met welke afdeling je van doen hebt, en de hele riedel opnieuw in gang zetten.

Ik heb wel andere dingen te doen dan er weer veel telefoontjes en brieven aan te wijden, dus ik heb gevraagd dat een manager van deze persoon mij belt. Dat is wellicht ook gebeurd, maar ik hing aan een ander telefoontje (namelijk die waar ik eigenlijk op aan het wachten was).

In de tussentijd kunnen ze gaarne een kijkje nemen op de website van het Curateleregister: http://curateleregister.rechtspraak.nl/

Informatie over curatele valt namelijk weliswaar onder de wet bescherming persoonsgegevens, maar er is ook een publicatieplicht en on-line curateleregister.

Het idee achter de combinatie van publicatieplicht en register is dat iedereen in Nederland moet kunnen weten of iemand onder curatele staat, en kan uitzoeken wie de curator is, en hoe je daarmee contact krijgt.
Iemand die onder curatele staat (de curandus) is namelijk handelingsonbekwaam, en vrijwel alle handelingen die (met) zo iemand doet zijn bij voorbaat nietig of vernietigbaar.

Het online curateleregister is – vanwege de wet bescherming persoonsgegevens – zo ingericht dat bepaalde gegevens vindbaar zijn als je genoeg zoekinformatie hebt (en ja: achternaam + geboortedatum hebben ze bij het CAK op hun afdelingen).

Daarmee is de voor het CAK benodigde informatie openbaar toegankelijk, inclusief mijn woonadres. Dat is overigens niet het beste adres om post heen te sturen, want PostNL wil bij ons in de “grote stad” nog wel eens foutief afleveren, dus heb ik een postbus aan de andere kant van het kanaal op een plek waar ze wat accurater met post omgaan.

Hierbij alvast een hint naar het CAK, gebruik vooral mijn postadres:

Postbus 72
1170 AB  Badhoevedorp

Als ze nou eens bij “het ministerie” zouden informeren over hoe de vork in de steel zit over informatie van curatele en hoe je daarmee omgaat, hadden ze dit al jaren geleden kunnen weten.

En het excuus dat ze de informatie niet bij een andere afdeling kunnen opvragen is niet meer relevant: het staat publiek hier op mijn blog.

–jeroen

–jeroen

via: svn – How do I move a file or folder from one folder to another in TortoiseSVN? – Stack Overflow.

That results in a few things you should take into account when developing iOS applications:

• Do not use Unit scope identifiers (that’s why for instance the FireMonkey unit FMX.Dialogs is called FMX_Dialogs when building an iOS application)
  So don’t do a “uses System.SysUtils”, but “uses SysUtils” and don’t name your units using Unit scope identifiers for now.
  It would be so nice if Embarcadero shipped the tool that made all the FMX_* units out of the FMX.* units; that alone would make code sharing between non-iOS and iOS applications in Delphi a lot easier.
• Do not use Generics (though FPC supports them, the FPC mode that Delphi XE2 uses for iOS compatibility does not)
• Do not use new style RTTI or TValue (they are not supported by FPC)
• Do not use any other dataset than the ones directly descending from TDataSet (so anything TClientDataSet or IBX like is out) mostly because those depend on external C obj files, Unit scope identifiers or new style RTTI
• Do not spread your application sources over multiple directories
• Do not use the TMyDynamicArray.Create shortcut of initializing dynamic arrays, but use a wrapper function that uses Open Array parameters as Rob Kennedy explains on StackOverflow.
• Do not run dpr2xcode after you have changed any files it generated (believe me, you will change those). This basically makes you have to reinvent most of the dpr2xcode logic, which is a real pain, as I’m still in that process and not completed.
  These are the things you usually want to manually keep track of:
  - most of the manual changes are keeping the “YourProject.dpr” and dpr2xcode generated “YourProject.pas” in sync
  - altering the PNG files to show different splash graphics / application icons

I will extend this list over time.

Note that this detour should be gone in a future Delphi version, but for now you need to take the above into account.

It means that you might feel like programming with one hand behind your back. Well, the Objective C and Xcode way feels very similar, but from a different perspective

–jeroen

Diverse verzekeringsmaatschappijen sturen nu brieven rond (al dan niet via hun verkooporganisatie die soms een andere naam heeft van de verzekeraar) rondom spaarloon.

De spaaroonregeling stop namelijk per 1 januari 2012.

De brieven vermelden een levensverzekering met polisnummer, dan ergens een kopje over het stoppen van de spaarloonregeling en de keuze wat je wilt doen met de verzekering.

Ofwel: meeliftend op het nieuws van de spaarloonregeling laten ze je een keuze maken over een heel ander product: de levensverzekering.

Hier komt de crux: een spaarloonrekening hoeft helemaal niet gekoppeld te zijn aan een levensverzekering.

Doe een gedegen controle

Check dus eerst of vanuit de spaarloonrekening er premies betaald worden van de levensverzekering.

Zo niet, dan hoef je vanuit de spaarloonrekening gezien meestal niets te doen.

Natuurlijk kan het zo zijn dat de situatie rondom de levensverzekering veranderd is (en aandacht behoeft), maar dat staat over het algemeen volkomen los van de spaarloonregeling.

Ik was er (ook als curator van mijn broer) bijna ingetuind, juist omdat in dit specifieke geval de levensverzekering en spaarloonregeling oorspronkelijk (maar wel afzonderlijk, en zonder koppeling!) door de oud-curator bij dezelfde instelling waren afgesloten.
Nu die instelling gesplitst is in een verzekeraar en een bank, was ik hier extra attent op (de brief gaf aan dat de levensverzekering van de bank was, maar die is van de verzekeraar).
Gelukkig had de boekhouder alle rekeningnummers paraat en kon me bevestigen dat beide  producten niet aan elkaar gekoppeld waren.

Even terug naar de spaarloonregeling.

Het sparen via de spaarloonregeling wordt dan wel opgeheven, maar niet alles rondom de spaarloonregeling eindigt.

Met name de vermogensrendementsheffing speelt hier een rol: de spaarloonregeling valt hier buiten.

Je kunt dan ook meerdere dingen met het saldo van de spaarloonregeling doen. Het opheffen en laten uitkeren van het saldo is lang niet altijd de beste mogelijkheid.

Let dus goed op de mogelijke consequenties! En laat je persoonlijk informeren door je een onafhankelijke partij. Die kan dan naar jouw persoonlijke situatie kijken wat de beste oplossing is die past bij jouw behoefte of die van de curandus.

En (als curator) wellicht is het handig om even met de rechtbank te overleggen. Ook die hebben het aan het einde van het jaar razend druk, maar het is verstandiger van hen een accoord over een wijziging te hebben dan achteraf teruggefloten te worden.

–jeroen

• Stationsletters Rotterdam CS gestole (via NOS Nieuws).
• Straaljager gestolen bij museum Deelen (via  nu.nl).

Denk ik altijd: de Friese Nieuwjaarsverenigingen hebben weer wat in petto!

–jeroen

Hoewel @NS_Online en @NS_Stations normaal vrij snel zijn met antwoorden hebben ze deze handschoen niet opgepakt, ook niet na wat meer UX teasers.

Dus volgende de komende tijd hier en daar wat artikeltjes over wat er met User Experience voor de NS reizigers gewonnen zou kunnen worden op de sites, mobiele applicaties, stations, treinnen, etc.

Dit is de eerste, met twee eenvoudige over dienstregelingen, stations, apps en websites.

Op 9 december is Station Sassenheim geopend, met een pagina over Station Sassenheim op ns.nl.

Op 11 december is de nieuwe NS dienstregeling gestart met onder ander opname van Station Sassenheim en meer Fyra verbindingen.

Resultaat:

1. De webservices.ns.nl hoofdingang van de NS API is niet bijgewerkt met Station Sassenheim.
   Alle sites en mobiele apps die daarvanaf hangen (waaronder de mobiele apps van de NS zelf en de SnelTrein app van een Android ontwikkelaar die UX heel goed door heeft) kunnen Sassenheim niet als station kiezen.
   Op de mobiele site kan het wel, maar daar moet je wel de stations exact goed intikken (handig op een smartphone) anders werkt het niet.
   Probeer dat maar eens goed te krijgen met Station Laan van NOI in Den Haag (ja, je moet precies “Den Haag Laan v NOI” intikken).
   Deze Android apps doen het bijvoorbeeld niet:
   - 9292ov pro
   - SnelTrein (van een geweldige developer die wel snapt wat UX inhoudt, en hoe technologie werkt).
   - ActuTrein
   - NS Reisplanner Extra
   - TreinTijden Lite
2. De  NS Reisplanner op de ns.nl homepage planned van Rotterdam Centraal naar Amsterdam Centraal geen Fyra treinen meer.
   Dit blijkt voor alle HSL treinen op alle verbindingen te gaan: pas in het vervolg scherm zit een “Edit” button waarin je op een pagina komt waar je het HSL vinkje wel kunt zetten.
   De homepage van de mobiele m.ns.nl site heeft het vinkje wel staan, en daar staat het ook standaard aan.

Oh ja, nog helemaal vergeten: mijn G+ post over een grote vertraging in oktober, waar @NS_Online toen ook geen info over had.

Les geleerd in regio Den Haag / Rotterdam: pak ook eens Randstadrail lijn E.  Op de site en planner van de HTM vind je hem niet, maar wel op site van de RET staat de dienstregeling van lijn E.

–jeroen

–jeroen

via: Dilbert comic strip for 12/16/2011 from the official Dilbert comic strips archive..

Nokia Lumia 800 Experience: nog 3 plekken beschikbaar!

Wil jij alsnog vanavond aanwezig zijn bij de Nokia Lumia 800 Experience op het hoofdkantoor van Tweakers.net, stuur dan een e-mail naar a.engelsman@vnumedia.nl. Wie het eerst komt, wie het eerst maalt. Winnaars krijgen een bevestiging, hoor je niks dan ben je er helaas niet bij. Het programma start om 17.30u, inloop vanaf 17.00u.

Groet,
Wilbert de Vries
Hoofdredacteur Tweakers.net

–jeroen

via: Software updates – WSUS Offline Update 7.2 | Core | Tweakers.net Meuktracker.

On my 42PFL7676H TV, you can reveal those URLs with the “Options key” on your remote control.

From there, it is very easy to see that the aquariums and fire places, are just a bunch of MP4 streams that are repeated indefinitely.

A few of the URLs:

• Loading screen
• Fireplaces html
• Live Coral Aquarium html
• Fireplaces MP4
• Live Coral Aquarium MP4

--jeroen
 

It is based on FireMonkey supports Delphi XE2 Update 1 and up, and FPC (and yes: it supports on iOS too).

Interesting stuff!

–jeroen

Via: Asphyre Sphinx 2.

I won’t duplicate the tables of .NET CLR/Framework and Visual Studio version numbers here as it will age: the tables linked below will somehow be updated by someone. The real power of SO.

–jeroen

Via: How do the .NET Framework, CLR and Visual Studio version numbers relate to each other? – Stack Overflow.

Error 9 Unable to copy file "obj\x86\Debug\MyProject.exe" to "bin\Debug\MyProject.exe". The process cannot access the file 'bin\Debug\MyProject.exe' because it is being used by another process.

When using SysInternals’ Process Explorer to see which process has handles open to MyProject, you will see that devenv.exe (The Visual Studio IDE) is the culprit: sometimes it has a lot of handles open.

The workaround is simple: close all UserControls before debugging your WinForms application.

A real pity, as UserControls are a very useful feature when developing software (many platforms use the same paradigm, .NET certainly wasn’t the first to introduce it, and it is available in for instance WPF as well).

Note that there are other causes of the same error message, but for me this was the issue.

–jeroen

Via: visual studio 2010 – VisualStudio2010 Debugging – The process cannot access the file … because it is being used by another process – Stack Overflow.

The latter will quickly drain my battery when I unplug my Android device.

So far, it looks like the StayAwake app won’t drain my battery  when the device is unplugged. Thanks to the XDA developers forum post that pointed me to it.

–jeroen

via: StayAwake – Android Market.

So I completely missed the “Dilbert Punch Line Mashups: Write your own Dilbert Punch Line from a Dilbert comic strip“.

For instance, Mashup 131126 is the finishing of 2011-08-08:

How Duh is that?

–jeroen

Via: Dilbert Punch Line Mashups: Write your own Dilbert Punch Line from a Dilbert comic strip – www.Dilbert.com.

–jeroen

via: 2012 leap year and Microsoft Office 365 – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

Note for the scripts in this post:

• on Windows you need to execute them with run as Administrator!
• on a Mac you need to run them with sudo

Windows

restart-InterBase.cmd:

net stop IBG_gds_db
net stop IBS_gds_db
net start IBG_gds_db
net start IBS_gds_db

It restarts only the default instance.

Usually it is enough to restart the Guarduan (IBG_gds_db), but sometimes that hangs, so I restart both the Guardian and the DB service (IBS_gds_db).

You can do the same with Firebird of course, and adapt for non-default instances: just find the right service names using a script like this:

sc query

then search the output for entries matching InterBase or Firebird like these:

SERVICE_NAME: IBG_gds_db
DISPLAY_NAME: InterBase XE Guardian gds_db
        TYPE               : 10  WIN32_OWN_PROCESS
        STATE              : 4  RUNNING
                                (STOPPABLE, NOT_PAUSABLE, IGNORES_SHUTDOWN)
        WIN32_EXIT_CODE    : 0  (0x0)
        SERVICE_EXIT_CODE  : 0  (0x0)
        CHECKPOINT         : 0x0
        WAIT_HINT          : 0x0

SERVICE_NAME: IBS_gds_db
DISPLAY_NAME: InterBase XE Server gds_db
        TYPE               : 10  WIN32_OWN_PROCESS
        STATE              : 4  RUNNING
                                (STOPPABLE, NOT_PAUSABLE, IGNORES_SHUTDOWN)
        WIN32_EXIT_CODE    : 0  (0x0)
        SERVICE_EXIT_CODE  : 0  (0x0)
        CHECKPOINT         : 0x0
        WAIT_HINT          : 0x0

Mac OS X

You can find the name of your Interbase service when you look at the user-installed services:

bash-3.2$ cd /Library/StartupItems/InterBase_gds_db/
bash-3.2$ ls -l
total 16
-rwxr-xr-x  1 root  wheel  636 Oct 21 15:44 InterBase_gds_db
-rwxr-xr-x  1 root  wheel  204 Sep 14  2007 StartupParameters.plist
bash-3.2$ cat StartupParameters.plist
{
  Description     = "InterBase Server";
  Provides        = ("InterBase Database Server");
  Requires        = ("DirectoryServices");
  Uses            = ("Disks", "NFS");
  OrderPreference = "None";
}
bash-3.2$

You can restart the InterBase Database Server using this command:

sudo SystemStarter -vdD restart "InterBase Database Server"

The SystemStarter -vdD parameters make the output add verbose, debugging information and dependencies.
–jeroen

Funny, as I remember being late to report GExperts 1.35 for Delphi XE2 was released a while a go

It reminded me to ask Thomas to publish the XE2 version of his Experimental GExperts build though.

Lets hope he is faster than me catching up

–jeroen

via: Google Reader feed for GExperts.org.

For instance, on this table:

What are the results of these SELECT statements

SELECT COUNT (*)
FROM MYTABLE

SELECT COUNT (*)
FROM MYTABLE
WHERE     (LAST_NAME = 'FOO')

SELECT COUNT (*)
FROM MYTABLE
WHERE     (LAST_NAME <> 'FOO')

SELECT COUNT (*)
FROM MYTABLE
WHERE     NOT (LAST_NAME = 'FOO')

You might think they are like these, as LASTNAME <> ‘FOO’ looks like the inverse of LASTNAME = ‘FOO’:

• 6
• 3
• 3
• 3

But in fact the results are these:

• 6
• 3
• 2
• 2

When you look closely to the SQL statements below, you will see that the inverse of EQUALS contains an IS NULL, the same for the inverse of NOT EQUALS:

SELECT COUNT (*)
FROM MYTABLE

-- inverse of NOT EQUALS
SELECT COUNT (*)
FROM MYTABLE
WHERE     (LAST_NAME = 'FOO') OR (LAST_NAME IS NULL)

SELECT COUNT (*)
FROM MYTABLE
WHERE     (LAST_NAME <> 'FOO')

SELECT COUNT (*)
FROM MYTABLE
WHERE     (LAST_NAME = 'FOO')

-- inverse of EQUALS
SELECT COUNT (*)
FROM MYTABLE
WHERE     (LAST_NAME <> 'FOO') OR (LAST_NAME IS NULL)

-- inverse of EQUALS
SELECT COUNT (*)
FROM MYTABLE
WHERE     (NOT (LAST_NAME = 'FOO')) OR (LAST_NAME IS NULL)

• 6
• 4
• 2
• 3
• 3
• 3

Lesson learned: always take into account NULL when trying to formulate your SQL comparisons well.

–jeroen

Many modern applications seem to put less and less emphasis on the most efficient user input device: the keyboard.

You should: it makes your application much more pleasant to use.

I wrote about CUA before, but the Windows and Mac shortcuts are just as important.

A small table (please post a comment if you know additions):

Note that many Linux programs follow both the CUA and Windows settings.

References:

• CUA: SAA Common User Access Bookshelf
• Windows: Guidelines for Keyboard User Interface Design
• HIG: Keyboard Shortcuts

–jeroen

–jeroen

Via: xkcd: Citogenesis.

–jeroen

via: delphi – Save source code with formatting syntax highlight – Stack Overflow.

Tasker for Android is an application which performs Tasks (sets of Actions) based on Contexts (application, time, date, location, event, gesture) in user-defined Profiles, or in clickable or timer home screen widgets.

This simple concept profoundly extends your control of your Android device and it’s capabilities, without the need for ‘root’ or a special home screen.

Highly recommended, for instance to wake up your phone in an emergency.

–jeroen

Now there are many more extensions involved, so it is harder to choose what to put in your version control system and what not.

The File Extensions of Files Generated by RAD Studio page helps you with that: it lists most of the Delphi file extensions (.local is a noticeable exception) that are used today.

–jeroen

via: File Extensions of Files Generated by RAD Studio – RAD Studio XE2.

I was refactoring bits of code where someone clearly didn’t understand the benefits of enumerations, similar to this very contrived example:

using System;

namespace Demo
{
    // explicit equivalence of: 
    // public enum TrafficLight { Red, Yellow, Green };
    public enum TrafficLight { Red = 0, Yellow = 1, Green = 2 };

    public class Program
    {
        public static void Main()
        {
            // old code:
            Console.WriteLine(IntIsRedTrafficLight((int)TrafficLight.Red));
            Console.WriteLine(IntIsRedTrafficLight((int)TrafficLight.Yellow));
            Console.WriteLine(IntIsRedTrafficLight((int)TrafficLight.Green));
        }

        public static bool IntIsRedTrafficLight(int trafficLight)
        {
            return (trafficLight == (int)TrafficLight.Red);
        }
    }
}

The code was using way too many casts, and my goal was something as simple as this:

using System;

namespace Demo
{
    public enum TrafficLight { Red, Yellow, Green };

    public class Program
    {
        public static void Main()
        {
            Console.WriteLine(IsRed(TrafficLight.Red));
            Console.WriteLine(IsRed(TrafficLight.Yellow));
            Console.WriteLine(IsRed(TrafficLight.Green));
        }

        public static bool IsRed(TrafficLight trafficLight)
        {
            return (trafficLight == TrafficLight.Red);
        }

    }
}

Often when refactoring code into something that can be better enforced by the compiler, I start changing the central code, then have the compiler mark all the errors.

Well, in this case, I got less compiler errors than expected:

using System;

namespace Demo
{
    public enum TrafficLight { Red = 0, Yellow = 1, Green = 2 };

    public class Program
    {
        public static void Main()
        {
            // simplified code: about to remove the (int) casts
            Console.WriteLine(IsRed((int)TrafficLight.Red)); // no compiler errror!
            Console.WriteLine(IsRed((int)TrafficLight.Yellow)); // compiler error: Argument 1: cannot convert from 'int' to 'Demo.TrafficLight'
            Console.WriteLine(IsRed((int)TrafficLight.Green)); // compiler error: Argument 1: cannot convert from 'int' to 'Demo.TrafficLight'
        }

        public static bool IsRed(TrafficLight trafficLight)
        {
            return (trafficLight == TrafficLight.Red);
        }

    }
}

What happens is that the int value 0 is compatible with all enumeration types that have an enumeration value mapping to zero.

I had a duh moment here, as I didn’t expect that. But reading the ECMA C# standard section on enums, it makes sense.

The trick to force the compiler to generate errors is to make sure none of the elements map to zero:

using System;

namespace Demo
{
    // public enum TrafficLight { Red = 0, Yellow = 1, Green = 2 };
    // trick to make all assignments fail: make Read != 0
    public enum TrafficLight { Red = 3, Yellow = 1, Green = 2 };

    public class Program
    {
        public static void Main()
        {
            // simplified code: about to remove the (int) casts
            Console.WriteLine(IsRed((int)TrafficLight.Red)); // compiler error: Argument 1: cannot convert from 'int' to 'Demo.TrafficLight'
            Console.WriteLine(IsRed((int)TrafficLight.Yellow)); // compiler error: Argument 1: cannot convert from 'int' to 'Demo.TrafficLight'
            Console.WriteLine(IsRed((int)TrafficLight.Green)); // compiler error: Argument 1: cannot convert from 'int' to 'Demo.TrafficLight'
        }

        public static bool IsRed(TrafficLight trafficLight)
        {
            return (trafficLight == TrafficLight.Red);
        }

    }
}

–jeroen

Since many databases like yyyy-mm-dd as a universal import date format, I suggested trying that and searching for some backing on the Internet.

Indeed this StackOverflow answer confirmed my gues.

–jeroen

Via: vba – Parse data and time string to Access Date value – Stack Overflow.

After starting KillSkypeHome, make sure you configure its tray icon as follows:

1. Minimize Skype on Start
2. Start with Windows
3. Persistent Mode
   (this keeps KillSkypeHome running after minimizing Skype the first time, just in case Skype Home tries to popup again, which Skype does at inconvenient moments).

–jeroen

Via: Andrew Worcester • Kill Skype Home (KSH) – Get rid of that annoying “Skype Home” popup.

NTFS alternate data streams are a perfect way to hide data, support Mac OS data forks (which used them to support resource fork meta data tagging long before NTFS alternate data streams were introduced), or to append meta-data to files.

It is a known ADS used to show a security warning when you run executable content that has been downloaded.
That warning can be annoying, or hang your application which it is started from a service, so further below is a batch file that kills the stream.

You cannot use type for displaying NTFS alternate data streams, but redirection through more or using notepad is fine.

This shows the Zone.Identifier NTFS alternate data stream for a single file:

more < %1:Zone.Identifier

When you want to see the ADS of many files, then just use NirSoft’s AlternateDateStreams utility.

You should only kill an Zone.Identifier NTFS alternate data stream when you have verified that the downloaded executable content (which nowadays is much more than just an executable) is verified to be safe.

An easy way to kill any NTFS alternate data stream is to copy it to a FAT32 device and back: FAT does not support alternate data streams. Drawback: it modifies the timestamp of your file as FAT has a smaller time resolution than NTFS has.

This batch file kills  the Zone.Identifier NTFS alternate data stream using the SysInternals streams tool:

@echo off
  if !%1!==!! goto :end
  :: use caret before pipe to hide the pipe from the outermost command in the batch file
  for /f "usebackq tokens=1" %%d in (`streams.exe %1 ^| find "Zone.Identifier:$DATA"`) do (
    goto :kill
  )
  goto :end
:kill
  streams -d %1
:end

and this batch file lists the Zone.Identifier NTFS alternate data streams:

@echo off
  if !%1!==!! goto :end
  :: use caret before pipe to hide the pipe from the outermost command in the batch file
  for /f "usebackq tokens=1" %%d in (`streams.exe %1 ^| find "Zone.Identifier:$DATA"`) do (
    goto :list
  )
  goto :end
:list
  streams.exe %1 | find ":"
:end

Note that the $DATA in the above batch files is not part of the NTFS alternate data stream name, but explains what kind of data is in the stream.
I have not found other types yet, but if you do, please leave a comment (preferably with a link).

–jeroen

a matrix library including some advanced operations like singular value or LU decomposition, pseudo inversion and others as well as a large set of assembler hand optimized matrix primitive functions. The assembler version are available for x64 code as well by the way. Quite a few of these matrix primitives are also available as multi threaded versions.  All functions are encapsulated in an easy to handle matrix class or interface.The library is released under the apache licence meaning that it may also be integrated into commercial products.

So it has lots of features, and optimizations. When browsing the source code, there are also some tests, I presume there will be more in the future.

The library has both a web site with download and a Google Code respository with source browsing.

–jeroen

via: Matrix Library by Michael Rabatscher.

It encapsulates the MQTT protocol, which – being a telemetry transport protocol – is extremely light weight, but also versatile.

–jeroen

Via: Jamie’s Blog | MQTT Client Library for Delphi.

In Delphi the SHR is always a SHR operation: it never takes into account the sign.

• SAR is the artithmetic shift right.
• SHR is the binary/logical shift right.

–jeroen

via: Shift Right: Delphi vs C | Galfars Lair.

It has been named “System Profiler” over more than a decade (actually it had almost 3 lustrums), bot no more: As of OS X Lion, this is called “System Information”, and has been redesigned.

Both quoted names can be easily found by using the Spotlight quick search (which I think is still one of the brilliant pieces of software in OS X).

–jeroen

Via: OS X Lion: Reclaiming the System Profiler Application | TMO Quick Tip | The Mac Observer.

So I quickly learned all the keyboard shortcuts of the things I use everyday.

Most of the CUA and Windows keyboard shortcuts stored in my spline, and having done quite a bit of Mac development lately, it took a while for Mac keyboard shortcuts to end there as well.

Here are a few nice overviews of handy Mac keyboard shortcuts:

• apple.com: Mac OS X keyboard shortcuts
• mac.com: Keyboard Control
• Mac Central: Mac Keyboard Shortcuts

Have fun with them!

–jeroen

Via: mac os x keyboard shortcuts – Google Search.

Below is a batch file that generates a CSV file with scopes and units. The file does not only contain the VCL, RTL and FMX units, but all units in the C:\Program Files (x86)\Embarcadero\RAD Studio\9.0\source\ directory tree.

From the CSV, I generated two tables at the end: one with only the scope prefixes, one with all the units and the scopes they belong to.

The tables are based on Delphi XE2 Update 1.

I hope the batch file survives the WordPress syntax highlighter.

@echo off
  echo ScopePrefix
  call :outer 0
  echo ScopePrefix;UnitName;FileName;ParentDirectory
  call :outer 1
goto :end

:outer
:: recursively walk the directory for .pas file having a unit scope
:: http://osix.net/modules/article/?id=755
for /F "tokens=*" %%f in ('dir /s /b "C:\Program Files (x86)\Embarcadero\RAD Studio\9.0\source\*.pas"') do call :inner %1%%f
goto :end

:inner
setlocal
::http://stackoverflow.com/questions/636381/what-is-the-best-way-to-do-a-substring-in-a-batch-file
  set Parameter=%*
  :: strip the first character: copy from 1 till the end
  set FullFileName=%Parameter:~1%
  set Mode=%Parameter:~0,1%
  shift
::  ~dp does not work for regular environment variables
::  ~dp only works for batch file parameters and loop indexes
  for %%d in ("%FullFileName%") do set ParentDirectory=%%~dpd
  for %%f in ("%FullFileName%") do set FileName=%%~nf
  for %%f in ("%FileName%") do set ScopePrefix=%%~nf
  for %%f in ("%FileName%") do set UnitName=%%~xf
  :: strip the first character: copy from 1 till the end
  if !%UnitName%!==!! goto :noscope
  goto :scope
:noscope
  set UnitName=%ScopePrefix%
  set ScopePrefix=
  goto :display
:scope
  set UnitName=%UnitName:~1%
:display
  if !%Mode%!==!0! if not !%ScopePrefix%!==!! echo %ScopePrefix%
  if !%Mode%!==!1! echo %ScopePrefix%;%UnitName%;%FileName%.pas;%ParentDirectory%
endlocal
  goto :end

:end

–jeroen

Table: Scope prefixes

Table: Units and their Scope prefixes