Lessons, tips, and experiences from venturing through the realms of technology and software.

Monday, August 3, 2009

Version Control Systems Comparison

Some of the most popular version control systems / source code management software tools include Subversion (SVN), Microsoft Visual Source Safe (VSS), Mercurial, Microsoft Team Foundation Server (TFS), and Perforce. Embedded below is a fairly detailed comparison (compare & contrast, pros & cons) of these systems:




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SharePoint Calendar - Color Coding

The default SharePoint calendar does not come with event highlighting and color coding.

To fix this issue:

Calendar event highlighting and color coding functionality will be implemented by adding two columns to hold the background and foreground color values and another column to hold the display HTML code. A hidden web part will also be incorporated to translate the code from a literal string to actual HTML.

Details & Directions:


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SharePoint Calendar - Prevent Double Booking

The default SharePoint calendar does not come with double booking prevention.

To fix the issue:

Calendar double booking detection and prevention functionality will be implemented by first adding a column for the event/location—in this case, the Meeting Room. Views for different meeting rooms will also be created. A new class library will then be incorporated, which will include custom event handlers for ItemAdding and ItemUpdating events.

Details & Directions:



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C++ Console Progress Bar

Given the percentage complete, the following piece of code can print a text progress bar for a console application along with an animatedly "spinning" slash to show that the program is still running.


// this function prints progress bar
// pre: percentage complete
// post: progress bar
void progressbar(int percent)
{
static stringstream bars;
static int x = 0;
string slash[4];
slash[0] = "\\";
slash[1] = "-";
slash[2] = "/";
slash[3] = "|";
bars << "|";
cout << "\r"; // carriage return back to beginning of line
cout << bars.str() << " " << slash[x] << " " << percent << " %"; // print the bars and percentage
x++; // increment to make the slash appear to rotate
if(x == 4)
x = 0; // reset slash animation
}


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DARPA National Cyber Range (NCR) Proposal / Idea

In response to the DARPA National Cyber Range (NCR) project, the following diagram serves as a basic proposal/idea to accomplish the task of creating a virtual cyber "firing range" to enable a revolution in the nation’s ability to conduct cyber operations and providing a persistent virtual "range" for cyber warfare experiments and tactic/strategy implementation.

Utilizing several clusters of powerful Sun Microsystems x4600 M2 servers equipped with VMWare ESX virtualization platform to allow for the virtualization of a variety of operating systems, applications, and run-time environments, large testbeds can be segregated to perform various cyber defense/offense experiments. Furthermore, a super database can serve as a source of data/statistics for human emulation according to foreign statistics and intelligence gathered regarding a foreign target's user base habits and computer system/software specifications.

By David Poarch




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The ROCK - A multithreading, multi-core SPARC microprocessor

Author: David Poarch

ABSTRACT

This work presents and discusses the Rock—a multithreading, multi-core, and the newest SPARC microprocessor under development by Sun Microsystems. In addition to an overview of the 16-core processor and its architecture, multithreading technologies such as hardware scouting, thread-level speculation, transactional memory, and thread-level parallelism, as well as the implementation of these unconventional features, are investigated. Designed as a multi-threaded processor that allows multiple processes to perform calculations in parallel, the Rock is ideal for high-end computer systems such as web and application servers, which demand massive multimedia and multitasking operations. Incorporating 16 cores arranged in four clusters with shared resources and delivering full parallel execution of multiple software threads implemented by efficient multithreading technologies, the Rock enables area-efficient, power-efficient, and low-frequency operation with relatively low impact on core performance. With such resourceful and sophisticated capabilities, Sun’s Rock processor directly competes with and poses distinct advantages over other multi-core processors from competitors such as Intel, IBM, and AMD.

FULL PAPER:



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SharePoint Designer Missing Content Tab for New Workflow

If you are trying to create a new workflow, yet seem to be missing a File -> New -> Sharepoint Content tab or a File -> New -> Workflow tab, then it is likely because you have not connected to your SharePoint site.

In order to correct this issue, click File -> Open Site and type in the URL of your SharePoint site. SharePoint Designer should then connect and the missing Workflow tabs or choices should appear.
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