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Short Story ... But you are born to winAn eagle's egg was placed in the nest of a prairie chicken. The egg hatched and the little eagle grew up thinking it was a prairie chicken. The eagle did what the prairie chickens did. It scratched in the dirt for seeds. It clucked and cackled. It never flew more than a few feet because that is what the prairie chickens did. One day he saw an eagle flying gracefully and majestically in the open sky. He asked the prairie chickens: "What is that beautiful bird?" The chickens replied, "That is an eagle. He is an outstanding bird, but you cannot fly like him because you are just a prairie chicken." So the eagle never gave it a second thought, believing that to be the truth. He lived the life of and died a prairie chicken, depriving himself of his heritage because of his lack of vision. What a waste! He was born to win, but was conditioned to lose. If you want to soar like an eagle, you have to learn the ways of an eagle. If you associate with achievers, you will become one. If you associate with thinkers, you will become one. If you associate with givers, you will become one. If you associate with complainers, you will become one. by Shiv Khera { You Can Win } Short Story ... But also giveAs human beings, we all have the need to receive and take. But a healthy personality with high self-esteem is one that not only has its need to take but also to give. A man was washing his new car when his neighbor asked him, "When did you get the car?" He replied "My brother gave it to me." The neighbor's response was, "I wish l had a 24 of 24 car like that." The man replied, "You should wish to have a brother like that." The neighbor's wife was listening to the conversation and she interrupted, "I wish I was a brother like that." What a way to go! by Shiv Khera { You Can Win } Tips & Tricks, Google hacksSay you want to get, for example, a Garth Brooks song. type this in the search bar - "index of/" "garth brooks" .mp3 the ones you want to check out first are the ones that say "Index of/" in the title of the search result. this technique allows you to easily pull up web folders with direct downloads. It will look the same as if you were logging into a ftp url. You can be pretty flexible on how you type that in, so long as you include "index of/" You can use this for more than just mp3's (it's not perfect but it has worked) Always make sure to use the quotations where it has been placed. they help pinpoint the correct search results more accurately. just try it out, also if you want to learn how to do more with google look up "google hacks" Ref: http://mahendragr.wordpress.com/2008/07/18/find-serial-numbers-on-google/ What exactly is DirectXEver wondered just what that enigmatic name means? Gaming and multimedia applications are some of the most satisfying programs you can get for your PC, but getting them to run properly isn’t always as easy as it could be. First, the PC architecture was never designed as a gaming platform. Second, the wide-ranging nature of the PC means that one person’s machine can be different from another. While games consoles all contain the same hardware, PCs don’t: the massive range of difference can make gaming a headache. To alleviate as much of the pain as possible, Microsoft needed to introduce a common standard which all games and multimedia applications could follow – a common interface between the OS and whatever hardware is installed in the PC, if you like. This common interface is DirectX, something which can be the source of much confusion. DirectX is an interface designed to make certain programming tasks much easier, for both the game developer and the rest of us who just want to sit down and play the latest blockbuster. Before we can explain what DirectX is and how it works though, we need a little history lesson. DirectX history Any game needs to perform certain tasks again and again. It needs to watch for your input from mouse, joystick or keyboard, and it needs to be able to display screen images and play sounds or music. That’s pretty much any game at the most simplistic level. Imagine how incredibly complex this was for programmers developing on the early pre-Windows PC architecture, then. Each programmer needed to develop their own way of reading the keyboard or detecting whether a joystick was even attached, let alone being used to play the game. Specific routines were needed even to display the simplest of images on the screen or play a simple sound. Essentially, the game programmers were talking directly to your PC’s hardware at a fundamental level. When Microsoft introduced Windows, it was imperative for the stability and success of the PC platform that things were made easier for both the developer and the player. After all, who would bother writing games for a machine when they had to reinvent the wheel every time they began work on a new game? Microsoft’s idea was simple: stop programmers talking directly to the hardware, and build a common toolkit which they could use instead. DirectX was born. How it works At the most basic level, DirectX is an interface between the hardware in your PC and Windows itself, part of the Windows API or Application Programming Interface. Let’s look at a practical example. When a game developer wants to play a sound file, it’s simply a case of using the correct library function. When the game runs, this calls the DirectX API, which in turn plays the sound file. The developer doesn’t need to know what type of sound card he’s dealing with, what it’s capable of, or how to talk to it. Microsoft has provided DirectX, and the sound card manufacturer has provided a DirectX-capable driver. He asks for the sound to be played, and it is – whichever machine it runs on. From our point of view as gamers, DirectX also makes things incredibly easy – at least in theory. You install a new sound card in place of your old one, and it comes with a DirectX driver. Next time you play your favourite game you can still hear sounds and music, and you haven’t had to make any complex configuration changes. Originally, DirectX began life as a simple toolkit: early hardware was limited and only the most basic graphical functions were required. As hardware and software has evolved in complexity, so has DirectX. It’s now much more than a graphical toolkit, and the term has come to encompass a massive selection of routines which deal with all sorts of hardware communication. For example, the DirectInput routines can deal with all sorts of input devices, from simple two-button mice to complex flight joysticks. Other parts include DirectSound for audio devices and DirectPlay provides a toolkit for online or multiplayer gaming. DirectX versions The current version of DirectX at time of writing is DirectX 9.0. This runs on all versions of Windows from Windows 98 up to and including Windows Server 2003 along with every revision in between. It doesn’t run on Windows 95 though: if you have a machine with Windows 95 installed, you’re stuck with the older and less capable 8.0a. Windows NT 4 also requires a specific version – in this case, it’s DirectX 3.0a. With so many versions of DirectX available over the years, it becomes difficult to keep track of which version you need. In all but the most rare cases, all versions of DirectX are backwardly compatible – games which say they require DirectX 7 will happily run with more recent versions, but not with older copies. Many current titles explicitly state that they require DirectX 9, and won’t run without the latest version installed. This is because they make use of new features introduced with this version, although it has been known for lazy developers to specify the very latest version as a requirement when the game in question doesn’t use any of the new enhancements. Generally speaking though, if a title is version locked like this, you will need to upgrade before you can play. Improvements to the core DirectX code mean you may even see improvements in many titles when you upgrade to the latest build of DirectX. Downloading and installing DirectX need not be complex, either. Upgrading DirectX All available versions of Windows come with DirectX in one form or another as a core system component which cannot be removed, so you should always have at least a basic implementation of the system installed on your PC. However, many new games require the very latest version before they work properly, or even at all. Generally, the best place to install the latest version of DirectX from is the dedicated section of the Microsoft Web site, which is found at www.microsoft.com/windows/directx. As we went to press, the most recent build available for general download was DirectX 9.0b. You can download either a simple installer which will in turn download the components your system requires as it installs, or download the complete distribution package in one go for later offline installation. Another good source for DirectX is games themselves. If a game requires a specific version, it’ll be on the installation CD and may even be installed automatically by the game’s installer itself. You won’t find it on magazine cover discs though, thanks to Microsoft’s licensing terms. Diagnosing problems Diagnosing problems with a DirectX installation can be problematic, especially if you don’t know which one of the many components is causing your newly purchased game to fall over. Thankfully, Microsoft provides a useful utility called the DirectX Diagnostic Tool, although this isn’t made obvious. You won’t find this tool in the Start Menu with any version of Windows, and each tends to install it in a different place. The easiest way to use it is to open the Start Menu’s Run dialog, type in dxdiag and then click OK. When the application first loads, it takes a few seconds to interrogate your DirectX installation and find any problems. First, the DirectX Files tab displays version information on each one of the files your installation uses. The Notes section at the bottom is worth checking, as missing or corrupted files will be flagged here. The tabs marked Display, Sound, Music, Input and Network all relate to specific areas of DirectX, and all but the Input tab provide tools to test the correct functioning on your hardware. Finally, the More Help tab provides a useful way to start the DirectX Troubleshooter, Microsoft’s simple linear problem solving tool for many common DirectX issues. Create One-Click Shutdown and Reboot ShortcutsFirst, create a shortcut on your desktop by right clicking on the desktop, choosing New, and then choosing Shortcut. The Create Shortcut Wizard appears. In the box asking for the location of the shortcut, type shutdown. After you create the shortcut, double-clicking on it will shut down your PC. But you can do much more with a shutdown shortcut than merely shut down your PC. You can add any combination of several switches to do extra duty, like this: shutdown -r -t 01 -c "Rebooting your PC" Double-clicking on that shortcut will reboot your PC after a one-second delay and display the message "Rebooting your PC." The shutdown command includes a variety of switches you can use to customize it. Table 1-3 lists all of them and describes their use. Use this technique to create two shutdown shortcuts on my desktop—one for turning off PC, and one for rebooting. Here are the ones: shutdown -s -t 03 -c "Bye Bye m8!" shutdown -r -t 03 -c "Ill be back m8 ;)!" Switch -s Shuts down the PC. -l Logs off the current user. -t nn Indicates the duration of delay, in seconds, before performing the action. -c "messagetext" Displays a message in the System Shutdown window. A maximum of 127 characters can be used. The message must be enclosed in quotation marks. -f Forces any running applications to shut down. -r Reboots the PC. Measuring storage device capacityBIT stands for BInary DigiIT and is 0 & 1. And 8 such bits forms 1 byte. Following is its further measurements
MS-DOS Command Prompt, Page 3
MS-DOS Command Prompt, Page 2
MS-DOS Command Prompt, Page 1
Shortcuts, Windows XP
Shortcuts, Windows Explorer
Shortcuts, Internet Explorer
Start -> Run, Control panel programs
Start -> Run, System utility programs
Short Story ... Remember those who serveIn the days when an ice cream sundae cost much less, a 10-year-old boy entered a hotel coffee shop and sat at a table. A waitress put a glass of water in front of him. "How much is an ice cream sundae?" he asked. "Fifty cents," replied the waitress. The little boy pulled is hand out of his pocket and studied the coins in it. "Well, how much is a plain dish of ice cream?" he inquired. By now more people were waiting for a table and the waitress was growing impatient. "Thirty-five cents," she brusquely replied. The little boy again counted his coins. "I'll have the plain ice cream," he said. The waitress brought the ice cream, put the bill on the table and walked away. The boy finished the ice cream, paid the cashier and left. When the waitress came back, she began to cry as she wiped down the table. There, placed neatly beside the empty dish, were two nickels and five pennies.. You see, he couldn't have the sundae, because he had to have enough left to leave her a tip. by Jack Canfield, Mark Victor Hansen (Chicken Soup for the Soul)
Short Story ... Giving When it CountsMany years ago, when I worked as a volunteer at a hospital, I got to know a little girl named Liz who was suffering from a rare & serious disease. Her only chance of recovery appeared to be a blood transfusion from her 5-year old brother, who had miraculously survived the same disease and had developed the antibodies needed to combat the illness. The doctor explained the situation to her little brother, and asked the little boy if he would be willing to give his blood to his sister. I saw him hesitate for only a moment before taking a deep breath and saying, "Yes I'll do it if it will save her." As the transfusion progressed, he lay in bed next to his sister and smiled, as we all did, seeing the color returning to her cheek. Then his face grew pale and his smile faded. He looked up at the doctor and asked with a trembling voice, "Will I start to die right away". Being young, the little boy had misunderstood the doctor; he thought he was going to have to give his sister all of his blood in order to save her. by Anonymous (Ref: http://www.sikhism.us/inspirational-stories/22660-morals.html) Short Story ... Life Is A Piece Of CakeA little boy is telling his Grandma how everything is going wrong. School, family problems, severe health problems, etc. Meanwhile, Grandma is baking a cake. She asks her grandson if he would like a snack, which, of course, he does. "Here, have some cooking oil." "Yuck" says the boy. "How about a couple raw eggs?" "Gross, Grandma!" "Would you like some flour then? Or maybe baking soda?" "Grandma, those are all yucky!" To which Grandma replies: "Yes, all those things seem bad all by themselves. But when they are put together in the right way, they make a wonderfully delicious cake!" God works the same way. Many times we wonder why he would let us go through such bad and difficult times. But God knows that when He puts these things all in His order, they always work for good! We just have to trust Him and, eventually, they will all make something wonderful! Hope your day is a "Piece of cake!" Ref: http://www.sikhism.us/inspirational-stories/141-life-is-piece-cake-enjoy-fullest.html Sending an email using MAPIHave you ever thought it would be great to be able to send email from a Visual Basic program? With Visual Basic's MAPI controls, it's a snap. These two controls let you send messages on any MAPI-compliant email system, such as Outlook and Exchange. To use the MAPI controls, you must select them in your project's Components dialog box. They are listed as "Microsoft MAPI Controls 6.0." The two controls will then appear in your toolbox; they are called MAPISession and MAPIMessages. Place one of each on a form - they are invisible at runtime. The MAPISession control is used to establish a session, or connection, with whatever MAPI-compliant mail software is installed on the system. The control has UserName and Password properties for signing onto an email account. You can set these properties at design time or prompt the user for them in code. Then, call the control's SignOn method to establish the session. Once the session is established, the control's SessionID property returns a handle of the session. The MAPIMessages control must be passed the handle of the MAPI session, obtained from the MAPISession control's SessionID property. Once this is done, the MAPIMessages control can be used for various tasks such as accessing messages in the InBox, saving, copying and deleting messages, and working with attachments. For this tip we are interested in creating and sending messages. This requires the following steps: 1. Call the Compose method to create a new message. 2. Put the recipient, the subject, and the body of the message in the corresponding control properties. 3. Call the Resolve method to verify the message recipient. 4. Call the Send method to send the message. Sending a message with the MAPIMessages control does not literally send it, but puts it in the Outbox of the mail system. When the message is actually sent depends on the mail system settings. When your program is finished with mail-related activities, call the MAPISession control's SignOff method to terminate the session. The following code demonstrates this. It assumes that the form containing the code contains TextBox controls for the various bits of information needed: user name, password, etc. Private Sub SendMail_Click() MAPISession1.UserName = tstUserName.Text MAPISession1.Password = txtPassword.Text MAPISession1.SignOn MAPIMessages1.SessionID = MAPISession1.SessionID MAPIMessages1.Compose MAPIMessages1.RecipAddress = txtTo.Text MAPIMessages1.MsgSubject = txtSubject.Text MAPIMessages1.MsgNoteText = txtMessage.Text MAPIMessages1.ResolveName MAPIMessages1.Send MAPISession1.SignOff End Sub An alternate way to use the Send method is to pass an argument with the value True (the default for this argument is False, that's why it is not included in the code above). MAPIMessages1.Send True In this case, the Send method displays a message dialog box in which the user can enter or edit the elements of the message and then send it by clicking the Send button. When a Visual Basic program needs to send email messages, perhaps for support or licensing issues, it's a lot nicer to integrate email support in the program rather than requiring the user to switch to their own email software. Ref: http://www.pgacon.com/visualbasic.htm Architectural Pattern for Software EngineeringArchitectural patterns are software patterns that offer well-established solutions to architectural problems in software engineering. It gives description of the elements and relation type together with a set of constraints on how they may be used. An architectural pattern expresses a fundamental structural organization schema for a software system, which consists of subsystems, their responsibilities and interrelations. In comparison to design patterns, architectural patterns are larger in scale. Even though an architectural pattern conveys an image of a system, it is not an architecture as such. An architectural pattern is rather a concept that captures essential elements of a software architecture. Countless different architectures may implement the same pattern and thereby share the same characteristics. Furthermore, patterns are often defined as something "strictly described and commonly available". For example, layered architecture is a call-and-return style, when it defines an overall style to interact. When it is strictly described and commonly available, it is a pattern. One of the most important aspects of architectural patterns is that they embody different quality attributes. For example, some patterns represent solutions to performance problems and others can be used successfully in high-availability systems. In the early design phase, a software architect makes a choice of which architectural pattern(s) best provide the system's desired qualities. Examples of architectural patterns include the following: • Layers • Presentation-abstraction-control • Three-tier • Pipeline • Implicit invocation • Blackboard system • Peer-to-peer • Service-oriented architecture • Naked objects • Model-View-Controller SOA: A service-oriented architecture can be defined as a group of services, which communicate with each other. The process of communication involves either simple data passing or it could involve two or more services coordinating some activity. Some means of connecting services to each other is needed. Ref: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Architectural_pattern_%28computer_science%29 What Exactly Is BizTalk?BizTalk is to business process automation what Visual Studio and the .NET Framework are to application development. It is a runtime and tools that enable you to automate and manage business processes more productively. That's basically it. If I only get 10 seconds to explain what BizTalk is to a customer, the above description is what I'm most comfortable with. If I have more time, I would elaborate on that description as follows. The term "application development" is worth further exploration. Looking at the kinds of applications that people build with Visual Studio and the .NET Framework today, the vast majority are focused on specific tasks rather than end to end processes. Not to say that such applications are isolated, they're actually often connected to other apps or data sources via Web services or other means. But the focus of the app is to automate a particular task or set of related tasks and the connectivity serves that purpose. However the business reality is that businesses run on processes which span multiple tasks and of course people. So to automate a business process end-to-end you wind up wanting to connect some of the applications that were written to automate the tasks that make up that business process. As an example, consider the task of updating contact information in the company's address book for a newly hired employee. That employee may launch a .NET desktop app or go to an intranet Web site and enter they home address, cell phone number, emergency contact etc. Now zoom out and look at the big picture and what you see is an end-to-end on-boarding process that includes things like provisioning credentials, certificates, smart card, automatic deposit setup, hardware procurement, office furniture procurement, 401K account setup, setting up a mentor, and the variety of other things a new employee needs to get/set up. The address book update app automates one task in the end to end process but there's no app that automates the entire process. BizTalk Server allows you to connect existing apps that automate the various tasks of this process and automate the tasks or parts that don't yet have automation to form a complete end-to-end process automation solution. It also gives you an operational or runtime view of that automation allowing you to see all the moving parts from one vantage point and start/stop/change/maintain them. While it's certainly possible to build VS and .NET apps that automate end-to-end business processes, it's not the most productive use of the customer's/developer's time because they'd have to reinvent (or re-implement) several wheels in the process. It's a bit like building an document management Web site using nothing but ASP.NET: You can do it, but you can do it a lot better and faster if you used Windows SharePoint Services (WSS). The operations folks would also love you for it because of the management features they get out of the box with WSS. Ref1: http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp?url=/library/en-us/BTS06coredocs/html/011684a5-0aaf-4355-b6a6-d6fef5993863.asp Ref2: http://www.microsoft.com/biztalk/evaluation/overview/default.mspx?pf=true Ref3: http://blogs.msdn.com/yassers/archive/2006/07/25/678105.aspx |
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