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1,906 | The 2011 Community Moderator Election is now underway!
Community moderator elections have three phases:
1. Nomination phase
2. Primary phase
3. Election phase
Most elections take between two and three weeks, but this depends how many candidates there are.
Please visit the official election page at
<https://superuser.com/election>
for more detail, and to participate!
If you have general questions about the election process, or questions for moderator candidates, feel free to ask them here on meta -- just make sure your questions are tagged [election](/questions/tagged/election "show questions tagged 'election'"). | 2011/01/18 | [
"https://meta.superuser.com/questions/1906",
"https://meta.superuser.com",
"https://meta.superuser.com/users/-1/"
] | Edit: Everyone getting nervous yet? :D
======================================
I think it's rather disappointing you only get to (And are allowed to in the first place) nominate yourself. I think such a nomination should be done by the community. Especially because you'll get a lot of nice sales talks when individual contribution should be evaluated.
Furthermore, I think nominations should be kept invisible to prevent community nominees in such a system to suddenly start working their butts off to get elected.
To be honest, I wouldn't have nominated myself if there was any other way to get nominated... | [After the example of the Math.SE site](https://math.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1254/list-of-questions-for-candidates-in-2010-moderator-election) I have some questions that I would love to see each nominee respond to in their nomination (if they choose to do so):
* Is there anything you would want to change on the site? And how would you plan on achieving this?
* How do you expect becoming a moderator will change or influence the way you use Super User?
* What's your stance on duplicates and how should they be handled?
* What's your opinion about the overlap between Super User and Apple.SE/Ubuntu.SE? And when should questions be migrated from Super User to any of these other SE-sites?
* Which three nominees do you think are the most suited to become the next moderators and why? |
1,275,544 | I would like to know how to do the next:
I have one app that make some connections to receive data (this data is shown in the screen)
I would like to know which code I can use to wait each connection, I mean, the time between the connection start and this finish I would like to show in the screen one spin (Loading...).
I have created the connections, and the spin. My problem is that I don't know which code I can use to manage this and where to write this code. | 2009/08/14 | [
"https://Stackoverflow.com/questions/1275544",
"https://Stackoverflow.com",
"https://Stackoverflow.com/users/-1/"
] | See this: [Oracle: is there a tool to trace queries, like Profiler for sql server?](https://stackoverflow.com/questions/148648/oracle-is-there-a-tool-to-trace-queries-like-profiler-for-sql-server)
and this:
<http://www.oradev.com/create_statistics.jsp> | **Explain Plan**
For tuning individual statements you can use "explain plan". Try a copy of the free Sql Developer, it has a nice GUI interface for this.
<http://www.oracle.com/technology/products/database/sql_developer/index.html> |
1,275,544 | I would like to know how to do the next:
I have one app that make some connections to receive data (this data is shown in the screen)
I would like to know which code I can use to wait each connection, I mean, the time between the connection start and this finish I would like to show in the screen one spin (Loading...).
I have created the connections, and the spin. My problem is that I don't know which code I can use to manage this and where to write this code. | 2009/08/14 | [
"https://Stackoverflow.com/questions/1275544",
"https://Stackoverflow.com",
"https://Stackoverflow.com/users/-1/"
] | See this: [Oracle: is there a tool to trace queries, like Profiler for sql server?](https://stackoverflow.com/questions/148648/oracle-is-there-a-tool-to-trace-queries-like-profiler-for-sql-server)
and this:
<http://www.oradev.com/create_statistics.jsp> | Along with the answers given so far, it is also worth mentioning the [PL/SQL Profiler](http://download.oracle.com/docs/cd/B19306_01/appdev.102/b14261/tuning.htm#sthref2171) |
1,275,544 | I would like to know how to do the next:
I have one app that make some connections to receive data (this data is shown in the screen)
I would like to know which code I can use to wait each connection, I mean, the time between the connection start and this finish I would like to show in the screen one spin (Loading...).
I have created the connections, and the spin. My problem is that I don't know which code I can use to manage this and where to write this code. | 2009/08/14 | [
"https://Stackoverflow.com/questions/1275544",
"https://Stackoverflow.com",
"https://Stackoverflow.com/users/-1/"
] | See this: [Oracle: is there a tool to trace queries, like Profiler for sql server?](https://stackoverflow.com/questions/148648/oracle-is-there-a-tool-to-trace-queries-like-profiler-for-sql-server)
and this:
<http://www.oradev.com/create_statistics.jsp> | Some kind of profiler tool for Oracle
1. [dbForge Studio for Oracle](https://www.devart.com/dbforge/oracle/studio/oracle-sql-profiler.html)
2. [GI Oracle Profiler](http://www.iacosoft.com/home/tools.asp#PROFILER)
3. [Statement Tracer for Oracle](https://download.cnet.com/Statement-Tracer-for-Oracle/3000-10254_4-10138049.html)
Hopefully this is what you are looking for |
47,367,584 | We are running our application on a DCOS cluster in Azure Container Service. Docker image of our marathon app is approx 7GB. I know this is against best practices but lets keep that debate aside for this question. We pull latest on worker nodes and it takes around 20 minutes, if no running container currently uses this image on a node, it gets deleted from that node by some cleanup routine job.
Is there a way to prevent this from happening? | 2017/11/18 | [
"https://Stackoverflow.com/questions/47367584",
"https://Stackoverflow.com",
"https://Stackoverflow.com/users/1287489/"
] | Amount of time to wait before Docker containers are removed can be set using this flag (this is agent option)
[--docker\_remove\_delay flag](http://mesos.apache.org/documentation/latest/configuration/agent/)
>
> --docker\_remove\_delay=VALUE The amount of time to wait before removing docker containers (e.g., 3days, 2weeks, etc). (default: 6hrs)
>
>
> | To prevent accidental deletion (or modification) of a resource. You can create a lock that would prevent users from deleting or modifying the resource while the lock is there (even if they have the permissions to delete\modify the resource).
For more details, refer "[Lock resources to prevent unexpected changes](https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/azure-resource-manager/resource-group-lock-resources)". |
413,070 | I have a 2020 MBP 16", and I bought two Dell P2721Q, which are capable of delivering up to 65W through the USB-C port. Could connecting 2 of these simultaneously somehow damage the computer?
I want to use these 2 monitors as external displays. I know that macs can drive 2 4K monitors without problems, I'm simply concerned about the power delivery through multiple ports in the MBP. | 2021/02/07 | [
"https://apple.stackexchange.com/questions/413070",
"https://apple.stackexchange.com",
"https://apple.stackexchange.com/users/405825/"
] | I am not sure why you think there would be a power problem. The [Apple specifications](https://www.apple.com/macbook-pro-16/specs/) state up to 4 displays with 4096‑by‑2304 resolution at 60Hz and the [Dell P2721Q specifications](https://www.dell.com/en-us/work/shop/dell-27-4k-usb-c-monitor-p2721q/apd/210-axlt/monitors-monitor-accessories?gacd=9646510-1028-5761040-0-0&dgc=st&ds_rl=1282789&gclid=Cj0KCQiAvP6ABhCjARIsAH37rbTSVHm7NaBGQ10kwGZ6oBk1H4L0OiMszO-ML61e0AmfCIu-OxHq0gEaApAiEALw_wcB&gclsrc=aw.ds#techspecs_section) state a native resolution of 3840 x 2160 at 60 Hz. The monitors includes a hub, so I would assume the 65W through the USB-C port comes from the monitor, not the Mac. In other words, the monitor has a powered hub. | Yes, any device can damage another when there are cables and signals and physical attachments, but that would be an exceptionally rare event.
As long as all hardware is functioning, there’s no benefit or harm to connecting things to see how it works, though. Daisy chaining displays is on the way out with Thunderbolt 3 and USB 4 since the hubs are becoming quite inexpensive.
I would connect things straight and make sure everything is working first before you try chaining. |
413,070 | I have a 2020 MBP 16", and I bought two Dell P2721Q, which are capable of delivering up to 65W through the USB-C port. Could connecting 2 of these simultaneously somehow damage the computer?
I want to use these 2 monitors as external displays. I know that macs can drive 2 4K monitors without problems, I'm simply concerned about the power delivery through multiple ports in the MBP. | 2021/02/07 | [
"https://apple.stackexchange.com/questions/413070",
"https://apple.stackexchange.com",
"https://apple.stackexchange.com/users/405825/"
] | Connecting two power supplies to a MacBook Pro will not damage it. The computer will simply choose to take power from the device providing the most power and if they are equal then the first one plugged in. If both monitors are on and the MacBook Pro powered off then on power up the computer will likely simply choose a monitor to take power at random.
Unfortunately a MacBook Pro is not capable of taking power from two supplies at the same time, so plugging in two 50 watt power supplies will not net you 100 watts of power but only 50 watts. If your monitors supply only 65 watts, and you need 87 watts to avoid draining the battery due to high CPU load, then you should plug in an 87 watt power supply in addition to the monitors. This is assuming you have more than two USB-C ports on your computer.
Apple planned for this in their design so don't be concerned about shorting anything out by plugging in more than one power supply to you MacBook. | Yes, any device can damage another when there are cables and signals and physical attachments, but that would be an exceptionally rare event.
As long as all hardware is functioning, there’s no benefit or harm to connecting things to see how it works, though. Daisy chaining displays is on the way out with Thunderbolt 3 and USB 4 since the hubs are becoming quite inexpensive.
I would connect things straight and make sure everything is working first before you try chaining. |
413,070 | I have a 2020 MBP 16", and I bought two Dell P2721Q, which are capable of delivering up to 65W through the USB-C port. Could connecting 2 of these simultaneously somehow damage the computer?
I want to use these 2 monitors as external displays. I know that macs can drive 2 4K monitors without problems, I'm simply concerned about the power delivery through multiple ports in the MBP. | 2021/02/07 | [
"https://apple.stackexchange.com/questions/413070",
"https://apple.stackexchange.com",
"https://apple.stackexchange.com/users/405825/"
] | Connecting two power supplies to a MacBook Pro will not damage it. The computer will simply choose to take power from the device providing the most power and if they are equal then the first one plugged in. If both monitors are on and the MacBook Pro powered off then on power up the computer will likely simply choose a monitor to take power at random.
Unfortunately a MacBook Pro is not capable of taking power from two supplies at the same time, so plugging in two 50 watt power supplies will not net you 100 watts of power but only 50 watts. If your monitors supply only 65 watts, and you need 87 watts to avoid draining the battery due to high CPU load, then you should plug in an 87 watt power supply in addition to the monitors. This is assuming you have more than two USB-C ports on your computer.
Apple planned for this in their design so don't be concerned about shorting anything out by plugging in more than one power supply to you MacBook. | I am not sure why you think there would be a power problem. The [Apple specifications](https://www.apple.com/macbook-pro-16/specs/) state up to 4 displays with 4096‑by‑2304 resolution at 60Hz and the [Dell P2721Q specifications](https://www.dell.com/en-us/work/shop/dell-27-4k-usb-c-monitor-p2721q/apd/210-axlt/monitors-monitor-accessories?gacd=9646510-1028-5761040-0-0&dgc=st&ds_rl=1282789&gclid=Cj0KCQiAvP6ABhCjARIsAH37rbTSVHm7NaBGQ10kwGZ6oBk1H4L0OiMszO-ML61e0AmfCIu-OxHq0gEaApAiEALw_wcB&gclsrc=aw.ds#techspecs_section) state a native resolution of 3840 x 2160 at 60 Hz. The monitors includes a hub, so I would assume the 65W through the USB-C port comes from the monitor, not the Mac. In other words, the monitor has a powered hub. |
53,936 | Since we are limited to two master-detail relationships on any given record, is it possible to have more than 2 many-to-many relationships for a given object?
This seems like a rather large limitation.
EDIT: I suggest that this is a limitation as only a M-M relationship bounded by M-D lookups allow for the pass-through of information to the related list on the other object for quick reference. I realize that it is possible to create several lookups on a single object. | 2014/10/22 | [
"https://salesforce.stackexchange.com/questions/53936",
"https://salesforce.stackexchange.com",
"https://salesforce.stackexchange.com/users/2771/"
] | No. But the limitation of 2 Master-Details has no effect on the number of Many to Many relationships an object to have.
1) You can use lookups to accomplish the exact same thing as a Master-Detail if the only requirement is to have a Many to Many relationship.
2) The limitation of 2 Master-Details per object has no effect on the number of Many to Many relationships that use Master-Detail. In a Many to Many, **the Master-Detail relationships goes on the child junction object not the parent object itself**. That means all you need to do is create more junction objects (which is what makes the object many to many), with each having the maximum of two Master-Detail relationship fields.
Account <- -> Contact: Junction of AccountContactRole to create a Many to Many relationship
Account <- -> Special\_Asset\_\_c: Junction object of AccountAssetType\_\_c to create Many to Many relationship
Account <- -> Case: Junction of AccountCaseLink\_\_c to create a 3rd Many to many relationship.
You now have 3 junctions that all use Master-Detail to create Many to Many relationships. (Keep in mind that these are Theoretical objects I am using here and so likely make no sense in your org past my example.) | If you use Lookup relationships instead, yes. |
53,936 | Since we are limited to two master-detail relationships on any given record, is it possible to have more than 2 many-to-many relationships for a given object?
This seems like a rather large limitation.
EDIT: I suggest that this is a limitation as only a M-M relationship bounded by M-D lookups allow for the pass-through of information to the related list on the other object for quick reference. I realize that it is possible to create several lookups on a single object. | 2014/10/22 | [
"https://salesforce.stackexchange.com/questions/53936",
"https://salesforce.stackexchange.com",
"https://salesforce.stackexchange.com/users/2771/"
] | No. But the limitation of 2 Master-Details has no effect on the number of Many to Many relationships an object to have.
1) You can use lookups to accomplish the exact same thing as a Master-Detail if the only requirement is to have a Many to Many relationship.
2) The limitation of 2 Master-Details per object has no effect on the number of Many to Many relationships that use Master-Detail. In a Many to Many, **the Master-Detail relationships goes on the child junction object not the parent object itself**. That means all you need to do is create more junction objects (which is what makes the object many to many), with each having the maximum of two Master-Detail relationship fields.
Account <- -> Contact: Junction of AccountContactRole to create a Many to Many relationship
Account <- -> Special\_Asset\_\_c: Junction object of AccountAssetType\_\_c to create Many to Many relationship
Account <- -> Case: Junction of AccountCaseLink\_\_c to create a 3rd Many to many relationship.
You now have 3 junctions that all use Master-Detail to create Many to Many relationships. (Keep in mind that these are Theoretical objects I am using here and so likely make no sense in your org past my example.) | only 2 Master Details and 25 lookups we can create in an object.
with apex coding you can achieve this. |
4,442,793 | I am evaluating using Selenium to perform automated testing of my company's Asp.net Webforms application. Since most of the html ids are auto-generated I am trying to rely on xpaths to be able to interact with my page.
As I am knew to xpaths, I am having issues trying to pinpoint the exact xpath I need to click on this element. The process of changing my coded xpath, compiling my C# app, loading the app, running the app, then having Selenium exception out is getting pretty annoying. I need to find some way to quickly determine if an xpath is valid (i.e. exists) or not.
Unfortunately, they coded this site to only work in IE, so that is all i have access to.
If someone has a good quick way for me to test an xpath out in IE, I would be very grateful! | 2010/12/14 | [
"https://Stackoverflow.com/questions/4442793",
"https://Stackoverflow.com",
"https://Stackoverflow.com/users/231002/"
] | **Use the [XPath Visualizer](http://www.huttar.net/dimitre/XPV/TopXML-XPV.html)**.
This is a popular tool that through the years has taught XPath the fun way to thousands of developers.
You first load an XML file and then can enter any XPath expressions and see the selected nodes immediately hi-lighted in the XML document. There are many more features, even for experienced developers.
**The XPath Visualizer can be downloaded [here](http://www.huttar.net/dimitre/XPV/TopXML-XPV.html)**. | This StackOverflow post has some links to techniques for finding XPath in IE.
[Finding an elements XPath using IE Developer tool](https://stackoverflow.com/questions/1990225/finding-an-elements-xpath-using-ie-developer-tool)
I particularly like this solution in that post: <http://functionaltestautomation.blogspot.com/2008/12/xpath-in-internet-explorer.html>
However, to test/verify your XPath, whether found from such tools or you defined it yourself, you may want to do something like this (if you're thinking something similar to what FirePath provides for XPath/CSS validity verification):
<http://autumnator.wordpress.com/2013/05/02/testing-xpath-and-css-locators-firepath-style-across-browsers/> |
4,442,793 | I am evaluating using Selenium to perform automated testing of my company's Asp.net Webforms application. Since most of the html ids are auto-generated I am trying to rely on xpaths to be able to interact with my page.
As I am knew to xpaths, I am having issues trying to pinpoint the exact xpath I need to click on this element. The process of changing my coded xpath, compiling my C# app, loading the app, running the app, then having Selenium exception out is getting pretty annoying. I need to find some way to quickly determine if an xpath is valid (i.e. exists) or not.
Unfortunately, they coded this site to only work in IE, so that is all i have access to.
If someone has a good quick way for me to test an xpath out in IE, I would be very grateful! | 2010/12/14 | [
"https://Stackoverflow.com/questions/4442793",
"https://Stackoverflow.com",
"https://Stackoverflow.com/users/231002/"
] | **Use the [XPath Visualizer](http://www.huttar.net/dimitre/XPV/TopXML-XPV.html)**.
This is a popular tool that through the years has taught XPath the fun way to thousands of developers.
You first load an XML file and then can enter any XPath expressions and see the selected nodes immediately hi-lighted in the XML document. There are many more features, even for experienced developers.
**The XPath Visualizer can be downloaded [here](http://www.huttar.net/dimitre/XPV/TopXML-XPV.html)**. | >
> As I am knew to xpaths, I am having issues trying to pinpoint the
> exact xpath I need to click on this element. The process of changing
> my coded xpath, compiling my C# app, loading the app, running the app,
> then having Selenium exception out is getting pretty annoying.
>
>
>
I've created [SWD Page Recorder](https://github.com/dzhariy/swd-recorder/releases) for this purpose.
It can work with all browsers supported by Selenium WebDriver and allows to debug, test and save locators for further editing.
When you download Page Recorder, please, put the Internet Explorer driver near the executable: [IE Driver Download page](http://www.seleniumhq.org/download/) |
4,442,793 | I am evaluating using Selenium to perform automated testing of my company's Asp.net Webforms application. Since most of the html ids are auto-generated I am trying to rely on xpaths to be able to interact with my page.
As I am knew to xpaths, I am having issues trying to pinpoint the exact xpath I need to click on this element. The process of changing my coded xpath, compiling my C# app, loading the app, running the app, then having Selenium exception out is getting pretty annoying. I need to find some way to quickly determine if an xpath is valid (i.e. exists) or not.
Unfortunately, they coded this site to only work in IE, so that is all i have access to.
If someone has a good quick way for me to test an xpath out in IE, I would be very grateful! | 2010/12/14 | [
"https://Stackoverflow.com/questions/4442793",
"https://Stackoverflow.com",
"https://Stackoverflow.com/users/231002/"
] | **Use the [XPath Visualizer](http://www.huttar.net/dimitre/XPV/TopXML-XPV.html)**.
This is a popular tool that through the years has taught XPath the fun way to thousands of developers.
You first load an XML file and then can enter any XPath expressions and see the selected nodes immediately hi-lighted in the XML document. There are many more features, even for experienced developers.
**The XPath Visualizer can be downloaded [here](http://www.huttar.net/dimitre/XPV/TopXML-XPV.html)**. | Do F12 on the IE browser and copy the html. Then open the notepad and paste the html and save it as .html file. Finally you got the html page, then you can open the saved file in Firefox fox browser for validating xpath with firebug or firepath. |
4,442,793 | I am evaluating using Selenium to perform automated testing of my company's Asp.net Webforms application. Since most of the html ids are auto-generated I am trying to rely on xpaths to be able to interact with my page.
As I am knew to xpaths, I am having issues trying to pinpoint the exact xpath I need to click on this element. The process of changing my coded xpath, compiling my C# app, loading the app, running the app, then having Selenium exception out is getting pretty annoying. I need to find some way to quickly determine if an xpath is valid (i.e. exists) or not.
Unfortunately, they coded this site to only work in IE, so that is all i have access to.
If someone has a good quick way for me to test an xpath out in IE, I would be very grateful! | 2010/12/14 | [
"https://Stackoverflow.com/questions/4442793",
"https://Stackoverflow.com",
"https://Stackoverflow.com/users/231002/"
] | **Use the [XPath Visualizer](http://www.huttar.net/dimitre/XPV/TopXML-XPV.html)**.
This is a popular tool that through the years has taught XPath the fun way to thousands of developers.
You first load an XML file and then can enter any XPath expressions and see the selected nodes immediately hi-lighted in the XML document. There are many more features, even for experienced developers.
**The XPath Visualizer can be downloaded [here](http://www.huttar.net/dimitre/XPV/TopXML-XPV.html)**. | You can use the with Fire-IEBrowser.xlsm a google project application,
This will help you to find XPath of web elements in IE
You can find this application [here](http://code.google.com/p/fire-ie-selenium/downloads/list)
Also, you can find the more better solution in this [answer](https://stackoverflow.com/questions/1990225/finding-an-elements-xpath-using-ie-developer-tool) |
4,442,793 | I am evaluating using Selenium to perform automated testing of my company's Asp.net Webforms application. Since most of the html ids are auto-generated I am trying to rely on xpaths to be able to interact with my page.
As I am knew to xpaths, I am having issues trying to pinpoint the exact xpath I need to click on this element. The process of changing my coded xpath, compiling my C# app, loading the app, running the app, then having Selenium exception out is getting pretty annoying. I need to find some way to quickly determine if an xpath is valid (i.e. exists) or not.
Unfortunately, they coded this site to only work in IE, so that is all i have access to.
If someone has a good quick way for me to test an xpath out in IE, I would be very grateful! | 2010/12/14 | [
"https://Stackoverflow.com/questions/4442793",
"https://Stackoverflow.com",
"https://Stackoverflow.com/users/231002/"
] | **Use the [XPath Visualizer](http://www.huttar.net/dimitre/XPV/TopXML-XPV.html)**.
This is a popular tool that through the years has taught XPath the fun way to thousands of developers.
You first load an XML file and then can enter any XPath expressions and see the selected nodes immediately hi-lighted in the XML document. There are many more features, even for experienced developers.
**The XPath Visualizer can be downloaded [here](http://www.huttar.net/dimitre/XPV/TopXML-XPV.html)**. | You could use my little java project, The Browsermator, to run/check your routines first: <https://www.browsermator.com> It would save you the trouble of re-running builds all the time. |
356,297 | I've read a lot of comments mention in passing that the BlackBerry threading model deviates from the Java standard and can cause issues, but no amount of googling has enlightened me on what this means exactly.
I've been developing a fairly large business application for the BlackBerry and, although I don't really have any previous experience with Java multi-threaded applications, haven't come across any issue that we've been able to blame on threading, other than what we caused ourselves.
Can someone describe exactly how the BlackBerry threading model is different, and how I as a developer should take that into account? Obviously any links on the topic would also be great. | 2008/12/10 | [
"https://Stackoverflow.com/questions/356297",
"https://Stackoverflow.com",
"https://Stackoverflow.com/users/270/"
] | Two quirks I found in the blackberry forums:
1. Vector is not thread safe.
2. If you are creating a native blackberry CLDC app, a static is not necessarily a singleton over the VM. | The only issue I can think of is discussed in the answer to [another stackoverflow question](https://stackoverflow.com/questions/292587/interacting-with-ui-threads-in-javaj2me). |
356,297 | I've read a lot of comments mention in passing that the BlackBerry threading model deviates from the Java standard and can cause issues, but no amount of googling has enlightened me on what this means exactly.
I've been developing a fairly large business application for the BlackBerry and, although I don't really have any previous experience with Java multi-threaded applications, haven't come across any issue that we've been able to blame on threading, other than what we caused ourselves.
Can someone describe exactly how the BlackBerry threading model is different, and how I as a developer should take that into account? Obviously any links on the topic would also be great. | 2008/12/10 | [
"https://Stackoverflow.com/questions/356297",
"https://Stackoverflow.com",
"https://Stackoverflow.com/users/270/"
] | The differences aren't in the Threading model but the way in you use them and as The initial post said, You can't use a ui thread for network connections or you can't use a network connection for updating the ui.
There are a lot of differences in this matter between what you called desktop java an blackberry java... believe me! | The only issue I can think of is discussed in the answer to [another stackoverflow question](https://stackoverflow.com/questions/292587/interacting-with-ui-threads-in-javaj2me). |
356,297 | I've read a lot of comments mention in passing that the BlackBerry threading model deviates from the Java standard and can cause issues, but no amount of googling has enlightened me on what this means exactly.
I've been developing a fairly large business application for the BlackBerry and, although I don't really have any previous experience with Java multi-threaded applications, haven't come across any issue that we've been able to blame on threading, other than what we caused ourselves.
Can someone describe exactly how the BlackBerry threading model is different, and how I as a developer should take that into account? Obviously any links on the topic would also be great. | 2008/12/10 | [
"https://Stackoverflow.com/questions/356297",
"https://Stackoverflow.com",
"https://Stackoverflow.com/users/270/"
] | Two quirks I found in the blackberry forums:
1. Vector is not thread safe.
2. If you are creating a native blackberry CLDC app, a static is not necessarily a singleton over the VM. | The differences aren't in the Threading model but the way in you use them and as The initial post said, You can't use a ui thread for network connections or you can't use a network connection for updating the ui.
There are a lot of differences in this matter between what you called desktop java an blackberry java... believe me! |
54,865 | The AC failed suddenly out of the blue, took it to the shop. They replaced the compressor and stated there are no leaks (after testing with dye). However, the AC now takes, on a hot day, 15 minutes to start to make the interior of the car somewhat comfortable. I took it back twice. The first time they recharged and sent me home again. The second time they said that by process of elimination, it is clear that the condenser also needs replacing. (At first they said there is no test to see if the condenser needs replacing; when I probed further, they said they could check the pressure at the input side and the output side, but there's really no need, because there are only three potential problems with the AC, the compressor, the condenser, and leaks.)
The weather report says we're in for a cool, rainy week coming up. Should I wait until the following week to take it for the condenser replacement, so as to be able to judge fairly whether the condenser replacement truly results in properly working AC?
In case you want to know about the car: 2004 Corolla. AC worked fine up until that sudden failure. | 2018/06/03 | [
"https://mechanics.stackexchange.com/questions/54865",
"https://mechanics.stackexchange.com",
"https://mechanics.stackexchange.com/users/38092/"
] | >
> I guess the real question is, could you perform a compression test on the engine while the cooling system was disconnected/broken?
>
>
>
Absolutely.
The coolant line passages that flow coolant through the cylinder head and engine block are meant to be physically isolated from the combustion chamber(s). On a properly-functioning engine, a disconnected/damaged/open cooling system should have no bearing on the compression level that each cylinder is capable of.
A compression test should be able to pick up a burnt valve regardless of what the cooling system's condition is; the inability of the valve to seal in and retain air-fuel-exhaust within the combustion chamber will give rise to lower-than-expected compression readings.
In the case of a damaged head gasket or warped cylinder head, you might obtain different compression test results depending on the quantity (and subsequently pressure) of coolant in the cooling lines. | the head can be warped and need to be machined ,i dont think replacing the engine would be needed unless you have no oil pressure or the engine is using or burning oil ,i have machined many heads for overheating and they all have worked fine without incident as long as there wasn't to much warpage on ohc engines which may require line boring or honing for cam journals ...im an automotive machinest |
2,152 | I am currently using a Baratza Encore grinder with my Saeco Aroma espresso machine. I know that neither of these are very high quality products, but I really don't have the budget to upgrade. The Encore is able to grind sufficiently fine and I have been quite happy with it, however, I get a lot of clumping when grinding for espresso. It can be difficult to evenly distribute the coffee when you get these clumps, so it would be nice if there was an easy way to avoid this. Anyone have any suggestions? I've heard people say that a doser can solve this problem as the rotating sections will break up the clumps. This is a nice solution, but I don't believe the encore is capable of being upgraded to have a doser. | 2015/09/27 | [
"https://coffee.stackexchange.com/questions/2152",
"https://coffee.stackexchange.com",
"https://coffee.stackexchange.com/users/1223/"
] | I wouldn't go so far as to say that it's not a very high-quality grinder, it does extremely well for the price. The clumping is an artifact of:
* Humidity
* Heat from grinding
* Type and roast of the bean
Grinders that produce almost no heat while grinding, to the point that they do it reliably enough for it to be a listed feature cost *ten times* the amount that you paid for your grinder. Heat during grind isn't an indication of a low-quality grinder, rather, little to no heat is simply an indicator of a *very* high-quality grinder. There isn't much you can do about this other than purchase a manual burr grinder and grind by hand *very* gingerly, which takes lots of time.
Tamping alone should be sufficient to deal with any clumps (at approximately 15kg of force) - if it's not, then you want to take a very close look at the beans you're using, and the level of humidity they're exposed to in storage. Is your grinder normally close to anything that produces steam? Is your kitchen air really humid? Are the beans stored in air-tight containers? If you have clumps that tamping won't take care of, you probably have a moisture problem.
It can also be the bean, some roasts just *do not* do well for espresso, no matter how fine the grind or how dry the storage.
Both [Lavazza](http://www.lavazza.us/us/products/blends/espresso/qualita-oro/) and [Illy](http://shop.illy.com/online/store/product_coffee-all-us_whole-bean-medium-roast_us) produce a *very* pleasant medium arabica bean that should work very well in your grinder. They are *very* consistent in production, delicious, and should give you a good baseline to select other beans that would work similarly well. You *can* get beans that weren't specifically produced with espresso in mind to work, but it takes a bit of tinkering. I recommend the above beans very often to people just getting started because they're delicious and very easy to work with.
Anyway, try one of those, see what comes out of the grinder. If you're still getting clumps that don't immediately break down when you tamp (tap the portafilter on the sides a few times before you tamp to help this) you could try cleaning the grinder, changing how you store the beans, or looking at a de-humidifier in the area that you keep them. | I have the Baratza Virtuoso myself, and I would stir the coffee up with a spoon in a separate vessel before distributing it into your portafilter. When distributing, generally lightly tapping the side of the portafilter with the palm of your hand until level - should break up anything thing remaining. |
29,580 | We have a SpaceSaver (Model number: SS012SEB15), single-element 120v/1500w hot water heater which worked great until one day it went completely cold.
* First thing was I tested the voltage to the unit. It tested fine (120v).
* Next - did continuity test on the element and that tested good.
* Did voltage test going into, and, coming out of, the thermostat, and that tested good.
* Replaced element and thermostat anyway, still didn't work. (yes, I made sure to allow the tank to fill up, and the air to drain before turning on the power again)
* Double checked the thermostat's reset button, still no go.
What do I check next? I am totally frustrated and lost at this point, but I don't want to shell out for a new tank since ours is not leaking or anything.
 | 2013/07/11 | [
"https://diy.stackexchange.com/questions/29580",
"https://diy.stackexchange.com",
"https://diy.stackexchange.com/users/13608/"
] | Here was the solution:
For some reason, the circuit was showing a reading of 120v on the multimeter. This led me to believe it was good. Since it is a 120v water heater, I went ahead and hooked it up to a nearby circuit which I KNOW was good. Sure enough, we had hot water within 45 minutes.
I am not sure how the multimeter read 120v if the circuit was bad.
Apparently water heater elements need extremely consistent and constant supply of power or else they won't heat up.
Problem Solved. Thanks for all of the pointers and advice. | Is this the unit? <http://www.gsw-wh.com/Docs/61515.1P.pdf>
Page 6 figure 1 shows a reset button on the "High Limit" control that appears to be independent of the thermostat. Is the "High Limit" control functioning correctly? :) |
114,059 | I have collected ratings on a scale from 0 to 100 for two different conditions: A and B. I want to show now, that the ratings collected under both conditions are very similar and that their range overlap.
How can I do that best? I thought about drawing a box plot for both conditions, but I would prefer a number / numbers to show. | 2014/09/02 | [
"https://stats.stackexchange.com/questions/114059",
"https://stats.stackexchange.com",
"https://stats.stackexchange.com/users/54103/"
] | [The Bhattacharyya distance](https://www.encyclopediaofmath.org/index.php/Bhattacharyya_distance "The Bhattacharyya distance") is a coefficient in the [0;1] range showing the overlap between two probability distributions. Intuitively, it seems to give the answer you desire. | Why not just use the numbers from the box plot, that is a table with the minimum, 25 percentile, 50 percentile (median), 75 percentile, and maximum? Alternatively, you could simply say what percentage of X values lie in the range of observed Y values. |
433,471 | What to call a person who has always had advantages in his whole life and career because of his family's social/political status. Obviously most of the time these people, usually youngsters, are found in countries with systematic corruption.
Can the word "princeling" be used? | 2018/03/01 | [
"https://english.stackexchange.com/questions/433471",
"https://english.stackexchange.com",
"https://english.stackexchange.com/users/284289/"
] | As modern German, French, and Italian still do today, early modern English formed the perfect tenses of intransitive verbs of directed motion and some changes of state not with a form of *to have*, but *to be* and the past participle. *I have become* is the modern grammatical equivalent of the archaic *I am become*, but far from equal in rhetorical power.
This grammar change might have passed unnoticed were it not for two literary sources that both kept the form alive and gave any statement using a *to be* perfect tense tremendous weight: [Shakespeare](http://public.oed.com/aspects-of-english/english-in-time/grammar-in-early-modern-english/#modal-and-auxiliary-verbs) and the King James translation of the Bible.
>
> ISABELLA
>
> I am come to know your pleasure. [*Measure for Measure* II.4](http://nfs.sparknotes.com/measure-for-measure/page_94.html)
>
>
> I am come a light into the world, that whosoever believeth on me should not abide in darkness. [John 12.46](http://biblehub.com/john/12-46.htm)
>
>
>
Oppenheimer [is quoting the *Bhagavad Gita*](https://en.m.wikiquote.org/wiki/Now#O), Hindu scripture originally in Sanskrit first translated into English in [1785](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bhagavad_Gita#Scholarly_translations). While there still were English speakers using a form like "I am come" in normal speech — some of Jane Austen's characters [regularly use the form](https://www.google.de/search?rlz=1C9BKJA_enDE701DE701&hl=de&biw=1024&bih=653&ei=9byXWomvHdDWwQLxhbvADA&q=%22Jane%20Austen%22%20%22am%20come%22&oq=%22Jane%20Austen%22%20%22am%20come%22&gs_l=mobile-gws-serp.3...20467.37465..38350...0....645.2612.0j7j2j1j0j1..........1..mobile-gws-wiz-serp.......30i10j0i13i30j0i13i5i30j0i8i13i30.hICZfogUO7M%3D) — it is unlikely that the translator was imitating that usage as much as the Shakespeare-KJV archaic forms to add gravitas to the translation. Oppenheimer is recalling the verse from some edition that maintained the archaic but rhetorically powerful *to be* present perfect.
The only survival in ordinary speech I can think of is the use of *to go* as a euphemism for death:
>
> “Oh, Gracie,” Grandma said, “your poor sweet mama is gone forever!” We both bawled and completely missed seeing the funeral home men picking Mama up and heading with her out to their van. [Dolores Richardson, *The Climbing Tree*, 2012.](https://books.google.de/books?id=akKXc_KVRb4C&pg=PA4&lpg=PA4&dq=%22Mama%20is%20gone%22&source=bl&ots=k_2t2LFkLV&sig=9p48snf3qdtxM02De89wwBI_WVA&hl=de&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwi03IiSz8rZAhXNJ1AKHYLOCcU4ChDoATAJegQIBhAB)
>
>
> | [KarlG's answer](https://english.stackexchange.com/a/433470/63503) covers the phrase that Oppenheimer used; your question also asks about two phrases that he didn't use.
Neither "Now, I become Death" nor "Now, I am becoming Death" has the same meaning. Although the quote begins with the word "Now", Oppenheimer is actually referring to an event in the recent past: the detonation of the world's first nuclear bomb. He "became Death" at the point when that bomb exploded. To say "I become Death" would be a statement about what he habitually does ("On Fridays, I go to the pub and have a drink with my friends; on Saturdays, I become Death, the destroyer of worlds; on Sundays, I play golf and spend time with my family.") and "I am becoming Death" would be a statement about an act that is still in progress ("I am becoming Death, the destroyer of worlds. The transformation will probably be complete by the end of the month."). |
32,940 | I have a schematic where I'm using hierarchical sheets. I'll have five same sheets and I'd like a way to make one and somehow just copy it for the other four sheets.
Any ideas how to do that? I can't find any obvious way to do so.
UPDATE: Just to be clear: I'd like to copy not just the sheet symbol but the whole sheet and all components in it. | 2012/05/30 | [
"https://electronics.stackexchange.com/questions/32940",
"https://electronics.stackexchange.com",
"https://electronics.stackexchange.com/users/1240/"
] | This is an old question I know, but it's what I found when searching for a solution to this problem, so I think it's a good place to put the solution for fellow searchers:
1. Drag a box around around the sheet you want to duplicate, using the
left mouse button.
2. Release the left mouse button and press the right
to see a menu of things you can do. Select "Save Block".
3. Then click on the little clipboard (paste) icon which will be somewhere around the edge of your schematic editing area (it's near the top left for me).
4. Select where the new block will go.
This will paste a copy of your block, but it will refer to a new sheet based on the same filename as the original. If you annotate parts you'll see that the parts in the different sheets have different labels, even though they are sourced from the same schematic file. | KiCAD when making hierarchical sheets creates a new .sch file for each sheet. One way solve the problem is to make several sheets and then copy the original sheet's .sch file and have the copies replace the .sch files of other sheets. This way, when entered, each of the copies will look like original sheet. |
32,940 | I have a schematic where I'm using hierarchical sheets. I'll have five same sheets and I'd like a way to make one and somehow just copy it for the other four sheets.
Any ideas how to do that? I can't find any obvious way to do so.
UPDATE: Just to be clear: I'd like to copy not just the sheet symbol but the whole sheet and all components in it. | 2012/05/30 | [
"https://electronics.stackexchange.com/questions/32940",
"https://electronics.stackexchange.com",
"https://electronics.stackexchange.com/users/1240/"
] | If you have many same schematic blocks you want to reuse, you can use hierarchical sheet like this: (Kicad-4.0.2-stable MacOSX)
1. Create a hierarchical sheet with sheet name A\_1 , file name A.sch
2. Place your components and wires into this hierarchical sheet.
3. Add a new hierarchical sheet with sheet name A\_x (x is 1, 2, 3), file name A.sch ( only if the file name is the same, but different sheet name will work)
4. Done. | KiCAD when making hierarchical sheets creates a new .sch file for each sheet. One way solve the problem is to make several sheets and then copy the original sheet's .sch file and have the copies replace the .sch files of other sheets. This way, when entered, each of the copies will look like original sheet. |
136,802 | In one day I went from being the junior member of a three person team to the senior member of a three person team. It's my first supervisory role.
Unfortunately one of the new members of the team is someone I shall refer to as Mr. Problem. This is his first job out of college. His behavior is often unprofessional (arrives late and/or leaves early without letting people know what is going on - even when it is planned (e.g. a doctor's appointment); skips meetings; doesn't apprise people of his progress; makes inappropriate comments about co-workers, customers, and other people; dismisses and refuses to follow best practices and standards; etc.). In spite of this, he seems to have upper management thinking he's some sort of expert, as he puts on a show of being enthusiastic and presents himself as a genius at what he's doing (I know better, but can't say too much - see the next paragraph).
The manager who decided to hire Mr. Problem moonlights as an instructor at the college Mr. Problem attended and had him as a student. It is obvious they are friends. While I wasn't trying to eavesdrop (one of their offices is adjacent to mine and the walls do almost nothing to stop sound) I've overheard conversations they've had about leaving this company and starting their own (which isn't uncommon in this company anyway). Since this manager is higher up than (but not directly above) me, I need to move carefully here. While I've never had anything more than suspicions of why (mostly involving the fact that he didn't get along with the first manager I worked for here - something I came to understand), this manager has always treated me with some hostility.
This morning the customer contacted me to request a change in the product we are creating for them. The change is in the work area of Mr. Problem, so he's easily the best person to make the change. While I'm not intimately familiar with what Mr. Problem has done, the change should be almost trivial to do, taking a half day or less. It will save the customer's employees considerable time when they need to use this functionality of the product. However, when I told Mr. Problem of the customer's request, he simply refused to do the task. His stated reason for refusing was that there is another way to accomplish what the customer wants. While that is true, it is more time consuming, which he admitted.
In theory, I'm supposed to be the supervisor here and Mr. Problem should be doing what I've directed. In reality, I have no power to reprimand him. Going to the next level is tricky, as mentioned above. Going above that seems likely to create even more problems than it solves for me. I could to the work myself, but have my own work to do and figuring out how to make things work within Mr. Problem's stuff will be much more time consuming for me than it would be for him.
So, should I restate my directive to him? Talk with Mr. Problem's manager buddy? Kick this to upper management? Just do the work myself?
Note: (In actuality, this is in the past for me and I didn't navigate the situation well. However, I think someone else might benefit from reading suggestions here.) | 2019/05/17 | [
"https://workplace.stackexchange.com/questions/136802",
"https://workplace.stackexchange.com",
"https://workplace.stackexchange.com/users/2317/"
] | Even though Mr. Problem is friends with a manager in a higher position than you, the buddy manager is in a different reporting structure and thus different food chain. While I wouldn't dismiss this friendship as unimportant to note outright, I also don't think it should prevent you from making the best decisions for your team.
Remember you were the one promoted to be a manager and not Mr. Problem and that should someone higher up thinks you're worthy of the manager job. Don't sell yourself short by thinking you're powerless in this situation.
>
> While I'm not intimately familiar with what Mr. Problem has done, the change should be almost trivial to do, taking a half day or less. It will save the customer's employees considerable time when they need to use this functionality of the product. However, when I told Mr. Problem of the customer's request, he simply refused to do the task. He (accurately) pointed out that there is another way to accomplish what the customer wants, although he admitted it is more time consuming.
>
>
>
It's perfectly appropriate for an engineer to discuss a customer defect, weigh the pros and cons, and come up with a plan to fix. What solution I would pick and priority level depends on how many other customers use the feature and how important is the customer (size of deal, potential for up sell, renewal status and/or reputation). If customer accepts the workaround completely, no additional work needs to be done. If the customer accepts the workaround temporarily, put the real fix on the roadmap. If the customer rejects the workaround and the customer is important enough, consider the hacky solution and if it's sustainable for the time being. Then put the more maintainable solution on the roadmap. I wouldn't chose this option lightly, because you might get stuck maintaining a bad implementation.
>
> However, when I told Mr. Problem of the customer's request, he simply refused to do the task.
>
>
>
Mr. Problem can certainly have an opinion about how best to use his development time, but at the end of the day it is the manager that is responsible for the performance of each individual of their team. Mr. Problem is expected to work on what you assign him to do. I don't recommend pulling rank right off the bat, but rather discuss as colleagues the best approach. Bring Mr. Problem into the decision process within reason and document what you discussed and decided. Pull rank as a last resort.
>
> One of the new members of the team is someone I shall refer to as Mr. Problem. This is his first job out of college. His behavior is often unprofessional (arrives late and/or leaves early without letting people know what is going on - even when it is planned (e.g. a doctor's appointment); skips meetings; doesn't apprise people of his progress; makes inappropriate comments about co-workers, customers, and other people; dismisses and refuses to follow best practices and standards; etc.). In spite of this, he seems to have upper management thinking he's some sort of expert, as he puts on a show of being enthusiastic and presents himself as a genius at what he's doing (I know better, but can't say too much
>
>
>
While these are definitely issues that you should discuss with him in your one-on-one meetings and set goals to address them (remember to follow your company's policy for performance improvement), I feel as though they are independent of this particular customer issue scenario which you have described. Don't let your personal feelings about Mr. Problem cloud your judgement for this customer issue. | If you have an under-performing and/or insubordinate employee, you need to make sure they get the message that their behavior is not acceptable. If they do not improve, you should work with your manager (hopefully the same person who put you in the new role) and HR.
It should not be your job to deal with the other manager You should work through your chain of command and let higher-ups deal with the other manager. While reprimand may not be the best action for you, the fact that you have no power here needs to be addressed by those above you. If they don't support your action, you will get nowhere. |
136,802 | In one day I went from being the junior member of a three person team to the senior member of a three person team. It's my first supervisory role.
Unfortunately one of the new members of the team is someone I shall refer to as Mr. Problem. This is his first job out of college. His behavior is often unprofessional (arrives late and/or leaves early without letting people know what is going on - even when it is planned (e.g. a doctor's appointment); skips meetings; doesn't apprise people of his progress; makes inappropriate comments about co-workers, customers, and other people; dismisses and refuses to follow best practices and standards; etc.). In spite of this, he seems to have upper management thinking he's some sort of expert, as he puts on a show of being enthusiastic and presents himself as a genius at what he's doing (I know better, but can't say too much - see the next paragraph).
The manager who decided to hire Mr. Problem moonlights as an instructor at the college Mr. Problem attended and had him as a student. It is obvious they are friends. While I wasn't trying to eavesdrop (one of their offices is adjacent to mine and the walls do almost nothing to stop sound) I've overheard conversations they've had about leaving this company and starting their own (which isn't uncommon in this company anyway). Since this manager is higher up than (but not directly above) me, I need to move carefully here. While I've never had anything more than suspicions of why (mostly involving the fact that he didn't get along with the first manager I worked for here - something I came to understand), this manager has always treated me with some hostility.
This morning the customer contacted me to request a change in the product we are creating for them. The change is in the work area of Mr. Problem, so he's easily the best person to make the change. While I'm not intimately familiar with what Mr. Problem has done, the change should be almost trivial to do, taking a half day or less. It will save the customer's employees considerable time when they need to use this functionality of the product. However, when I told Mr. Problem of the customer's request, he simply refused to do the task. His stated reason for refusing was that there is another way to accomplish what the customer wants. While that is true, it is more time consuming, which he admitted.
In theory, I'm supposed to be the supervisor here and Mr. Problem should be doing what I've directed. In reality, I have no power to reprimand him. Going to the next level is tricky, as mentioned above. Going above that seems likely to create even more problems than it solves for me. I could to the work myself, but have my own work to do and figuring out how to make things work within Mr. Problem's stuff will be much more time consuming for me than it would be for him.
So, should I restate my directive to him? Talk with Mr. Problem's manager buddy? Kick this to upper management? Just do the work myself?
Note: (In actuality, this is in the past for me and I didn't navigate the situation well. However, I think someone else might benefit from reading suggestions here.) | 2019/05/17 | [
"https://workplace.stackexchange.com/questions/136802",
"https://workplace.stackexchange.com",
"https://workplace.stackexchange.com/users/2317/"
] | If you have an under-performing and/or insubordinate employee, you need to make sure they get the message that their behavior is not acceptable. If they do not improve, you should work with your manager (hopefully the same person who put you in the new role) and HR.
It should not be your job to deal with the other manager You should work through your chain of command and let higher-ups deal with the other manager. While reprimand may not be the best action for you, the fact that you have no power here needs to be addressed by those above you. If they don't support your action, you will get nowhere. | You are only responsible for making the project succeed. If somebody else in the team can do Mr. Problems tasks, let them do it, even if it takes a little longer. Document the meeting in which Mr. Problem suggests his solution, document that he agrees it could be done as the customer asks but doesn't feel like he should be working at the task.
Then go to your boss, tell him that customer explicitly asked "A" and Mr. Problem only want to implement "B", If you have a good rapport with him (and he is not a friend of the other manager) tell him that you may have overheard a discussion in the office about them potentially leaving. |
136,802 | In one day I went from being the junior member of a three person team to the senior member of a three person team. It's my first supervisory role.
Unfortunately one of the new members of the team is someone I shall refer to as Mr. Problem. This is his first job out of college. His behavior is often unprofessional (arrives late and/or leaves early without letting people know what is going on - even when it is planned (e.g. a doctor's appointment); skips meetings; doesn't apprise people of his progress; makes inappropriate comments about co-workers, customers, and other people; dismisses and refuses to follow best practices and standards; etc.). In spite of this, he seems to have upper management thinking he's some sort of expert, as he puts on a show of being enthusiastic and presents himself as a genius at what he's doing (I know better, but can't say too much - see the next paragraph).
The manager who decided to hire Mr. Problem moonlights as an instructor at the college Mr. Problem attended and had him as a student. It is obvious they are friends. While I wasn't trying to eavesdrop (one of their offices is adjacent to mine and the walls do almost nothing to stop sound) I've overheard conversations they've had about leaving this company and starting their own (which isn't uncommon in this company anyway). Since this manager is higher up than (but not directly above) me, I need to move carefully here. While I've never had anything more than suspicions of why (mostly involving the fact that he didn't get along with the first manager I worked for here - something I came to understand), this manager has always treated me with some hostility.
This morning the customer contacted me to request a change in the product we are creating for them. The change is in the work area of Mr. Problem, so he's easily the best person to make the change. While I'm not intimately familiar with what Mr. Problem has done, the change should be almost trivial to do, taking a half day or less. It will save the customer's employees considerable time when they need to use this functionality of the product. However, when I told Mr. Problem of the customer's request, he simply refused to do the task. His stated reason for refusing was that there is another way to accomplish what the customer wants. While that is true, it is more time consuming, which he admitted.
In theory, I'm supposed to be the supervisor here and Mr. Problem should be doing what I've directed. In reality, I have no power to reprimand him. Going to the next level is tricky, as mentioned above. Going above that seems likely to create even more problems than it solves for me. I could to the work myself, but have my own work to do and figuring out how to make things work within Mr. Problem's stuff will be much more time consuming for me than it would be for him.
So, should I restate my directive to him? Talk with Mr. Problem's manager buddy? Kick this to upper management? Just do the work myself?
Note: (In actuality, this is in the past for me and I didn't navigate the situation well. However, I think someone else might benefit from reading suggestions here.) | 2019/05/17 | [
"https://workplace.stackexchange.com/questions/136802",
"https://workplace.stackexchange.com",
"https://workplace.stackexchange.com/users/2317/"
] | Even though Mr. Problem is friends with a manager in a higher position than you, the buddy manager is in a different reporting structure and thus different food chain. While I wouldn't dismiss this friendship as unimportant to note outright, I also don't think it should prevent you from making the best decisions for your team.
Remember you were the one promoted to be a manager and not Mr. Problem and that should someone higher up thinks you're worthy of the manager job. Don't sell yourself short by thinking you're powerless in this situation.
>
> While I'm not intimately familiar with what Mr. Problem has done, the change should be almost trivial to do, taking a half day or less. It will save the customer's employees considerable time when they need to use this functionality of the product. However, when I told Mr. Problem of the customer's request, he simply refused to do the task. He (accurately) pointed out that there is another way to accomplish what the customer wants, although he admitted it is more time consuming.
>
>
>
It's perfectly appropriate for an engineer to discuss a customer defect, weigh the pros and cons, and come up with a plan to fix. What solution I would pick and priority level depends on how many other customers use the feature and how important is the customer (size of deal, potential for up sell, renewal status and/or reputation). If customer accepts the workaround completely, no additional work needs to be done. If the customer accepts the workaround temporarily, put the real fix on the roadmap. If the customer rejects the workaround and the customer is important enough, consider the hacky solution and if it's sustainable for the time being. Then put the more maintainable solution on the roadmap. I wouldn't chose this option lightly, because you might get stuck maintaining a bad implementation.
>
> However, when I told Mr. Problem of the customer's request, he simply refused to do the task.
>
>
>
Mr. Problem can certainly have an opinion about how best to use his development time, but at the end of the day it is the manager that is responsible for the performance of each individual of their team. Mr. Problem is expected to work on what you assign him to do. I don't recommend pulling rank right off the bat, but rather discuss as colleagues the best approach. Bring Mr. Problem into the decision process within reason and document what you discussed and decided. Pull rank as a last resort.
>
> One of the new members of the team is someone I shall refer to as Mr. Problem. This is his first job out of college. His behavior is often unprofessional (arrives late and/or leaves early without letting people know what is going on - even when it is planned (e.g. a doctor's appointment); skips meetings; doesn't apprise people of his progress; makes inappropriate comments about co-workers, customers, and other people; dismisses and refuses to follow best practices and standards; etc.). In spite of this, he seems to have upper management thinking he's some sort of expert, as he puts on a show of being enthusiastic and presents himself as a genius at what he's doing (I know better, but can't say too much
>
>
>
While these are definitely issues that you should discuss with him in your one-on-one meetings and set goals to address them (remember to follow your company's policy for performance improvement), I feel as though they are independent of this particular customer issue scenario which you have described. Don't let your personal feelings about Mr. Problem cloud your judgement for this customer issue. | You are transitioning to a supervisory role. First of all you need to speak to your line manager and understand what is expected of you. Ideally you would do this by describing to them the role and responsibilities that you want, and asking them to confirm if that is what is expected of you. That way you get to frame the role in a way that suits you, and it proves that you have understood what is expected of you.
If your line manager says that you an advisor to the team, then that is all you should do. You should advise their line manager that they are not completing the work required and it is up to their line manager to sort that.
If you are the line manager of the team then it is your responsibility to get the team to deliver. If you kick the problem to upper management then you are saying that you do not have control of your team. You may want to discuss the situation with your line manager and get their advice and support, but if anyone needs to be disciplined that needs to be done by you so they understand that you hold that power.
Having said that, disciplinary procedures should be a last resort and this doesn't sound anywhere near that level yet. A good developer should want to produce a good solution to the problems they are presented with. Often this doesn't mean doing exactly what they are asked, but rather asking why something is needed and perhaps coming up with a better solution to the actual business problem. It sounds like this is what happened, but the customer said they weren't willing to pay for the better solution. At that point yes, you need to restate your directive and explain that the customer feels the first solution is good enough and that the better solution is not better value. |
136,802 | In one day I went from being the junior member of a three person team to the senior member of a three person team. It's my first supervisory role.
Unfortunately one of the new members of the team is someone I shall refer to as Mr. Problem. This is his first job out of college. His behavior is often unprofessional (arrives late and/or leaves early without letting people know what is going on - even when it is planned (e.g. a doctor's appointment); skips meetings; doesn't apprise people of his progress; makes inappropriate comments about co-workers, customers, and other people; dismisses and refuses to follow best practices and standards; etc.). In spite of this, he seems to have upper management thinking he's some sort of expert, as he puts on a show of being enthusiastic and presents himself as a genius at what he's doing (I know better, but can't say too much - see the next paragraph).
The manager who decided to hire Mr. Problem moonlights as an instructor at the college Mr. Problem attended and had him as a student. It is obvious they are friends. While I wasn't trying to eavesdrop (one of their offices is adjacent to mine and the walls do almost nothing to stop sound) I've overheard conversations they've had about leaving this company and starting their own (which isn't uncommon in this company anyway). Since this manager is higher up than (but not directly above) me, I need to move carefully here. While I've never had anything more than suspicions of why (mostly involving the fact that he didn't get along with the first manager I worked for here - something I came to understand), this manager has always treated me with some hostility.
This morning the customer contacted me to request a change in the product we are creating for them. The change is in the work area of Mr. Problem, so he's easily the best person to make the change. While I'm not intimately familiar with what Mr. Problem has done, the change should be almost trivial to do, taking a half day or less. It will save the customer's employees considerable time when they need to use this functionality of the product. However, when I told Mr. Problem of the customer's request, he simply refused to do the task. His stated reason for refusing was that there is another way to accomplish what the customer wants. While that is true, it is more time consuming, which he admitted.
In theory, I'm supposed to be the supervisor here and Mr. Problem should be doing what I've directed. In reality, I have no power to reprimand him. Going to the next level is tricky, as mentioned above. Going above that seems likely to create even more problems than it solves for me. I could to the work myself, but have my own work to do and figuring out how to make things work within Mr. Problem's stuff will be much more time consuming for me than it would be for him.
So, should I restate my directive to him? Talk with Mr. Problem's manager buddy? Kick this to upper management? Just do the work myself?
Note: (In actuality, this is in the past for me and I didn't navigate the situation well. However, I think someone else might benefit from reading suggestions here.) | 2019/05/17 | [
"https://workplace.stackexchange.com/questions/136802",
"https://workplace.stackexchange.com",
"https://workplace.stackexchange.com/users/2317/"
] | Even though Mr. Problem is friends with a manager in a higher position than you, the buddy manager is in a different reporting structure and thus different food chain. While I wouldn't dismiss this friendship as unimportant to note outright, I also don't think it should prevent you from making the best decisions for your team.
Remember you were the one promoted to be a manager and not Mr. Problem and that should someone higher up thinks you're worthy of the manager job. Don't sell yourself short by thinking you're powerless in this situation.
>
> While I'm not intimately familiar with what Mr. Problem has done, the change should be almost trivial to do, taking a half day or less. It will save the customer's employees considerable time when they need to use this functionality of the product. However, when I told Mr. Problem of the customer's request, he simply refused to do the task. He (accurately) pointed out that there is another way to accomplish what the customer wants, although he admitted it is more time consuming.
>
>
>
It's perfectly appropriate for an engineer to discuss a customer defect, weigh the pros and cons, and come up with a plan to fix. What solution I would pick and priority level depends on how many other customers use the feature and how important is the customer (size of deal, potential for up sell, renewal status and/or reputation). If customer accepts the workaround completely, no additional work needs to be done. If the customer accepts the workaround temporarily, put the real fix on the roadmap. If the customer rejects the workaround and the customer is important enough, consider the hacky solution and if it's sustainable for the time being. Then put the more maintainable solution on the roadmap. I wouldn't chose this option lightly, because you might get stuck maintaining a bad implementation.
>
> However, when I told Mr. Problem of the customer's request, he simply refused to do the task.
>
>
>
Mr. Problem can certainly have an opinion about how best to use his development time, but at the end of the day it is the manager that is responsible for the performance of each individual of their team. Mr. Problem is expected to work on what you assign him to do. I don't recommend pulling rank right off the bat, but rather discuss as colleagues the best approach. Bring Mr. Problem into the decision process within reason and document what you discussed and decided. Pull rank as a last resort.
>
> One of the new members of the team is someone I shall refer to as Mr. Problem. This is his first job out of college. His behavior is often unprofessional (arrives late and/or leaves early without letting people know what is going on - even when it is planned (e.g. a doctor's appointment); skips meetings; doesn't apprise people of his progress; makes inappropriate comments about co-workers, customers, and other people; dismisses and refuses to follow best practices and standards; etc.). In spite of this, he seems to have upper management thinking he's some sort of expert, as he puts on a show of being enthusiastic and presents himself as a genius at what he's doing (I know better, but can't say too much
>
>
>
While these are definitely issues that you should discuss with him in your one-on-one meetings and set goals to address them (remember to follow your company's policy for performance improvement), I feel as though they are independent of this particular customer issue scenario which you have described. Don't let your personal feelings about Mr. Problem cloud your judgement for this customer issue. | You are only responsible for making the project succeed. If somebody else in the team can do Mr. Problems tasks, let them do it, even if it takes a little longer. Document the meeting in which Mr. Problem suggests his solution, document that he agrees it could be done as the customer asks but doesn't feel like he should be working at the task.
Then go to your boss, tell him that customer explicitly asked "A" and Mr. Problem only want to implement "B", If you have a good rapport with him (and he is not a friend of the other manager) tell him that you may have overheard a discussion in the office about them potentially leaving. |
136,802 | In one day I went from being the junior member of a three person team to the senior member of a three person team. It's my first supervisory role.
Unfortunately one of the new members of the team is someone I shall refer to as Mr. Problem. This is his first job out of college. His behavior is often unprofessional (arrives late and/or leaves early without letting people know what is going on - even when it is planned (e.g. a doctor's appointment); skips meetings; doesn't apprise people of his progress; makes inappropriate comments about co-workers, customers, and other people; dismisses and refuses to follow best practices and standards; etc.). In spite of this, he seems to have upper management thinking he's some sort of expert, as he puts on a show of being enthusiastic and presents himself as a genius at what he's doing (I know better, but can't say too much - see the next paragraph).
The manager who decided to hire Mr. Problem moonlights as an instructor at the college Mr. Problem attended and had him as a student. It is obvious they are friends. While I wasn't trying to eavesdrop (one of their offices is adjacent to mine and the walls do almost nothing to stop sound) I've overheard conversations they've had about leaving this company and starting their own (which isn't uncommon in this company anyway). Since this manager is higher up than (but not directly above) me, I need to move carefully here. While I've never had anything more than suspicions of why (mostly involving the fact that he didn't get along with the first manager I worked for here - something I came to understand), this manager has always treated me with some hostility.
This morning the customer contacted me to request a change in the product we are creating for them. The change is in the work area of Mr. Problem, so he's easily the best person to make the change. While I'm not intimately familiar with what Mr. Problem has done, the change should be almost trivial to do, taking a half day or less. It will save the customer's employees considerable time when they need to use this functionality of the product. However, when I told Mr. Problem of the customer's request, he simply refused to do the task. His stated reason for refusing was that there is another way to accomplish what the customer wants. While that is true, it is more time consuming, which he admitted.
In theory, I'm supposed to be the supervisor here and Mr. Problem should be doing what I've directed. In reality, I have no power to reprimand him. Going to the next level is tricky, as mentioned above. Going above that seems likely to create even more problems than it solves for me. I could to the work myself, but have my own work to do and figuring out how to make things work within Mr. Problem's stuff will be much more time consuming for me than it would be for him.
So, should I restate my directive to him? Talk with Mr. Problem's manager buddy? Kick this to upper management? Just do the work myself?
Note: (In actuality, this is in the past for me and I didn't navigate the situation well. However, I think someone else might benefit from reading suggestions here.) | 2019/05/17 | [
"https://workplace.stackexchange.com/questions/136802",
"https://workplace.stackexchange.com",
"https://workplace.stackexchange.com/users/2317/"
] | Even though Mr. Problem is friends with a manager in a higher position than you, the buddy manager is in a different reporting structure and thus different food chain. While I wouldn't dismiss this friendship as unimportant to note outright, I also don't think it should prevent you from making the best decisions for your team.
Remember you were the one promoted to be a manager and not Mr. Problem and that should someone higher up thinks you're worthy of the manager job. Don't sell yourself short by thinking you're powerless in this situation.
>
> While I'm not intimately familiar with what Mr. Problem has done, the change should be almost trivial to do, taking a half day or less. It will save the customer's employees considerable time when they need to use this functionality of the product. However, when I told Mr. Problem of the customer's request, he simply refused to do the task. He (accurately) pointed out that there is another way to accomplish what the customer wants, although he admitted it is more time consuming.
>
>
>
It's perfectly appropriate for an engineer to discuss a customer defect, weigh the pros and cons, and come up with a plan to fix. What solution I would pick and priority level depends on how many other customers use the feature and how important is the customer (size of deal, potential for up sell, renewal status and/or reputation). If customer accepts the workaround completely, no additional work needs to be done. If the customer accepts the workaround temporarily, put the real fix on the roadmap. If the customer rejects the workaround and the customer is important enough, consider the hacky solution and if it's sustainable for the time being. Then put the more maintainable solution on the roadmap. I wouldn't chose this option lightly, because you might get stuck maintaining a bad implementation.
>
> However, when I told Mr. Problem of the customer's request, he simply refused to do the task.
>
>
>
Mr. Problem can certainly have an opinion about how best to use his development time, but at the end of the day it is the manager that is responsible for the performance of each individual of their team. Mr. Problem is expected to work on what you assign him to do. I don't recommend pulling rank right off the bat, but rather discuss as colleagues the best approach. Bring Mr. Problem into the decision process within reason and document what you discussed and decided. Pull rank as a last resort.
>
> One of the new members of the team is someone I shall refer to as Mr. Problem. This is his first job out of college. His behavior is often unprofessional (arrives late and/or leaves early without letting people know what is going on - even when it is planned (e.g. a doctor's appointment); skips meetings; doesn't apprise people of his progress; makes inappropriate comments about co-workers, customers, and other people; dismisses and refuses to follow best practices and standards; etc.). In spite of this, he seems to have upper management thinking he's some sort of expert, as he puts on a show of being enthusiastic and presents himself as a genius at what he's doing (I know better, but can't say too much
>
>
>
While these are definitely issues that you should discuss with him in your one-on-one meetings and set goals to address them (remember to follow your company's policy for performance improvement), I feel as though they are independent of this particular customer issue scenario which you have described. Don't let your personal feelings about Mr. Problem cloud your judgement for this customer issue. | You are a new manager. Congratulations! It's a hard job, and it takes time -- a lifetime, even -- to develop your skills and personal style. Be patient with yourself. Don't hesitate to ask more experienced managers for help. Ask the same kinds of questions you asked us about this situation. "How can I handle this situation?"
And, one of your duties is to **teach a fresh-out-of-school employee how to work**. That's a hard job, layered right on top of your other new hard job. So, again, be patient with yourself.
Whether or not you have the authority to fire Mr. Problem, you can try to teach him to work. In this situation, don't hesitate to sit down with him in person and in private. You can say something like,
"I understand your point about the customer's ability to do their job some other way. It's a good point: workarounds are always helpful.
"Still, I've instructed you to build a product feature for that customer. The customer has decided they need the feature. That decision is not yours to make. It is simply not your job, nor mine, to decide those kinds of things. Please do that work, and do a good job of it.
"I don't think it will take long. And, I think it will give you a chance to learn (whatever) about our product. Thanks."
Don't expect him to just say, "OK." That kind of feedback takes time to sink in. You may have to repeat it a couple of times.
About the erratic scheduling, use the same sort of conversation. (But do it in a different conversation).
"I, and our other team members, rely on you to be available to work with us during business hours. When you arrive late or take off in the middle of the day--for any reason--you need to let us know what to expect. You need to do this every time.
"I'm aware that in college you set your own schedule. But when you're working we need you to be present and ready to do your job on time. "
He may protest that he finishes his assignments, and nothing else matters. You might respond to that by saying,
"Yes, you do finish your assignments and that's good. But other things do matter. You have lots to learn from the other team members, and they have things to learn from you. In this company we do that by showing up and working together."
If, after you try to teach him, he still doesn't learn better work habits, he may have to learn the hard way. That's where you ask your human resource person, or your boss, how to fire him. Losing him won't hurt your company much. It will save you a pain in the neck. And your other team members will be relieved to have the slacker gone.
And: I bet you'll get new respect for assistant managers at McDonalds. Their job is to teach large numbers of teenagers to work! |
136,802 | In one day I went from being the junior member of a three person team to the senior member of a three person team. It's my first supervisory role.
Unfortunately one of the new members of the team is someone I shall refer to as Mr. Problem. This is his first job out of college. His behavior is often unprofessional (arrives late and/or leaves early without letting people know what is going on - even when it is planned (e.g. a doctor's appointment); skips meetings; doesn't apprise people of his progress; makes inappropriate comments about co-workers, customers, and other people; dismisses and refuses to follow best practices and standards; etc.). In spite of this, he seems to have upper management thinking he's some sort of expert, as he puts on a show of being enthusiastic and presents himself as a genius at what he's doing (I know better, but can't say too much - see the next paragraph).
The manager who decided to hire Mr. Problem moonlights as an instructor at the college Mr. Problem attended and had him as a student. It is obvious they are friends. While I wasn't trying to eavesdrop (one of their offices is adjacent to mine and the walls do almost nothing to stop sound) I've overheard conversations they've had about leaving this company and starting their own (which isn't uncommon in this company anyway). Since this manager is higher up than (but not directly above) me, I need to move carefully here. While I've never had anything more than suspicions of why (mostly involving the fact that he didn't get along with the first manager I worked for here - something I came to understand), this manager has always treated me with some hostility.
This morning the customer contacted me to request a change in the product we are creating for them. The change is in the work area of Mr. Problem, so he's easily the best person to make the change. While I'm not intimately familiar with what Mr. Problem has done, the change should be almost trivial to do, taking a half day or less. It will save the customer's employees considerable time when they need to use this functionality of the product. However, when I told Mr. Problem of the customer's request, he simply refused to do the task. His stated reason for refusing was that there is another way to accomplish what the customer wants. While that is true, it is more time consuming, which he admitted.
In theory, I'm supposed to be the supervisor here and Mr. Problem should be doing what I've directed. In reality, I have no power to reprimand him. Going to the next level is tricky, as mentioned above. Going above that seems likely to create even more problems than it solves for me. I could to the work myself, but have my own work to do and figuring out how to make things work within Mr. Problem's stuff will be much more time consuming for me than it would be for him.
So, should I restate my directive to him? Talk with Mr. Problem's manager buddy? Kick this to upper management? Just do the work myself?
Note: (In actuality, this is in the past for me and I didn't navigate the situation well. However, I think someone else might benefit from reading suggestions here.) | 2019/05/17 | [
"https://workplace.stackexchange.com/questions/136802",
"https://workplace.stackexchange.com",
"https://workplace.stackexchange.com/users/2317/"
] | You are transitioning to a supervisory role. First of all you need to speak to your line manager and understand what is expected of you. Ideally you would do this by describing to them the role and responsibilities that you want, and asking them to confirm if that is what is expected of you. That way you get to frame the role in a way that suits you, and it proves that you have understood what is expected of you.
If your line manager says that you an advisor to the team, then that is all you should do. You should advise their line manager that they are not completing the work required and it is up to their line manager to sort that.
If you are the line manager of the team then it is your responsibility to get the team to deliver. If you kick the problem to upper management then you are saying that you do not have control of your team. You may want to discuss the situation with your line manager and get their advice and support, but if anyone needs to be disciplined that needs to be done by you so they understand that you hold that power.
Having said that, disciplinary procedures should be a last resort and this doesn't sound anywhere near that level yet. A good developer should want to produce a good solution to the problems they are presented with. Often this doesn't mean doing exactly what they are asked, but rather asking why something is needed and perhaps coming up with a better solution to the actual business problem. It sounds like this is what happened, but the customer said they weren't willing to pay for the better solution. At that point yes, you need to restate your directive and explain that the customer feels the first solution is good enough and that the better solution is not better value. | You are only responsible for making the project succeed. If somebody else in the team can do Mr. Problems tasks, let them do it, even if it takes a little longer. Document the meeting in which Mr. Problem suggests his solution, document that he agrees it could be done as the customer asks but doesn't feel like he should be working at the task.
Then go to your boss, tell him that customer explicitly asked "A" and Mr. Problem only want to implement "B", If you have a good rapport with him (and he is not a friend of the other manager) tell him that you may have overheard a discussion in the office about them potentially leaving. |
136,802 | In one day I went from being the junior member of a three person team to the senior member of a three person team. It's my first supervisory role.
Unfortunately one of the new members of the team is someone I shall refer to as Mr. Problem. This is his first job out of college. His behavior is often unprofessional (arrives late and/or leaves early without letting people know what is going on - even when it is planned (e.g. a doctor's appointment); skips meetings; doesn't apprise people of his progress; makes inappropriate comments about co-workers, customers, and other people; dismisses and refuses to follow best practices and standards; etc.). In spite of this, he seems to have upper management thinking he's some sort of expert, as he puts on a show of being enthusiastic and presents himself as a genius at what he's doing (I know better, but can't say too much - see the next paragraph).
The manager who decided to hire Mr. Problem moonlights as an instructor at the college Mr. Problem attended and had him as a student. It is obvious they are friends. While I wasn't trying to eavesdrop (one of their offices is adjacent to mine and the walls do almost nothing to stop sound) I've overheard conversations they've had about leaving this company and starting their own (which isn't uncommon in this company anyway). Since this manager is higher up than (but not directly above) me, I need to move carefully here. While I've never had anything more than suspicions of why (mostly involving the fact that he didn't get along with the first manager I worked for here - something I came to understand), this manager has always treated me with some hostility.
This morning the customer contacted me to request a change in the product we are creating for them. The change is in the work area of Mr. Problem, so he's easily the best person to make the change. While I'm not intimately familiar with what Mr. Problem has done, the change should be almost trivial to do, taking a half day or less. It will save the customer's employees considerable time when they need to use this functionality of the product. However, when I told Mr. Problem of the customer's request, he simply refused to do the task. His stated reason for refusing was that there is another way to accomplish what the customer wants. While that is true, it is more time consuming, which he admitted.
In theory, I'm supposed to be the supervisor here and Mr. Problem should be doing what I've directed. In reality, I have no power to reprimand him. Going to the next level is tricky, as mentioned above. Going above that seems likely to create even more problems than it solves for me. I could to the work myself, but have my own work to do and figuring out how to make things work within Mr. Problem's stuff will be much more time consuming for me than it would be for him.
So, should I restate my directive to him? Talk with Mr. Problem's manager buddy? Kick this to upper management? Just do the work myself?
Note: (In actuality, this is in the past for me and I didn't navigate the situation well. However, I think someone else might benefit from reading suggestions here.) | 2019/05/17 | [
"https://workplace.stackexchange.com/questions/136802",
"https://workplace.stackexchange.com",
"https://workplace.stackexchange.com/users/2317/"
] | You are a new manager. Congratulations! It's a hard job, and it takes time -- a lifetime, even -- to develop your skills and personal style. Be patient with yourself. Don't hesitate to ask more experienced managers for help. Ask the same kinds of questions you asked us about this situation. "How can I handle this situation?"
And, one of your duties is to **teach a fresh-out-of-school employee how to work**. That's a hard job, layered right on top of your other new hard job. So, again, be patient with yourself.
Whether or not you have the authority to fire Mr. Problem, you can try to teach him to work. In this situation, don't hesitate to sit down with him in person and in private. You can say something like,
"I understand your point about the customer's ability to do their job some other way. It's a good point: workarounds are always helpful.
"Still, I've instructed you to build a product feature for that customer. The customer has decided they need the feature. That decision is not yours to make. It is simply not your job, nor mine, to decide those kinds of things. Please do that work, and do a good job of it.
"I don't think it will take long. And, I think it will give you a chance to learn (whatever) about our product. Thanks."
Don't expect him to just say, "OK." That kind of feedback takes time to sink in. You may have to repeat it a couple of times.
About the erratic scheduling, use the same sort of conversation. (But do it in a different conversation).
"I, and our other team members, rely on you to be available to work with us during business hours. When you arrive late or take off in the middle of the day--for any reason--you need to let us know what to expect. You need to do this every time.
"I'm aware that in college you set your own schedule. But when you're working we need you to be present and ready to do your job on time. "
He may protest that he finishes his assignments, and nothing else matters. You might respond to that by saying,
"Yes, you do finish your assignments and that's good. But other things do matter. You have lots to learn from the other team members, and they have things to learn from you. In this company we do that by showing up and working together."
If, after you try to teach him, he still doesn't learn better work habits, he may have to learn the hard way. That's where you ask your human resource person, or your boss, how to fire him. Losing him won't hurt your company much. It will save you a pain in the neck. And your other team members will be relieved to have the slacker gone.
And: I bet you'll get new respect for assistant managers at McDonalds. Their job is to teach large numbers of teenagers to work! | You are only responsible for making the project succeed. If somebody else in the team can do Mr. Problems tasks, let them do it, even if it takes a little longer. Document the meeting in which Mr. Problem suggests his solution, document that he agrees it could be done as the customer asks but doesn't feel like he should be working at the task.
Then go to your boss, tell him that customer explicitly asked "A" and Mr. Problem only want to implement "B", If you have a good rapport with him (and he is not a friend of the other manager) tell him that you may have overheard a discussion in the office about them potentially leaving. |
40,449,403 | I don't know how to make an empty branch, whenever I make a branch, all of the 'master' branch items gets putted in the new branch... | 2016/11/06 | [
"https://Stackoverflow.com/questions/40449403",
"https://Stackoverflow.com",
"https://Stackoverflow.com/users/7036824/"
] | In theory you can train a model on the device. However, it generally requires huge amounts of processing power (and/or a GPU), memory (RAM) and disk space to train a model. Nobody recommends attempting to do this on a mobile device, due to the hardware and battery life constraints.
If you were doing only a limited amount of training, you *might* be able to do it on the device. You could also consider only training the model when the phone is plugged into a power cable and is otherwise idle (in this case you might have problems if Doze mode kicks in).
The other problem is that almost all the tutorials and code labs assume you are training the model on a powerful computer, then embedding that trained model in the application (e.g. [here are some blog](https://medium.com/@daj/creating-an-image-classifier-on-android-using-tensorflow-part-1-513d9c10fa6a#.nivdljtgr) posts I wrote). If you do find any good examples of training a model on an Android device please share them in the comments! | i think you can run the tensorflow apk first (size of 106MB):
<https://ci.tensorflow.org/view/Nightly/job/nightly-matrix-android/TF_BUILD_CONTAINER_TYPE=ANDROID,TF_BUILD_IS_OPT=OPT,TF_BUILD_IS_PIP=NO_PIP,TF_BUILD_PYTHON_VERSION=PYTHON2,label=android-slave/>
i think if we know how the tensorflow work and we can allow the train job to the romete service such as AWS or sth. our android phone just send the data and receive the result. right? |
337,617 | As a non-native speaker, I think those two above mentioned has no difference.
If any, would any of you tell me the subtle difference?
As far as I am concerned, past participles should be put before nouns except for past participle phrases modifying nouns. | 2016/07/17 | [
"https://english.stackexchange.com/questions/337617",
"https://english.stackexchange.com",
"https://english.stackexchange.com/users/185767/"
] | The difference between "discussed topics" and "topics discussed" depends on how the two words are positioned in the overall text.
English is a *spoken* language. Rhythm and emphasis have meaning. However, sometimes this is hard to represent in written form, especially for non-native speakers, who may not "hear the words in their heads" as the writer originally imagined them.
English is very flexible in its word placement, and this makes it possible for the writer with a sense of rhythm to place the most important word at a point in the sentence where the emphasis would be natural.
For example, imagine someone attending a meeting on global warming, and describing the experience to a friend:
* Well, the *discussed* topics were all about agriculture. No one seemed to care about the fishery at all. Our group couldn't even get on the agenda. *versus*,
* Well, the *topics* discussed were pretty technical, but all the parties had tables in the hallways, and there were always people standing around them.
In the first case, the sense is that there were some topics discussed and some topics **not** discussed. The speaker wants to emphasize this before moving on to the next thought.
In the second case, the sense is that the topics had some common property, but that their discussion is less important.
There is no written grammatical rule to guide you on this, in part because the violation of conventional phrasing is often used to create a more memorable phrase.
To improve your ear, you could try [Vital Speeches of the Day](https://www.vsotd.com/). It takes a little work to find the best examples, but in each case you are looking at words that were meant to be spoken aloud, written by people with a good sense of the language. The printed speeches are speeches printed, if you get my drift. | If the difference is treated as a grammar or syntax problem rather than a semantic problem, you will have different solutions. If the phrase was "the articles discussed" versus "the discussed articles" we might have a semantic problem given that we might we concerned about what the articles discussed versus what articles were discussed. With "topics" we do not appear to have that same type of semantic problem. |
343,389 | I have multiple labels of one field which in some scenarios I'd like to move manually to avoid overlapping etc.
But the problem is if I have multiple labels and choose **Data defined placement** in labels options (x,y coordinates) and move my label it's merged to one label instead of displaying multiple.
I know it's related to coordinates, I can choose only 1 field for **Coordinate X** and 1 field for **Coordinate Y**...
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/Hx5v0.png)
Do you know how to be able to move multiple labels of one field? | 2019/11/29 | [
"https://gis.stackexchange.com/questions/343389",
"https://gis.stackexchange.com",
"https://gis.stackexchange.com/users/154375/"
] | You can try using the EasyCustomLabeling extension.
At first, the extension will ask you for a labelling field and then create a new layer.
By opening the attribute table of this new layer, you can see the x and y position of each label and modify them directly in the table.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/SyTT3.png) | an other possibility will be to use rule-based labels, there you can define datadefined override for each rule. you will need different placement fields for that: you can use the auxilary storage where you can define multiple fields for that purpose, see screenshots below.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/VRhwM.png)
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/P1Xt5.png)
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/KmQQI.png) |
10,380,457 | I've tried using JMF on a 64 bit environment and 64 bit JDK but to no avail. There isn't a 64 bit jmvfw DLL available for JMF.
My question is: Is there any alternative Media Framework out there that is fully 64 bit or a Java Media Framework 64 bit?
I need it to do camera capturing and video streaming and it has to run on 64 bit environment and JDK.
Thanks | 2012/04/30 | [
"https://Stackoverflow.com/questions/10380457",
"https://Stackoverflow.com",
"https://Stackoverflow.com/users/251173/"
] | I would recommend [vagrant](http://vagrantup.com/) not only for quick development setups (which it excels at), but also for sharing VM configurations as you can publish your own vagrant file which your designer uses.
It relies on [VirtualBox](http://virtualbox.org/) Sun Oracle's open source hypervisor and is available for free on all major platforms. | I have been in a very similar situation before Rog, where the backend was a Ruby on Rails setup running on \*nix, and the frontend guy needed windows. We initially set up a Windows-Apache-MySql+git+RoR (using Cygwin and other tools) but eventually installing our app libraries and gems became a pain on the windows setup (anytime we would introduce a new gem (or app in django terms) the setup would break on windows). In the end we finally made the front-end guy work on \*nix setup.
[andLinux](http://www.andlinux.org/) is extremely useful in these situations, it lets your run a seamless install of linux withing a windows 2000 setup, so the front end guy can still use windows tool. It is not like a dual boot, but here both the OS are running at the same time. Have a look into it. |
147,910 | I have a local OpenStreetMap Server (Ubuntu + postgresql + mod\_tile + mapnik).
How to use only English language in names (or any Specific language) for all areas?
P.S. I understand that names store in tags and maybe for some areas it's not available.
**UPDATE** Can I change style file for mapnik to render tiles in specific language? | 2015/05/20 | [
"https://gis.stackexchange.com/questions/147910",
"https://gis.stackexchange.com",
"https://gis.stackexchange.com/users/52194/"
] | There have been similar questions at [help.openstreetmap.org](http://help.openstreetmap.org) with different solutions, see:
* <https://help.openstreetmap.org/questions/7920/mapnik-street-name-generation>
* <https://help.openstreetmap.org/questions/21784/render-place-name-in-two-languages-with-mapnik>
* <https://help.openstreetmap.org/questions/20735/country-place-and-street-names-in-english-instead-of-local-language-for-my-own-mapserver>
So you can choose between modifying the style, osm2pgsql or rewriting tags using lua. | Depending on your setup you will want to edit the queries to Postgres to choose the local name if available. See <https://help.openstreetmap.org/questions/21784/render-place-name-in-two-languages-with-mapnik> for an example.
You will need to make sure that the tags are preserved when doing the import(s). |
148,168 | I have very simple bot that gathers and parses web pages. It's on a machine in network, behind NAT (so I cannot setup a web server, for example). I don't have MTA set up. The bot should notify me about changes in parsed pages (once in a hour or two, to one recipient). How can this be done?
Is there any RESTful email gateways, like SMS ones?
I can set up him a twitter account and use `curl` to post statuses/DM, but it's a very temporary bot.
**UPD**: Right now the problem is solved by setting up custom PHP HTTP-to-email gateway on remote server with MTA. The bounty still will be awarded to the best answer (I'm interested in another solutions to this problem, just in case). | 2010/06/04 | [
"https://serverfault.com/questions/148168",
"https://serverfault.com",
"https://serverfault.com/users/28607/"
] | It's difficult to answer here.
What kind of Internet access do you have? Do you have any SMTP access at all? What about HTTP(S)? Directly or through a proxy? VPN? Anything else?
Also, which language is your bot written in? On which operating system are you running it?
There are *lots* of ways a program can send a notification to you; but which one is better for your scenario depends on a lot of things.
---
Update:
-------
If you can open an outbound TCP connection, then you can just connect to any SMTP server (even your own one) and send an e-mail message. It's really easy if you have SMTP libraries, but it would be very easy even if you had to talk native SMTP to the remote server. | What language/environment are you developing in? Does it not have an API for connecting to an SMTP server?
If you want to use a RESTful API, the twitter option really seems like the best to me if the notification can be under 140 characters. It's pretty straightforward to use, and there are probably even great libraries for it in whatever language your bot is written in.
If you need to send more information and you still want to use a RESTful interface, then you could give the bot a blog on (say) Blogspot. They have an [API](http://code.google.com/apis/blogger/) that doesn't look too bad for your purposes. |
148,168 | I have very simple bot that gathers and parses web pages. It's on a machine in network, behind NAT (so I cannot setup a web server, for example). I don't have MTA set up. The bot should notify me about changes in parsed pages (once in a hour or two, to one recipient). How can this be done?
Is there any RESTful email gateways, like SMS ones?
I can set up him a twitter account and use `curl` to post statuses/DM, but it's a very temporary bot.
**UPD**: Right now the problem is solved by setting up custom PHP HTTP-to-email gateway on remote server with MTA. The bounty still will be awarded to the best answer (I'm interested in another solutions to this problem, just in case). | 2010/06/04 | [
"https://serverfault.com/questions/148168",
"https://serverfault.com",
"https://serverfault.com/users/28607/"
] | you can use **XMPP/Jabber** to deliver message
you can use **wget** to check/download http content and some time to POST data
and let`s gooogle guide you :) | What language/environment are you developing in? Does it not have an API for connecting to an SMTP server?
If you want to use a RESTful API, the twitter option really seems like the best to me if the notification can be under 140 characters. It's pretty straightforward to use, and there are probably even great libraries for it in whatever language your bot is written in.
If you need to send more information and you still want to use a RESTful interface, then you could give the bot a blog on (say) Blogspot. They have an [API](http://code.google.com/apis/blogger/) that doesn't look too bad for your purposes. |
148,168 | I have very simple bot that gathers and parses web pages. It's on a machine in network, behind NAT (so I cannot setup a web server, for example). I don't have MTA set up. The bot should notify me about changes in parsed pages (once in a hour or two, to one recipient). How can this be done?
Is there any RESTful email gateways, like SMS ones?
I can set up him a twitter account and use `curl` to post statuses/DM, but it's a very temporary bot.
**UPD**: Right now the problem is solved by setting up custom PHP HTTP-to-email gateway on remote server with MTA. The bounty still will be awarded to the best answer (I'm interested in another solutions to this problem, just in case). | 2010/06/04 | [
"https://serverfault.com/questions/148168",
"https://serverfault.com",
"https://serverfault.com/users/28607/"
] | It's difficult to answer here.
What kind of Internet access do you have? Do you have any SMTP access at all? What about HTTP(S)? Directly or through a proxy? VPN? Anything else?
Also, which language is your bot written in? On which operating system are you running it?
There are *lots* of ways a program can send a notification to you; but which one is better for your scenario depends on a lot of things.
---
Update:
-------
If you can open an outbound TCP connection, then you can just connect to any SMTP server (even your own one) and send an e-mail message. It's really easy if you have SMTP libraries, but it would be very easy even if you had to talk native SMTP to the remote server. | you can use **XMPP/Jabber** to deliver message
you can use **wget** to check/download http content and some time to POST data
and let`s gooogle guide you :) |
8,811,744 | Is there some kind of native loading screen for each os available in phonegap?
I know there is a javascript loading screen when phonegap is loaded but before that, when you start your application, it can be really slow...
For example, in android, I could imagine an asynctask showing a load screen or displaying some interesting data until all the js libs are loaded.
Anyone has seen something like this?
Thanks | 2012/01/10 | [
"https://Stackoverflow.com/questions/8811744",
"https://Stackoverflow.com",
"https://Stackoverflow.com/users/263521/"
] | Native loading screen aka "splash screen":
build.phonegap.com supports this (as mentioned in the answer from iliha139) during the build process. But what if you want a splash screen without using the build service?
You have to solve it platform specifically:
* iOS
Without code, see [iOS programming guide](http://developer.apple.com/library/ios/#documentation/iPhone/Conceptual/iPhoneOSProgrammingGuide/App-RelatedResources/App-RelatedResources.html#//apple_ref/doc/uid/TP40007072-CH6-SW12)
* Android
Code needed, was mentioned on StackOverflow, see <https://stackoverflow.com/a/8157103/734687> or <http://blog.assortedgarbage.com/2011/02/adding-a-splash-screen-for-android-using-phonegap/>
* WP7
Without code, see: <http://windowsphonegeek.com/articles/All-about-Splash-Screens-in-WP7-ndash-Creating-animated-Splash-Screen>
iOS and WP7 supports native splash screen (displayed by the OS), while in Android the DroidGap class is displaying the splash screen. Therefore you still see an empty activity on Android when the application starts until the DroidGap activity becomes active. | Yes, there is. Check this <https://build.phonegap.com/docs/config-xml>.
For example for iOS just put the splash screen image in Resources/splash with name Default.png. |
8,811,744 | Is there some kind of native loading screen for each os available in phonegap?
I know there is a javascript loading screen when phonegap is loaded but before that, when you start your application, it can be really slow...
For example, in android, I could imagine an asynctask showing a load screen or displaying some interesting data until all the js libs are loaded.
Anyone has seen something like this?
Thanks | 2012/01/10 | [
"https://Stackoverflow.com/questions/8811744",
"https://Stackoverflow.com",
"https://Stackoverflow.com/users/263521/"
] | Native loading screen aka "splash screen":
build.phonegap.com supports this (as mentioned in the answer from iliha139) during the build process. But what if you want a splash screen without using the build service?
You have to solve it platform specifically:
* iOS
Without code, see [iOS programming guide](http://developer.apple.com/library/ios/#documentation/iPhone/Conceptual/iPhoneOSProgrammingGuide/App-RelatedResources/App-RelatedResources.html#//apple_ref/doc/uid/TP40007072-CH6-SW12)
* Android
Code needed, was mentioned on StackOverflow, see <https://stackoverflow.com/a/8157103/734687> or <http://blog.assortedgarbage.com/2011/02/adding-a-splash-screen-for-android-using-phonegap/>
* WP7
Without code, see: <http://windowsphonegeek.com/articles/All-about-Splash-Screens-in-WP7-ndash-Creating-animated-Splash-Screen>
iOS and WP7 supports native splash screen (displayed by the OS), while in Android the DroidGap class is displaying the splash screen. Therefore you still see an empty activity on Android when the application starts until the DroidGap activity becomes active. | on ios you can use <https://github.com/Initsogar/cordova-activityindicator> phonegap plugin which is very good . You can use this for androi also .
But for android there is easiest way navigator.notification.activityStart(); . you can see its usage [here :
http://javacourseblog.blogspot.ro/2014/02/show-loading-screen-in-phonegap-app.html](http://javacourseblog.blogspot.ro/2014/02/show-loading-screen-in-phonegap-app.html) |
325,320 | Are both versions correct? Do they convey the same meaning?
>
> I think board games are the best games **to learn / for learning** different subjects such as history, literature and science.
>
>
> | 2022/10/18 | [
"https://ell.stackexchange.com/questions/325320",
"https://ell.stackexchange.com",
"https://ell.stackexchange.com/users/150655/"
] | You've made a slight error in parsing the sentence, which is where the confusion comes in: **record modifies haul here, not drugs**.
That is, the headline is not referring to a 'haul of record drugs', but to a 'record haul of drugs'.
'Record haul' then means 'haul that set a new record', and in context that can be assumed to be a record for largest size. | **Record drugs** is an abbreviated version of **a record amount of drugs** that was shortened to be a headline.
In this case, **record** is like the record time in a sporting event. It means more drugs were found than had ever been found before. |
14,358 | How can I configure BBEdit to insert 4 spaces (or at least spaces up to the next column which is a multiple of 4)? I've checked "Auto-expand tabs" in the preferences, but it doesn't seem to be doing that. | 2011/05/17 | [
"https://apple.stackexchange.com/questions/14358",
"https://apple.stackexchange.com",
"https://apple.stackexchange.com/users/788/"
] | The Auto-expand tabs preference must also be set for the Language mapping setting. Also, the setting won't be applied until you create or open a new document.
See `Languages` in BBEdit. | This has stymied me for quite some time, and today I found the way to enable this for open documents. At the very top of the Document in BBEdit in the left hand corner, you will find the path of the file you are currently editing immediately preceded by a small gear icon. Click the gear icon and place a check in the box next to "Auto-expand Tabs". |
318,701 | I have this question. There's a lot of information out there but none of the things I tried helped and I am still unable to identify if it can be helped at all.
I have a site originally with a provider. Later I transferred the DNS to another web hosting site but the DNS settings are still visible on the original domain registrar.
So what happens is the site will display at www.domain.com but not when I put domain.com
I've checked the CNAME settings on both the original provider and the new one and appear to be correct.
I've also tried to enable forwarding using an .htaccess file and that failed too (although some other redirects seem to work well).
I can't identify where else to look in order to finally get domain.com working!
Could it be some sort of limitation on the new web host that forbids that sort of thing? (even though there is a CNAME setting present)
Any help will be greatly appreciated. This has been troubling me for over a month!
Thank you
---
UPDATE 10/10/11
I am trying to make sense of all this. The domain is fineenergy.co.uk (or www.fineenergy.co.uk is the one that actually works)
By doing a NSLookUp I get much more results than www.fineenergy.co.uk
I think, as you said, either the A record or the CNAME records is missing but after checking the DNS settings I find that both records are there. In detail:
A Record
Host fineenergy.co.uk Points to 66.96.147.104
CNAME Record
Host fineenergy.co.uk Points to www.fineenergy.co.uk
Not sure what else I could add to that.
The only other thing I can think of is that these settings are ignored in favour of the original host's settings.
Any other suggestion would be very welcome.
Thank you guys for the help! | 2011/10/04 | [
"https://serverfault.com/questions/318701",
"https://serverfault.com",
"https://serverfault.com/users/97369/"
] | Now you've posted the domain we can see that the root domain (without the www) hasn't been configured in the DNS
www.fineenergy.co.uk has an A record pointing to 66.96.147.104 but nothing is listed for fineenergy.co.uk
You need to add an A record for fineenergy.co.uk pointing to 66.96.147.104
---
EDIT: Okay having looked again it seems a bit more complicated...
Nominet says that your nameservers should be ns1.ipage.com and ns2.ipage.com but dig is saying that your NS records are set to be dns1.fluent.ltd.uk and dns2.fluent.ltd.uk in the zone
Looking up fineenergy.co.uk on dns1.fluent.ltd.uk or dns2.fluent.ltd.uk shows there is no record
Looking up www.fineenergy.co.uk on dns1.fluent.ltd.uk or dns2.fluent.ltd.uk shows an A record to 66.96.147.104
Looking up fineenergy.co.uk on ns1.ipage.com and ns2.ipage.com shows a CNAME record pointing to www.fineenergy.co.uk which is against DNS rules
Looking up www.fineenergy.co.uk on ns1.ipage.com and ns2.ipage.com shows an A record to 66.96.147.104
No nameserver records appear to be in the ns1.ipage.com and ns2.ipage.com zone. | This may not be related to DNS. You web server also may need to be configured to handle domain.com in addition to www.domain.com. i.e., it needs to be told that it is serving content for domain.com, and where the content is located. If you were on apache, one way to do this is by configuring a [ServerAlias](http://httpd.apache.org/docs/2.0/mod/core.html#serveralias) setting under your original domain config. |
204,904 | Not only are our sprint planning meetings not fun, they're downright dreadful.
The meetings are tedious, and boring, and take forever (a day, but it feels like a lot longer).
The developers complain about it, and dread upcoming plannings.
Our routine is pretty standard (user story inserted into sprint backlog by priority >> story is taken apart to tasks >> tasks are estimated in hours >> repeat), and I can't figure out what we're doing wrong.
How can we make the meetings more enjoyable?
...
Some more details, in response to requests for more information:
**Why are the backlog items not inserted and prioritized before sprint kickoff?**
User stories are indeed prioritized; we have no idea how long they'll take until we break them down into tasks! From the (excellent) answers here, I see that maybe we shouldn't estimate tasks at all, only the user stories. The reason we estimate tasks (and not stories) is because we've been getting story-estimates terribly wrong -- but I guess that's the subject for an altogether different question.
**Why are developers complaining?**
1. Meetings are long.
2. Meetings are monotonous. Story after story, task after task, struggling (yes, struggling) to estimate how long it will take and what it involves.
3. Estimating tasks makes user-story-estimation seem pointless.
4. The longer the meeting, the less focus in the room. The less focused colleagues are, the longer the meeting takes. A recursive hate-spiral develops. We've considered splitting the meeting into two days in order to keep people focused, but the developers wouldn't hear of it. One day of planning is bad enough; now we'll have *two*?!
Part of our problem is that we go into very small detail (in order to get more accurate estimations). But when we estimate roughly, we go way off the mark!
**To sum up the question:**
* What are we doing wrong?
* What additional ways are there to make the meeting generally more enjoyable? | 2013/07/15 | [
"https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/204904",
"https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com",
"https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/users/43798/"
] | 1. **Why are the backlog items not inserted and prioritized before sprint kickoff?** Wasting developers time is not fun. Let your team leads work with the product owner and project manager a few days beforehand to prioritize stuff. This goes for planning who is on each sprint team too.
2. **Why is it taking a day to break things out into tasks?** If you have a reasonably sized team (2-4 developers, .5-1.5 QA people per developer, 1-2 misc) then you should have 2-4 user stories this sprint. Spend 30 minutes or so with the product owner clarifying requirements, then 30 minutes or so breaking it out to ~8 hour tasks. *Don't enter the tasks during the meeting.* Just agree as a team what the tasks are enough for sane people to understand them, who is responsible for them, and about how long they should take. Agree that "how long they should take (including testing)" fits comfortably within the sprint.
3. **If it's not just breaking things into tasks, what else are you doing?** Sure, retrospectives can take 30-60 minutes, but will be shorter as the teams get into a groove.
So in summary - quit wasting people's time and they'll dread the meetings a bit less.
Beyond that, fun and comradarie in the team isn't something you can address in meetings. Go to lunch together, joke around, mix people up to have better personality fits, have mustache growing contests... once the morale is up then people will naturally make sprint planning meetings more lighthearted. | Yea I know this is an old question, but I have a new answer. :P
Split the meeting up.
---------------------
We split our Sprint planning meeting into 3 separate mini-meetings
* Backlog grooming
* Story selection
* Task breakdown
We do each on a different day, right after our daily Scrum - as soon as the daily is done, we roll right into the planning activity, and then we are free from (regular planned) meetings the rest of the day.
So yea, we waterfalled our planning :-O
I'll go into more detail about what is involved in each session in a second, but let me explain how we arrived at this.
---
We, like yourself, had a problem with really dreadful Sprint planning meetings. We had all the right elements, but everything just took forever and was really draining mentally and emotionally to get through.
Then I got this idea after reading [this Business Insider article on Pivotal's 5-minute daily](http://www.businessinsider.com/pivotal-ceo-rob-mee-on-meetings-2016-7) about breaking our meetings up into shorter sessions and doing them at the beginning of each day.
I brought it up with the team at a retrospective. Some team members liked it right away, others were a little apprehensive, but then our intern mentioned some study he read about [the pomodoro technique](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pomodoro_Technique) and started going on about it, and that really helped the idea gain traction.
So we decided to try it.
We broke our 2 hour meeting down into three 25 minutes sessions. (yes, that's fuzzy math, but everyone felt our meetings were too long and only wanted to do it if we saved time).
And it worked!
We've been doing it for about 6 weeks now on two separate projects (6 two week sprints total) and it's made a world of difference.
We are more productive.
We save a ton of time.
We get better outputs.
And we no longer dread our planning meetings.
And honestly, our 25 minute time-box is pretty loose - some sessions go really fast, like 5-10 minutes on some of our grooming sessions, and some go long, like when we end up identifying new stories or having to break stories up and re-estimate during negotiation. Overall though, it usually averages out to no more than 1.5 hours for the whole shebang, and I think that is why it works so well.
---
On to the details.....
Backlog grooming
----------------
Pretty simple - we review the top priority stories, talk about what they entail, and make sure our estimates are good.
We'll re-estimate stories if needed - like say we estimated something months ago and after realizing what a similar story actually took, we might agree to re-estimate. (we use [unit-less story points](http://blog.celerity.com/why-your-agile-team-should-use-story-point-relative-estimation) by the way, and we [don't estimate tasks](https://www.scrumalliance.org/community/articles/2009/january/a-cure-for-task-estimation-obsession)).
Also, if the PO has added any new stories that he feels are high-priority, this is the time to estimate them.
Because we don't do Story selection until the next day, this process gives the PO a little extra time to do make final judgement on what's most important to get done in the next iteration - and this has proved very helpful.
This meeting tends to run short with some PO's and long with others. (personally, I think it's a great smell indicator of how your PO is doing)
Story Selection
---------------
Get your [Chris Voss](http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/B014DUR7L2) on, it's time to negotiate.
At this meeting, we take the top priority stories and define a [DoD](https://www.agilealliance.org/glossary/definition-of-done/) for each. We negotiate what each will entail - splitting and combining stories as needed - until we can all agree on our Sprint goals.
We benefit a lot from having fresh minds and that good morning energy for this meeting - and knowing we will do tasks another day allows us to spend the time we need to really negotiate well and understand our commitments.
Tasks
-----
Okay, so I'll be the first to say, tasks was my *LEAST* favorite part of planning in our old one day meetings.
We just never hit our stride with this.
We tried saving tasks til the end of the meeting - but we were all just drained by then and it was really unproductive.
We tried defining tasks at the same time as our DoD during our negotiation, but we found it too distracting and too cumbersome - we would burn ourselves out before selecting all the stories. Also, it was really hard to keep switching focus/thinking back and forth between estimating, negotiating, story selection, and task generation. We struggled, and it sucked, and it made our meetings dreadful.
**But now,** by defining the DoD on one day, and not doing tasks until the next, we don't get burned out, we're always in the right mindstate, and it gives us a whole day to marinate over the story and really think through and understand all the tasks before we get started.
This alone, IMHO, is a total game changer.
---
Putting it all together.
------------------------
So, here is what our Sprint ceremony schedule looks like now:
* Monday - Daily scrum -> Sprint review
* Tuesday - Daily scrum -> Backlog grooming
* Wednesday - Daily scrum -> Story selection
* Thursday - Daily scrum -> Tasks
* Friday - Daily scrum -> Retrospective
It's worked really well for us.
If you give it a shot, I'd love to hear what you think. |
204,904 | Not only are our sprint planning meetings not fun, they're downright dreadful.
The meetings are tedious, and boring, and take forever (a day, but it feels like a lot longer).
The developers complain about it, and dread upcoming plannings.
Our routine is pretty standard (user story inserted into sprint backlog by priority >> story is taken apart to tasks >> tasks are estimated in hours >> repeat), and I can't figure out what we're doing wrong.
How can we make the meetings more enjoyable?
...
Some more details, in response to requests for more information:
**Why are the backlog items not inserted and prioritized before sprint kickoff?**
User stories are indeed prioritized; we have no idea how long they'll take until we break them down into tasks! From the (excellent) answers here, I see that maybe we shouldn't estimate tasks at all, only the user stories. The reason we estimate tasks (and not stories) is because we've been getting story-estimates terribly wrong -- but I guess that's the subject for an altogether different question.
**Why are developers complaining?**
1. Meetings are long.
2. Meetings are monotonous. Story after story, task after task, struggling (yes, struggling) to estimate how long it will take and what it involves.
3. Estimating tasks makes user-story-estimation seem pointless.
4. The longer the meeting, the less focus in the room. The less focused colleagues are, the longer the meeting takes. A recursive hate-spiral develops. We've considered splitting the meeting into two days in order to keep people focused, but the developers wouldn't hear of it. One day of planning is bad enough; now we'll have *two*?!
Part of our problem is that we go into very small detail (in order to get more accurate estimations). But when we estimate roughly, we go way off the mark!
**To sum up the question:**
* What are we doing wrong?
* What additional ways are there to make the meeting generally more enjoyable? | 2013/07/15 | [
"https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/204904",
"https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com",
"https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/users/43798/"
] | 1. **Why are the backlog items not inserted and prioritized before sprint kickoff?** Wasting developers time is not fun. Let your team leads work with the product owner and project manager a few days beforehand to prioritize stuff. This goes for planning who is on each sprint team too.
2. **Why is it taking a day to break things out into tasks?** If you have a reasonably sized team (2-4 developers, .5-1.5 QA people per developer, 1-2 misc) then you should have 2-4 user stories this sprint. Spend 30 minutes or so with the product owner clarifying requirements, then 30 minutes or so breaking it out to ~8 hour tasks. *Don't enter the tasks during the meeting.* Just agree as a team what the tasks are enough for sane people to understand them, who is responsible for them, and about how long they should take. Agree that "how long they should take (including testing)" fits comfortably within the sprint.
3. **If it's not just breaking things into tasks, what else are you doing?** Sure, retrospectives can take 30-60 minutes, but will be shorter as the teams get into a groove.
So in summary - quit wasting people's time and they'll dread the meetings a bit less.
Beyond that, fun and comradarie in the team isn't something you can address in meetings. Go to lunch together, joke around, mix people up to have better personality fits, have mustache growing contests... once the morale is up then people will naturally make sprint planning meetings more lighthearted. | Your planning sessions are way too long!
Based on my experience, a sprint planning meeting should take no more than 2 hours per week being planned (e.g. a 2 week sprint should take 1/2 day at most), but successful ones should be shorter than that (half of it).
In your particular case: why are you estimating tasks? You should estimate only stories during planning. Tasks can be estimated later by the *specific task owners*.
A way that worked for me:
* Quick intro to the sprint by the PO
* Estimation of the sprint capacity
* Stories run down and planning poker (timeboxed at 5/10 minutes per story) until there's enough estimated stuff to cover the sprint
* Official commitment/forecast by the team
Then, in parallel/pairs/self organized at our desks, tasking and task estimation. |
204,904 | Not only are our sprint planning meetings not fun, they're downright dreadful.
The meetings are tedious, and boring, and take forever (a day, but it feels like a lot longer).
The developers complain about it, and dread upcoming plannings.
Our routine is pretty standard (user story inserted into sprint backlog by priority >> story is taken apart to tasks >> tasks are estimated in hours >> repeat), and I can't figure out what we're doing wrong.
How can we make the meetings more enjoyable?
...
Some more details, in response to requests for more information:
**Why are the backlog items not inserted and prioritized before sprint kickoff?**
User stories are indeed prioritized; we have no idea how long they'll take until we break them down into tasks! From the (excellent) answers here, I see that maybe we shouldn't estimate tasks at all, only the user stories. The reason we estimate tasks (and not stories) is because we've been getting story-estimates terribly wrong -- but I guess that's the subject for an altogether different question.
**Why are developers complaining?**
1. Meetings are long.
2. Meetings are monotonous. Story after story, task after task, struggling (yes, struggling) to estimate how long it will take and what it involves.
3. Estimating tasks makes user-story-estimation seem pointless.
4. The longer the meeting, the less focus in the room. The less focused colleagues are, the longer the meeting takes. A recursive hate-spiral develops. We've considered splitting the meeting into two days in order to keep people focused, but the developers wouldn't hear of it. One day of planning is bad enough; now we'll have *two*?!
Part of our problem is that we go into very small detail (in order to get more accurate estimations). But when we estimate roughly, we go way off the mark!
**To sum up the question:**
* What are we doing wrong?
* What additional ways are there to make the meeting generally more enjoyable? | 2013/07/15 | [
"https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/204904",
"https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com",
"https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/users/43798/"
] | Yea I know this is an old question, but I have a new answer. :P
Split the meeting up.
---------------------
We split our Sprint planning meeting into 3 separate mini-meetings
* Backlog grooming
* Story selection
* Task breakdown
We do each on a different day, right after our daily Scrum - as soon as the daily is done, we roll right into the planning activity, and then we are free from (regular planned) meetings the rest of the day.
So yea, we waterfalled our planning :-O
I'll go into more detail about what is involved in each session in a second, but let me explain how we arrived at this.
---
We, like yourself, had a problem with really dreadful Sprint planning meetings. We had all the right elements, but everything just took forever and was really draining mentally and emotionally to get through.
Then I got this idea after reading [this Business Insider article on Pivotal's 5-minute daily](http://www.businessinsider.com/pivotal-ceo-rob-mee-on-meetings-2016-7) about breaking our meetings up into shorter sessions and doing them at the beginning of each day.
I brought it up with the team at a retrospective. Some team members liked it right away, others were a little apprehensive, but then our intern mentioned some study he read about [the pomodoro technique](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pomodoro_Technique) and started going on about it, and that really helped the idea gain traction.
So we decided to try it.
We broke our 2 hour meeting down into three 25 minutes sessions. (yes, that's fuzzy math, but everyone felt our meetings were too long and only wanted to do it if we saved time).
And it worked!
We've been doing it for about 6 weeks now on two separate projects (6 two week sprints total) and it's made a world of difference.
We are more productive.
We save a ton of time.
We get better outputs.
And we no longer dread our planning meetings.
And honestly, our 25 minute time-box is pretty loose - some sessions go really fast, like 5-10 minutes on some of our grooming sessions, and some go long, like when we end up identifying new stories or having to break stories up and re-estimate during negotiation. Overall though, it usually averages out to no more than 1.5 hours for the whole shebang, and I think that is why it works so well.
---
On to the details.....
Backlog grooming
----------------
Pretty simple - we review the top priority stories, talk about what they entail, and make sure our estimates are good.
We'll re-estimate stories if needed - like say we estimated something months ago and after realizing what a similar story actually took, we might agree to re-estimate. (we use [unit-less story points](http://blog.celerity.com/why-your-agile-team-should-use-story-point-relative-estimation) by the way, and we [don't estimate tasks](https://www.scrumalliance.org/community/articles/2009/january/a-cure-for-task-estimation-obsession)).
Also, if the PO has added any new stories that he feels are high-priority, this is the time to estimate them.
Because we don't do Story selection until the next day, this process gives the PO a little extra time to do make final judgement on what's most important to get done in the next iteration - and this has proved very helpful.
This meeting tends to run short with some PO's and long with others. (personally, I think it's a great smell indicator of how your PO is doing)
Story Selection
---------------
Get your [Chris Voss](http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/B014DUR7L2) on, it's time to negotiate.
At this meeting, we take the top priority stories and define a [DoD](https://www.agilealliance.org/glossary/definition-of-done/) for each. We negotiate what each will entail - splitting and combining stories as needed - until we can all agree on our Sprint goals.
We benefit a lot from having fresh minds and that good morning energy for this meeting - and knowing we will do tasks another day allows us to spend the time we need to really negotiate well and understand our commitments.
Tasks
-----
Okay, so I'll be the first to say, tasks was my *LEAST* favorite part of planning in our old one day meetings.
We just never hit our stride with this.
We tried saving tasks til the end of the meeting - but we were all just drained by then and it was really unproductive.
We tried defining tasks at the same time as our DoD during our negotiation, but we found it too distracting and too cumbersome - we would burn ourselves out before selecting all the stories. Also, it was really hard to keep switching focus/thinking back and forth between estimating, negotiating, story selection, and task generation. We struggled, and it sucked, and it made our meetings dreadful.
**But now,** by defining the DoD on one day, and not doing tasks until the next, we don't get burned out, we're always in the right mindstate, and it gives us a whole day to marinate over the story and really think through and understand all the tasks before we get started.
This alone, IMHO, is a total game changer.
---
Putting it all together.
------------------------
So, here is what our Sprint ceremony schedule looks like now:
* Monday - Daily scrum -> Sprint review
* Tuesday - Daily scrum -> Backlog grooming
* Wednesday - Daily scrum -> Story selection
* Thursday - Daily scrum -> Tasks
* Friday - Daily scrum -> Retrospective
It's worked really well for us.
If you give it a shot, I'd love to hear what you think. | We are having a weekly sprint with a one hour meeting in which we discuss the previous sprint, what is left to do and then move on to the planning of coming week.
All within one hour.
This is of course because we found out that in our case following scrum too strictly would only waste too much time. That is because most stories are already discussed with our team members when the requester creates the user story.
I'm just saying that if your team dreads planning meetings, you should probably let go some of the "rules" of scrum. |
204,904 | Not only are our sprint planning meetings not fun, they're downright dreadful.
The meetings are tedious, and boring, and take forever (a day, but it feels like a lot longer).
The developers complain about it, and dread upcoming plannings.
Our routine is pretty standard (user story inserted into sprint backlog by priority >> story is taken apart to tasks >> tasks are estimated in hours >> repeat), and I can't figure out what we're doing wrong.
How can we make the meetings more enjoyable?
...
Some more details, in response to requests for more information:
**Why are the backlog items not inserted and prioritized before sprint kickoff?**
User stories are indeed prioritized; we have no idea how long they'll take until we break them down into tasks! From the (excellent) answers here, I see that maybe we shouldn't estimate tasks at all, only the user stories. The reason we estimate tasks (and not stories) is because we've been getting story-estimates terribly wrong -- but I guess that's the subject for an altogether different question.
**Why are developers complaining?**
1. Meetings are long.
2. Meetings are monotonous. Story after story, task after task, struggling (yes, struggling) to estimate how long it will take and what it involves.
3. Estimating tasks makes user-story-estimation seem pointless.
4. The longer the meeting, the less focus in the room. The less focused colleagues are, the longer the meeting takes. A recursive hate-spiral develops. We've considered splitting the meeting into two days in order to keep people focused, but the developers wouldn't hear of it. One day of planning is bad enough; now we'll have *two*?!
Part of our problem is that we go into very small detail (in order to get more accurate estimations). But when we estimate roughly, we go way off the mark!
**To sum up the question:**
* What are we doing wrong?
* What additional ways are there to make the meeting generally more enjoyable? | 2013/07/15 | [
"https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/204904",
"https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com",
"https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/users/43798/"
] | Make estimating easier
======================
---
### Break your sprint planning down.
Do you *need* to estimate the individual tasks? I've done sprint planning two ways:
1. Stories are estimated in story points and then tasks are estimated in hours
2. Stories are estimated in story points and tasks simply fall under that with no estimate
Of the two, I prefer the second option. **I find that not estimating tasks gives more freedom to developers to cope with changes.** If a task no longer makes sense (how many times have you found out that a task isn't applicable or was already done in a previous sprint) you simply throw it out without any penalty, or you may have to change a current task into something new, possibly breaking it up. You're really being redundant if you estimate both, as the sum of the tasks should represent the story points and vice versa. What value do you really gain by this other than knowing how much time individual tasks will take? If you find yourself with task sizes that really vary enough to make a difference, I would suggest breaking those tasks down into smaller, more homogeneous chunks.
By doing this, you can **cut down on the time you spend in sprint planning**. Stories get estimated during sprint planning, and when you start the sprint you can put down all the tasks you can think of that make up that story. Obviously if there are points that you come across in estimating the story that you *know* will have to be dealt with in a task, you can add that onto the story information and put it as a task.
### Estimate in Ideal units
**Story points are meant to be in *ideal* units** such as ideal man hours or ideal work days. These are meant to mean that given the perfect day every day, where you had no interruptions, no meetings, and everything went according to plan, you could accomplish the task in X days. Now everyone knows that this simply isn't true, but the wonderful thing about statistics is that it doesn't have to be.
What I mean by this is that after a while of estimating these in ideal days, you realize that maybe it takes an extra 25% of the time you estimate on average to complete a story. Lets say you had estimated 4 ideal work days, and instead it took you 5. Over time, you keep track of this and then you have a rough idea of the conversion from ideal days to real days. Your first instinct would be to try and compensate for this by over estimating, and you would likely be wrong. The main thing here is to **stay consistent.** That way, your long term average remains the same. Sure sometimes, it'll be under and sometimes it'll be over, **but the more you estimate, the better off you are.** If you find that you *still* can't get a decent estimate, maybe that means you don't know enough about the story to estimate it properly.
### Talk about the stories
When you estimate, **everyone should have a rough idea of what will need to be done,** from start to finish, of what it will take for this story to be complete. You don't need to know every detail, but enough that you think you, yourself, could undertake the story. If you don't have that level of confidence, you probably shouldn't be estimating it. If you say "Well this story is too big for us to know most of the details" then that's an indication that the story is too big, and should be broken down. Stories, at least in my experience, have been small enough that one person, if need be, could work on it alone and accomplish it within a week or two.
This also will help to solve your second point in the edit, which is **too much estimation**. Instead of estimating every single task for every single story, you simply estimate the story as a whole, which should help to remove a lot of the estimating. As for making the meetings less monotonous, I would suggest planning poker, which you can see more information about above.
Make planning more engaging
===========================
---
### Estimate using Planning Poker
As far as making estimation more fun, **have you tried [planning poker](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planning_poker)?** It's the way that I've always done planning for all my sprints on multiple teams, and it's a good way to keep everyone involved, as every person has to at least pick SOMETHING. There's also a fair amount of fun involved when everyone on the team picks 3, and someone puts down a 20 and has to explain themselves, or when everyone on the team puts down a 5 but the manager puts down an 8 (who's gonna argue with the boss when he wants to give you more time!).
To do this, **all you need are some planning poker cards**, which we often make on the back side of index cards, or using normal playing cards with values attached to face cards. Nothing fancy, and it keeps everyone focused. Just remember that trying to do any task for an entire day (including planning poker) takes a toll on productivity. Many sets of cards come with a coffee card for a reason; if someone is feeling burnt out, give the team a break to recharge and pick it up when everyone is fresh!
**As an alternative to physical cards**, you could also look at [electronic cards](http://www.planningpoker.com/). The real benefits here are automated tracking of results, tracking user stories to be estimated and allowing everyone to show their cards at once to avoid "cheating" (where one persons estimate is influenced by another's due to being able to see their card). Obviously this requires everyone have a computer and the ability to focus on the task at hand though, so use it at your own discretion. | This question has been answered comprehensively, but only one thing is needed to make it work and be fun.
**Give power to the team.** - i.e. make them work on things that **they** think are the most important. |
204,904 | Not only are our sprint planning meetings not fun, they're downright dreadful.
The meetings are tedious, and boring, and take forever (a day, but it feels like a lot longer).
The developers complain about it, and dread upcoming plannings.
Our routine is pretty standard (user story inserted into sprint backlog by priority >> story is taken apart to tasks >> tasks are estimated in hours >> repeat), and I can't figure out what we're doing wrong.
How can we make the meetings more enjoyable?
...
Some more details, in response to requests for more information:
**Why are the backlog items not inserted and prioritized before sprint kickoff?**
User stories are indeed prioritized; we have no idea how long they'll take until we break them down into tasks! From the (excellent) answers here, I see that maybe we shouldn't estimate tasks at all, only the user stories. The reason we estimate tasks (and not stories) is because we've been getting story-estimates terribly wrong -- but I guess that's the subject for an altogether different question.
**Why are developers complaining?**
1. Meetings are long.
2. Meetings are monotonous. Story after story, task after task, struggling (yes, struggling) to estimate how long it will take and what it involves.
3. Estimating tasks makes user-story-estimation seem pointless.
4. The longer the meeting, the less focus in the room. The less focused colleagues are, the longer the meeting takes. A recursive hate-spiral develops. We've considered splitting the meeting into two days in order to keep people focused, but the developers wouldn't hear of it. One day of planning is bad enough; now we'll have *two*?!
Part of our problem is that we go into very small detail (in order to get more accurate estimations). But when we estimate roughly, we go way off the mark!
**To sum up the question:**
* What are we doing wrong?
* What additional ways are there to make the meeting generally more enjoyable? | 2013/07/15 | [
"https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/204904",
"https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com",
"https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/users/43798/"
] | Make estimating easier
======================
---
### Break your sprint planning down.
Do you *need* to estimate the individual tasks? I've done sprint planning two ways:
1. Stories are estimated in story points and then tasks are estimated in hours
2. Stories are estimated in story points and tasks simply fall under that with no estimate
Of the two, I prefer the second option. **I find that not estimating tasks gives more freedom to developers to cope with changes.** If a task no longer makes sense (how many times have you found out that a task isn't applicable or was already done in a previous sprint) you simply throw it out without any penalty, or you may have to change a current task into something new, possibly breaking it up. You're really being redundant if you estimate both, as the sum of the tasks should represent the story points and vice versa. What value do you really gain by this other than knowing how much time individual tasks will take? If you find yourself with task sizes that really vary enough to make a difference, I would suggest breaking those tasks down into smaller, more homogeneous chunks.
By doing this, you can **cut down on the time you spend in sprint planning**. Stories get estimated during sprint planning, and when you start the sprint you can put down all the tasks you can think of that make up that story. Obviously if there are points that you come across in estimating the story that you *know* will have to be dealt with in a task, you can add that onto the story information and put it as a task.
### Estimate in Ideal units
**Story points are meant to be in *ideal* units** such as ideal man hours or ideal work days. These are meant to mean that given the perfect day every day, where you had no interruptions, no meetings, and everything went according to plan, you could accomplish the task in X days. Now everyone knows that this simply isn't true, but the wonderful thing about statistics is that it doesn't have to be.
What I mean by this is that after a while of estimating these in ideal days, you realize that maybe it takes an extra 25% of the time you estimate on average to complete a story. Lets say you had estimated 4 ideal work days, and instead it took you 5. Over time, you keep track of this and then you have a rough idea of the conversion from ideal days to real days. Your first instinct would be to try and compensate for this by over estimating, and you would likely be wrong. The main thing here is to **stay consistent.** That way, your long term average remains the same. Sure sometimes, it'll be under and sometimes it'll be over, **but the more you estimate, the better off you are.** If you find that you *still* can't get a decent estimate, maybe that means you don't know enough about the story to estimate it properly.
### Talk about the stories
When you estimate, **everyone should have a rough idea of what will need to be done,** from start to finish, of what it will take for this story to be complete. You don't need to know every detail, but enough that you think you, yourself, could undertake the story. If you don't have that level of confidence, you probably shouldn't be estimating it. If you say "Well this story is too big for us to know most of the details" then that's an indication that the story is too big, and should be broken down. Stories, at least in my experience, have been small enough that one person, if need be, could work on it alone and accomplish it within a week or two.
This also will help to solve your second point in the edit, which is **too much estimation**. Instead of estimating every single task for every single story, you simply estimate the story as a whole, which should help to remove a lot of the estimating. As for making the meetings less monotonous, I would suggest planning poker, which you can see more information about above.
Make planning more engaging
===========================
---
### Estimate using Planning Poker
As far as making estimation more fun, **have you tried [planning poker](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planning_poker)?** It's the way that I've always done planning for all my sprints on multiple teams, and it's a good way to keep everyone involved, as every person has to at least pick SOMETHING. There's also a fair amount of fun involved when everyone on the team picks 3, and someone puts down a 20 and has to explain themselves, or when everyone on the team puts down a 5 but the manager puts down an 8 (who's gonna argue with the boss when he wants to give you more time!).
To do this, **all you need are some planning poker cards**, which we often make on the back side of index cards, or using normal playing cards with values attached to face cards. Nothing fancy, and it keeps everyone focused. Just remember that trying to do any task for an entire day (including planning poker) takes a toll on productivity. Many sets of cards come with a coffee card for a reason; if someone is feeling burnt out, give the team a break to recharge and pick it up when everyone is fresh!
**As an alternative to physical cards**, you could also look at [electronic cards](http://www.planningpoker.com/). The real benefits here are automated tracking of results, tracking user stories to be estimated and allowing everyone to show their cards at once to avoid "cheating" (where one persons estimate is influenced by another's due to being able to see their card). Obviously this requires everyone have a computer and the ability to focus on the task at hand though, so use it at your own discretion. | 1. **Why are the backlog items not inserted and prioritized before sprint kickoff?** Wasting developers time is not fun. Let your team leads work with the product owner and project manager a few days beforehand to prioritize stuff. This goes for planning who is on each sprint team too.
2. **Why is it taking a day to break things out into tasks?** If you have a reasonably sized team (2-4 developers, .5-1.5 QA people per developer, 1-2 misc) then you should have 2-4 user stories this sprint. Spend 30 minutes or so with the product owner clarifying requirements, then 30 minutes or so breaking it out to ~8 hour tasks. *Don't enter the tasks during the meeting.* Just agree as a team what the tasks are enough for sane people to understand them, who is responsible for them, and about how long they should take. Agree that "how long they should take (including testing)" fits comfortably within the sprint.
3. **If it's not just breaking things into tasks, what else are you doing?** Sure, retrospectives can take 30-60 minutes, but will be shorter as the teams get into a groove.
So in summary - quit wasting people's time and they'll dread the meetings a bit less.
Beyond that, fun and comradarie in the team isn't something you can address in meetings. Go to lunch together, joke around, mix people up to have better personality fits, have mustache growing contests... once the morale is up then people will naturally make sprint planning meetings more lighthearted. |
204,904 | Not only are our sprint planning meetings not fun, they're downright dreadful.
The meetings are tedious, and boring, and take forever (a day, but it feels like a lot longer).
The developers complain about it, and dread upcoming plannings.
Our routine is pretty standard (user story inserted into sprint backlog by priority >> story is taken apart to tasks >> tasks are estimated in hours >> repeat), and I can't figure out what we're doing wrong.
How can we make the meetings more enjoyable?
...
Some more details, in response to requests for more information:
**Why are the backlog items not inserted and prioritized before sprint kickoff?**
User stories are indeed prioritized; we have no idea how long they'll take until we break them down into tasks! From the (excellent) answers here, I see that maybe we shouldn't estimate tasks at all, only the user stories. The reason we estimate tasks (and not stories) is because we've been getting story-estimates terribly wrong -- but I guess that's the subject for an altogether different question.
**Why are developers complaining?**
1. Meetings are long.
2. Meetings are monotonous. Story after story, task after task, struggling (yes, struggling) to estimate how long it will take and what it involves.
3. Estimating tasks makes user-story-estimation seem pointless.
4. The longer the meeting, the less focus in the room. The less focused colleagues are, the longer the meeting takes. A recursive hate-spiral develops. We've considered splitting the meeting into two days in order to keep people focused, but the developers wouldn't hear of it. One day of planning is bad enough; now we'll have *two*?!
Part of our problem is that we go into very small detail (in order to get more accurate estimations). But when we estimate roughly, we go way off the mark!
**To sum up the question:**
* What are we doing wrong?
* What additional ways are there to make the meeting generally more enjoyable? | 2013/07/15 | [
"https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/204904",
"https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com",
"https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/users/43798/"
] | Planning is one area of scrum where teams have a lot of flexibility. Try something new every sprint until you hit on something that works for your team.
Some successful ideas I've either tried personally, or heard about from other teams:
* Do user story creation and prioritization without the entire team. The product owner and/or scrum master can handle a lot of the busy work and just let the team tweak it.
* Make your backlog significantly longer than a single sprint. It can take a while to build it up, but if your backlog is long enough, planning meetings are reduced to making small tweaks or addressing recent business developments.
* Have estimation meetings separate from sprint planning. If people think the meetings are too long, there's no reason not to split them up.
* Specifically plan breaks into the agenda. This is useful if you're often wasting time waiting for one or two team members to return.
* Break in the middle of the meeting and assign everyone to task out one or two user stories, then meet back together to report and gain consensus.
* Make sure your planning meeting is about *what* to do, not *how* to do it. Engineers fall very easily into the latter. If you need to, set up separate design meetings where you discuss the how.
* Separate your stories into investigation and implementation. Planning meetings often go too long when team members know too little about what they will be working on, and try to figure it out during the meeting.
For example, say you needed to integrate with an API that your team has no experience with. Rather than try to create estimates and tasks during the planning meeting about something you are clueless about, make one investigation story to learn the API, do a simple "hello world" app, and teach it to the team. *Then* you'll be equipped to plan the actual work.
* Keep track during your meetings of specific issues. Not just "planning is boring," but a level of detail like, "we spend a lot of time talking about unclear requirements, and no one seems to know the right answer." Then discuss those specific issues in your retrospectives and brainstorm for specific solutions. Break your problem down until the pieces are easy to solve.
We hold our sprint planning and retrospective at the same time, and are almost always done in 90 minutes, but we are one of the faster teams. We do a big company-wide longer-term planning every 5 sprints that takes 4-6 hours. Every team is different, of course, but if you're spending an entire day every sprint, there's a lot of room for improvement. | The Sprint planning meeting has 2 parts:
1. Decide what the team will do
2. Decide how the team will do it.
The first part is relatively straight forward--based on the number of story points the team feels they can take on, the commit to completing that many user stories in their order of priority. Done.
The second part is what developers should actually enjoy--elaboration of the story and designing the solution. The tasks fall out of that. So, have the product owner, or whatever SME he has provided explain a chosen story. Then have whichever developer wants to take it on, lead the design discussion. Use a white board. Bounce ideas around. Have fun.
That's it, really. If design meetings aren't fun, then there's just something plain wrong. |
204,904 | Not only are our sprint planning meetings not fun, they're downright dreadful.
The meetings are tedious, and boring, and take forever (a day, but it feels like a lot longer).
The developers complain about it, and dread upcoming plannings.
Our routine is pretty standard (user story inserted into sprint backlog by priority >> story is taken apart to tasks >> tasks are estimated in hours >> repeat), and I can't figure out what we're doing wrong.
How can we make the meetings more enjoyable?
...
Some more details, in response to requests for more information:
**Why are the backlog items not inserted and prioritized before sprint kickoff?**
User stories are indeed prioritized; we have no idea how long they'll take until we break them down into tasks! From the (excellent) answers here, I see that maybe we shouldn't estimate tasks at all, only the user stories. The reason we estimate tasks (and not stories) is because we've been getting story-estimates terribly wrong -- but I guess that's the subject for an altogether different question.
**Why are developers complaining?**
1. Meetings are long.
2. Meetings are monotonous. Story after story, task after task, struggling (yes, struggling) to estimate how long it will take and what it involves.
3. Estimating tasks makes user-story-estimation seem pointless.
4. The longer the meeting, the less focus in the room. The less focused colleagues are, the longer the meeting takes. A recursive hate-spiral develops. We've considered splitting the meeting into two days in order to keep people focused, but the developers wouldn't hear of it. One day of planning is bad enough; now we'll have *two*?!
Part of our problem is that we go into very small detail (in order to get more accurate estimations). But when we estimate roughly, we go way off the mark!
**To sum up the question:**
* What are we doing wrong?
* What additional ways are there to make the meeting generally more enjoyable? | 2013/07/15 | [
"https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/204904",
"https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com",
"https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/users/43798/"
] | 1. **Why are the backlog items not inserted and prioritized before sprint kickoff?** Wasting developers time is not fun. Let your team leads work with the product owner and project manager a few days beforehand to prioritize stuff. This goes for planning who is on each sprint team too.
2. **Why is it taking a day to break things out into tasks?** If you have a reasonably sized team (2-4 developers, .5-1.5 QA people per developer, 1-2 misc) then you should have 2-4 user stories this sprint. Spend 30 minutes or so with the product owner clarifying requirements, then 30 minutes or so breaking it out to ~8 hour tasks. *Don't enter the tasks during the meeting.* Just agree as a team what the tasks are enough for sane people to understand them, who is responsible for them, and about how long they should take. Agree that "how long they should take (including testing)" fits comfortably within the sprint.
3. **If it's not just breaking things into tasks, what else are you doing?** Sure, retrospectives can take 30-60 minutes, but will be shorter as the teams get into a groove.
So in summary - quit wasting people's time and they'll dread the meetings a bit less.
Beyond that, fun and comradarie in the team isn't something you can address in meetings. Go to lunch together, joke around, mix people up to have better personality fits, have mustache growing contests... once the morale is up then people will naturally make sprint planning meetings more lighthearted. | Planning is one area of scrum where teams have a lot of flexibility. Try something new every sprint until you hit on something that works for your team.
Some successful ideas I've either tried personally, or heard about from other teams:
* Do user story creation and prioritization without the entire team. The product owner and/or scrum master can handle a lot of the busy work and just let the team tweak it.
* Make your backlog significantly longer than a single sprint. It can take a while to build it up, but if your backlog is long enough, planning meetings are reduced to making small tweaks or addressing recent business developments.
* Have estimation meetings separate from sprint planning. If people think the meetings are too long, there's no reason not to split them up.
* Specifically plan breaks into the agenda. This is useful if you're often wasting time waiting for one or two team members to return.
* Break in the middle of the meeting and assign everyone to task out one or two user stories, then meet back together to report and gain consensus.
* Make sure your planning meeting is about *what* to do, not *how* to do it. Engineers fall very easily into the latter. If you need to, set up separate design meetings where you discuss the how.
* Separate your stories into investigation and implementation. Planning meetings often go too long when team members know too little about what they will be working on, and try to figure it out during the meeting.
For example, say you needed to integrate with an API that your team has no experience with. Rather than try to create estimates and tasks during the planning meeting about something you are clueless about, make one investigation story to learn the API, do a simple "hello world" app, and teach it to the team. *Then* you'll be equipped to plan the actual work.
* Keep track during your meetings of specific issues. Not just "planning is boring," but a level of detail like, "we spend a lot of time talking about unclear requirements, and no one seems to know the right answer." Then discuss those specific issues in your retrospectives and brainstorm for specific solutions. Break your problem down until the pieces are easy to solve.
We hold our sprint planning and retrospective at the same time, and are almost always done in 90 minutes, but we are one of the faster teams. We do a big company-wide longer-term planning every 5 sprints that takes 4-6 hours. Every team is different, of course, but if you're spending an entire day every sprint, there's a lot of room for improvement. |
204,904 | Not only are our sprint planning meetings not fun, they're downright dreadful.
The meetings are tedious, and boring, and take forever (a day, but it feels like a lot longer).
The developers complain about it, and dread upcoming plannings.
Our routine is pretty standard (user story inserted into sprint backlog by priority >> story is taken apart to tasks >> tasks are estimated in hours >> repeat), and I can't figure out what we're doing wrong.
How can we make the meetings more enjoyable?
...
Some more details, in response to requests for more information:
**Why are the backlog items not inserted and prioritized before sprint kickoff?**
User stories are indeed prioritized; we have no idea how long they'll take until we break them down into tasks! From the (excellent) answers here, I see that maybe we shouldn't estimate tasks at all, only the user stories. The reason we estimate tasks (and not stories) is because we've been getting story-estimates terribly wrong -- but I guess that's the subject for an altogether different question.
**Why are developers complaining?**
1. Meetings are long.
2. Meetings are monotonous. Story after story, task after task, struggling (yes, struggling) to estimate how long it will take and what it involves.
3. Estimating tasks makes user-story-estimation seem pointless.
4. The longer the meeting, the less focus in the room. The less focused colleagues are, the longer the meeting takes. A recursive hate-spiral develops. We've considered splitting the meeting into two days in order to keep people focused, but the developers wouldn't hear of it. One day of planning is bad enough; now we'll have *two*?!
Part of our problem is that we go into very small detail (in order to get more accurate estimations). But when we estimate roughly, we go way off the mark!
**To sum up the question:**
* What are we doing wrong?
* What additional ways are there to make the meeting generally more enjoyable? | 2013/07/15 | [
"https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/204904",
"https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com",
"https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/users/43798/"
] | Make estimating easier
======================
---
### Break your sprint planning down.
Do you *need* to estimate the individual tasks? I've done sprint planning two ways:
1. Stories are estimated in story points and then tasks are estimated in hours
2. Stories are estimated in story points and tasks simply fall under that with no estimate
Of the two, I prefer the second option. **I find that not estimating tasks gives more freedom to developers to cope with changes.** If a task no longer makes sense (how many times have you found out that a task isn't applicable or was already done in a previous sprint) you simply throw it out without any penalty, or you may have to change a current task into something new, possibly breaking it up. You're really being redundant if you estimate both, as the sum of the tasks should represent the story points and vice versa. What value do you really gain by this other than knowing how much time individual tasks will take? If you find yourself with task sizes that really vary enough to make a difference, I would suggest breaking those tasks down into smaller, more homogeneous chunks.
By doing this, you can **cut down on the time you spend in sprint planning**. Stories get estimated during sprint planning, and when you start the sprint you can put down all the tasks you can think of that make up that story. Obviously if there are points that you come across in estimating the story that you *know* will have to be dealt with in a task, you can add that onto the story information and put it as a task.
### Estimate in Ideal units
**Story points are meant to be in *ideal* units** such as ideal man hours or ideal work days. These are meant to mean that given the perfect day every day, where you had no interruptions, no meetings, and everything went according to plan, you could accomplish the task in X days. Now everyone knows that this simply isn't true, but the wonderful thing about statistics is that it doesn't have to be.
What I mean by this is that after a while of estimating these in ideal days, you realize that maybe it takes an extra 25% of the time you estimate on average to complete a story. Lets say you had estimated 4 ideal work days, and instead it took you 5. Over time, you keep track of this and then you have a rough idea of the conversion from ideal days to real days. Your first instinct would be to try and compensate for this by over estimating, and you would likely be wrong. The main thing here is to **stay consistent.** That way, your long term average remains the same. Sure sometimes, it'll be under and sometimes it'll be over, **but the more you estimate, the better off you are.** If you find that you *still* can't get a decent estimate, maybe that means you don't know enough about the story to estimate it properly.
### Talk about the stories
When you estimate, **everyone should have a rough idea of what will need to be done,** from start to finish, of what it will take for this story to be complete. You don't need to know every detail, but enough that you think you, yourself, could undertake the story. If you don't have that level of confidence, you probably shouldn't be estimating it. If you say "Well this story is too big for us to know most of the details" then that's an indication that the story is too big, and should be broken down. Stories, at least in my experience, have been small enough that one person, if need be, could work on it alone and accomplish it within a week or two.
This also will help to solve your second point in the edit, which is **too much estimation**. Instead of estimating every single task for every single story, you simply estimate the story as a whole, which should help to remove a lot of the estimating. As for making the meetings less monotonous, I would suggest planning poker, which you can see more information about above.
Make planning more engaging
===========================
---
### Estimate using Planning Poker
As far as making estimation more fun, **have you tried [planning poker](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planning_poker)?** It's the way that I've always done planning for all my sprints on multiple teams, and it's a good way to keep everyone involved, as every person has to at least pick SOMETHING. There's also a fair amount of fun involved when everyone on the team picks 3, and someone puts down a 20 and has to explain themselves, or when everyone on the team puts down a 5 but the manager puts down an 8 (who's gonna argue with the boss when he wants to give you more time!).
To do this, **all you need are some planning poker cards**, which we often make on the back side of index cards, or using normal playing cards with values attached to face cards. Nothing fancy, and it keeps everyone focused. Just remember that trying to do any task for an entire day (including planning poker) takes a toll on productivity. Many sets of cards come with a coffee card for a reason; if someone is feeling burnt out, give the team a break to recharge and pick it up when everyone is fresh!
**As an alternative to physical cards**, you could also look at [electronic cards](http://www.planningpoker.com/). The real benefits here are automated tracking of results, tracking user stories to be estimated and allowing everyone to show their cards at once to avoid "cheating" (where one persons estimate is influenced by another's due to being able to see their card). Obviously this requires everyone have a computer and the ability to focus on the task at hand though, so use it at your own discretion. | At my previous job, the entire first day of each sprint (we called them iterations there) was taken up with:
* **Retrospective.** We started out doing this in the afternoon of the last day, but we often found ourselves retrospecting about the sprint and then going back to work tying up the last loose ends of that sprint's work, so we figured it would be better to make sure the work was all behind us before retrospecting on it. It also seemed logical to consolidate all the meeting overhead of the Scrum process so the other days could be planned and spent in more ideal terms. This typically took 2 hours.
* **Sprint Planning.** The backlog was estimated during a Milestone Planning Meeting (which could be an entire day in itself for both the Devs and POs), and had been prioritized by the POs prior to the beginning of each sprint. We figured out how many developer-days we had available (accounting for holidays, vaca, etc), grabbed the work we thought we could do off the top of the pile, and quickly reviewed the user requirements (previously vetted by our BAs) to get a more complete sense of what the work entailed than we got with the simple overview during the MPM. This typically took another 2 hours.
* **Task Planning.** Knowing the stories and acceptance criteria, we broke down each story into bite-size tasks estimated in ideal hours (an hour spent focused solely on getting that task "done" with no distractions or roadblocks). The way our point scale ended up being calibrated, a 5 was a developer-sprint, so a 1 could be anything up to and including two developer-days. For that reason, virtually everything had to be broken down in order for team members to be able to show progress on the scrum board. This was another 2-hour block, with some give-and-take between this and the next item.
* **AAT Outlining.** Our POs and BAs were not programmers and did not code. The POs hid behind a contract stipulating that they would deliver requirements in the form of a Word template and would work with the BAs to refine them in that form. BAs understood code, but their time was purely analysis and final testing (which required the system to exist, so they could record their macros into Selenium). So, to verify that our code would meet acceptance criteria when it came to that, we had to write our own AATs modelling the actions of the "paper" acceptance test. We typically did this in the same NUnit framework we used for unit and integration tests (we tried FitNesse and couldn't give it up fast enough). This was the rest of our first day of each sprint and continued into the second.
In my current job, we're still adopting the Scrum process, we didn't have a team-wide milestone planning, and a lot of what we're working on doesn't have strict acceptance criteria. So, our sprint planning is as much an explanation of what each story entails and what we'll call done as it is a commitment to grab the top X ideal hours of work off the top. We get away with it - for now at least - because we're an in-house team and each of us works personally with the end users of our software to gather requirements and design solutions. Even then, sprint planning is an all-morning thing every other Monday, and the afternoon is spent clearing any personal roadblocks to being able to start development in earnest on Tuesday.
---
To actually answer the OP's question rather than contrasting other comments/answers saying it shouldn't be taking that long, there are ways to approach Agile estimation, sprint planning and retrospectives that are a little more interesting than you might be using.
Specifically addressing your concerns:
* *Meetings are long* - Time-box them. Each meeting, be it a retrospective, sprint planning, task breakdown, etc, should have a definite purpose and topic of discussion, and should be limited as much as possible to a set amount of time. It's the Scrum Master's job to keep these meetings on topic and rolling along to meet the time goals.
* *Meetings are monotonous* - There will be some of that; you're working in bite-size chunks, one at a time, so you'll be doing the same thing over and over. Keeping the team focused and driving toward accomplishing the purpose of the meeting will help.
Something else I hear is that maybe your sprint planning meetings are trying to accomplish too much. At my last company, story estimation was done at "milestone planning meetings", which happened about once a quarter and took all day. In those meetings, everything that had built up on the backlog that we hadn't estimated was estimated in points. If you're doing story estimation in points, and then task estimation in hours, you don't want to do them both at the same time (maybe on the same day).
* *Estimating stories in points, then tasks in hours seems redundant* - They have two different purposes. The purpose of story estimation is to provide a rough estimate of complexity, that you can use to fill your sprint backlog based on past velocity and expected bandwidth. The purpose of task estimation is to break the stories down into things that take one developer-day or less (and so can be assigned to a single guy who would be expected to have it all done in time), and ensure you haven't mis-estimated any story's complexity nor bitten off more than you can chew in the sprint.
If your stories all take one day or less, then it is redundant, but not all points scales are calibrated equally; at my last job, a 5 was two developer-weeks (because at the beginning we had a lot of epics to estimate), which on a linear scale made a point anything up to 2 developer-days. Given that kind of scale, virtually everything should get broken down into tasks. At my new company, a point is closer to half a developer day, so a 1 or even a 2 is definitely its own task, and 3-8 is nebulous with regard to forcing the team to split it up into tasks.
* *There's a vicious cycle of it taking longer making people less focused so it takes longer* - Time-box your time-box. Take breaks, just like you should be when coding. Every 30 minutes, take 5 minutes to stretch your legs, regroup, etc. You can make it ten minutes every hour, but don't push a solid block of meeting time too much further than that. Your guys might be getting hungry, or need more coffee, or a bathroom break, etc. Don't deny them; if you make them suck it up you'll find their minds wandering. Beyond that, keeping discussions short, sweet and to the point will help as well, as previously mentioned. |
204,904 | Not only are our sprint planning meetings not fun, they're downright dreadful.
The meetings are tedious, and boring, and take forever (a day, but it feels like a lot longer).
The developers complain about it, and dread upcoming plannings.
Our routine is pretty standard (user story inserted into sprint backlog by priority >> story is taken apart to tasks >> tasks are estimated in hours >> repeat), and I can't figure out what we're doing wrong.
How can we make the meetings more enjoyable?
...
Some more details, in response to requests for more information:
**Why are the backlog items not inserted and prioritized before sprint kickoff?**
User stories are indeed prioritized; we have no idea how long they'll take until we break them down into tasks! From the (excellent) answers here, I see that maybe we shouldn't estimate tasks at all, only the user stories. The reason we estimate tasks (and not stories) is because we've been getting story-estimates terribly wrong -- but I guess that's the subject for an altogether different question.
**Why are developers complaining?**
1. Meetings are long.
2. Meetings are monotonous. Story after story, task after task, struggling (yes, struggling) to estimate how long it will take and what it involves.
3. Estimating tasks makes user-story-estimation seem pointless.
4. The longer the meeting, the less focus in the room. The less focused colleagues are, the longer the meeting takes. A recursive hate-spiral develops. We've considered splitting the meeting into two days in order to keep people focused, but the developers wouldn't hear of it. One day of planning is bad enough; now we'll have *two*?!
Part of our problem is that we go into very small detail (in order to get more accurate estimations). But when we estimate roughly, we go way off the mark!
**To sum up the question:**
* What are we doing wrong?
* What additional ways are there to make the meeting generally more enjoyable? | 2013/07/15 | [
"https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/204904",
"https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com",
"https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/users/43798/"
] | The Sprint planning meeting has 2 parts:
1. Decide what the team will do
2. Decide how the team will do it.
The first part is relatively straight forward--based on the number of story points the team feels they can take on, the commit to completing that many user stories in their order of priority. Done.
The second part is what developers should actually enjoy--elaboration of the story and designing the solution. The tasks fall out of that. So, have the product owner, or whatever SME he has provided explain a chosen story. Then have whichever developer wants to take it on, lead the design discussion. Use a white board. Bounce ideas around. Have fun.
That's it, really. If design meetings aren't fun, then there's just something plain wrong. | This question has been answered comprehensively, but only one thing is needed to make it work and be fun.
**Give power to the team.** - i.e. make them work on things that **they** think are the most important. |
204,904 | Not only are our sprint planning meetings not fun, they're downright dreadful.
The meetings are tedious, and boring, and take forever (a day, but it feels like a lot longer).
The developers complain about it, and dread upcoming plannings.
Our routine is pretty standard (user story inserted into sprint backlog by priority >> story is taken apart to tasks >> tasks are estimated in hours >> repeat), and I can't figure out what we're doing wrong.
How can we make the meetings more enjoyable?
...
Some more details, in response to requests for more information:
**Why are the backlog items not inserted and prioritized before sprint kickoff?**
User stories are indeed prioritized; we have no idea how long they'll take until we break them down into tasks! From the (excellent) answers here, I see that maybe we shouldn't estimate tasks at all, only the user stories. The reason we estimate tasks (and not stories) is because we've been getting story-estimates terribly wrong -- but I guess that's the subject for an altogether different question.
**Why are developers complaining?**
1. Meetings are long.
2. Meetings are monotonous. Story after story, task after task, struggling (yes, struggling) to estimate how long it will take and what it involves.
3. Estimating tasks makes user-story-estimation seem pointless.
4. The longer the meeting, the less focus in the room. The less focused colleagues are, the longer the meeting takes. A recursive hate-spiral develops. We've considered splitting the meeting into two days in order to keep people focused, but the developers wouldn't hear of it. One day of planning is bad enough; now we'll have *two*?!
Part of our problem is that we go into very small detail (in order to get more accurate estimations). But when we estimate roughly, we go way off the mark!
**To sum up the question:**
* What are we doing wrong?
* What additional ways are there to make the meeting generally more enjoyable? | 2013/07/15 | [
"https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/204904",
"https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com",
"https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/users/43798/"
] | Make estimating easier
======================
---
### Break your sprint planning down.
Do you *need* to estimate the individual tasks? I've done sprint planning two ways:
1. Stories are estimated in story points and then tasks are estimated in hours
2. Stories are estimated in story points and tasks simply fall under that with no estimate
Of the two, I prefer the second option. **I find that not estimating tasks gives more freedom to developers to cope with changes.** If a task no longer makes sense (how many times have you found out that a task isn't applicable or was already done in a previous sprint) you simply throw it out without any penalty, or you may have to change a current task into something new, possibly breaking it up. You're really being redundant if you estimate both, as the sum of the tasks should represent the story points and vice versa. What value do you really gain by this other than knowing how much time individual tasks will take? If you find yourself with task sizes that really vary enough to make a difference, I would suggest breaking those tasks down into smaller, more homogeneous chunks.
By doing this, you can **cut down on the time you spend in sprint planning**. Stories get estimated during sprint planning, and when you start the sprint you can put down all the tasks you can think of that make up that story. Obviously if there are points that you come across in estimating the story that you *know* will have to be dealt with in a task, you can add that onto the story information and put it as a task.
### Estimate in Ideal units
**Story points are meant to be in *ideal* units** such as ideal man hours or ideal work days. These are meant to mean that given the perfect day every day, where you had no interruptions, no meetings, and everything went according to plan, you could accomplish the task in X days. Now everyone knows that this simply isn't true, but the wonderful thing about statistics is that it doesn't have to be.
What I mean by this is that after a while of estimating these in ideal days, you realize that maybe it takes an extra 25% of the time you estimate on average to complete a story. Lets say you had estimated 4 ideal work days, and instead it took you 5. Over time, you keep track of this and then you have a rough idea of the conversion from ideal days to real days. Your first instinct would be to try and compensate for this by over estimating, and you would likely be wrong. The main thing here is to **stay consistent.** That way, your long term average remains the same. Sure sometimes, it'll be under and sometimes it'll be over, **but the more you estimate, the better off you are.** If you find that you *still* can't get a decent estimate, maybe that means you don't know enough about the story to estimate it properly.
### Talk about the stories
When you estimate, **everyone should have a rough idea of what will need to be done,** from start to finish, of what it will take for this story to be complete. You don't need to know every detail, but enough that you think you, yourself, could undertake the story. If you don't have that level of confidence, you probably shouldn't be estimating it. If you say "Well this story is too big for us to know most of the details" then that's an indication that the story is too big, and should be broken down. Stories, at least in my experience, have been small enough that one person, if need be, could work on it alone and accomplish it within a week or two.
This also will help to solve your second point in the edit, which is **too much estimation**. Instead of estimating every single task for every single story, you simply estimate the story as a whole, which should help to remove a lot of the estimating. As for making the meetings less monotonous, I would suggest planning poker, which you can see more information about above.
Make planning more engaging
===========================
---
### Estimate using Planning Poker
As far as making estimation more fun, **have you tried [planning poker](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planning_poker)?** It's the way that I've always done planning for all my sprints on multiple teams, and it's a good way to keep everyone involved, as every person has to at least pick SOMETHING. There's also a fair amount of fun involved when everyone on the team picks 3, and someone puts down a 20 and has to explain themselves, or when everyone on the team puts down a 5 but the manager puts down an 8 (who's gonna argue with the boss when he wants to give you more time!).
To do this, **all you need are some planning poker cards**, which we often make on the back side of index cards, or using normal playing cards with values attached to face cards. Nothing fancy, and it keeps everyone focused. Just remember that trying to do any task for an entire day (including planning poker) takes a toll on productivity. Many sets of cards come with a coffee card for a reason; if someone is feeling burnt out, give the team a break to recharge and pick it up when everyone is fresh!
**As an alternative to physical cards**, you could also look at [electronic cards](http://www.planningpoker.com/). The real benefits here are automated tracking of results, tracking user stories to be estimated and allowing everyone to show their cards at once to avoid "cheating" (where one persons estimate is influenced by another's due to being able to see their card). Obviously this requires everyone have a computer and the ability to focus on the task at hand though, so use it at your own discretion. | The Sprint planning meeting has 2 parts:
1. Decide what the team will do
2. Decide how the team will do it.
The first part is relatively straight forward--based on the number of story points the team feels they can take on, the commit to completing that many user stories in their order of priority. Done.
The second part is what developers should actually enjoy--elaboration of the story and designing the solution. The tasks fall out of that. So, have the product owner, or whatever SME he has provided explain a chosen story. Then have whichever developer wants to take it on, lead the design discussion. Use a white board. Bounce ideas around. Have fun.
That's it, really. If design meetings aren't fun, then there's just something plain wrong. |
48,974 | I would like to de-emphasise the contents of the following text fields when one of the dropdowns is selected. I do not want to turn them grey as that would suggest they are disabled. They effectively become information when a dropdown is used, but are still available for editing at which point they will become prominent again. What is the best way to achieve this?
[download bmml source](/plugins/mockups/download?image=http%3a%2f%2fi.stack.imgur.com%2fu5mep.png) – Wireframes created with [Balsamiq Mockups](http://www.balsamiq.com/products/mockups)
Background
==========
We have a web application used for data analysis and you select the time range to look at using two simple text fields (with calendar controls attached):
[download bmml source](/plugins/mockups/download?image=http%3a%2f%2fi.stack.imgur.com%2fcsmcR.png)
We are experimentally introducing presets to easily allow selecting of common time ranges. We do not want to remove the existing time fields though in order to allow the selection of arbitrary times if required. They also serve to show the exact time range chosen when a preset is used (as in the example above).
If a preset is picked from the dropdown menu, the text fields are updated to match. If the text fields are edited the dropdown selection is cleared. This means that only one set of controls is in use at any time.
What I would like is that when a preset is selected, the text fields should be de-emphasised somehow, to show that they are not being used. The simplest approach would be to grey out or even disable the controls but I do not want to do this as they are still perfectly usable if needed.
What would be a good way to address this problem?
It may be that I am focusing too much on the text fields. My main goal is to indicate that only one set of controls is in use but that the other set can easily be used. My secondary goal is to also not change the UI too drastically to reduce friction with existing users of the system. | 2013/12/11 | [
"https://ux.stackexchange.com/questions/48974",
"https://ux.stackexchange.com",
"https://ux.stackexchange.com/users/9287/"
] | Based on the constraint that you want to keep both sets of fields visible and indicate that they are both usable at any point, you could wrap them in a radio button group if it's not too confusing for your users, since what you're trying to say to the user (if I'm interpreting you correctly) is that they can use a preset, or they can set a specific range.
Then if the user changes the range fields or selects the second radio button, you flip the radio button over to indicate that this is what's being used, and clear the presets as you described if they enter a custom range.
It may be worth "disabling" the controls that aren't being used just to de-emphasise them. The radio buttons tell the user that they can use either option.
 | I don't think that both options should be visible at the same time. Having a control that allows to view one option at a time greatly simplifies interface and reduces cognitive load.
You need to make a decision which option should be a default one based on business requirements and past usage analytics. I believe tabs allow to solve this problem quite effectively.
We've been using a similar solution at work for several years without any negative feedback. |
112,350 | When I click on connectivity\_highlights/void I get some pads highlighted. What does this mean? | 2014/05/29 | [
"https://electronics.stackexchange.com/questions/112350",
"https://electronics.stackexchange.com",
"https://electronics.stackexchange.com/users/-1/"
] | What you want to do (or at least the way you want to do it) is actually quite complex. First, you need 2 peak detectors, one for positive peaks (let's call it PDA), and one for negative peaks (PDB). Your proposed schematic will work for PDA with a few modifications. If you use a 0.1 uF cap, it needs about a 100 ohm resistor in series with it. This will prevent the current spike / voltage step behavior seen in the video.
PDB is the same as PDA, except that the diode is reversed.
Assuming your signal has no noise at higher frequencies, you don't need to look for 20 mV differences. The output of the first opamp will do the job quite nicely, and all you have to do is detect when its output is above or below ground, depending on whether you're looking at PDA or PDB. For discussion, we'll call these opamps A1 and B1.
Here's where it gets tricky. The capacitors in PDA and PDB must not be tied to ground, but rather, each must be tied to the output of as sample/hold which is driven from the signal input (call them SH1 and SH2). When the output of A1 goes below zero, generate a pulse which causes SH2 to acquire the input, and when A1 goes above zero, generate a pulse which causes SH1 to acquire the input. If the signal you are trying to analyze (the high frequency part whose peaks you are looking at) has a minimum period T, then the pulse width should be about T/10. At the same time as you acquire the SH signal, you also need to short the capacitor to zero.
Since you are talking about fairly low frequencies, the construction of these circuits should be fairly straightforward. I didn't say simple, I said straightforward.
In the presence of higher frequency noise, you may have problems, that is, the system may go berserk. This is left as an exercise for the reader.
There is another, possibly simpler way to do what you want. If (and you need to determine this for yourself) you can view your signal as a high frequency signal riding in a larger, lower frequency signal, and you know what those frequencies are, and they are not too close, then do this. Make a high-pass filter with 90 degrees phase shift at the signal frequency. This can be as simple as a couple of RCs and op amps. For a reasonably large frequency difference,
[simulate this circuit](/plugins/schematics?image=http%3a%2f%2fi.stack.imgur.com%2f8vvc9.png) – Schematic created using [CircuitLab](https://www.circuitlab.com/)
is the sort of thing I'm suggesting. R1, C1, and OA1 provide a high-pass filter, while R2, C2 and OA2 provide 90 degrees of phase shift. This 90 degrees can also be described as differentiation (for sinusoids, they're the same thing). Please ignore the TL081 label on OA2 - it's the default for the editor and I missed deleting it (and I'm too lazy to go back and redo the schematic). | I'm assuming that the Arduino has its own internal sample-and-hold circuitry, and if that's true, the circuit shown below should work for you, ANALOG\_OUT going to an ADC input and INT\_OUT starting the ISR for the conversion.
The schematic and the plot were both generated by LTSpice, which is available free - no strings - at: <http://www.linear.com/designtools/software/>
The way it works is that as the voltage out of V1 (ANALOG\_OUT) rises, it goes directly to the - input of U1, a voltage comparator.
Slightly delayed by R2C1, the now less positive version of ANALOG\_OUT appears at U1+ and, since it's less positive than the signal on U1- will force the output of U1 low.
because of the delay, as ANALOG\_OUT rises toward its positive peak, U1- will remain more positive than U1+, and U1's output will remain low.
Then, when ANALOG\_OUT rounds the positive peak and starts going more negative, the delay will keep U1+ from catching up and, since U1+ is now more positive than U1-, U1's output will go high, and stay high, until U1- starts to go more positive again, when the cycle will repeat.
U2 is an EXCLUSIVE-OR gate, and it functions by having its output go high only when its inputs aren't both zeros or both ones.
Imagine for a moment that U1's output is low and that C2 is discharged.
Such being the case, INT\_OUT will be low and will stay low until U1's output goes high, forcing INT\_OUT high.
C2 will then start to charge toward +5V and, when it crosses the input threshold voltage of U2, INT\_OUT will go low again and stay there until the output of U1 goes low, and discharges C2, starting the cycle anew.
Doing it this way puts a nice, sharp edge pretty close to the positive and negative peaks of the input signal, which should work, depending on how close to the peak you have to be and if the Arduino has its own sample-and-hold.
If it doesn't, that's another post... ;)
Better circuit, same basic description:
 |
112,350 | When I click on connectivity\_highlights/void I get some pads highlighted. What does this mean? | 2014/05/29 | [
"https://electronics.stackexchange.com/questions/112350",
"https://electronics.stackexchange.com",
"https://electronics.stackexchange.com/users/-1/"
] | What you want to do (or at least the way you want to do it) is actually quite complex. First, you need 2 peak detectors, one for positive peaks (let's call it PDA), and one for negative peaks (PDB). Your proposed schematic will work for PDA with a few modifications. If you use a 0.1 uF cap, it needs about a 100 ohm resistor in series with it. This will prevent the current spike / voltage step behavior seen in the video.
PDB is the same as PDA, except that the diode is reversed.
Assuming your signal has no noise at higher frequencies, you don't need to look for 20 mV differences. The output of the first opamp will do the job quite nicely, and all you have to do is detect when its output is above or below ground, depending on whether you're looking at PDA or PDB. For discussion, we'll call these opamps A1 and B1.
Here's where it gets tricky. The capacitors in PDA and PDB must not be tied to ground, but rather, each must be tied to the output of as sample/hold which is driven from the signal input (call them SH1 and SH2). When the output of A1 goes below zero, generate a pulse which causes SH2 to acquire the input, and when A1 goes above zero, generate a pulse which causes SH1 to acquire the input. If the signal you are trying to analyze (the high frequency part whose peaks you are looking at) has a minimum period T, then the pulse width should be about T/10. At the same time as you acquire the SH signal, you also need to short the capacitor to zero.
Since you are talking about fairly low frequencies, the construction of these circuits should be fairly straightforward. I didn't say simple, I said straightforward.
In the presence of higher frequency noise, you may have problems, that is, the system may go berserk. This is left as an exercise for the reader.
There is another, possibly simpler way to do what you want. If (and you need to determine this for yourself) you can view your signal as a high frequency signal riding in a larger, lower frequency signal, and you know what those frequencies are, and they are not too close, then do this. Make a high-pass filter with 90 degrees phase shift at the signal frequency. This can be as simple as a couple of RCs and op amps. For a reasonably large frequency difference,
[simulate this circuit](/plugins/schematics?image=http%3a%2f%2fi.stack.imgur.com%2f8vvc9.png) – Schematic created using [CircuitLab](https://www.circuitlab.com/)
is the sort of thing I'm suggesting. R1, C1, and OA1 provide a high-pass filter, while R2, C2 and OA2 provide 90 degrees of phase shift. This 90 degrees can also be described as differentiation (for sinusoids, they're the same thing). Please ignore the TL081 label on OA2 - it's the default for the editor and I missed deleting it (and I'm too lazy to go back and redo the schematic). | That first schematic doesn't look right. You suppose it might be wrong? Maybe it's supposed to be:
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/EVmtS.jpg) |
20,628 | I'm not an experienced user and would like to make something complicated: I'd like to use aviary editor to edit photo's on form submit. I need a form where user's can upload their image, edit it with aviary and submit it. Aviary provides a temporary link to the new edited image, I want this edited image to not be sent to the server until the whole form is submitted. How should i go about doing this?
I had hoped to pass the url into the input file path.
How can i do it?
should be something similar to <http://freeonlinephotoeditor.org> with submit instead download
Thanks | 2014/03/25 | [
"https://expressionengine.stackexchange.com/questions/20628",
"https://expressionengine.stackexchange.com",
"https://expressionengine.stackexchange.com/users/2590/"
] | Have a look at @objectivehtml's extremely powerful [Photo Frame add-on](http://devot-ee.com/add-ons/photo-frame). There is also a [demo of it running on the front end](https://objectivehtml.com/photo-frame/demo). To get the same number of editing options, you may also need his companion [Photo Frame Button Pack](http://devot-ee.com/add-ons/photo-frame-button-pack). There are several other packs for the add-on, for things like focus, text, filters, etc. | Unless you'd like to roll your own module, try this module $25 which uses avairy: <http://devot-ee.com/add-ons/image-editor> |
24,329 | **In short:** Within the fundamental model of societal growth, does socialism *only* follow after capitalism, or is socialism philosophically capable of standing alone as a principle ideology during the consutruction of a society?
---
**Long form:**
In a hypothetical pre-society, 3-5 people of the same plot of land equipped with only the knowledge of sticks and stones, band together to mark the initiation of a society with the goal to reproduce and explore/innovate within science, geography, literature, economics, manufacturing, ect., to establish an infrastructure of societal growth that would be fundamental to the underlying success of the advanced society their progeny find themselves playing video games in. For simplicity, let's say the growth/advancement of the society followed a sigmoidal trend over 1000 years, where extreme growth was preceded and succeeded by a relative plateau:
During societal development, would centralized socialism ever be favored to secure equality of outcome for each individual, at the expense of progress (natural selection by societal contribution) and available utilities (individual cost/benefit of food, water, attention, ect.)?
Or, would capitalism, as a vehicle for 'natural selection by societal contribution', inherently be required for societal establishment up until the second plateauing of the society's growth, in which only then higher degrees of socialism could be implemented?
---
**Revised:** (at the request to narrow the scope)
*Can socialism be a principle ideology during the growth of society; or does capitalism always precede socialism?*
\*socialism def: individuals and businesses own the means of production, socialize the profits to ensure principled outcome equality of citizens.
\*societal growth def: In the context of endogenous growth theory; growth curve is positively sigmoidal in the example indicating non-sustainability of high-growth phase.
\*note: I understand my question may solicit some opinion; though I do not see any material addressing this question anywhere on the web (perhaps I'm missing it); so I do apologize as I cannot guarantee succinct factual answers despite the potential validity of the question. | 2017/09/04 | [
"https://politics.stackexchange.com/questions/24329",
"https://politics.stackexchange.com",
"https://politics.stackexchange.com/users/16689/"
] | According to some socialist and communist philosophies, a stage of capitalism may be required, at least for underdeveloped countries.
This is called [stagism](https://www.marxists.org/glossary/terms/s/t.htm#stagism) / [two-stage theory](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Two-stage_theory). Proponents are for example stalinists or maoists (or early social democrats).
The opposite idea is sometimes called [permanent revolution](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Permanent_revolution) and is supported by trotskyists.
Marx and Engels [made it clear](https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1848/communist-manifesto/preface.htm#preface-1882) that they think that there may at least be some circumstances in which a capitalist stage is not required:
>
> Now the question is: can the Russian obshchina, though greatly undermined, yet a form of primeval common ownership of land, pass directly to the higher form of Communist common ownership? Or, on the contrary, must it first pass through the same process of dissolution such as constitutes the historical evolution of the West?
>
>
> The only answer to that possible today is this: If the Russian Revolution becomes the signal for a proletarian revolution in the West, so that both complement each other, the present Russian common ownership of land may serve as the starting point for a communist development.
>
>
> | Social democracies use progressive policies to redistribute wealth and use regulation to oversee capitalism, so arguably they don't have a problem with capitalism (apart from when it causes crises of various kinds).
Communism, as Marx theorised it, is what comes after Capitalism; he didn't suppose this would happen until pretty much every nation in the world has been touched by it; one could argue that globalisation is exactly this. One of his theses was that it was driven partly by technology and partly by commodification.
Political communism is what occurred in the former Soviet Union & China, and is more like state capitalism than communism per se; in fact it's very difficult to say exactly what it is since Marx didn't say what exactly it would be. |
6,283,673 | I'm not too familiar with Amazon Mechanical Turk, but being a JavaScript/PHP developer, it occurred to me that paying for someone to click through could affect simple voting applications (i.e. Yahoo's OMG voting).
Hypothetically speaking, is there a way or method to validate against clicks from this service and block them? For the sake of the question, let's assume the voting system is using a combo of PHP, AJAX and jQuery. | 2011/06/08 | [
"https://Stackoverflow.com/questions/6283673",
"https://Stackoverflow.com",
"https://Stackoverflow.com/users/536753/"
] | Nothing comes to mind, as the people doing the clicking are just that. Actual People. You have no programmatic way of differentiating one actual person behind a computer from another person who is getting paid to do this.
At least, not to my knowledge. To a web server, they both look the same. You can't rely on a referrer or... anything. It's just a person mindlessly clicking.
I suppose if your application had multiple things to vote on, you could keep track of votes by IP/session/whatever, and then do a check to make sure you aren't getting an obscene amount from 1 place, but then the people posting listings would just change how many clicks they paid for...
I think you're just screwed. | you can secure ur polls with simple lines.
1. User can only vote if he stays on
page more than 20sec. (javascript)
2. Cookie save that he saved.
3. Ip saved in file/mysql to block him
from re voting
that's is usually enough to block all spammers away ! or not ? |
5,321,434 | Is there an easy way to scrape Google and write the text (just the text) of the top N (say, 1000) .html (or whatever) documents for a given search?
As an example, imagine searching for the phrase "big bad wolf" and downloading just the text from the top 1000 hits -- i.e., actually downloading the text from those 1000 web pages (but just those pages, not the entire site).
I'm assuming this would use the urllib2 library? I use Python 3.1 if that helps. | 2011/03/16 | [
"https://Stackoverflow.com/questions/5321434",
"https://Stackoverflow.com",
"https://Stackoverflow.com/users/661889/"
] | The official way to get results from Google programmatically is to use [Google's Custom Search API](http://code.google.com/apis/customsearch/v1/overview.html). As [icktoofay](https://stackoverflow.com/users/200291/icktoofay) comments, other approaches (such as directly scraping the results or using the [xgoogle](http://www.catonmat.net/blog/python-library-for-google-search/) module) break [Google's terms of service](http://www.google.co.uk/accounts/TOS). Because of that, you might want to consider using the API from another search engine, such as the [Bing API](http://www.bing.com/developers) or [Yahoo!'s service](http://developer.yahoo.com/search/). | Check out [BeautifulSoup](http://www.crummy.com/software/BeautifulSoup/) for scraping the content out of web pages. It is supposed to be very tolerant of broken web pages which will help because not all results are well formed. So you should be able to:
* Request <http://www.google.ca/search?q=QUERY_HERE>
* Extract and follow result links using BeautifulSoup (It appears as though class="r" for result links)
* Extract text from result pages using BeautifulSoup |
5,321,434 | Is there an easy way to scrape Google and write the text (just the text) of the top N (say, 1000) .html (or whatever) documents for a given search?
As an example, imagine searching for the phrase "big bad wolf" and downloading just the text from the top 1000 hits -- i.e., actually downloading the text from those 1000 web pages (but just those pages, not the entire site).
I'm assuming this would use the urllib2 library? I use Python 3.1 if that helps. | 2011/03/16 | [
"https://Stackoverflow.com/questions/5321434",
"https://Stackoverflow.com",
"https://Stackoverflow.com/users/661889/"
] | The official way to get results from Google programmatically is to use [Google's Custom Search API](http://code.google.com/apis/customsearch/v1/overview.html). As [icktoofay](https://stackoverflow.com/users/200291/icktoofay) comments, other approaches (such as directly scraping the results or using the [xgoogle](http://www.catonmat.net/blog/python-library-for-google-search/) module) break [Google's terms of service](http://www.google.co.uk/accounts/TOS). Because of that, you might want to consider using the API from another search engine, such as the [Bing API](http://www.bing.com/developers) or [Yahoo!'s service](http://developer.yahoo.com/search/). | As mentioned, scraping Google violates their TOS. That said, that's probably not the answer you're looking for.
There's a PHP script available that does a perfect job of scraping Google: <http://google-scraper.squabbel.com/> Just give it a keyword, # of results you want, and it'll return all the results for you. Just parse for the URLs returned, use urllib, or curl to extract the HTML source, and you're done.
You also really shouldn't attempt to scrape Google unless you got more than 100 proxy servers though. They'll easily ban your IP temporarily after a few attempts. |
62,513 | Can SQL Server engine express edition be installed on OS X? I use a MacBook at home and would like to use it as a testing/learning platform for SQL Server. | 2014/04/03 | [
"https://dba.stackexchange.com/questions/62513",
"https://dba.stackexchange.com",
"https://dba.stackexchange.com/users/-1/"
] | No, SQL Server will not run on macOS (it can run on Apple hardware, if you use Boot Camp and boot natively to Windows). Otherwise you will need to install virtualization software of some sort, where you install Windows in a VM, and install SQL Server there - I use [Parallels Desktop](http://www.parallels.com/products/desktop/), but there is also [VMWare Fusion](http://www.vmware.com/products/fusion) and [Oracle VirtualBox](http://www.virtualbox.org).
*(I haven't tested the latter recently, but last time I tried, it was a disaster - gets great reviews as a VM host on Windows, but not very stable on the Mac.)*
You can also, of course, RDP to other machines, use [SSMS equivalent clients](https://stackoverflow.com/questions/3452/sql-client-for-mac-os-x-that-works-with-ms-sql-server) to connect to another SQL Server running on Windows elsewhere, or install a different platform on the Mac ([such as PostgreSQL](http://www.postgresql.org/download/macosx/)). There is also [an IDE from JetBrains called DataGrip](https://www.jetbrains.com/datagrip/) and I'm sure others I don't know about.
With SQL Server 2017, you can run [SQL Server on Linux](https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/sql-server/sql-server-vnext-including-Linux), and can even host your own docker container without using Windows at all (I am doing this on my Macs right now - [and I wrote about it here](https://www.sentryone.com/blog/aaronbertrand/vs-code-mac-sql-linux-docker)).
[VS Code](https://code.visualstudio.com/download), [Visual Studio](https://www.visualstudio.com/vs/visual-studio-mac/), and [Azure Data Studio](https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/sql/azure-data-studio/download-azure-data-studio) now run natively on the Mac, so that can work for you too in some scenarios. It all depends on whether you expect SQL Server to actually *run* on macOS, or if you just want to do most of your work there. | **EDIT**
Recently SQL Server was released for linux. This makes using Docker a viable solution to "running sql server on mac". You can find some details on how to do this here: <https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/sql/linux/sql-server-linux-setup-docker>.
**Old answer**
If you have a mac and do not want to run a virtual machine, there are a few options.
1. You can grab a [Azure trial](http://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/) and setup an SQL Server instance. Azure also provides a web based query interface.
2. You could also setup a [Amazon RDS](http://aws.amazon.com/rds/sqlserver/) free account and create an SQL Server instance.
If you need an MSSQL database client which runs on OS X (similar to SSMS) there are a few available.
* [SQLPro for MSSQL](http://macsqlclient.com) (also available on the [mac app store](https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/sqlpro-for-mssql-database/id828466809?mt=12)) [Note: I am the developer of this app].
* [RazorSQL](http://razorsql.com/)
* [Navicat for MSSQL](http://www.navicat.com/products/navicat-for-sqlserver)
* [TablePlus](https://tableplus.io/)
You can find a review of multiple clients [here](http://bentspine.com/microsoft-sql-server-and-osx/). |
62,513 | Can SQL Server engine express edition be installed on OS X? I use a MacBook at home and would like to use it as a testing/learning platform for SQL Server. | 2014/04/03 | [
"https://dba.stackexchange.com/questions/62513",
"https://dba.stackexchange.com",
"https://dba.stackexchange.com/users/-1/"
] | No, SQL Server will not run on macOS (it can run on Apple hardware, if you use Boot Camp and boot natively to Windows). Otherwise you will need to install virtualization software of some sort, where you install Windows in a VM, and install SQL Server there - I use [Parallels Desktop](http://www.parallels.com/products/desktop/), but there is also [VMWare Fusion](http://www.vmware.com/products/fusion) and [Oracle VirtualBox](http://www.virtualbox.org).
*(I haven't tested the latter recently, but last time I tried, it was a disaster - gets great reviews as a VM host on Windows, but not very stable on the Mac.)*
You can also, of course, RDP to other machines, use [SSMS equivalent clients](https://stackoverflow.com/questions/3452/sql-client-for-mac-os-x-that-works-with-ms-sql-server) to connect to another SQL Server running on Windows elsewhere, or install a different platform on the Mac ([such as PostgreSQL](http://www.postgresql.org/download/macosx/)). There is also [an IDE from JetBrains called DataGrip](https://www.jetbrains.com/datagrip/) and I'm sure others I don't know about.
With SQL Server 2017, you can run [SQL Server on Linux](https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/sql-server/sql-server-vnext-including-Linux), and can even host your own docker container without using Windows at all (I am doing this on my Macs right now - [and I wrote about it here](https://www.sentryone.com/blog/aaronbertrand/vs-code-mac-sql-linux-docker)).
[VS Code](https://code.visualstudio.com/download), [Visual Studio](https://www.visualstudio.com/vs/visual-studio-mac/), and [Azure Data Studio](https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/sql/azure-data-studio/download-azure-data-studio) now run natively on the Mac, so that can work for you too in some scenarios. It all depends on whether you expect SQL Server to actually *run* on macOS, or if you just want to do most of your work there. | To run SQL on mac, we can run this using docker. Please follow the link below.
[Running SQL on mac using docker.](https://medium.com/@reverentgeek/sql-server-running-on-a-mac-3efafda48861) |
62,513 | Can SQL Server engine express edition be installed on OS X? I use a MacBook at home and would like to use it as a testing/learning platform for SQL Server. | 2014/04/03 | [
"https://dba.stackexchange.com/questions/62513",
"https://dba.stackexchange.com",
"https://dba.stackexchange.com/users/-1/"
] | No, SQL Server will not run on macOS (it can run on Apple hardware, if you use Boot Camp and boot natively to Windows). Otherwise you will need to install virtualization software of some sort, where you install Windows in a VM, and install SQL Server there - I use [Parallels Desktop](http://www.parallels.com/products/desktop/), but there is also [VMWare Fusion](http://www.vmware.com/products/fusion) and [Oracle VirtualBox](http://www.virtualbox.org).
*(I haven't tested the latter recently, but last time I tried, it was a disaster - gets great reviews as a VM host on Windows, but not very stable on the Mac.)*
You can also, of course, RDP to other machines, use [SSMS equivalent clients](https://stackoverflow.com/questions/3452/sql-client-for-mac-os-x-that-works-with-ms-sql-server) to connect to another SQL Server running on Windows elsewhere, or install a different platform on the Mac ([such as PostgreSQL](http://www.postgresql.org/download/macosx/)). There is also [an IDE from JetBrains called DataGrip](https://www.jetbrains.com/datagrip/) and I'm sure others I don't know about.
With SQL Server 2017, you can run [SQL Server on Linux](https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/sql-server/sql-server-vnext-including-Linux), and can even host your own docker container without using Windows at all (I am doing this on my Macs right now - [and I wrote about it here](https://www.sentryone.com/blog/aaronbertrand/vs-code-mac-sql-linux-docker)).
[VS Code](https://code.visualstudio.com/download), [Visual Studio](https://www.visualstudio.com/vs/visual-studio-mac/), and [Azure Data Studio](https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/sql/azure-data-studio/download-azure-data-studio) now run natively on the Mac, so that can work for you too in some scenarios. It all depends on whether you expect SQL Server to actually *run* on macOS, or if you just want to do most of your work there. | The command line tools are also available for Mac. (In case if it helps)
<https://blogs.technet.microsoft.com/dataplatforminsider/2017/04/03/sql-server-command-line-tools-for-mac-preview-now-available/> |
62,513 | Can SQL Server engine express edition be installed on OS X? I use a MacBook at home and would like to use it as a testing/learning platform for SQL Server. | 2014/04/03 | [
"https://dba.stackexchange.com/questions/62513",
"https://dba.stackexchange.com",
"https://dba.stackexchange.com/users/-1/"
] | **EDIT**
Recently SQL Server was released for linux. This makes using Docker a viable solution to "running sql server on mac". You can find some details on how to do this here: <https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/sql/linux/sql-server-linux-setup-docker>.
**Old answer**
If you have a mac and do not want to run a virtual machine, there are a few options.
1. You can grab a [Azure trial](http://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/) and setup an SQL Server instance. Azure also provides a web based query interface.
2. You could also setup a [Amazon RDS](http://aws.amazon.com/rds/sqlserver/) free account and create an SQL Server instance.
If you need an MSSQL database client which runs on OS X (similar to SSMS) there are a few available.
* [SQLPro for MSSQL](http://macsqlclient.com) (also available on the [mac app store](https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/sqlpro-for-mssql-database/id828466809?mt=12)) [Note: I am the developer of this app].
* [RazorSQL](http://razorsql.com/)
* [Navicat for MSSQL](http://www.navicat.com/products/navicat-for-sqlserver)
* [TablePlus](https://tableplus.io/)
You can find a review of multiple clients [here](http://bentspine.com/microsoft-sql-server-and-osx/). | To run SQL on mac, we can run this using docker. Please follow the link below.
[Running SQL on mac using docker.](https://medium.com/@reverentgeek/sql-server-running-on-a-mac-3efafda48861) |
62,513 | Can SQL Server engine express edition be installed on OS X? I use a MacBook at home and would like to use it as a testing/learning platform for SQL Server. | 2014/04/03 | [
"https://dba.stackexchange.com/questions/62513",
"https://dba.stackexchange.com",
"https://dba.stackexchange.com/users/-1/"
] | **EDIT**
Recently SQL Server was released for linux. This makes using Docker a viable solution to "running sql server on mac". You can find some details on how to do this here: <https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/sql/linux/sql-server-linux-setup-docker>.
**Old answer**
If you have a mac and do not want to run a virtual machine, there are a few options.
1. You can grab a [Azure trial](http://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/) and setup an SQL Server instance. Azure also provides a web based query interface.
2. You could also setup a [Amazon RDS](http://aws.amazon.com/rds/sqlserver/) free account and create an SQL Server instance.
If you need an MSSQL database client which runs on OS X (similar to SSMS) there are a few available.
* [SQLPro for MSSQL](http://macsqlclient.com) (also available on the [mac app store](https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/sqlpro-for-mssql-database/id828466809?mt=12)) [Note: I am the developer of this app].
* [RazorSQL](http://razorsql.com/)
* [Navicat for MSSQL](http://www.navicat.com/products/navicat-for-sqlserver)
* [TablePlus](https://tableplus.io/)
You can find a review of multiple clients [here](http://bentspine.com/microsoft-sql-server-and-osx/). | The command line tools are also available for Mac. (In case if it helps)
<https://blogs.technet.microsoft.com/dataplatforminsider/2017/04/03/sql-server-command-line-tools-for-mac-preview-now-available/> |
62,513 | Can SQL Server engine express edition be installed on OS X? I use a MacBook at home and would like to use it as a testing/learning platform for SQL Server. | 2014/04/03 | [
"https://dba.stackexchange.com/questions/62513",
"https://dba.stackexchange.com",
"https://dba.stackexchange.com/users/-1/"
] | The command line tools are also available for Mac. (In case if it helps)
<https://blogs.technet.microsoft.com/dataplatforminsider/2017/04/03/sql-server-command-line-tools-for-mac-preview-now-available/> | To run SQL on mac, we can run this using docker. Please follow the link below.
[Running SQL on mac using docker.](https://medium.com/@reverentgeek/sql-server-running-on-a-mac-3efafda48861) |
3,109 | I want to ask a question regarding who currently has the rights to publish a popular game line that's changed hands a few times. During my due-diligence searching of past questions, however, I came across this question:
[Who holds the license for Cadillacs & Dinosaurs?](https://rpg.stackexchange.com/questions/9739/who-holds-the-license-for-cadillacs-dinosaurs)
which was marked as off-topic.
Was that question was off-topic because it was asking who owned the rights to a licensed property that was not itself a tabletop RPG, or are all questions regarding ownership of IP off topic, even if I'm asking about publishing rights for an RPG? | 2013/08/28 | [
"https://rpg.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/3109",
"https://rpg.meta.stackexchange.com",
"https://rpg.meta.stackexchange.com/users/4249/"
] | I'd have to say that asking who has the publication rights to a *specific game* should be on topic.
I'm pretty sure there are some other questions here that have come and gotten pretty good answers that are along a similar line.
I think that yes, it's probably quite different when the question is about a *non-rpg* license issue. For instance asking who has the current star wars license (if there is not an active game) is probably not on topic. But asking who has the publication license for D&D would be.
However, make sure that in your due diligence you take a peek at wikipedia or make a quick google search and make sure the answer isn't glaringly obvious. | As clearly stated in its comments, that previous question was closed because it was a crosspost from SF&F that was already answered there, not because it was off topic.
A question to who owns publishing rights to a given RPG is on topic here, though frequently not really answerable without lawyers involved. |
7,451 | In my job I have to test [Markdown documents](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Markdown). This includes looking for bugs related to:
* The **procedure** described in the document
* **Typos**, grammar mistakes, etc.
* The **HTML version** of the document
Right now, what we do to log bugs is this:
1. If a bug is a found, I **write a comment in the document**. I don't like this because:
* It is not clear where the bug is (is the bug in the word or paragraph that is before or after the comment?)
* I can actually break the document if I don't write the comment correctly (e.g. by forgetting the closing `-->`)
2. Once I am done testing, I use a tool that looks for the comments I wrote, and I paste them into a **new issue in our bugtracker**. I don't like this because:
* Instead of creating a new issue per bug, I create one issue per document. This makes it hard for me to keep track of what bugs were fixed and what bugs were not fixed.
* It may be hard for the devs to understand the bugs (imagine reading something like this:
>
> Line 8: SEVERITY 3 - PROCEDURE - Consider rewriting the above paragraph for clarity
>
>
>
Is it immediately clear what the bug is? The dev now has to open the file that I edited and look for each and every one of the bugs. How tedious is that?
3. In order to **get statistics about the bugs found** (type, severity, etc.), we use another tool that creates an Excel spreadsheet, and from there I have to create the graphs of statistics. I don't like this because:
* We have to use two tools,
* I have to create the graphs manually.
This whole procedure is too complicated and hinders my performance.
I know I can fix (2) and (3) by combining both tools into one, and automating the creation of graphs.
But **how can I fix (1)?**
NOTE: this question is also applicable to other types of documents (MS Word, most importantly). Feel free to suggest ways of reporting bugs in these formats. | 2014/01/03 | [
"https://sqa.stackexchange.com/questions/7451",
"https://sqa.stackexchange.com",
"https://sqa.stackexchange.com/users/6037/"
] | Screenshots. Take a screenshot of the document, edit the image to highlight the problem area, and add it as an attachment to your bug report along with the markdown document (unedited).
 | I would suggest you to use following tool:
Ducklink Screen Capture.
<http://www.ducklink.com/>
You'll find it very useful as it provides the friendly capture and editor. |
166,216 | I'm trying to define a character for a short story I'm writing, but I'm having a hard time defining him.
He has the ability to find everything.
What you do call someone who can find anything/everything? | 2014/04/25 | [
"https://english.stackexchange.com/questions/166216",
"https://english.stackexchange.com",
"https://english.stackexchange.com/users/58773/"
] | There's this film, a classic, starring Steve McQueen and Richard Attenborough, set during the second World War at an Air Force Prisoner of War camp in Germany. The film, if you haven't guessed by now, is called *The Great Escape*, based on real-life events that happened in [Stalag Luft III](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stalag_Luft_III), Sagan, once a German town, 100 miles south-east of Berlin.
In the film there is a Flight Lieutenant pilot called Robert Hendley, an American in the RAF, whose nickname is "**the scrounger**"
>
> **who finds what the others need, from a camera to clothes and identity
> cards**
>
>
>
Interestingly, the actor who portrayed this role, the gorgeous-looking James Garner, had been a soldier in the Korean war and he too had been a scrounger during that time. Unfortunately, today the term has very negative connotations especially in BrEng where it is synonymous with *moocher*, *sponger* and a *freeloader* but according to *[War Slang](http://archive.org/stream/War_Slang/War_Slang_djvu.txt). American Fighting Words and Phrases Since the Civil War* by Paul Dickson, its meaning was *slightly* more noble.
>
> Scrounge. To appropriate; to misappropriate. *In Behind the Barrage*,
> published shortly after the war, British writer G. Goodchild
> discusses the term:
>
>
> In the category of "odd jobs" came "scrounging." "Scrounging" is
> eloquent armyese; it covers pilfering, commandeering, "pinching,"
> and many other familiar terms. You may scrounge for rations, kit,
> pay, or leave. Signalers are experts at it, and they usually
> scrounge for wire. Scrounging for wire is legitimized by the War
> Office, and called by the gentler name of "*[salving](http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/american_english/salve?q=salving#salve-2)*."
>
>
>
and further on
>
> scrounger. One adept at acquiring food and other goods.
>
>
>
Oxford Dictionaries says *[scrounger](http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/american_english/scrounger)* in AmEng is
>
> A cleverly resourceful person who finds and procures items for a
> specific purpose
>
>
>
So, it kinda fits if the character is American or is given the nickname of Hendly; however, the author would have to give a brief justification for this name. | [Trouvaille](http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?allowed_in_frame=0&search=trouver&searchmode=none): it means a lucky find or discovery |
166,216 | I'm trying to define a character for a short story I'm writing, but I'm having a hard time defining him.
He has the ability to find everything.
What you do call someone who can find anything/everything? | 2014/04/25 | [
"https://english.stackexchange.com/questions/166216",
"https://english.stackexchange.com",
"https://english.stackexchange.com/users/58773/"
] | There's this film, a classic, starring Steve McQueen and Richard Attenborough, set during the second World War at an Air Force Prisoner of War camp in Germany. The film, if you haven't guessed by now, is called *The Great Escape*, based on real-life events that happened in [Stalag Luft III](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stalag_Luft_III), Sagan, once a German town, 100 miles south-east of Berlin.
In the film there is a Flight Lieutenant pilot called Robert Hendley, an American in the RAF, whose nickname is "**the scrounger**"
>
> **who finds what the others need, from a camera to clothes and identity
> cards**
>
>
>
Interestingly, the actor who portrayed this role, the gorgeous-looking James Garner, had been a soldier in the Korean war and he too had been a scrounger during that time. Unfortunately, today the term has very negative connotations especially in BrEng where it is synonymous with *moocher*, *sponger* and a *freeloader* but according to *[War Slang](http://archive.org/stream/War_Slang/War_Slang_djvu.txt). American Fighting Words and Phrases Since the Civil War* by Paul Dickson, its meaning was *slightly* more noble.
>
> Scrounge. To appropriate; to misappropriate. *In Behind the Barrage*,
> published shortly after the war, British writer G. Goodchild
> discusses the term:
>
>
> In the category of "odd jobs" came "scrounging." "Scrounging" is
> eloquent armyese; it covers pilfering, commandeering, "pinching,"
> and many other familiar terms. You may scrounge for rations, kit,
> pay, or leave. Signalers are experts at it, and they usually
> scrounge for wire. Scrounging for wire is legitimized by the War
> Office, and called by the gentler name of "*[salving](http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/american_english/salve?q=salving#salve-2)*."
>
>
>
and further on
>
> scrounger. One adept at acquiring food and other goods.
>
>
>
Oxford Dictionaries says *[scrounger](http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/american_english/scrounger)* in AmEng is
>
> A cleverly resourceful person who finds and procures items for a
> specific purpose
>
>
>
So, it kinda fits if the character is American or is given the nickname of Hendly; however, the author would have to give a brief justification for this name. | If they're the first to find things:
>
> [pathfinder](http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/pathfinder) - a person or group that is the first to do something
> and that makes it possible for others to do the same thing
>
>
>
If their ability to find things is divine or they have foresight, they might be a:
>
> [diviner](http://www.vocabulary.com/dictionary/diviner) - someone who claims to discover hidden knowledge with
> the aid of supernatural powers
>
>
> or a
>
>
> [seer](http://www.vocabulary.com/dictionary/seer) - a person with unusual powers of foresight
>
>
>
If they are always in search of finding things, they may be a:
>
> [fortune-hunter](http://www.collinsdictionary.com/dictionary/english/fortune-hunter) - a person who seeks to secure a fortune
>
>
>
If they just have good luck, they may have a lot of:
>
> [serendipity](http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/serendipity) - luck that takes the form of finding valuable or
> pleasant things that are not looked for
>
>
> |
10,857 | Please bear with me: I am still a learner in this forum.
In a [question such as this](https://english.stackexchange.com/questions/413124/is-this-clause-the-passive-or-present-perfect/%20%22question%20such%20as%20this,), where a correct answer (well, one I would have given) has been provided and the question seems interesting, is it ok to answer and expound on the comment, giving the person who commented credit of course. Or do people just comment at times because there is a quick answer to the question and they don't want to be downvoted? | 2017/10/08 | [
"https://english.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/10857",
"https://english.meta.stackexchange.com",
"https://english.meta.stackexchange.com/users/258304/"
] | People leave partial answers in comments for various reasons. Regardless, if you see useful information or partial answers in the comments, you can use that to write a detailed answer yourself.
It'd be nice to give credit where it's due. | Please bear with me: why do you care? :-) If you have information that might help someone who posted a question and got a mediocre or incomplete response, then post your advice. If someone posted anything you think is wrong, then voice it. If anyone downvotes you, who cares? He or she should have the courtesy to at least explain why. If not, well... that just means that he/she has no leg to stand on, or is just lazy. |
10,857 | Please bear with me: I am still a learner in this forum.
In a [question such as this](https://english.stackexchange.com/questions/413124/is-this-clause-the-passive-or-present-perfect/%20%22question%20such%20as%20this,), where a correct answer (well, one I would have given) has been provided and the question seems interesting, is it ok to answer and expound on the comment, giving the person who commented credit of course. Or do people just comment at times because there is a quick answer to the question and they don't want to be downvoted? | 2017/10/08 | [
"https://english.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/10857",
"https://english.meta.stackexchange.com",
"https://english.meta.stackexchange.com/users/258304/"
] | I will not speak for others but some of why people do it is addressed in [Why Do Some People Answer in Comments](https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/4217/why-do-some-people-answer-in-comments) on the main Meta Stack Exchange (S.E.) Website. The matter is also addressed in a similar topic here on our local Meta in [Why Are Answers Being Posted in the Comments on the Question.](https://english.meta.stackexchange.com/q/2653/124936)
As for the the matter regarding what to do has already been addressed on the main Meta S.E. website a few times times before. The canonical question there is [What should be done with questions that have been self-resolved as a comment instead of an answer?](https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/117251/what-should-be-done-with-questions-that-have-been-self-resolved-as-a-comment-ins) The top rated answer there, by user [Iain](https://meta.stackexchange.com/users/147520/iain) reads as follows:
>
> We discussed this on [meta.serverfault](http://meta.serverfault.com/q/1886/9517) a short while ago and decided that you should **[Steal comments that answer the question and post them as an answer.](http://meta.serverfault.com/a/1931/9517)** You can always tick the Community Wiki box if you're not comfortable rep whoring.
>
>
>
[The top rated answers on a meta post are supposed to set the policy](https://english.stackexchange.com/help/whats-meta), provided that something else doesn't superscede it. However the secondary answer raises the important point that it is not an excuse for plagiarism, so if you are directly quoting the comment, [then you should follow our rules for referencing material written by others](https://english.stackexchange.com/help/referencing). Even though it may seem as if the original source should be obvious, it is still important since comments can become hidden if enough other comments are made, or disappear for no reason whatsoever.
You may also want to consider flagging the comment for deletion, if it really is an answer, because many website mechanisms are heavily predicated upon the premise that comments and answers serving a different scope, [which is defined by our commentary guidelines](https://english.stackexchange.com/help/privileges/comment). To closely paraphrase the relevant portions for your convenience:
---
Comments are for clarification, constructive criticism and minor or transient information, like a related link to a related question. They are not for answering the question, or providing an alternate solution to an existing answer, and an actual answer should be posted instead.
---
If you flag a *good* comment for deletion, you may want to post it as an answer first, because otherwise there is no retrieving it, if it is. I suggest considering using the community wiki tickbox if you post just the comment, so that others may expand upon it, if it does not suffice to stand as an answer on its own merits. | People leave partial answers in comments for various reasons. Regardless, if you see useful information or partial answers in the comments, you can use that to write a detailed answer yourself.
It'd be nice to give credit where it's due. |
10,857 | Please bear with me: I am still a learner in this forum.
In a [question such as this](https://english.stackexchange.com/questions/413124/is-this-clause-the-passive-or-present-perfect/%20%22question%20such%20as%20this,), where a correct answer (well, one I would have given) has been provided and the question seems interesting, is it ok to answer and expound on the comment, giving the person who commented credit of course. Or do people just comment at times because there is a quick answer to the question and they don't want to be downvoted? | 2017/10/08 | [
"https://english.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/10857",
"https://english.meta.stackexchange.com",
"https://english.meta.stackexchange.com/users/258304/"
] | I will not speak for others but some of why people do it is addressed in [Why Do Some People Answer in Comments](https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/4217/why-do-some-people-answer-in-comments) on the main Meta Stack Exchange (S.E.) Website. The matter is also addressed in a similar topic here on our local Meta in [Why Are Answers Being Posted in the Comments on the Question.](https://english.meta.stackexchange.com/q/2653/124936)
As for the the matter regarding what to do has already been addressed on the main Meta S.E. website a few times times before. The canonical question there is [What should be done with questions that have been self-resolved as a comment instead of an answer?](https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/117251/what-should-be-done-with-questions-that-have-been-self-resolved-as-a-comment-ins) The top rated answer there, by user [Iain](https://meta.stackexchange.com/users/147520/iain) reads as follows:
>
> We discussed this on [meta.serverfault](http://meta.serverfault.com/q/1886/9517) a short while ago and decided that you should **[Steal comments that answer the question and post them as an answer.](http://meta.serverfault.com/a/1931/9517)** You can always tick the Community Wiki box if you're not comfortable rep whoring.
>
>
>
[The top rated answers on a meta post are supposed to set the policy](https://english.stackexchange.com/help/whats-meta), provided that something else doesn't superscede it. However the secondary answer raises the important point that it is not an excuse for plagiarism, so if you are directly quoting the comment, [then you should follow our rules for referencing material written by others](https://english.stackexchange.com/help/referencing). Even though it may seem as if the original source should be obvious, it is still important since comments can become hidden if enough other comments are made, or disappear for no reason whatsoever.
You may also want to consider flagging the comment for deletion, if it really is an answer, because many website mechanisms are heavily predicated upon the premise that comments and answers serving a different scope, [which is defined by our commentary guidelines](https://english.stackexchange.com/help/privileges/comment). To closely paraphrase the relevant portions for your convenience:
---
Comments are for clarification, constructive criticism and minor or transient information, like a related link to a related question. They are not for answering the question, or providing an alternate solution to an existing answer, and an actual answer should be posted instead.
---
If you flag a *good* comment for deletion, you may want to post it as an answer first, because otherwise there is no retrieving it, if it is. I suggest considering using the community wiki tickbox if you post just the comment, so that others may expand upon it, if it does not suffice to stand as an answer on its own merits. | Please bear with me: why do you care? :-) If you have information that might help someone who posted a question and got a mediocre or incomplete response, then post your advice. If someone posted anything you think is wrong, then voice it. If anyone downvotes you, who cares? He or she should have the courtesy to at least explain why. If not, well... that just means that he/she has no leg to stand on, or is just lazy. |
11,885,763 | I have a shopify test app (written in rails) here:
<http://csiga-second-shopify.herokuapp.com/>
How can I make a very easy app, that is includable by a store owner.
I'd like to do it similar to AddThis app.
( <http://www.addthis.com/shopify/preferences#.UCPF28ge6CU> )
How to connect {% include 'foo' %} function to my deployed app? | 2012/08/09 | [
"https://Stackoverflow.com/questions/11885763",
"https://Stackoverflow.com",
"https://Stackoverflow.com/users/590414/"
] | If you want to add an Asset to a Shop when your App is installed, you have to first have the merchant approve your App for adding assets to the shop. Second, you have to install your asset, in this case 'foo.liquid'. Once it is an Asset in the shop, you could have the theme reference the asset, using include.
Note that this is a little tricky since when the merchant uninstalls the App, any assets you installed are not automatically removed. That could be considered litter. | Where you want to add {% include 'foo' %} in your deployed app??
And AddThis link does nothing but just redirects to the login page of Shopify. If you want to publish your app first built it then get it tested on the Shopify Test Commpunity present on google groups and then send it for publishing. After 15 days they will reply with the message saying your app has been published.
You cannot add with current APIs what Shopify provides any liquid code into their page. You can add Javascripts which can even act as stylesheets to it. |
58,351 | I just tried to replace my chain for the first time - Shimano, 9-speed, labeled as CN-GH53. After I inserted the special pin, the joint is somewhat more stiff compared to the other ones. On the insertion side, it seems to protrude from the plate about as much as the regular pins (so almost not at all), and on the other side, where the guiding part of the pin was, it's protruding by about 0.5 mm.
Is this normal, and will it get better once lube penetrates the link, or did I mess something up? I did notice that before I pushed it in enough to be aligned with the regular pins on the one side, the joint couldn't move at all and it got better once I got it further, but I don't want to push it in too far by accident. | 2018/12/02 | [
"https://bicycles.stackexchange.com/questions/58351",
"https://bicycles.stackexchange.com",
"https://bicycles.stackexchange.com/users/40435/"
] | It happened to me several times and the most reliable way to fix it was to actually push the pin back a bit, i.e. use the breaker tool from the opposite side engaging the chain link on the other bits of the breaker tool, see the picture:
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/azLgi.png)
**Red** is the chain breaking tool
**Black** are the chain parts
**Blue** is the pin you are driving in
First you drive the pin (usually from the outside towards the frame) just to see it flush like the other pins on the frame side (middle figure). Since the whole link was resting against the massive part of the breaking tool, it gets somewhat compressed (towards the frame).
You then reposition the chain breaker tool so the chain link rests on the tiny leaves of the breaker tool (see the right-most figure) and drive the pin further relieving the link.
I've found a youtube video titled [Bike Assembly and Repair - Chain Breaker Tool](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=93CPI9_TstA) that shows the whole process as I've described it above. | It happens quite often, and can normally be fixed by flexing the chain (perpendicular to the direction it doesn't normally bend easily, i.e. left-right as you look down from a riding position). The easiest way I've found to do this is to position the stiff link on the lower (return) run of chain, where it's slack and grip the chain in both fists with your thumbs meeting over the stiff link. Then bend towards/away from yourself a few times. this should be enough, if everything is in the right place |
63 | I have seen a few questions about strategy games come up in the close queue.
* [What is the optimal first move in tic-tac-toe?](https://puzzling.stackexchange.com/questions/30)
* [What's the optimal strategy in Gomoku / Five in a row?](https://puzzling.stackexchange.com/questions/83)
There are other examples as well.
Many of these like tic-tac-toe or [Chess](https://puzzling.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/chess) can be played with yourself as your own opponent.
Is any strategy games that can be played with two or more players automacally off topic? If not what are the guidelines? | 2014/05/15 | [
"https://puzzling.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/63",
"https://puzzling.meta.stackexchange.com",
"https://puzzling.meta.stackexchange.com/users/126/"
] | I would argue that a two person game is a puzzle in the same way that a brain teaser is.
Is the recent (2014) Google Code Jam, one of the qualifying [problems](https://code.google.com/codejam/contest/2974486/dashboard#s=p3) was a about a two person game which could be coded and solved.
Finding patterns and strategies is as much of a puzzle as the Tower of Hanoi (from a programming perspective). | I believe these posts should be off-topic. They're clearly close in that they involve logic, but they're also clearly not puzzles. Furthermore, there's overlap with [boardgames.SE](http://boardgames.stackexchange.com), e.g. [a Tic Tac Toe question](https://boardgames.stackexchange.com/questions/8310/first-modern-naughts-and-crosses-tic-tac-toe).
I'd say, general questions about games should be off-topic, as should questions about playing games. Discussion about game-based puzzles (e.g., Chess retrograde analysis) would be fine. |
63 | I have seen a few questions about strategy games come up in the close queue.
* [What is the optimal first move in tic-tac-toe?](https://puzzling.stackexchange.com/questions/30)
* [What's the optimal strategy in Gomoku / Five in a row?](https://puzzling.stackexchange.com/questions/83)
There are other examples as well.
Many of these like tic-tac-toe or [Chess](https://puzzling.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/chess) can be played with yourself as your own opponent.
Is any strategy games that can be played with two or more players automacally off topic? If not what are the guidelines? | 2014/05/15 | [
"https://puzzling.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/63",
"https://puzzling.meta.stackexchange.com",
"https://puzzling.meta.stackexchange.com/users/126/"
] | I would argue that a two person game is a puzzle in the same way that a brain teaser is.
Is the recent (2014) Google Code Jam, one of the qualifying [problems](https://code.google.com/codejam/contest/2974486/dashboard#s=p3) was a about a two person game which could be coded and solved.
Finding patterns and strategies is as much of a puzzle as the Tower of Hanoi (from a programming perspective). | I would suggest that two-person games may be on-topic if, in any situation mentioned by the puzzle, there will be some procedure by which moves can be *unambiguously* categorized as either "best" or "inferior"; there may be multiple equally-good "best" moves, and there might be many categories of "inferior" moves, but it must be possible to prove that a particular move is "best" [other moves may be just as good, but none qualitatively better].
I think the biggest difficulty with two-person games is that some question/answer pairs will be like
* Q: Is there a known winning strategy for game X?
* A: Sure. If a player opens with Q, then on each turn thereafter does R, victory is guaranteed.
which would be an informative Q/A pair and which--if the strategy was not obvious until demonstrated, but would be clear and understandable once it was explained--could be a good fit for a puzzle site, but others would be more like:
* Q: Is there a winning strategy for game X?
* A: As yet there is not. The second player cannot have an advantage, and no human or computer has ever beaten program Y, even when it plays second (it always manages at least a draw), but it has not yet been proven that no winning strategy exists for the first player.
or
* Q: Is there a winning strategy for game X?
* A: Computer searching has shown that the first player can always win with perfect play, but there are many situations where the proper move is far from clear. It does not appear likely that there is any simple "human-understandable" perfect strategy for the game.
While the first answer would be a good fit for the site (finding the strategy could be a good puzzle in and of itself), the latter two would suggest that the search for a perfect strategy would be more of a research project than a "puzzle". Unfortunately, I don't know any means by which someone could judge whether the answer would be a good fit for the site without knowing what the answer *was*; if the answer can't readily be found elsewhere, that would mean that one couldn't know whether the question would be a good fit before asking it. |
63 | I have seen a few questions about strategy games come up in the close queue.
* [What is the optimal first move in tic-tac-toe?](https://puzzling.stackexchange.com/questions/30)
* [What's the optimal strategy in Gomoku / Five in a row?](https://puzzling.stackexchange.com/questions/83)
There are other examples as well.
Many of these like tic-tac-toe or [Chess](https://puzzling.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/chess) can be played with yourself as your own opponent.
Is any strategy games that can be played with two or more players automacally off topic? If not what are the guidelines? | 2014/05/15 | [
"https://puzzling.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/63",
"https://puzzling.meta.stackexchange.com",
"https://puzzling.meta.stackexchange.com/users/126/"
] | I would suggest that two-person games may be on-topic if, in any situation mentioned by the puzzle, there will be some procedure by which moves can be *unambiguously* categorized as either "best" or "inferior"; there may be multiple equally-good "best" moves, and there might be many categories of "inferior" moves, but it must be possible to prove that a particular move is "best" [other moves may be just as good, but none qualitatively better].
I think the biggest difficulty with two-person games is that some question/answer pairs will be like
* Q: Is there a known winning strategy for game X?
* A: Sure. If a player opens with Q, then on each turn thereafter does R, victory is guaranteed.
which would be an informative Q/A pair and which--if the strategy was not obvious until demonstrated, but would be clear and understandable once it was explained--could be a good fit for a puzzle site, but others would be more like:
* Q: Is there a winning strategy for game X?
* A: As yet there is not. The second player cannot have an advantage, and no human or computer has ever beaten program Y, even when it plays second (it always manages at least a draw), but it has not yet been proven that no winning strategy exists for the first player.
or
* Q: Is there a winning strategy for game X?
* A: Computer searching has shown that the first player can always win with perfect play, but there are many situations where the proper move is far from clear. It does not appear likely that there is any simple "human-understandable" perfect strategy for the game.
While the first answer would be a good fit for the site (finding the strategy could be a good puzzle in and of itself), the latter two would suggest that the search for a perfect strategy would be more of a research project than a "puzzle". Unfortunately, I don't know any means by which someone could judge whether the answer would be a good fit for the site without knowing what the answer *was*; if the answer can't readily be found elsewhere, that would mean that one couldn't know whether the question would be a good fit before asking it. | I believe these posts should be off-topic. They're clearly close in that they involve logic, but they're also clearly not puzzles. Furthermore, there's overlap with [boardgames.SE](http://boardgames.stackexchange.com), e.g. [a Tic Tac Toe question](https://boardgames.stackexchange.com/questions/8310/first-modern-naughts-and-crosses-tic-tac-toe).
I'd say, general questions about games should be off-topic, as should questions about playing games. Discussion about game-based puzzles (e.g., Chess retrograde analysis) would be fine. |
66,316 | There were around ten of these monuments by the side of the trail from Visegrád, Hungary, to the town's castle. I didn't see any dates or description, but the stone looked quite worn, so they're not *too* recent.
**What do these monuments depict or symbolize?**
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/rKZC6.jpg)
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/dBO7k.jpg)
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/gZM01.jpg) | 2016/04/08 | [
"https://travel.stackexchange.com/questions/66316",
"https://travel.stackexchange.com",
"https://travel.stackexchange.com/users/36332/"
] | [These are stations of the *via crucis* (the Way of the Cross).](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stations_of_the_Cross) They represent fourteen events which occurred prior, during and after Jesus was crucified. The Way of the Cross is usually celebrated on Good Friday as a pilgrimage during which believers visit every station. It is not uncommon to find these stations represented on a trail or path leading to a church or monastery, although they are more frequently found inside churches all around the walls. The stations are (quoting from Wikipedia):
>
> 1. Jesus is condemned to death
> 2. Jesus carries his cross
> 3. Jesus falls the first time
> 4. Jesus meets his mother
> 5. Simon of Cyrene helps Jesus carry the cross
> 6. Veronica wipes the face of Jesus
> 7. Jesus falls the second time
> 8. Jesus meets the women of Jerusalem
> 9. Jesus falls the third time
> 10. Jesus is stripped of his garments
> 11. Crucifixion: Jesus is nailed to the cross
> 12. Jesus dies on the cross
> 13. Jesus is taken down from the cross (Deposition or Lamentation)
> 14. Jesus is laid in the tomb.
>
>
>
Guessing from the photos, the stations you posted could be:
* 1: Jesus is condemned to death / 5: Simon of Cyrene helps Jesus carry the cross
* 6: Veronica wipes the face of Jesus
* 8: Jesus meets the women of Jerusalem | As mentioned, those are stations of the Way of the Cross (*via crucis* in Latin, *kálvária* in Hungarian). These particular stations were created by sculptor [Szakál Ernő in 1961](http://visegrad.utisugo.hu/latnivalok/kalvaria-visegrad-93370.html). The path they're on leads to the Calvary Chapel, which was [built in 1770](http://csendhegyek.blogspot.com/2014/04/visegrad-kalvaria-h_2.html). |
14,865 | I have just Googled 'damn or damned' and was presented with [a post on your site](https://english.stackexchange.com/a/124678/18696). Imagine my absolute horror when I saw in the explanation you gave, a grammatical error.
You write 'Damn'is a verb.....and can be used on it's own'. This literally reads 'and can be used on it is own' which is nonsensical. I fail to understand how a site about English grammar can make such a blatant error. Unfortunately, it is a very common mistake, along with they're and there that I notice in even professional writing. I despair. This surely is basic English grammar taught in the primary school.
I would appreciate an answer and explanation. Do you not proof read your site insertions? | 2020/12/31 | [
"https://english.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/14865",
"https://english.meta.stackexchange.com",
"https://english.meta.stackexchange.com/users/410079/"
] | This is part of an effort to elicit genuine answers, meaning ones posted
using the answer box where they belong. It seeks to address a particularly
pernicious variant of the age-old [Fastest Gun in the
West](https://meta.stackoverflow.com/q/308302) problem that afflicts our site.
Our variant involves shot-from-the-hip, one-liner comments containing
proposed answers. These often hit the site within the first ten minutes of
the question being posted. After five or ten of them, nobody bothers to
post an actual answer, suborning the Stack Exchange model of how SE sites
are intended to operate.
It appears to be working. Now instead of using the comment box for
answers, people post actual answers instead, answers that can be voted on,
edited, searched for, have a public revision history, contribute
to badges — and, dare I say, sometimes even seasonal hats. | On another site I have seen a moderator's template comment along the lines of "Comments that attempt to answer the question have been deleted. To answer the question, please use the Answer Box". Wouldn't this be a better solution than locking a question? |
40,580,722 | I'm wondering if there is a function that does the exact opposite of string.char(). It would be convenient to get a number value from letters in order to sort things alphabetically. | 2016/11/14 | [
"https://Stackoverflow.com/questions/40580722",
"https://Stackoverflow.com",
"https://Stackoverflow.com/users/4426132/"
] | I'm the author of ReDoc.
At the moment there is no API console functionality implemented in ReDoc. But we have this in the [roadmap](https://github.com/Rebilly/ReDoc#roadmap).
Hopefully this will be implemented in 4-5months
update: <https://redoc.ly/docs/api-reference-docs/console-overview/>
From the docs:
>
> warning
>
>
> The Try it feature is not available in Redoc's "community edition".
> You will need access to Redocly's Reference docs or Developer portal
> to use the Try it feature.
>
>
> | Update Oct 2020:
----------------
As per maintainer: <https://github.com/Redocly/redoc/issues/53#issuecomment-576377856>
Open source version of ReDoc wont have API console functionality.
If you want you can get the paid version.
As for me, I will go find an alternative :) |
40,580,722 | I'm wondering if there is a function that does the exact opposite of string.char(). It would be convenient to get a number value from letters in order to sort things alphabetically. | 2016/11/14 | [
"https://Stackoverflow.com/questions/40580722",
"https://Stackoverflow.com",
"https://Stackoverflow.com/users/4426132/"
] | I'm the author of ReDoc.
At the moment there is no API console functionality implemented in ReDoc. But we have this in the [roadmap](https://github.com/Rebilly/ReDoc#roadmap).
Hopefully this will be implemented in 4-5months
update: <https://redoc.ly/docs/api-reference-docs/console-overview/>
From the docs:
>
> warning
>
>
> The Try it feature is not available in Redoc's "community edition".
> You will need access to Redocly's Reference docs or Developer portal
> to use the Try it feature.
>
>
> | After wasted few days, I understand redoc only have making request feature on their commercial version, so I switch to its alternatives.
If you use react, you can try openapi-react, similar to redoc, but it has function to issue http request.
Check <https://www.npmjs.com/package/openapi-react> |
241,538 | I've learned that one reason some computers don't work with an LCD monitor's native resolution is that certain specific resolutions can be blocked by something in the [Video BIOS](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Video_BIOS) called the "Mode Removal Table". I'd like to learn exactly what jobs this Video BIOS does, how the system interacts with it, what functionality it provides, whether I can read and/or disassemble it, whether I can programmatically work around any of this Mode Removal Table functionality, etc.
~~Would everything be covered by [VESA BIOS Extensions](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VESA_BIOS_Extensions) or is that just part of the story?~~ I cannot find any mention of this "Mode Removal Table" which is often cited in online help setting monitor resolutions.
**UPDATE**
Since it's difficult to believe some makers block specific video modes that their hardware is perfectly capable of, [here is a very complete and clear article from Intel describing the problem and workaround it](http://software.intel.com/en-us/articles/custom-resolutions-on-intel-graphics/). The specific sections relevant to my problem:
>
> ...
>
>
> or that particular resolution is explicitly prohibited in the **VideoBIOS** by the motherboard vendor. **I'm not sure why motherboard/laptop vendors would do this, but there's no question they do it, especially in laptops.**
>
>
> ...
>
>
> If the DTD data is correct in the registry but the resolution is still not available, it's a pretty good bet **it's forbidden in the BIOS**. How do we get around this? We cheat! The BIOS contains the **Mode Removal Table**, and it has entries like "1600x1200, 60Hz" and "1400x1000, 50Hz". But it doesn't say anything about 1592x1200, or 1392x1000, so those are allowed.
>
>
>
(emphasis added by yours truly) | 2011/02/04 | [
"https://superuser.com/questions/241538",
"https://superuser.com",
"https://superuser.com/users/58110/"
] | Your HP Mini 3500 netbook uses the Intel Graphics Media Accelerator 3150 graphics-adapter. There are no know GMA BIOS editors (you can only update the [video BIOS by updating the system BIOS](http://www.intel.com/support/graphics/sb/CS-029985.htm)), so even if it were possible to do what you want with an Nvidia or ATI video-card, it won’t apply to your case. Sorry; netbooks just aren’t meant to be hooked up to widescreen LCDs.
Since your netbook is still new and supported, you should consider contacting HP to ask them to fix the shortcoming. You may not get the information you wanted to edit the video BIOS, but at least your problem would be officially fixed without compromise. There are several [support options](http://h10025.www1.hp.com/ewfrf/wc/product?product=4346351&lc=en&cc=us&dlc=en&lang=en&cc=us), so you should be able to contact a technical support rep. It looks like you have already asked other users about [the problem](http://h30434.www3.hp.com/t5/Notebook-Display-and-Video/Mini-110-3500-won-t-work-in-1680x1050-on-external-monitor/m-p/494499/highlight/true#M19554), and like DimaO said, [the specs](http://download.intel.com/design/processor/datashts/322847.pdf) (do a search for “resolution”) indicate that maximum resolution for the analog VGA connector is 1440x1050. That’s why HP blocked higher resolutions in the BIOS; because they are not supported and would have unpredictable/unreliable performance and/or results. Even it if works, it is not dependable and so they don’t allow it or support it. It’s the same with plenty of other hardware. For example, CPU manufacturers often produce a batch of the same CPU, but then lock it down in different ways to release different versions. Unlocking it may work, but because it’s a hack, it could cause problems, and at the very least, would void the warranty (which I suspect is also the case for your netbook; flashing unofficial BIOSes is usually a violation).
---
What do you mean by your first sentence? What exactly is the problem with the LCD monitor on the aforementioned systems? Are you saying that the LCD’s native resolution is not supported by the video card? There aren’t exactly dozens of unique resolutions; there’s generally a small handful, and those are generally supported by most video cards made in the past dozen years (ie, since LCD monitors started becoming affordable for the masses). The problem will usually be a combination of really old video card and non-standard LCD monitor.
If the mode is blocked, then it is *not supported* for whatever reason, otherwise they wouldn’t have blocked it; the mfgs are stupid or purposely messing with customers. Even if there is a way to force it to switch to that mode, then there is likely to be problems.
When you say that the graphics mode is not supported, do you mean that it is not listed in the list of resolutions in Display Properties (or other resolution selection dialog)? For example, 320x200 is rarely listed these days, and even 640x480 isn’t provided as an option in Vista+. If so, have you tried using a resolution program such as [QRes](http://sourceforge.net/projects/qres/) or [QuickRes](http://sourceforge.net/projects/qres/) to manually set the resolution?
As for the VESA BIOS Extensions, you are misinterpreting it. There is no actual video BIOS involved in that. Rather, *they are extensions to the standard BIOS*. That is, VESA extensions specify additional graphics modes that were not part of the original set of modes that the (system) BIOS supported via the `INT 10` function (which was used to set the graphics mode among other graphics-related things). So basically what would happen is that a video card mfg would build their cards to support these additional graphics modes, and thus, the card supported the *VESA BIOS Extensions*. | Calling this effect "the table" is misleading, like talking about "the BIOS". Each videocard has a BIOS, but they're not the same. Each manufacturer has its own, and will likely evolve add functionality to it for new products. VESA just descibes some common parts, not everything. |
241,538 | I've learned that one reason some computers don't work with an LCD monitor's native resolution is that certain specific resolutions can be blocked by something in the [Video BIOS](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Video_BIOS) called the "Mode Removal Table". I'd like to learn exactly what jobs this Video BIOS does, how the system interacts with it, what functionality it provides, whether I can read and/or disassemble it, whether I can programmatically work around any of this Mode Removal Table functionality, etc.
~~Would everything be covered by [VESA BIOS Extensions](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VESA_BIOS_Extensions) or is that just part of the story?~~ I cannot find any mention of this "Mode Removal Table" which is often cited in online help setting monitor resolutions.
**UPDATE**
Since it's difficult to believe some makers block specific video modes that their hardware is perfectly capable of, [here is a very complete and clear article from Intel describing the problem and workaround it](http://software.intel.com/en-us/articles/custom-resolutions-on-intel-graphics/). The specific sections relevant to my problem:
>
> ...
>
>
> or that particular resolution is explicitly prohibited in the **VideoBIOS** by the motherboard vendor. **I'm not sure why motherboard/laptop vendors would do this, but there's no question they do it, especially in laptops.**
>
>
> ...
>
>
> If the DTD data is correct in the registry but the resolution is still not available, it's a pretty good bet **it's forbidden in the BIOS**. How do we get around this? We cheat! The BIOS contains the **Mode Removal Table**, and it has entries like "1600x1200, 60Hz" and "1400x1000, 50Hz". But it doesn't say anything about 1592x1200, or 1392x1000, so those are allowed.
>
>
>
(emphasis added by yours truly) | 2011/02/04 | [
"https://superuser.com/questions/241538",
"https://superuser.com",
"https://superuser.com/users/58110/"
] | Your HP Mini 3500 netbook uses the Intel Graphics Media Accelerator 3150 graphics-adapter. There are no know GMA BIOS editors (you can only update the [video BIOS by updating the system BIOS](http://www.intel.com/support/graphics/sb/CS-029985.htm)), so even if it were possible to do what you want with an Nvidia or ATI video-card, it won’t apply to your case. Sorry; netbooks just aren’t meant to be hooked up to widescreen LCDs.
Since your netbook is still new and supported, you should consider contacting HP to ask them to fix the shortcoming. You may not get the information you wanted to edit the video BIOS, but at least your problem would be officially fixed without compromise. There are several [support options](http://h10025.www1.hp.com/ewfrf/wc/product?product=4346351&lc=en&cc=us&dlc=en&lang=en&cc=us), so you should be able to contact a technical support rep. It looks like you have already asked other users about [the problem](http://h30434.www3.hp.com/t5/Notebook-Display-and-Video/Mini-110-3500-won-t-work-in-1680x1050-on-external-monitor/m-p/494499/highlight/true#M19554), and like DimaO said, [the specs](http://download.intel.com/design/processor/datashts/322847.pdf) (do a search for “resolution”) indicate that maximum resolution for the analog VGA connector is 1440x1050. That’s why HP blocked higher resolutions in the BIOS; because they are not supported and would have unpredictable/unreliable performance and/or results. Even it if works, it is not dependable and so they don’t allow it or support it. It’s the same with plenty of other hardware. For example, CPU manufacturers often produce a batch of the same CPU, but then lock it down in different ways to release different versions. Unlocking it may work, but because it’s a hack, it could cause problems, and at the very least, would void the warranty (which I suspect is also the case for your netbook; flashing unofficial BIOSes is usually a violation).
---
What do you mean by your first sentence? What exactly is the problem with the LCD monitor on the aforementioned systems? Are you saying that the LCD’s native resolution is not supported by the video card? There aren’t exactly dozens of unique resolutions; there’s generally a small handful, and those are generally supported by most video cards made in the past dozen years (ie, since LCD monitors started becoming affordable for the masses). The problem will usually be a combination of really old video card and non-standard LCD monitor.
If the mode is blocked, then it is *not supported* for whatever reason, otherwise they wouldn’t have blocked it; the mfgs are stupid or purposely messing with customers. Even if there is a way to force it to switch to that mode, then there is likely to be problems.
When you say that the graphics mode is not supported, do you mean that it is not listed in the list of resolutions in Display Properties (or other resolution selection dialog)? For example, 320x200 is rarely listed these days, and even 640x480 isn’t provided as an option in Vista+. If so, have you tried using a resolution program such as [QRes](http://sourceforge.net/projects/qres/) or [QuickRes](http://sourceforge.net/projects/qres/) to manually set the resolution?
As for the VESA BIOS Extensions, you are misinterpreting it. There is no actual video BIOS involved in that. Rather, *they are extensions to the standard BIOS*. That is, VESA extensions specify additional graphics modes that were not part of the original set of modes that the (system) BIOS supported via the `INT 10` function (which was used to set the graphics mode among other graphics-related things). So basically what would happen is that a video card mfg would build their cards to support these additional graphics modes, and thus, the card supported the *VESA BIOS Extensions*. | @ hippietrail
Take a look at these TechPowerUp's:
(1) [RBE: Radeon BIOS editor](http://www.techpowerup.com/rbe/)
and
(2) [NiBiTor: NVIDIA BIOS Editor](http://www.techpowerup.com/142137/NVIDIA-BIOS-Editor-%28NiBiTor%29-Version-6.1-Released.html) |
241,538 | I've learned that one reason some computers don't work with an LCD monitor's native resolution is that certain specific resolutions can be blocked by something in the [Video BIOS](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Video_BIOS) called the "Mode Removal Table". I'd like to learn exactly what jobs this Video BIOS does, how the system interacts with it, what functionality it provides, whether I can read and/or disassemble it, whether I can programmatically work around any of this Mode Removal Table functionality, etc.
~~Would everything be covered by [VESA BIOS Extensions](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VESA_BIOS_Extensions) or is that just part of the story?~~ I cannot find any mention of this "Mode Removal Table" which is often cited in online help setting monitor resolutions.
**UPDATE**
Since it's difficult to believe some makers block specific video modes that their hardware is perfectly capable of, [here is a very complete and clear article from Intel describing the problem and workaround it](http://software.intel.com/en-us/articles/custom-resolutions-on-intel-graphics/). The specific sections relevant to my problem:
>
> ...
>
>
> or that particular resolution is explicitly prohibited in the **VideoBIOS** by the motherboard vendor. **I'm not sure why motherboard/laptop vendors would do this, but there's no question they do it, especially in laptops.**
>
>
> ...
>
>
> If the DTD data is correct in the registry but the resolution is still not available, it's a pretty good bet **it's forbidden in the BIOS**. How do we get around this? We cheat! The BIOS contains the **Mode Removal Table**, and it has entries like "1600x1200, 60Hz" and "1400x1000, 50Hz". But it doesn't say anything about 1592x1200, or 1392x1000, so those are allowed.
>
>
>
(emphasis added by yours truly) | 2011/02/04 | [
"https://superuser.com/questions/241538",
"https://superuser.com",
"https://superuser.com/users/58110/"
] | Your HP Mini 3500 netbook uses the Intel Graphics Media Accelerator 3150 graphics-adapter. There are no know GMA BIOS editors (you can only update the [video BIOS by updating the system BIOS](http://www.intel.com/support/graphics/sb/CS-029985.htm)), so even if it were possible to do what you want with an Nvidia or ATI video-card, it won’t apply to your case. Sorry; netbooks just aren’t meant to be hooked up to widescreen LCDs.
Since your netbook is still new and supported, you should consider contacting HP to ask them to fix the shortcoming. You may not get the information you wanted to edit the video BIOS, but at least your problem would be officially fixed without compromise. There are several [support options](http://h10025.www1.hp.com/ewfrf/wc/product?product=4346351&lc=en&cc=us&dlc=en&lang=en&cc=us), so you should be able to contact a technical support rep. It looks like you have already asked other users about [the problem](http://h30434.www3.hp.com/t5/Notebook-Display-and-Video/Mini-110-3500-won-t-work-in-1680x1050-on-external-monitor/m-p/494499/highlight/true#M19554), and like DimaO said, [the specs](http://download.intel.com/design/processor/datashts/322847.pdf) (do a search for “resolution”) indicate that maximum resolution for the analog VGA connector is 1440x1050. That’s why HP blocked higher resolutions in the BIOS; because they are not supported and would have unpredictable/unreliable performance and/or results. Even it if works, it is not dependable and so they don’t allow it or support it. It’s the same with plenty of other hardware. For example, CPU manufacturers often produce a batch of the same CPU, but then lock it down in different ways to release different versions. Unlocking it may work, but because it’s a hack, it could cause problems, and at the very least, would void the warranty (which I suspect is also the case for your netbook; flashing unofficial BIOSes is usually a violation).
---
What do you mean by your first sentence? What exactly is the problem with the LCD monitor on the aforementioned systems? Are you saying that the LCD’s native resolution is not supported by the video card? There aren’t exactly dozens of unique resolutions; there’s generally a small handful, and those are generally supported by most video cards made in the past dozen years (ie, since LCD monitors started becoming affordable for the masses). The problem will usually be a combination of really old video card and non-standard LCD monitor.
If the mode is blocked, then it is *not supported* for whatever reason, otherwise they wouldn’t have blocked it; the mfgs are stupid or purposely messing with customers. Even if there is a way to force it to switch to that mode, then there is likely to be problems.
When you say that the graphics mode is not supported, do you mean that it is not listed in the list of resolutions in Display Properties (or other resolution selection dialog)? For example, 320x200 is rarely listed these days, and even 640x480 isn’t provided as an option in Vista+. If so, have you tried using a resolution program such as [QRes](http://sourceforge.net/projects/qres/) or [QuickRes](http://sourceforge.net/projects/qres/) to manually set the resolution?
As for the VESA BIOS Extensions, you are misinterpreting it. There is no actual video BIOS involved in that. Rather, *they are extensions to the standard BIOS*. That is, VESA extensions specify additional graphics modes that were not part of the original set of modes that the (system) BIOS supported via the `INT 10` function (which was used to set the graphics mode among other graphics-related things). So basically what would happen is that a video card mfg would build their cards to support these additional graphics modes, and thus, the card supported the *VESA BIOS Extensions*. | A bit late but I think I have found something that you or others finding this page could find useful.
In a driver for 64-bit for GMA 3150 I found a Vbios.zip which contains three files with the same name.
An executable that runs only in 32-bit windows (probably the Vbios flashing tool), a .dat file that if opened with a hex editor is clearly the Vbios as it states such in the first line, and a .bsf file that if opened with notepad explains what the numbers at each offset are.
This is way over my head as I don't understand low-level hardware coding, but someone might find this interesting. Especially as this info does not seem to be GMA-3150-specific, although it is a bit outdated (as the GMA's architecture for that matter).
I'm hosting it on my dropbox, but spread the news and rehost this if you can.
I'm including the official support page where they give you driver and this package (and say they do)
DISCLAIMER: THIS STUFF IS VERY DANGEROUS FOR YOUR DEVICE, YOU PLAY WITH IT AT YOUR OWN RISK.
Dropbox Download link: <https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/47541136/GMA_3150_vbios%2Btools.zip>
Official Download link: <https://downloadcenter.intel.com/Detail_Desc.aspx?lang=eng&DwnldID=18478> |
557,261 | I am preparing for the development of an enterprise-style application for a very small business of 6 employees (including myself -- before you question why a 6-person company would need an enterprise application, we have a lot going on with a lot of processes and tools needed to simplify it). As always I'm trying to follow best practices in setting up the project; I'm going to be using .NET 3.5, with the database being on Windows Server 2003/SQL Server 2005.
While I'm developing and testing the solution, should I have everything in my main project? What I mean is... Visual Studio 2008 Professional lets you have "database projects" as well as all of the other types of projects. For this application I'm going to need:
* Database Project containing the create and test scripts for the new data schema
* C# projects containing the actual code/application:
1. Customer-facing web site(s) using ASP.NET MVC
2. Back-end order processing system, probably web-based but possibly a "smart client"
* SSIS project containing packages to ETL the "live" application data provided by our vendor(s) and migrate over existing customer and order data from the legacy database.
* Reporting project for SQL Server Reporting Services
Basically, I am wondering if it's a good idea to have all of these as part of one massive Visual Studio solution (let's call it "EnterpriseSolution"), or if I should break them out and tackle them separately. Most of the books and websites I've looked at include them all together, but they also assume a team of developers, DBAs, architects and the like - in this case I'm all of them rolled into one. The database project and at least some ETL processes need to be done and loaded into production before the rest of the application is written, since we need to load the new vendor's products in a live environment (to start selling them).
I'm a little overwhelmed as to how I should begin to structure this, but I want to come up with an overall plan before I begin to lay things out and start coding.
Any suggestions on how to tackle a project like this? | 2009/02/17 | [
"https://Stackoverflow.com/questions/557261",
"https://Stackoverflow.com",
"https://Stackoverflow.com/users/40667/"
] | I have found it most convenient to maintain the client-side and server-side code in separate solutions. This assumes the server presents a stable interface such as a web service or WCF interface.
Over time things grow, you may use more than one client technology (Windows, web...) and keeping these clusters of technology separate in their own solutions keeps things simpler.
If you are looking for a good architecture sample see the [Northwind Starter Kit](http://codeplex.com/nsk) at CodePlex. I found this when reading "[Microsoft .Net: Architecting Applications for the Enterprise](http://www.microsoft.com/learning/en/us/Books/12863.aspx)", by Dino Esposito and Andrea Saltarello.
>
> The Northwind Starter Kit is a sample
> application produced by Managed
> Designs (<http://www.manageddesigns.it>)
> and intended to be used as a blueprint
> when designing and implementing a .NET
> layered application architecture. The
> application uses the standard
> Northwind database, as included in
> Microsoft SQL Server and Microsoft
> Access: no modifications to the
> database schema are required in order
> to install and run the starter kit.
>
>
>
I agree with @Chris Ballance that including a Database Project can be very helpful. But note that the DB Project can seem a bit complicated as it syncronizes the project and reference DB structures.
+tom | There is no reason the application can't be all in one, if you need to breakup elements you could do that later on, as long as you keep your objects loosely coupled.
The one nice aspect of having separate projects is that you can successfully compile a section while having other sections incomplete, by just unloading them. |
557,261 | I am preparing for the development of an enterprise-style application for a very small business of 6 employees (including myself -- before you question why a 6-person company would need an enterprise application, we have a lot going on with a lot of processes and tools needed to simplify it). As always I'm trying to follow best practices in setting up the project; I'm going to be using .NET 3.5, with the database being on Windows Server 2003/SQL Server 2005.
While I'm developing and testing the solution, should I have everything in my main project? What I mean is... Visual Studio 2008 Professional lets you have "database projects" as well as all of the other types of projects. For this application I'm going to need:
* Database Project containing the create and test scripts for the new data schema
* C# projects containing the actual code/application:
1. Customer-facing web site(s) using ASP.NET MVC
2. Back-end order processing system, probably web-based but possibly a "smart client"
* SSIS project containing packages to ETL the "live" application data provided by our vendor(s) and migrate over existing customer and order data from the legacy database.
* Reporting project for SQL Server Reporting Services
Basically, I am wondering if it's a good idea to have all of these as part of one massive Visual Studio solution (let's call it "EnterpriseSolution"), or if I should break them out and tackle them separately. Most of the books and websites I've looked at include them all together, but they also assume a team of developers, DBAs, architects and the like - in this case I'm all of them rolled into one. The database project and at least some ETL processes need to be done and loaded into production before the rest of the application is written, since we need to load the new vendor's products in a live environment (to start selling them).
I'm a little overwhelmed as to how I should begin to structure this, but I want to come up with an overall plan before I begin to lay things out and start coding.
Any suggestions on how to tackle a project like this? | 2009/02/17 | [
"https://Stackoverflow.com/questions/557261",
"https://Stackoverflow.com",
"https://Stackoverflow.com/users/40667/"
] | It's definitely good idea to use one Solution with several projects in it. If you want to use ASP.NET MVC define one C# Project for each layer: MVC Web, Service layer, Data Access Layer and separate test project.
You can learn from Rob Conery's [Storefront](http://blog.wekeroad.com/mvc-storefront/mvc-storefront-part-1/) sample application or [Oxite](http://www.codeplex.com/oxite/Release/ProjectReleases.aspx?ReleaseId=23315).
You can try also to use Guidance Packages from patterns & practises group:
<http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/practices/default.aspx> | There is no reason the application can't be all in one, if you need to breakup elements you could do that later on, as long as you keep your objects loosely coupled.
The one nice aspect of having separate projects is that you can successfully compile a section while having other sections incomplete, by just unloading them. |
557,261 | I am preparing for the development of an enterprise-style application for a very small business of 6 employees (including myself -- before you question why a 6-person company would need an enterprise application, we have a lot going on with a lot of processes and tools needed to simplify it). As always I'm trying to follow best practices in setting up the project; I'm going to be using .NET 3.5, with the database being on Windows Server 2003/SQL Server 2005.
While I'm developing and testing the solution, should I have everything in my main project? What I mean is... Visual Studio 2008 Professional lets you have "database projects" as well as all of the other types of projects. For this application I'm going to need:
* Database Project containing the create and test scripts for the new data schema
* C# projects containing the actual code/application:
1. Customer-facing web site(s) using ASP.NET MVC
2. Back-end order processing system, probably web-based but possibly a "smart client"
* SSIS project containing packages to ETL the "live" application data provided by our vendor(s) and migrate over existing customer and order data from the legacy database.
* Reporting project for SQL Server Reporting Services
Basically, I am wondering if it's a good idea to have all of these as part of one massive Visual Studio solution (let's call it "EnterpriseSolution"), or if I should break them out and tackle them separately. Most of the books and websites I've looked at include them all together, but they also assume a team of developers, DBAs, architects and the like - in this case I'm all of them rolled into one. The database project and at least some ETL processes need to be done and loaded into production before the rest of the application is written, since we need to load the new vendor's products in a live environment (to start selling them).
I'm a little overwhelmed as to how I should begin to structure this, but I want to come up with an overall plan before I begin to lay things out and start coding.
Any suggestions on how to tackle a project like this? | 2009/02/17 | [
"https://Stackoverflow.com/questions/557261",
"https://Stackoverflow.com",
"https://Stackoverflow.com/users/40667/"
] | I have found it most convenient to maintain the client-side and server-side code in separate solutions. This assumes the server presents a stable interface such as a web service or WCF interface.
Over time things grow, you may use more than one client technology (Windows, web...) and keeping these clusters of technology separate in their own solutions keeps things simpler.
If you are looking for a good architecture sample see the [Northwind Starter Kit](http://codeplex.com/nsk) at CodePlex. I found this when reading "[Microsoft .Net: Architecting Applications for the Enterprise](http://www.microsoft.com/learning/en/us/Books/12863.aspx)", by Dino Esposito and Andrea Saltarello.
>
> The Northwind Starter Kit is a sample
> application produced by Managed
> Designs (<http://www.manageddesigns.it>)
> and intended to be used as a blueprint
> when designing and implementing a .NET
> layered application architecture. The
> application uses the standard
> Northwind database, as included in
> Microsoft SQL Server and Microsoft
> Access: no modifications to the
> database schema are required in order
> to install and run the starter kit.
>
>
>
I agree with @Chris Ballance that including a Database Project can be very helpful. But note that the DB Project can seem a bit complicated as it syncronizes the project and reference DB structures.
+tom | I like to start with a single solution until its gets so big that build times are noticeably slow.
How you do this really depends how the different parts of the system will interface with each other. The easiest way is to adopt a service oriented architecture. Then each service can have a different solution and the frontend its own solution.
However I really would reccomend that you strat with one solution and only make things more complicated when it is neccesary. Its nice to be able to build everything with one click. |
557,261 | I am preparing for the development of an enterprise-style application for a very small business of 6 employees (including myself -- before you question why a 6-person company would need an enterprise application, we have a lot going on with a lot of processes and tools needed to simplify it). As always I'm trying to follow best practices in setting up the project; I'm going to be using .NET 3.5, with the database being on Windows Server 2003/SQL Server 2005.
While I'm developing and testing the solution, should I have everything in my main project? What I mean is... Visual Studio 2008 Professional lets you have "database projects" as well as all of the other types of projects. For this application I'm going to need:
* Database Project containing the create and test scripts for the new data schema
* C# projects containing the actual code/application:
1. Customer-facing web site(s) using ASP.NET MVC
2. Back-end order processing system, probably web-based but possibly a "smart client"
* SSIS project containing packages to ETL the "live" application data provided by our vendor(s) and migrate over existing customer and order data from the legacy database.
* Reporting project for SQL Server Reporting Services
Basically, I am wondering if it's a good idea to have all of these as part of one massive Visual Studio solution (let's call it "EnterpriseSolution"), or if I should break them out and tackle them separately. Most of the books and websites I've looked at include them all together, but they also assume a team of developers, DBAs, architects and the like - in this case I'm all of them rolled into one. The database project and at least some ETL processes need to be done and loaded into production before the rest of the application is written, since we need to load the new vendor's products in a live environment (to start selling them).
I'm a little overwhelmed as to how I should begin to structure this, but I want to come up with an overall plan before I begin to lay things out and start coding.
Any suggestions on how to tackle a project like this? | 2009/02/17 | [
"https://Stackoverflow.com/questions/557261",
"https://Stackoverflow.com",
"https://Stackoverflow.com/users/40667/"
] | I have found it most convenient to maintain the client-side and server-side code in separate solutions. This assumes the server presents a stable interface such as a web service or WCF interface.
Over time things grow, you may use more than one client technology (Windows, web...) and keeping these clusters of technology separate in their own solutions keeps things simpler.
If you are looking for a good architecture sample see the [Northwind Starter Kit](http://codeplex.com/nsk) at CodePlex. I found this when reading "[Microsoft .Net: Architecting Applications for the Enterprise](http://www.microsoft.com/learning/en/us/Books/12863.aspx)", by Dino Esposito and Andrea Saltarello.
>
> The Northwind Starter Kit is a sample
> application produced by Managed
> Designs (<http://www.manageddesigns.it>)
> and intended to be used as a blueprint
> when designing and implementing a .NET
> layered application architecture. The
> application uses the standard
> Northwind database, as included in
> Microsoft SQL Server and Microsoft
> Access: no modifications to the
> database schema are required in order
> to install and run the starter kit.
>
>
>
I agree with @Chris Ballance that including a Database Project can be very helpful. But note that the DB Project can seem a bit complicated as it syncronizes the project and reference DB structures.
+tom | What I have done is create separate solutions for every independent piece of the project and then start integrating them into more complex solutions. This way you could load just part of the application for unit testing or debugging.
For example, in a multi layered application, I would create an independent solution for the data layer and a unit test project. Another solution would include the data layer and the business objects layer working together with unit testing. The complete solution would include the mentioned above projects plus the UI project
This way I can load and test separately every part of my application. |
557,261 | I am preparing for the development of an enterprise-style application for a very small business of 6 employees (including myself -- before you question why a 6-person company would need an enterprise application, we have a lot going on with a lot of processes and tools needed to simplify it). As always I'm trying to follow best practices in setting up the project; I'm going to be using .NET 3.5, with the database being on Windows Server 2003/SQL Server 2005.
While I'm developing and testing the solution, should I have everything in my main project? What I mean is... Visual Studio 2008 Professional lets you have "database projects" as well as all of the other types of projects. For this application I'm going to need:
* Database Project containing the create and test scripts for the new data schema
* C# projects containing the actual code/application:
1. Customer-facing web site(s) using ASP.NET MVC
2. Back-end order processing system, probably web-based but possibly a "smart client"
* SSIS project containing packages to ETL the "live" application data provided by our vendor(s) and migrate over existing customer and order data from the legacy database.
* Reporting project for SQL Server Reporting Services
Basically, I am wondering if it's a good idea to have all of these as part of one massive Visual Studio solution (let's call it "EnterpriseSolution"), or if I should break them out and tackle them separately. Most of the books and websites I've looked at include them all together, but they also assume a team of developers, DBAs, architects and the like - in this case I'm all of them rolled into one. The database project and at least some ETL processes need to be done and loaded into production before the rest of the application is written, since we need to load the new vendor's products in a live environment (to start selling them).
I'm a little overwhelmed as to how I should begin to structure this, but I want to come up with an overall plan before I begin to lay things out and start coding.
Any suggestions on how to tackle a project like this? | 2009/02/17 | [
"https://Stackoverflow.com/questions/557261",
"https://Stackoverflow.com",
"https://Stackoverflow.com/users/40667/"
] | It's definitely good idea to use one Solution with several projects in it. If you want to use ASP.NET MVC define one C# Project for each layer: MVC Web, Service layer, Data Access Layer and separate test project.
You can learn from Rob Conery's [Storefront](http://blog.wekeroad.com/mvc-storefront/mvc-storefront-part-1/) sample application or [Oxite](http://www.codeplex.com/oxite/Release/ProjectReleases.aspx?ReleaseId=23315).
You can try also to use Guidance Packages from patterns & practises group:
<http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/practices/default.aspx> | I have found it most convenient to maintain the client-side and server-side code in separate solutions. This assumes the server presents a stable interface such as a web service or WCF interface.
Over time things grow, you may use more than one client technology (Windows, web...) and keeping these clusters of technology separate in their own solutions keeps things simpler.
If you are looking for a good architecture sample see the [Northwind Starter Kit](http://codeplex.com/nsk) at CodePlex. I found this when reading "[Microsoft .Net: Architecting Applications for the Enterprise](http://www.microsoft.com/learning/en/us/Books/12863.aspx)", by Dino Esposito and Andrea Saltarello.
>
> The Northwind Starter Kit is a sample
> application produced by Managed
> Designs (<http://www.manageddesigns.it>)
> and intended to be used as a blueprint
> when designing and implementing a .NET
> layered application architecture. The
> application uses the standard
> Northwind database, as included in
> Microsoft SQL Server and Microsoft
> Access: no modifications to the
> database schema are required in order
> to install and run the starter kit.
>
>
>
I agree with @Chris Ballance that including a Database Project can be very helpful. But note that the DB Project can seem a bit complicated as it syncronizes the project and reference DB structures.
+tom |
557,261 | I am preparing for the development of an enterprise-style application for a very small business of 6 employees (including myself -- before you question why a 6-person company would need an enterprise application, we have a lot going on with a lot of processes and tools needed to simplify it). As always I'm trying to follow best practices in setting up the project; I'm going to be using .NET 3.5, with the database being on Windows Server 2003/SQL Server 2005.
While I'm developing and testing the solution, should I have everything in my main project? What I mean is... Visual Studio 2008 Professional lets you have "database projects" as well as all of the other types of projects. For this application I'm going to need:
* Database Project containing the create and test scripts for the new data schema
* C# projects containing the actual code/application:
1. Customer-facing web site(s) using ASP.NET MVC
2. Back-end order processing system, probably web-based but possibly a "smart client"
* SSIS project containing packages to ETL the "live" application data provided by our vendor(s) and migrate over existing customer and order data from the legacy database.
* Reporting project for SQL Server Reporting Services
Basically, I am wondering if it's a good idea to have all of these as part of one massive Visual Studio solution (let's call it "EnterpriseSolution"), or if I should break them out and tackle them separately. Most of the books and websites I've looked at include them all together, but they also assume a team of developers, DBAs, architects and the like - in this case I'm all of them rolled into one. The database project and at least some ETL processes need to be done and loaded into production before the rest of the application is written, since we need to load the new vendor's products in a live environment (to start selling them).
I'm a little overwhelmed as to how I should begin to structure this, but I want to come up with an overall plan before I begin to lay things out and start coding.
Any suggestions on how to tackle a project like this? | 2009/02/17 | [
"https://Stackoverflow.com/questions/557261",
"https://Stackoverflow.com",
"https://Stackoverflow.com/users/40667/"
] | I would recommend creating a "Blank Solution" to start that would be a \*.sln file (Say EnterpriseSolution.sln) that would sit in a folder named EneterpriseSolution. A blank solution can be created from "Other Types". I would then add in the additional parts you described as seperate projects, each within its own folder under the "EnterpriseSolution" folder.
For instance, each of your client facing websites would each have their own project folder. It looks like you will have more than one website so you will need to make sure you setup different "ports" for each to run under if you use one solution wrapper. However, you can aslo create different solution "wrappers" (as a blank solution to start and then project reference the projects you want) to include each website sperately in your folder structure so you can focus on a portion of your enterprise solution. But physically you will know where everything is and how it is organized.
This way, when you look at your Enterprise Solution folder thru windows explorer the only thing you will see is your solution file(s) and your project folders.
Thanks and good luck with your project. | I like to start with a single solution until its gets so big that build times are noticeably slow.
How you do this really depends how the different parts of the system will interface with each other. The easiest way is to adopt a service oriented architecture. Then each service can have a different solution and the frontend its own solution.
However I really would reccomend that you strat with one solution and only make things more complicated when it is neccesary. Its nice to be able to build everything with one click. |
557,261 | I am preparing for the development of an enterprise-style application for a very small business of 6 employees (including myself -- before you question why a 6-person company would need an enterprise application, we have a lot going on with a lot of processes and tools needed to simplify it). As always I'm trying to follow best practices in setting up the project; I'm going to be using .NET 3.5, with the database being on Windows Server 2003/SQL Server 2005.
While I'm developing and testing the solution, should I have everything in my main project? What I mean is... Visual Studio 2008 Professional lets you have "database projects" as well as all of the other types of projects. For this application I'm going to need:
* Database Project containing the create and test scripts for the new data schema
* C# projects containing the actual code/application:
1. Customer-facing web site(s) using ASP.NET MVC
2. Back-end order processing system, probably web-based but possibly a "smart client"
* SSIS project containing packages to ETL the "live" application data provided by our vendor(s) and migrate over existing customer and order data from the legacy database.
* Reporting project for SQL Server Reporting Services
Basically, I am wondering if it's a good idea to have all of these as part of one massive Visual Studio solution (let's call it "EnterpriseSolution"), or if I should break them out and tackle them separately. Most of the books and websites I've looked at include them all together, but they also assume a team of developers, DBAs, architects and the like - in this case I'm all of them rolled into one. The database project and at least some ETL processes need to be done and loaded into production before the rest of the application is written, since we need to load the new vendor's products in a live environment (to start selling them).
I'm a little overwhelmed as to how I should begin to structure this, but I want to come up with an overall plan before I begin to lay things out and start coding.
Any suggestions on how to tackle a project like this? | 2009/02/17 | [
"https://Stackoverflow.com/questions/557261",
"https://Stackoverflow.com",
"https://Stackoverflow.com/users/40667/"
] | I would recommend creating a "Blank Solution" to start that would be a \*.sln file (Say EnterpriseSolution.sln) that would sit in a folder named EneterpriseSolution. A blank solution can be created from "Other Types". I would then add in the additional parts you described as seperate projects, each within its own folder under the "EnterpriseSolution" folder.
For instance, each of your client facing websites would each have their own project folder. It looks like you will have more than one website so you will need to make sure you setup different "ports" for each to run under if you use one solution wrapper. However, you can aslo create different solution "wrappers" (as a blank solution to start and then project reference the projects you want) to include each website sperately in your folder structure so you can focus on a portion of your enterprise solution. But physically you will know where everything is and how it is organized.
This way, when you look at your Enterprise Solution folder thru windows explorer the only thing you will see is your solution file(s) and your project folders.
Thanks and good luck with your project. | First off, the **Database Project** is great stuff, and I would highly recommend using it for your data layer.
I would separate by project as it makes sense, but keep it all in the same solution. |
557,261 | I am preparing for the development of an enterprise-style application for a very small business of 6 employees (including myself -- before you question why a 6-person company would need an enterprise application, we have a lot going on with a lot of processes and tools needed to simplify it). As always I'm trying to follow best practices in setting up the project; I'm going to be using .NET 3.5, with the database being on Windows Server 2003/SQL Server 2005.
While I'm developing and testing the solution, should I have everything in my main project? What I mean is... Visual Studio 2008 Professional lets you have "database projects" as well as all of the other types of projects. For this application I'm going to need:
* Database Project containing the create and test scripts for the new data schema
* C# projects containing the actual code/application:
1. Customer-facing web site(s) using ASP.NET MVC
2. Back-end order processing system, probably web-based but possibly a "smart client"
* SSIS project containing packages to ETL the "live" application data provided by our vendor(s) and migrate over existing customer and order data from the legacy database.
* Reporting project for SQL Server Reporting Services
Basically, I am wondering if it's a good idea to have all of these as part of one massive Visual Studio solution (let's call it "EnterpriseSolution"), or if I should break them out and tackle them separately. Most of the books and websites I've looked at include them all together, but they also assume a team of developers, DBAs, architects and the like - in this case I'm all of them rolled into one. The database project and at least some ETL processes need to be done and loaded into production before the rest of the application is written, since we need to load the new vendor's products in a live environment (to start selling them).
I'm a little overwhelmed as to how I should begin to structure this, but I want to come up with an overall plan before I begin to lay things out and start coding.
Any suggestions on how to tackle a project like this? | 2009/02/17 | [
"https://Stackoverflow.com/questions/557261",
"https://Stackoverflow.com",
"https://Stackoverflow.com/users/40667/"
] | I have found it most convenient to maintain the client-side and server-side code in separate solutions. This assumes the server presents a stable interface such as a web service or WCF interface.
Over time things grow, you may use more than one client technology (Windows, web...) and keeping these clusters of technology separate in their own solutions keeps things simpler.
If you are looking for a good architecture sample see the [Northwind Starter Kit](http://codeplex.com/nsk) at CodePlex. I found this when reading "[Microsoft .Net: Architecting Applications for the Enterprise](http://www.microsoft.com/learning/en/us/Books/12863.aspx)", by Dino Esposito and Andrea Saltarello.
>
> The Northwind Starter Kit is a sample
> application produced by Managed
> Designs (<http://www.manageddesigns.it>)
> and intended to be used as a blueprint
> when designing and implementing a .NET
> layered application architecture. The
> application uses the standard
> Northwind database, as included in
> Microsoft SQL Server and Microsoft
> Access: no modifications to the
> database schema are required in order
> to install and run the starter kit.
>
>
>
I agree with @Chris Ballance that including a Database Project can be very helpful. But note that the DB Project can seem a bit complicated as it syncronizes the project and reference DB structures.
+tom | First off, the **Database Project** is great stuff, and I would highly recommend using it for your data layer.
I would separate by project as it makes sense, but keep it all in the same solution. |
557,261 | I am preparing for the development of an enterprise-style application for a very small business of 6 employees (including myself -- before you question why a 6-person company would need an enterprise application, we have a lot going on with a lot of processes and tools needed to simplify it). As always I'm trying to follow best practices in setting up the project; I'm going to be using .NET 3.5, with the database being on Windows Server 2003/SQL Server 2005.
While I'm developing and testing the solution, should I have everything in my main project? What I mean is... Visual Studio 2008 Professional lets you have "database projects" as well as all of the other types of projects. For this application I'm going to need:
* Database Project containing the create and test scripts for the new data schema
* C# projects containing the actual code/application:
1. Customer-facing web site(s) using ASP.NET MVC
2. Back-end order processing system, probably web-based but possibly a "smart client"
* SSIS project containing packages to ETL the "live" application data provided by our vendor(s) and migrate over existing customer and order data from the legacy database.
* Reporting project for SQL Server Reporting Services
Basically, I am wondering if it's a good idea to have all of these as part of one massive Visual Studio solution (let's call it "EnterpriseSolution"), or if I should break them out and tackle them separately. Most of the books and websites I've looked at include them all together, but they also assume a team of developers, DBAs, architects and the like - in this case I'm all of them rolled into one. The database project and at least some ETL processes need to be done and loaded into production before the rest of the application is written, since we need to load the new vendor's products in a live environment (to start selling them).
I'm a little overwhelmed as to how I should begin to structure this, but I want to come up with an overall plan before I begin to lay things out and start coding.
Any suggestions on how to tackle a project like this? | 2009/02/17 | [
"https://Stackoverflow.com/questions/557261",
"https://Stackoverflow.com",
"https://Stackoverflow.com/users/40667/"
] | I have found it most convenient to maintain the client-side and server-side code in separate solutions. This assumes the server presents a stable interface such as a web service or WCF interface.
Over time things grow, you may use more than one client technology (Windows, web...) and keeping these clusters of technology separate in their own solutions keeps things simpler.
If you are looking for a good architecture sample see the [Northwind Starter Kit](http://codeplex.com/nsk) at CodePlex. I found this when reading "[Microsoft .Net: Architecting Applications for the Enterprise](http://www.microsoft.com/learning/en/us/Books/12863.aspx)", by Dino Esposito and Andrea Saltarello.
>
> The Northwind Starter Kit is a sample
> application produced by Managed
> Designs (<http://www.manageddesigns.it>)
> and intended to be used as a blueprint
> when designing and implementing a .NET
> layered application architecture. The
> application uses the standard
> Northwind database, as included in
> Microsoft SQL Server and Microsoft
> Access: no modifications to the
> database schema are required in order
> to install and run the starter kit.
>
>
>
I agree with @Chris Ballance that including a Database Project can be very helpful. But note that the DB Project can seem a bit complicated as it syncronizes the project and reference DB structures.
+tom | I would recommend creating a "Blank Solution" to start that would be a \*.sln file (Say EnterpriseSolution.sln) that would sit in a folder named EneterpriseSolution. A blank solution can be created from "Other Types". I would then add in the additional parts you described as seperate projects, each within its own folder under the "EnterpriseSolution" folder.
For instance, each of your client facing websites would each have their own project folder. It looks like you will have more than one website so you will need to make sure you setup different "ports" for each to run under if you use one solution wrapper. However, you can aslo create different solution "wrappers" (as a blank solution to start and then project reference the projects you want) to include each website sperately in your folder structure so you can focus on a portion of your enterprise solution. But physically you will know where everything is and how it is organized.
This way, when you look at your Enterprise Solution folder thru windows explorer the only thing you will see is your solution file(s) and your project folders.
Thanks and good luck with your project. |
557,261 | I am preparing for the development of an enterprise-style application for a very small business of 6 employees (including myself -- before you question why a 6-person company would need an enterprise application, we have a lot going on with a lot of processes and tools needed to simplify it). As always I'm trying to follow best practices in setting up the project; I'm going to be using .NET 3.5, with the database being on Windows Server 2003/SQL Server 2005.
While I'm developing and testing the solution, should I have everything in my main project? What I mean is... Visual Studio 2008 Professional lets you have "database projects" as well as all of the other types of projects. For this application I'm going to need:
* Database Project containing the create and test scripts for the new data schema
* C# projects containing the actual code/application:
1. Customer-facing web site(s) using ASP.NET MVC
2. Back-end order processing system, probably web-based but possibly a "smart client"
* SSIS project containing packages to ETL the "live" application data provided by our vendor(s) and migrate over existing customer and order data from the legacy database.
* Reporting project for SQL Server Reporting Services
Basically, I am wondering if it's a good idea to have all of these as part of one massive Visual Studio solution (let's call it "EnterpriseSolution"), or if I should break them out and tackle them separately. Most of the books and websites I've looked at include them all together, but they also assume a team of developers, DBAs, architects and the like - in this case I'm all of them rolled into one. The database project and at least some ETL processes need to be done and loaded into production before the rest of the application is written, since we need to load the new vendor's products in a live environment (to start selling them).
I'm a little overwhelmed as to how I should begin to structure this, but I want to come up with an overall plan before I begin to lay things out and start coding.
Any suggestions on how to tackle a project like this? | 2009/02/17 | [
"https://Stackoverflow.com/questions/557261",
"https://Stackoverflow.com",
"https://Stackoverflow.com/users/40667/"
] | It's definitely good idea to use one Solution with several projects in it. If you want to use ASP.NET MVC define one C# Project for each layer: MVC Web, Service layer, Data Access Layer and separate test project.
You can learn from Rob Conery's [Storefront](http://blog.wekeroad.com/mvc-storefront/mvc-storefront-part-1/) sample application or [Oxite](http://www.codeplex.com/oxite/Release/ProjectReleases.aspx?ReleaseId=23315).
You can try also to use Guidance Packages from patterns & practises group:
<http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/practices/default.aspx> | I would recommend creating a "Blank Solution" to start that would be a \*.sln file (Say EnterpriseSolution.sln) that would sit in a folder named EneterpriseSolution. A blank solution can be created from "Other Types". I would then add in the additional parts you described as seperate projects, each within its own folder under the "EnterpriseSolution" folder.
For instance, each of your client facing websites would each have their own project folder. It looks like you will have more than one website so you will need to make sure you setup different "ports" for each to run under if you use one solution wrapper. However, you can aslo create different solution "wrappers" (as a blank solution to start and then project reference the projects you want) to include each website sperately in your folder structure so you can focus on a portion of your enterprise solution. But physically you will know where everything is and how it is organized.
This way, when you look at your Enterprise Solution folder thru windows explorer the only thing you will see is your solution file(s) and your project folders.
Thanks and good luck with your project. |
151,183 | I had a paper ready for journal publication, but decided to break it into 2 conference papers and submitted them to a conference.
Now, one of them is accepted but the other one is rejected! The thing is, the 2 papers are related and I think they should be published together. The paper which is rejected, had 3 reviewers. One accepted it, one weak-accepted and the other one rejected it. The two who accepted it, marked it as innovative, highly useful and relevant. (All 3 reviewers mentioned they are highly confident on being able to judge my paper)
Now, can I write to the conference and tell them to review the paper or argue with them that the paper could be accepted based on points made by the two reviewers?
PS: I had to break them into two papers because of the page limit. Furthermore, it makes more sense for them to be published together since they are parts of a single framework. However, this doesn't mean that one cannot be published without the other; as I mentioned, I believe publishing them together just makes more sense. Moreover, I was very confident that both will be accepted! | 2020/06/29 | [
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/151183",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/122003/"
] | (CS perspective / I was conference chair and program committee chair several times):
You made your choice and now you have to live with it. You have until submission of the final version to make sure that the paper is readable and self-contained. Since the accepted paper was reviewed independently from your other submission, that should be quite possible. You might disagree, but the reviewers thought it could live on its own.
You can publish your other paper on a preview server or as a technical report at your university / department / personal web-page. Pre-publishing it there should not hurt its chances of being accepted elsewhere. This way, you can cite and refer to it.
You can either submit the other half to a different conference or you can work both of them together and submit to a journal. This is standard practice in CS.
If you were to try to negotiate with me, I would be quite annoyed, though of course trying to be polite. | Honestly, you shouldn't be splitting a research paper into two and trying to submit as two publications, unless there is a page limit or something. You even are admitting that it doesn't make sense to publish one of these without the other.
I would say you're better off asking them to combine the two papers back into a single paper to publish. But doing this risks making you look bad, as it is admitting that they shouldn't have been split up in the first place. An alternative is to add to the second paper to make it strong enough to stand on its own and submit it to a different conference as a follow up. |
151,183 | I had a paper ready for journal publication, but decided to break it into 2 conference papers and submitted them to a conference.
Now, one of them is accepted but the other one is rejected! The thing is, the 2 papers are related and I think they should be published together. The paper which is rejected, had 3 reviewers. One accepted it, one weak-accepted and the other one rejected it. The two who accepted it, marked it as innovative, highly useful and relevant. (All 3 reviewers mentioned they are highly confident on being able to judge my paper)
Now, can I write to the conference and tell them to review the paper or argue with them that the paper could be accepted based on points made by the two reviewers?
PS: I had to break them into two papers because of the page limit. Furthermore, it makes more sense for them to be published together since they are parts of a single framework. However, this doesn't mean that one cannot be published without the other; as I mentioned, I believe publishing them together just makes more sense. Moreover, I was very confident that both will be accepted! | 2020/06/29 | [
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/151183",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/122003/"
] | >
> Now, can I write to the conference and tell them to review the paper or argue with them that the paper could be accepted based on points made by the two reviewers?
>
>
>
You can try, but what do you have to tell them that they do not already know? They have already read the reviews, thought about them and reached a decision. Unless you can think of a compelling argument that invalidates or rebuts the criticism of the unfavorable review, your chances of success are essentially zero. | **The outcome:** Some members kindly gave me good comments in reply to my question. Actually, I used some of them in preparing my email to the conference committee. Here, I'll mention what the process was and what happened for those who find themselves in a similar situation:
I have contacted the conference with the reasons I had in support of my paper, and argued that my paper had the required qualities to be accepted. However, they respectfully denied it almost immediately! :)
So, to sum it up and for clarification purposes for others that might one day need to do the same thing: It does not seem that there is anything wrong with contacting the conference committee to argue that your paper deserved to be accepted. However, there is a little chance of changing the conference judgement even despite having sufficient reasons.
PS: Something I learnt during this process, is to always ask direct and accurate questions without going into unnecessary details. In this question, I first talked about my journal paper,and I shouldn't have done It! Since the majority of comments were in regard and around reasons for why I should or shouldn't have broken one paper into two papers and that was not my question! I had already made my decision and divided the paper into two and I believe I had good reasons for that! As a result, not only I got many unrelated comments and answers, but also someone changed the topic of my question to something that I do not agree with, but since I didn't have enough points, I couldn't discard their changes! Now, how funny is that? :))
Thanks everyone and good luck with your publications! |
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