Sounds crazy, but its true.
Check out an article from the EFF about the issue:
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2012/10/your-right-own-under-threat
Or take action and contract congress and let them know how you feel about this!
Monday, October 29, 2012
First Sale Doctrine at risk
The Supreme Court is hearing a case that could affect whether we are all allowed to resell products we bought, or even customize or personalize them. The First Sale doctrine allows you to sell items you bought after they are have been sold by a retailer or manufacture. Without this you would need to obtain permission from every individual manufacturer if you want to modify or sell something you legal bought and paid for.
Sounds crazy, but its true.
Check out an article from the EFF about the issue:
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2012/10/your-right-own-under-threat
Or take action and contract congress and let them know how you feel about this!
Sounds crazy, but its true.
Check out an article from the EFF about the issue:
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2012/10/your-right-own-under-threat
Or take action and contract congress and let them know how you feel about this!
Wednesday, August 1, 2012
Gamespot is the Devil
So why are they the Devil? I just happened upon a message I had received a while ago notifying me how bad a person I am for making a cardinal sin and violating their terms of service. I didn't notice the thing because I mainly use RSS to get news, and I only still login to the site for the "Dark" color theme. I stopped using the "social" features of Gamespot a long time ago after getting these messages daily. I loved posting comments on news articles and that was how I spent most of my time on the site back then. However, I had a guy basically start following me around and hassling me. When I finally reported him he made it clear that he was friends with many people at Gamestop and sure enough every post I made after that equaled a TOS violation even though no one at Gamespot could tell me why other than the one word category it was classified as; nor could they tell me what I needed to do to not get flagged other than to stop posting, so I did.
My worse offense that had a good portion of the stupid "points" I was awarded for using the site taken away? Be prepared and shield your children because this is pretty bad. It was an article back when the PSN got hacked, and was not the first article about it. The story was about how much Sony respected its users by not upgrading their server software nor encrypting passwords. What did I comment? What heinous and cruel statement won me my harshest punishment in the "Trolling" category? Are you ready? It was:
LOL
Yep, just a laugh. Sure that might be insulting for anyone that trusted a company that made a track record of this behavior, but I am sure every other person in the world had a giggle. It was not directed at any body nor meant to offend. It was an honest reaction to the story, but someone that did not like me knew someone at Gamestop and I was punished. I never try to be a dick. Very often my opinions are not in the majority or may seem strange to some people, but I always try to be respectful and usually have more regard for other people's dissenting positions than they have of mine.
The worst part is Gamespot rewards people for reporting others by way of these "points". Being a fan of XBL and Gamescore, I can understand the appeal; however, gaining achievements involves a little more dedication that responding to surveys, commenting on news and trying to get people in trouble. Like it is possible to not piss off SOMEONE when you post to the internet. Its a bad system and why I have never been a fan of sites like Reddit or Digg where the system can be gamed for personal gain: even if the reward is something stupid like Karma points or Bozo Buttons.
What was my latest offense? I happened to mention a Kickstarter project in a post. SPAM/Advertisement they said. I guess. Although it did not benefit me, it was not my project and the only thing I would have gained is money being withdrawn from my bank account when the project succeeded. It was in topic, in the proper forum and very polite, but I guess someone was offended because I used the word Kickstarter. Probably their advertisers which should be threatened by the possibility developers could get money without them thus cutting them out of the market. Of course, this was only one of many posts I made about other Kickstarter projects, and none of the others were flagged or deleted. I even defended users who were pro-Kickstarter against those that used cursing and death threats. None of those users posts were removed; nor any of my other posts. Just one lone post about an iOS/Android game people in the topic might be interested it. Maybe I should have sprinkled some profanity and insults in so it would get lost among the others.
But oh well. I don't pay for an account now (since they ended up giving the privilege I paid for away for free), don't care about their points and don't get more than a color scheme for my account. So they can just shove it. However, its another example of how closed sites and communities chill free speech and spit on the foundation the internet was built on. I am all for allow users to ignore or filter content, but as a user-content provider/maintainer I think you have a responsibility to allow people to speak their mind; especially if they are being decent members of the community and are only guilty of offending 1 person. In the end, it is up to us to respect each other, live peacefully with one another and try not to be offended because someone thinks differently.
END RANT
Access SPListItem Attachment in Sharepoint 2010
My scenario was simple. Our company uses a financial vendor which has a web service for retrieving our Stock information and republishing it on our Sharepoint 2010 Intranet site. I successfully built a Timer Job that runs every 5 minutes during market open and close (deleting items older than a few days when market is closed) and it adds an item to a Sharepoint list attaching an XML file containing the results of the web service call. Working with past Stock applications in other languages I have found having the original, archived XML results is important to debug issues with the data provider.
The Timer Job works great and saves the files perfectly. Now I needed a Visual Web Part the user could add to their pages which would consume this XML file for the most recent entry, parse the information necessary then show the Stock Price in a pretty fashion per our marketing company's design. Honestly, I did not expect it to be difficult as I have done this a lot outside of .NET and Sharepoint. I setup the code to connect to my list, query the most recent item so I could grab its attachments. All good. With plenty of examples on the Google-nets, I quickly discovered how to get the URL of the attachment and could pass this to an XmlDocument object via Load() which lead to this code:
However, my code would not work and I continually received 404 errors trying to load the document via URL. I could take the same URL I was generating and put it in a browser window and successfully get to the list, but the code did not see it. I looked through logs, used Fiddler and even tried using HttpWebRequest and the LoadXml command as well with nothing shedding light on why this was erroring. I could not find any information from other people having this problem and even posted on MS' forums with no replies (although I was impatient and did not give it long).
My Timer Job was able to access urls outside the network, but this took some tricks by our Network and Server guys due to proxy issues. As such, I assume that maybe there was some permission/proxy issue hiding the list from my code, so I dug for other ways to try and load up this attachment. I found some references to people doing the same type of thing in Sharepoint 2003. Although I hate using old code since you never know what problems may exist using it in newer versions of Sharepoint and .NET, I was racing against my vacation and did not want to leave this hanging for weeks before I got back to it. So I replaced my code with the following which appears to be accessing the file in the list by its local folder structure and passing the binary stream to the XmlDocument Load command.
So far this is working and I have been able to use XPathNavigator to get the nodes I needed from the XML file. As is my MO, I posted this hoping to help anyone running into this issue and to get feedback from anyone that might have a better understanding of what is going on or a better way to accomplish this.
The Timer Job works great and saves the files perfectly. Now I needed a Visual Web Part the user could add to their pages which would consume this XML file for the most recent entry, parse the information necessary then show the Stock Price in a pretty fashion per our marketing company's design. Honestly, I did not expect it to be difficult as I have done this a lot outside of .NET and Sharepoint. I setup the code to connect to my list, query the most recent item so I could grab its attachments. All good. With plenty of examples on the Google-nets, I quickly discovered how to get the URL of the attachment and could pass this to an XmlDocument object via Load() which lead to this code:
However, my code would not work and I continually received 404 errors trying to load the document via URL. I could take the same URL I was generating and put it in a browser window and successfully get to the list, but the code did not see it. I looked through logs, used Fiddler and even tried using HttpWebRequest and the LoadXml command as well with nothing shedding light on why this was erroring. I could not find any information from other people having this problem and even posted on MS' forums with no replies (although I was impatient and did not give it long).
My Timer Job was able to access urls outside the network, but this took some tricks by our Network and Server guys due to proxy issues. As such, I assume that maybe there was some permission/proxy issue hiding the list from my code, so I dug for other ways to try and load up this attachment. I found some references to people doing the same type of thing in Sharepoint 2003. Although I hate using old code since you never know what problems may exist using it in newer versions of Sharepoint and .NET, I was racing against my vacation and did not want to leave this hanging for weeks before I got back to it. So I replaced my code with the following which appears to be accessing the file in the list by its local folder structure and passing the binary stream to the XmlDocument Load command.
So far this is working and I have been able to use XPathNavigator to get the nodes I needed from the XML file. As is my MO, I posted this hoping to help anyone running into this issue and to get feedback from anyone that might have a better understanding of what is going on or a better way to accomplish this.
Monday, July 23, 2012
Sharepoint 2010 and List Picker Custom Web Part Property
One of the frustrations I have learning to code for Sharepoint is that the amount of information available is miserable. Either you get incomplete or unhelpful information in the way of sterile Microsoft Documentation, or any fool with a blog that has the potential to understand just as little as the reader about the subject matter. And YES I do - in fact - understand I fall into that category as well, but at least I try to be open about my ignorance and only try to post information which was helpful to me and my process of learning. So if you are learning to code from me, I sincerely apologize and hope you have some other resources at your disposal.
In any case, even when you find some one knowledgeable you also run into the fact that they may not specify whether they are talking about Sharepoint 2003, 2007 or 2010 (I ONLY deal with Sharepoint 2010 on my blog) or maybe leave off information they deem too complex or too simple. As was the case when I needed to have a custom webpart property that allowed a users to search for a List. I found DOZENS of ways to accomplish this that ranged from super simple (and useless) to absurdly complex. I tried many of these and most did not work properly or how I would expect. MS has several webparts that to do this (i.e. Content Query Web Part), so why is doing it yourself such a mystery?
As some background, for my project I needed a web part that would take a list, read in the rows and items and display this in a branding friendly manner for our publishing sites. As such, I wanted Content Owners to be able to add the web part and select a list they created somewhere in the site for it to use. I called this web part "QuickLinks" so keep that in mind as you read my code.
First off, you should understand a bit about adding custom properties to a web part. Here are a few links I found very helpful:
http://morshemesh.blogspot.com/2011/05/adding-custom-properties-to-visual-web.html
http://www.lamber.info/post/2010/05/21/How-do-I-create-custom-properties-in-Visual-Web-Parts.aspx
http://naimishpandya.wordpress.com/2012/01/12/how-to-add-custom-web-part-properties-to-visual-web-part-in-sharepoint-2010/
Once you have a handle on adding a custom property then a List Picker will not contain many surprises. The main difference is that you have to (for lack of a better term) build your picker before it can be added as a functional control. Even though you are calling a built in tool that MS uses and has available, you have to set the stage and provide some code before you add it. This seems like a little overkill to me, but I guess MS likes to make us developers sweat a little.
Here is my code for the ListPicker. As a note, I pieced this together from a variety of sources. Many of which served other purposes, so please forgive me if there is something weird in there.
Now you have your ListPicker ready for use, so we will use the other tricks to add this as a custom property. Next make sure your webpart.cs file defines the ToolboxItem as IWebEditable. I have included my entire QuickLinks.cs file below for an example.
Finally you will want to add the few lines to your main webpart code behind to so you can use the custom property. I have a stub of code below to demonstrate how I added it:
If this works for you like it worked for me, you just spent less time adding the List Picker than searching for how to do it. One thing that bothers me is I have seen this code for 2007 and it is not much different, so hopefully this is a supported way of doing this. However, if it works maybe its worth the risk.
Happy Sharepointing!
In any case, even when you find some one knowledgeable you also run into the fact that they may not specify whether they are talking about Sharepoint 2003, 2007 or 2010 (I ONLY deal with Sharepoint 2010 on my blog) or maybe leave off information they deem too complex or too simple. As was the case when I needed to have a custom webpart property that allowed a users to search for a List. I found DOZENS of ways to accomplish this that ranged from super simple (and useless) to absurdly complex. I tried many of these and most did not work properly or how I would expect. MS has several webparts that to do this (i.e. Content Query Web Part), so why is doing it yourself such a mystery?
As some background, for my project I needed a web part that would take a list, read in the rows and items and display this in a branding friendly manner for our publishing sites. As such, I wanted Content Owners to be able to add the web part and select a list they created somewhere in the site for it to use. I called this web part "QuickLinks" so keep that in mind as you read my code.
First off, you should understand a bit about adding custom properties to a web part. Here are a few links I found very helpful:
http://morshemesh.blogspot.com/2011/05/adding-custom-properties-to-visual-web.html
http://www.lamber.info/post/2010/05/21/How-do-I-create-custom-properties-in-Visual-Web-Parts.aspx
http://naimishpandya.wordpress.com/2012/01/12/how-to-add-custom-web-part-properties-to-visual-web-part-in-sharepoint-2010/
Once you have a handle on adding a custom property then a List Picker will not contain many surprises. The main difference is that you have to (for lack of a better term) build your picker before it can be added as a functional control. Even though you are calling a built in tool that MS uses and has available, you have to set the stage and provide some code before you add it. This seems like a little overkill to me, but I guess MS likes to make us developers sweat a little.
Here is my code for the ListPicker. As a note, I pieced this together from a variety of sources. Many of which served other purposes, so please forgive me if there is something weird in there.
Now you have your ListPicker ready for use, so we will use the other tricks to add this as a custom property. Next make sure your webpart.cs file defines the ToolboxItem as IWebEditable. I have included my entire QuickLinks.cs file below for an example.
Finally you will want to add the few lines to your main webpart code behind to so you can use the custom property. I have a stub of code below to demonstrate how I added it:
If this works for you like it worked for me, you just spent less time adding the List Picker than searching for how to do it. One thing that bothers me is I have seen this code for 2007 and it is not much different, so hopefully this is a supported way of doing this. However, if it works maybe its worth the risk.
Happy Sharepointing!
Tuesday, May 15, 2012
Tex Murphy on Kickstarter
"I love murder mysteries. Ah, to be a *fictional* detective. Everything would be so much simpler then." Tex Murphy in Under a Killing Moon.
So Kickstarter has been a way for long lost and loved brands to make it back into the world. So far all the projects I have back have been successfully funded, and are in progress of being made. One, however, has just started up and it is the one I worry about the most.
Tex Murphy, an Private Detective in the future who takes inspiration from the gumshoes of the past. A man out of time and a hilarious series of adventure games. I loved the humor in these and the mixture of old school PI lingo with mutants, laser guns and flying cars. It was a fun series with a lot of wit, and one of the projects I desperately want to get funded.
Kickstarter is a great way to help get these games developed. It frees developers from fighting with publishers to get games funded and allows them to just make the fucking thing. This is why so few original ideas and soulless games get published. So if you can help, please do!
http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/251414413/tex-murphy-project-fedora?ref=live
"Ah, the Rodent Tracker 8000. Just like on TV. 'Because household pests *never* build up an immunity to bullets.'" Tex Murphy in Under a Killing Moon.
So Kickstarter has been a way for long lost and loved brands to make it back into the world. So far all the projects I have back have been successfully funded, and are in progress of being made. One, however, has just started up and it is the one I worry about the most.
Tex Murphy, an Private Detective in the future who takes inspiration from the gumshoes of the past. A man out of time and a hilarious series of adventure games. I loved the humor in these and the mixture of old school PI lingo with mutants, laser guns and flying cars. It was a fun series with a lot of wit, and one of the projects I desperately want to get funded.
Kickstarter is a great way to help get these games developed. It frees developers from fighting with publishers to get games funded and allows them to just make the fucking thing. This is why so few original ideas and soulless games get published. So if you can help, please do!
http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/251414413/tex-murphy-project-fedora?ref=live
"Ah, the Rodent Tracker 8000. Just like on TV. 'Because household pests *never* build up an immunity to bullets.'" Tex Murphy in Under a Killing Moon.
Friday, March 16, 2012
Kickstarter Gaming Division
Congrats to Double Fine on an awesome run on Kickerstarter! With 3,336,371 million, we will see one of the greats create an Adventure game: a genre that has almost completely died in a realm of cut-throat developers focusing only on games as a cash-cow.
Now we have the chance to bring back another genre: the top down, turn-based Role Playing Game. Gone from circulation, these gems are probably alien creatures to today's games. I am talking about Wasteland 2. Wasteland was a great game in the classic style of the Ultima series and lead to the inspiration for the Fallout series, which ended up regaining life as a 1st Person, Action RPG. However, all of this came from the roots of party, turn based RPGs.
The folks behind the original Wasteland have taken the lead from Double Fine and are funding on Kickstarter, which seems to be my latest Game Distribution Channel. Being the highest pledge amount on Kickstarter to be reached (over $900,000 in 2 days), this is really the rattling of the swords for those of us not satisfying with the over-sensationalized, shallow games that flood the market today.
For those of you interested, there is still 31 days to go to help an awesome game once again see the light of day!
http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/inxile/wasteland-2
Now if only publishers will learn that people play and want more than just 1st Person Shooters and MMOs!
Now we have the chance to bring back another genre: the top down, turn-based Role Playing Game. Gone from circulation, these gems are probably alien creatures to today's games. I am talking about Wasteland 2. Wasteland was a great game in the classic style of the Ultima series and lead to the inspiration for the Fallout series, which ended up regaining life as a 1st Person, Action RPG. However, all of this came from the roots of party, turn based RPGs.
The folks behind the original Wasteland have taken the lead from Double Fine and are funding on Kickstarter, which seems to be my latest Game Distribution Channel. Being the highest pledge amount on Kickstarter to be reached (over $900,000 in 2 days), this is really the rattling of the swords for those of us not satisfying with the over-sensationalized, shallow games that flood the market today.
For those of you interested, there is still 31 days to go to help an awesome game once again see the light of day!
http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/inxile/wasteland-2
Now if only publishers will learn that people play and want more than just 1st Person Shooters and MMOs!
Thursday, February 9, 2012
More Than Double Fine (Updated)
Today I feel giddy. As video gamer gaming for almost the full history of video games, I have played a LOT of them. I view games as an art form that may do not attribute to things "functional" or "interactive". Although I can enjoy the thrills of the world's Halos and other popular fodder, I prefer games with more depth and artistic merits. Fun is not the amount of headshots you gather, but the emotion you take away when the playing stops. Many of my personal favorites do not show up in the top 10 lists and are normally punished by publishers who don't see enormous blockbuster profits.
Tim Schafer is at the top of my list of gods within the gaming world. His games are always strange and alluring experiences that challenge the traditions of typical games. Not always do these types of games gather mainstream audiences as Tim has experienced with both Pyschonauts and Brutal Legend. This week was already going well for me with news that Pyschonauts 2 may actually happen with the help of Minecraft creator Markus "Notch" Persson, but then I discovered a link to kickstarter:
http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/66710809/double-fine-adventure
For someone that is never the target audience for the most popular Movies, TV Shows, Games, Music, (insert random entertainment form here), this is great news. A game being developed by a legend with his team working directly with gamers, and without a publisher, to make a game. This is how it should be done: without corporate greed or influence. It may not be the game for everyone and may not make millions of dollars, but this is where the future of game development needs to head. And this will be my first kickstarter investment and I hope other people help out too.
Rock the crap out of it Tim! Keep making games for the rest of us!
(UPDATE) 1.3 Million raised already. Congrats Double Fine!
Tim Schafer is at the top of my list of gods within the gaming world. His games are always strange and alluring experiences that challenge the traditions of typical games. Not always do these types of games gather mainstream audiences as Tim has experienced with both Pyschonauts and Brutal Legend. This week was already going well for me with news that Pyschonauts 2 may actually happen with the help of Minecraft creator Markus "Notch" Persson, but then I discovered a link to kickstarter:
http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/66710809/double-fine-adventure
For someone that is never the target audience for the most popular Movies, TV Shows, Games, Music, (insert random entertainment form here), this is great news. A game being developed by a legend with his team working directly with gamers, and without a publisher, to make a game. This is how it should be done: without corporate greed or influence. It may not be the game for everyone and may not make millions of dollars, but this is where the future of game development needs to head. And this will be my first kickstarter investment and I hope other people help out too.
Rock the crap out of it Tim! Keep making games for the rest of us!
(UPDATE) 1.3 Million raised already. Congrats Double Fine!
Tuesday, January 17, 2012
Umbrae's Tower Goes Dark for SOPA Protest on Jan 18th
This blog will go dark on January 18th in protest of SOPA and PIPA like may other sites:
http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/wikipedia-blackout-websites-wikipedia-reddit-dark-wednesday-protest/story?id=15373251#.TxWXQ29SRwg
Be prepared to see this page alot!
http://www.sopastrike.com/strike/
Keep Freedom of Speech Alive!
http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/wikipedia-blackout-websites-wikipedia-reddit-dark-wednesday-protest/story?id=15373251#.TxWXQ29SRwg
Be prepared to see this page alot!
http://www.sopastrike.com/strike/
Keep Freedom of Speech Alive!
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