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The blog, rants, ravings, and commentaries of Bill Watters

Entries Tagged as 'Programming'

T-SQL: Hex String to Hex Value func

May 19th, 2008 · No Comments

SQL Server 2005 includes an undocumented function, sys.fn_varbintohexstr, that converts a hex value to a string representation of that hex value (0×3a becomes ‘0×3a’), but there is no function to go back from a hex string to a hex value. Below is something that does the trick quite nicely
CREATE FUNCTION dbo.HexStrToVarBin(@hexstr varchar(8000))
RETURNS varbinary(8000)
AS
BEGIN 
    DECLARE @hex char(2), @i [...]

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Tags: Programming

Industry’s First Benchmark Study From Nielsen Entertainment Provides Directional Findings on Emerging Markets, Spending, and Cross-Media Ownership for Interactive Entertainment

April 16th, 2008 · No Comments

Well no shit, it took them this long to figure it out? But anyway, here’s the full article. It’s from the folks who still haven’t realized that DVRs have impacted viewing habits:
LOS ANGELES, April 7 /PRNewswire/ — How are the demographics of gamers evolving, how much do they spend each month on games and competitive [...]

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Tags: Geek Toys · Programming

How do RAID levels work?

January 29th, 2008 · No Comments

Here’s the best layman’s example of the various RAID drive redundancy levels I’ve ever stumbled across:

 

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Tags: Programming

Weighing in on the Gizmodo affair

January 12th, 2008 · No Comments

By now if you’re reading this post, you’ve already heard about the stunt that the tech gizmo blogging site, Gizmodo, pulled at CES this week. A doodad called TV-B-Gone had fallen into the dolt’s hands, and they had the bright idea to wander around turning off every TV in sight. Now at CES, that’s about [...]

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Tags: Geek Toys · Programming · The Day Job

Gizmodo, there’s some things you really shouldn’t fess up to…

January 10th, 2008 · No Comments

So, at CES there’s all those zillions of big pretty tv displays, right? Well, what happens when someone gets ahold of a universal IR blaster that turns any tv off and has a field day…
Video for what Gizmodo did at CES
I don’t think they’re going to be getting any more press passes anywhere for a [...]

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Tags: Geek Toys · Humor · Programming · YouTube