Microsoft Money Quote Updates

A great update to have - a new version of the updater from Gaier software has been released that now picks up more quotes for MS Money.

I've just downloaded the paid version as I think the developer deserves some benefit from their hard work.

You can view the details here:

https://gaiersoftware.com/Money

The note from the developer is below:

I wanted to let you know I have released version 2.0 tonight! 

This version switches to an entirely new online quote service.  The new quote service was built for the new MSN.com and MSN Money websites, and is also used by the Windows 8 Finance app.  The new online quote service is more reliable, has better symbol coverage, and should be here to stay for a long time.  It is backed by a Morningstar quote feed.

The MSN Money team has communicated to me the “old” quote service will be shutdown Jan 5^th.  It seems they pushed the date back from the originally planned date of Dec 22^nd 2014.  Good for us because it gave me more time to update my program!

As discussed in my previous email, this change required a significant amount of re-work to MSMoneyQuotes due to the new “symbology” format.  And thus I changed MSMoneyQuotes’s major version from “1” to “2”.

The approach my program uses to access online quotes has changed.  Instead of a single step to get online quotes using the symbols as-is from the Money file, there are now two steps: 

1)      The first step is to “resolve symbols”.  That means my program needs to map the symbols in your Money file (e.g. $US:INDU)  to a symbol on MSN Money (e.g. 126.10.!DJI.126.$INDU).  It uses the same service used by MSN Money’s “Quote Search” auto-complete input box to perform the lookup.  See the “Help and Support” section at the bottom of this page for more information: http://gaiersoftware.com/Money/DetailsAndHelp

2)      If it can resolve the symbol, then it uses the special MSN Money symbols (e.g. 126.10.!DJI.126.$INDU) to fetch online quotes.

You can see the two steps above in action if you use the –v verbose option.

I have also fixed a couple problems reported to me with regards to the FT.com import feature.  Specifically my program now handles symbols that have a double suffix  (e.g. SLXX:LSE:GBP, IGUS:LSE:GBX) and symbols that are 2 characters long with a suffix (e.g. AI:PAR, OR:PAR).

And lastly, as part of the above online quotes re-work, I have begun the effort to include currency exchange rates as part of the online quote update.  Look for that soon in version 2.1.  If you are interested in the feature, I’ll be looking for some beta testers in the near future.  Send me an email if you’re interested in participating in the testing.

EE PDP authentication error

There is a general EE error with users getting both PDP authentication error and APN settings incorrect when trying to use data.

NEET WiFi Music Receiver Setup

After looking at options for playing digital music through my old HiFi separates amplifier and speakers I had decided that SONOS wasn't a viable option and came across the NEET WiFi Music Receiver on Amazon. There seems to be little other information available elsewhere on the NEET WiFi Music Receiver so I wonder if the Amazon distribution is an exclusive channel.

Once I get the NEET WiFi Music Receiver setup with my Nexus 5 phone and Netgear NAS I'll post some more details of how the configuration and setup is arranged.

Whos Heart 2014 - Last Voice Guessed as Nigel Kennedy

Whos on Heart 2014 has now been won with the final voice identified as Nigel Kennedy the classical violinist. The last voice has taken nearly 12 months to identify but the winner now gets a fantastic £100,000!

The other voices from Whos on Heart 2014 were Stevie Nicks and Ben Miller

Whos = Ben Miller
On = Stevie Nicks
Heart = Nigel Kennedy



Whos Heart 2014 Last Voice Nigel Kennedy

Winshock Microsoft Windows Bug Patch - Old Windows Vulnerability Revealed

New Windows bug/vulnerability revealed called Winshock. This has been present in all versions of Windows since Windows95.

Nicknamed WinShock (like BASH that was nick named ShellShock), it is rated 9.3 on the CVSS (Common Vulnerability Scoring System) vulnerability scale.  However, there is no proof of concept code yet to show how it can be exploited.

Winshock Microsoft Windows Bug Patch - Old Windows Vulnerability Revealed

I was made aware of this yesterday - Microsoft released a number of patches which are already being released to home PCs via the Windows Update process.

Interestingly when I googled WinShock, Google automatically thought you meant WinSock (which is a communications protocol), and you have to tell it you actually mean WinShock.

Link to BBC News story

Microsoft patches '19-year-old' bug.  Microsoft patches a critical bug in its software that had existed for 19 years, according to IBM researchers. Read more:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-30019976

Date_Diff Error - Gives Negative Values for SAP Data Services 4.2 (BODI 14.2.2/14.2.3) Chan

Date_Diff problem with SAP BODI Data Services 4.2 - 14.2/14.2.2/14.2.3 (BI Business Objects)

I've found a problem with the values being output in one of my Data Services jobs where date diff was reporting negative numbers. This function compares dates against each other to display an elapsed time.

 Yesterday we upgraded our Data Services to BI4.2 (internally shown as BI 14.2.3) and this has affected jobs using date_diff since the upgrade.

It appears that SAP have changed the function date_diff in  Data Services 14.2.2 (BI4.2) so the date inputs are reversed which means it now gives negative numbers.

 

The date_diff function compares date1 and date2

 Originally date1 was the later date (end date) and date2 was earlier (start date). As of Data Services 4.2.2 (14.2.2) the first date is the earlier date and date2 was later

 

Prior to Data Services 14.2.2 the date_diff function works as below:

 

date_diff(end_date, start_date)

 

After Data Services 14.2.2 the date_diff function works like this:

 

date_diff(start_date, _end_date)

This may bring SAP Data Services into line with other products but it really needs to be highlighted to customers as it will break any data services job using date_diff in a job after you upgrade to BODI BI 4.2 or SAP version 14.2.2 or higher

See P41 in the attached document from SAP

http://help.sap.com/businessobject/product_guides/sbods42/en/ds_42_upgrade_en.pdf

SAP Data Services Date_Diff Function

The Data Services date_diff function compares date1 and date2

 Originally date1 was the later date (end date) and date2 was earlier (start date). As of Data Services 4.2.2 (14.2.2) the first date is the earlier date and date2 was later



SAP Data Services Date_Diff Function error problem in BODS 4.2 

 

Prior to Data Services 14.2.2 the date_diff function works as below:

 

date_diff(end_date, start_date)

 

After Data Services 14.2.2 the date_diff function works like this:

 

date_diff(start_date, _end_date)

This may bring SAP Data Services into line with other products but it really needs to be highlighted to customers as it will break any data services job using date_diff in a job after you upgrade to BODI BI 4.2 or SAP version 14.2.2 or higher

See P41 in the attached document from SAP

http://help.sap.com/businessobject/product_guides/sbods42/en/ds_42_upgrade_en.pdf