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Articles indexed Saturday November 19 2011

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  • Mixed Emotions: Humans React to Natural Language Computer

    - by Applications User Experience
    There was a big event in Silicon Valley on Tuesday, November 15. Watson, the natural language computer developed at IBM Watson Research Center in Yorktown Heights, New York, and its inventor and principal research investigator, David Ferrucci, were guests at the Computer History Museum in Mountain View, California for another round of the television game Jeopardy. You may have read about or watched on YouTube how Watson beat Ken Jennings and Brad Rutter, two top Jeopardy competitors, last February. This time, Watson swept the floor with two Silicon Valley high-achievers, one a venture capitalist with a background  in math, computer engineering, and physics, and the other a technology and finance writer well-versed in all aspects of culture and humanities. Watson is the product of the DeepQA research project, which attempts to create an artificially intelligent computing system through advances in natural language processing (NLP), among other technologies. NLP is a computing strategy that seeks to provide answers by processing large amounts of unstructured data contained in multiple large domains of human knowledge. There are several ways to perform NLP, but one way to start is by recognizing key words, then processing  contextual  cues associated with the keyword concepts so that you get many more “smart” (that is, human-like) deductions,  rather than a series of “dumb” matches.  Jeopardy questions often require more than key word matching to get the correct answer; typically several pieces of information put together, often from vastly different categories, to come up with a satisfactory word string solution that can be rephrased as a question.  Smarter than your average search engine, but is it as smart as a human? Watson was especially fast at descrambling mixed-up state capital names, and recalling and pairing movie titles where one started and the other ended in the same word (e.g., Billion Dollar Baby Boom, where both titles used the word Baby). David said they had basically removed the variable of how fast Watson hit the buzzer compared to human contestants, but frustration frequently appeared on the faces of the contestants beaten to the punch by Watson. David explained that top Jeopardy winners like Jennings achieved their success with a similar strategy, timing their buzz to the end of the reading of the clue,  and “running the board”, being first to respond on about 60% of the clues.  Similar results for Watson. It made sense that Watson would be good at the technical and scientific stuff, so I figured the venture capitalist was toast. But I thought for sure Watson would lose to the writer in categories such as pop culture, wines and foods, and other humanities. Surprisingly, it held its own. I was amazed it could recognize a word definition of a syllogism in the category of philosophy. So what was the audience reaction to all of this? We started out expecting our formidable human contestants to easily run some of their categories; however, they started off on the wrong foot with the state capitals which Watson could unscramble so efficiently. By the end of the first round, contestants and the audience were feeling a little bit, well, …. deflated. Watson was winning by about $13,000, and the humans had gone into negative dollars. The IBM host said he was going to “slow Watson down a bit,” and the humans came back with respectable scores in Double Jeopardy. This was partially thanks to a very sympathetic audience (and host, also a human) providing “group-think” on many questions, especially baseball ‘s most valuable players, which by the way, couldn’t have been hard because even I knew them.  Yes, that’s right, the humans cheated. Since Watson could speak but not hear us (it didn’t have speech recognition capability), it was probably unaware of this. In Final Jeopardy, the single question had to do with law. I was sure Watson would blow this one, but all contestants were able to answer correctly about a copyright law. In a career devoted to making computers more helpful to people, I think I may have seen how a computer can do too much. I’m not sure I’d want to work side-by-side with a Watson doing my job. Certainly listening and empathy are important traits we humans still have over Watson.  While there was great enthusiasm in the packed room of computer scientists and their friends for this standing-room-only show, I think it made several of us uneasy (especially the poor human contestants whose egos were soundly bashed in the first round). This computer system, by the way , only took 4 years to program. David Ferrucci mentioned several practical uses for Watson, including medical diagnoses and legal strategies. Are you “the expert” in your job? Imagine NLP computing on an Oracle database.   This may be the user interface of the future to enable users to better process big data. How do you think you’d like it? Postscript: There were three little boys sitting in front of me in the very first row. They looked, how shall I say it, … unimpressed!

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  • PeopleSoft 8.52 iPad Certification

    - by Dave Bain
    One of the real gems in the PeopleTools 8.52 release is the certification of PeopleSoft applications running in the Safari Browser on an iPad.  It is nice that PeopleSoft is not constrained by technology like Adobe Flex/Flash, so announcements like this "Adobe drops plans for mobile Flash support" do not limit our mobile solution to custom mobile development. There are parts of PeopleSoft applications that operate better on iPads than others.  One of the best is Workcenters.  Workcenters were new to PeopleTools 8.51 and we are starting to see more and more adoption of them.  Workcenters are roll based landing pages that eliminate difficult navigation by providing access to most links, pages, and reports a user in a role needs.  One of the nicest I’ve seen is the Supply Manager Workspace.  Here are some links to screenshots of what a WorkCenter looks like on an iPad: Here's the standard PeopleSoft Login Page The Supply Manager Workspace looks great full screen on an iPad iPad has a great user interface to zoom, here's a screenshot of an upclose view of an analytic. Touch one of the analytics and it drills into the details. Go ahead and give it a try.  WorkCenters and Dashboards are starting to show up across applications.  For a quick one to try, navigate to the PeopleTools->Integration Broker->Integration Network WorkCenter.  It’s new in PeopleTools 8.52.

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  • IHRIM's Latest Workforce Solutions Review Focuses on Risk!

    - by Jay Richey, HCM Product Marketing
    IHRIM's latest edition of the Workforce Solution's Review magazine (in print and online) has some really compelling features and articles focused on HCM risk and compliance management.  Check out this line-up and sign up if you aren't already a member.  It's well worth it.  http://www.ihrimpublications.com/WSR_about.php Three to Watch: HR's Growing Compliance Responsibilities for Data Security, Genetic Nondiscrimination, and Anti-Bribery Laws     By W. Scott Blackmer and Richard Santalesa, InfoLawGroup, LLP Global HR and International Background Check Best Practices     By Terry Corley, Aletheia Consulting Group Compliance: Old Wine in New Wineskins?     By Ursula Christina Fellberg, Ph.D., UCF-StrategieBeraterin Join the HR/HR technology professionals who have subscribed for so many years to IHRIM’s publications and become a reader today by visiting  http://www.ihrimpublications.com/amember/signup.php.  

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  • Oracle WebCenter at the Enterprise 2.0 Conference

    - by Brian Dirking
    We had a great week at the E20 Conference, presenting in four sessions – Andy MacMillan gave a session titled Today’s Successful Enterprises are Social Enterprises and was on a panel that Tony Byrne moderated; Christian Finn spoke on a panel on Unified Communications Unified Communications + Social Computing = Best of Both Worlds?, Mark Bennett spoke on a panel on The Evolution of Talent Management. The key areas of focus this year were sentiment analysis, adoption and community building, the benefits of failure, and social’s role in process applications. Sentiment analysis. This was focused not on external audiences but more on employee sentiment. Tim Young showed his internal "NikoNiko" project, where employees use smilies to report their current mood. The result was a dashboard that showed the company mood by department. Since the goal is to improve productivity, people can see which departments are running into issues and try and address them. A company might otherwise wait until the end of the quarter financials to find out that there was a problem and product didn’t ship. This is a way to identify issues immediately. Tim is great – he had the crowd laughing as soon as he hit the stage, with his proposed hastag for his session: by making it 138 characters long, people couldn’t say much behind his back. And as I tweeted during his session, I loved his comment that complexity diffuses energy - it sounds like something Sun Tzu would say. Another example of employee sentiment analysis was CubeVibe. Founder and CEO Aaron Aycock, in his 3 minute pitch or die session talked about how engaged employees perform better. It was too bad he got gonged, he was just picking up speed, but CubeVibe did win the vote – congratulations to them. Internal adoption, community building, and involvement. On this topic I spoke to Terri Griffith, and she said there is some good work going on at University of Indiana regarding this, and hinted that she might be blogging about it in the near future. This area holds lots of interest for me. Amongst our customers, - CPAC stands out as an organization that has successfully built a community. So, I wonder - what are the building blocks? A strong leader? A common or unifying purpose? A certain level of engagement? I imagine someone has created an equation that says “for a community to grow at 30% per month, there must be an engagement level x to the square root of y, where x equals current community size, and y equals the expected growth rate, and the result is how many engagements the average user must contribute to maintain that growth.” Does anyone have a framework like that? The net result of everyone’s experience is that there is nothing to do but start early and fail often. Kevin Jones made this the focus of his keynote. He talked about the types of failure and what they mean. And he showed his famous kids at work video: Kevin’s blog also has this post: Social Business Failure #8: Workflow Integration. This is something that we’ve been working on at Oracle. Since so much of business is based in enterprise applications such as ERP and CRM (and since Oracle offers e-Business Suite, Siebel, PeopleSoft, and JD Edwards, as well as Fusion Applications), it makes sense that the social capabilities of Oracle WebCenter is built right into these applications. There are two types of social collaboration – ad-hoc, and exception handling. When you are in a business process and encounter an exception, you immediately look for 1) the document that tells you how to handle it, or 2) the person who can tell you how to handle it. With WebCenter built into these processes, people either search their content management system, or engage in expertise location and conversation. The great thing is, THEY DON’T HAVE TO LEAVE THE APPLICATION TO DO IT. Oracle has built the social capabilities right into the applications and business processes. I don’t think enough folks were able to see that at the event, but I expect that over the next six months folks will become very aware of it. WebCenter also provides the ability to have ad-hoc collaboration, search, and expertise location that folks need when they are innovating or collaborating. We demonstrated Oracle Social Network. It’s built on our Oracle WebCenter product to provide social collaboration inside and outside of your company. When we showed it to people, there were a number of areas that they commented on that were different from the other products being shown at the conference: Screenshots from within the product Many authors working on documents simultaneously Flagging people for follow up Direct ability to call out to people Ability to see presence not just if someone is online, but which conversation they are actively in Great stuff, the conference was full of smart people that that we enjoy spending time with. We’ll keep up in the meantime, but we look forward to seeing you in Boston.

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  • Oracle Tutor: Document Audit and Maintenance

    - by Emily Chorba
    Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:10.0pt; font-family:"Times New Roman","serif";} Perhaps the most critical phase in the process of documenting policies and procedure -- and the greatest challenge to owners -- is the maintenance of published documents. Documents must reflect current practice and they must be accurate. The most effective way to ensure this is through the regular audit of documents. In the Tutor environment, a Document Owner must audit each of his/her documents once every 6 to 12 months to verify that the document reflects actual practice. If it does not, the document is updated or employees are retrained (depending on the nature of the discrepancy). If a document update is required, the Tutor system enables the owner to modify and redistribute the document within one work day. This is possible because: Documents contain a minimum of detail, thereby reducing the edits. Document format and structure are simple, so changes are easy to identify The Tutor Author software tool enables the Document Owner or the Document Administrator to update the file quickly. The Document Administrator verifies the document format and integration, publishes the document, and distributes it to all affected employees, thereby freeing the Document Owner of the more tedious tasks. Learn More For more information about Tutor, visit Oracle.Com or the Tutor Blog. Post your questions at the Tutor Forum. Emily Chorba Principle Product Manager Oracle Tutor & UPK

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  • Exadata ROI cases

    - by Javier Puerta
    The following cases illustrate the type of ROI benefits that customers can obtain from their investment in Exadata infrastructure. Australian Finance Group will achieve a 42% ROI by and break even in three years by consolidating Oracle E-Business Suite and Siebel applications on Oracle Exadata.  Read the ROI case at: http://www.oracle.com/us/corporate/customers/afg-1-exadata-cs-1354807.pdf In addition to this study, there are Oracle Exadata Mainstay ROI Case Studies for the following: Merck -Pharma, Oracle Exadata Achieves Fivefold Performance Increase for Critical Product Research Platform Turkcell Accelerates Reporting Tenfold, Saves on Storage and Energy Costs with Consolidated Oracle Exadata Platform

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  • Solving security issue in PowerPivot for SharePoint and Power View

    - by Marco Russo (SQLBI)
    I just installed a brand new server (well, a virtual machine) with SharePoint 2010 SP1 and SQL Server 2012 RC0, including PowerPivot and Reporting Services / Power View. The server is joined to the domain I use in our development environment. I published a workbook in the PowerPivot Gallery and my user was immediately able to connect, browse and navigate data of the Excel workbook published by SharePoint. Moreover, I was able to open it in Power View. However, other users failed the connection. After...(read more)

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  • SQL Server 2012 : Changes to system objects in RC0

    - by AaronBertrand
    As with every new major milestone, one of the first things I do is check out what has changed under the covers. Since RC0 was released yesterday, I've been poking around at some of the DMV and other system changes. Here is what I have noticed: New objects in RC0 that weren't in CTP3 Quick summary: We see a bunch of new aggregates for use with geography and geometry. I've stayed away from that area of programming so I'm not going to dig into them. There is a new extended procedure called sp_showmemo_xml....(read more)

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  • Why binding is not a native feature in most of the languages?

    - by Gulshan
    IMHO binding a variable to another variable or an expression is a very common scenario in mathematics. In fact, in the beginning, many students think the assignment operator(=) is some kind of binding. But in most of the languages, binding is not supported as a native feature. In some languages like C#, binding is supported in some cases with some conditions fulfilled. But IMHO implementing this as a native feature was as simple as changing the following code- int a,b,sum; sum := a + b; a = 10; b = 20; a++; to this- int a,b,sum; a = 10; sum = a + b; b = 20; sum = a + b; a++; sum = a + b; Meaning placing the binding instruction as assignments after every instruction changing values of any of the variable contained in the expression at right side. After this, trimming redundant instructions (or optimization in assembly after compilation) will do. So, why it is not supported natively in most of the languages. Specially in the C-family of languages? Update: From different opinions, I think I should define this proposed "binding" more precisely- This is one way binding. Only sum is bound to a+b, not the vice versa. The scope of the binding is local. Once the binding is established, it cannot be changed. Meaning, once sum is bound to a+b, sum will always be a+b. Hope the idea is clearer now. Update 2: I just wanted this P# feature. Hope it will be there in future.

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  • Is there a version control system that can show changes to a specific method or function?

    - by chesles
    Sometimes it would be nice to be able to say something like: (git|svn|hg|etc) diff Foo.c:main (git|svn|hg|etc) log log Foo.c:main to see the changes made to a specific function within a source file since the last commit, or the complete history of changes. My question is two-fold: Does something exist that does this? Would such a tool be practical? It would have to do some simple parsing of the code at each revision in order to compare different versions of the function; would the overhead be too much for it to be efficient?

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  • ResourceSerializable: an alternate to ORM and ActiveRecord

    - by Levi Morrison
    A few opinionated reasons I don't like the traditional ORM and ActiveRecord patterns: They work only with a database. Sometimes I'm dealing with objects from an API and other objects from a database. All the implementations I have seen don't allow for that. Feel free to clue me in if I'm wrong on this. They are brittle. Changes in the database will likely break your implemenation. Some implementations can help reduce this, but a few of the ones I've seen don't. Their very design is influenced by the database. If I want to switch to using an API, I'll have to redesign the object to get it to work (likely). It seems to violate the single-responsibility pattern. They know what they are and how they act, but they also know how they are created, destroyed and saved? Seems a bit much. What about an approach that is somewhat more familiar in PHP: implementing an interface? In php 5.4, we'll have the JsonSerializable interface that defines the data to be json_encoded, so users will become accustomed to this type of thing. What if there was a ResourceSerializable interface? This is still an ORM by name, but certainly not by tradition. interface ResourceSerializable { /** * Returns the id that identifies the resource. */ function resourceId(); /** * Returns the 'type' of the resource. */ function resourceType(); /** * Returns the data to be serialized. */ function resourceSerialize(); } Things might be poorly named, I'll take suggestions. Notes: ResourceId will work for API's and databases. As long as your primary key in the database is the same as the resource ID in the API, there is no conflict. All of the API's I've worked with have a unique ID for the resource, so I don't see any issues there. ResourceType is the group or type associated with the resource. You can use this to map the resource to an API call or a database table. If the ResourceType was person, it could map to /api/1/person/{resourceId} and the table persons (or people, if it's smart enough). resourceSerialize() returns the data to be stored. Keys would identify API parameters and database table columns. This also seems easier to test than ActiveRecord / Orm implemenations. I haven't done much automated testing on traditional ActiveRecord/ORM implemenations, so this is merely a guess. But it seems that I being able to create objects independently of the library helps me. I don't have to use load() to get an existing resource, I can simply create one and set all the right properties. This is not so easy in the ActiveRecord / Orm implemenations I've dealt with. Downsides: You need another object to serialize it. This also means you have more code in general as you have to use more objects. You have to map resource types to API calls and database tables. This is even more work, but some ORMs and ActiveRecord implementations require you to map objects to table names anyway. Are there other downsides that you see? Does this seem feasible to you? How would you improve it? Note: I almost asked this on StackOverflow because it might be too vague for their standards, but I'm still not really familiar with programmers.stackexchange.com, so please help me improve my question if it doesn't shape up to standards here.

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  • What's the real benefit of meta-modeling?

    - by Jakob
    After reading several texts about meta-modeling I still do not really get the practical benefit. Sometimes I think it is only an interesting mind game but no useful tool. Sure it is wise to clarify your modeling vocabulary: some may say class where others say entity or concept, but this is just simple documentation your modeling terminology. Meta-modeling, as I understand it, is more complex, as it tries to formalize and abstract modeling. Some good examples are Keet's formal comparison of conceptual data modeling languages (UML, ERM and ORM) from academia and the Meta Object Facility (MOF) from industry. To me MOF looks as impractical as CORBA, which was also created by OMG. In theory you could use meta-modeling to transform and integrate models in different modeling languages, but is anyone actually doing this?

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  • How can you achieve and maintain flow while pair programming?

    - by bizso09
    Flow is a concept introduced by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi; in short, it means to get into the "zone". You feel immersed in your task, focused; the task can be difficult but challenging at the same time. When people achieve flow their productivity shoots up. Programming requires a great deal of mental focus because we often need to juggle several things in our minds at once. Many like to work in a quiet environment where they can direct their full attention to the task. If they are interrupted, it may take several minutes or even hours to get back into flow. I understand there's a practice in agile development and extreme programming called pair programming. It means you put the whole software development team in one room so that communication is seamless. You do write code with your pair because this way you get instant code reviews and fewer bugs get through. I've always had problems achieving flow while doing pair programming because of constant interruptions. I'm thinking deep about an issue then all of sudden someone asks me a question from another pair. My train of thought is lost. How can you achieve and maintain flow while pair programming?

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  • Is there a good tutorial/book for creating a quiz app for iOS 5? [closed]

    - by NRUTA
    I am new to iOS development and looking to create a quiz application which will be for ipad, iphone and itouch. It will ask a question, text based, and have four possible answers. After you select an answer, the system tells you if you are right or wrong and provides an explanation. It provides the percentage of correct answers. I'm not sure how to go about creating this and wondered if anybody has read a book, seen a tutorial or could offer any advice that would explain this process? Thanks in advance for all of your help!

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  • Recommend a CMS and extension to build an Event Manager [closed]

    - by Haris
    I posted this question on SO but good friends there told me that SE is the better place for these kind of questions and the post was locked there by community. Hence, posting the question here as well: I have a lead to build an event manager solution in LAMP with following functionality: It should handle events by country, city, locality in city, type of event, venue type etc. following are a few user features: to see details of city, venue, event, performer etc. to purchase tickets and reserve tables. to search for events by city, venue, type, performer etc. to manage favorite venues and performers, save events etc. the venues should be able to add their events I plan to use a CMS (Joomla, Drupal etc.) with some ready made extension that provides most of the functionality or provide framework to build upon. Could you guys suggest me a CMS and an extension to build this. I know it is possible to do this in both Joomla or Drupal. What I am looking is the extension that is closest to my requirements whether it is done in Joomla or Drupal, or as a matter of fact any other CMS. Thanks in anticipation!

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  • What version will be chosen by MSXML2.XMLHTTP request, without version suffix? [migrated]

    - by jayarjo
    Probably every web developer is familiar with a pattern like this: var xmlHttp = null; if (window.XMLHttpRequest) { // If IE7, Mozilla, Safari, and so on: Use native object. xmlHttp = new XMLHttpRequest(); } else { if (window.ActiveXObject) { // ...otherwise, use the ActiveX control for IE5.x and IE6. xmlHttp = new ActiveXObject('MSXML2.XMLHTTP'); } } But the question is - if there are multiple MSXML versions available on the client's PC (let's say 3.0, 5.0, 6.0), which one of them will be chosen by MSXML2.XMLHTTP call (notice no version suffix at the end)? Will it be the latest or - not necessarily? And a side-question - is it possible to check which version was chosen?

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  • How can I improve my error checking and handling?

    - by Google
    Lately I have been struggling to understand what the right amount of checking is and what the proper methods are. I have a few questions regarding this: What is the proper way to check for errors (bad input, bad states, etc)? Is it better to explicitly check for errors, or use functions like asserts which can be optimized out of your final code? I feel like explicitly checking clutters a program with a lot of extra code which shouldn't be executed in most situations anyway-- and not to mention most errors end up with an abort/exit failure. Why clutter a function with explicit checks just to abort? I have looked for asserts versus explicit checking of errors and found little to truly explain when to do either. Most say 'use asserts to check for logic errors and use explicit checks to check for other failures.' This doesn't seem to get us very far though. Would we say this is feasible: Malloc returning null, check explictly API user inserting odd input for functions, use asserts Would this make me any better at error checking? What else can I do? I really want to improve and write better, 'professional' code.

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  • How to make NFS mounts available while offline?

    - by lpanebr
    Problem: I work on a notebook and while at work I have access to many NFS mounted drives. When I get home they are obviously not available. Windows 7 solution: My business partner uses Windows 7 and maps the folders via samba. Windows 7 has a very nice feature that let's he make these folders available offline. So when when he connects to the work network the changes get synchronized! Question: Is there a way to mimic that in ubuntu? What I have now: Server to local sync: I have added rsync entries on my crontab to copy server folders => local folders every five minutes. When at work I used the NFS mapped folders and while outside work I use the local copies. When I get at work I manually run a script that syncs local folders => server folders. Problems with my setup: slow startup when not at work (I guess do to the fstab trying to map the server folders) no conflict checking/managing I have to remember to sync manually and be careful because of the different file locations recent files do not work between work and home

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  • How to open OLE2 file format document

    - by Dominic Jordan Hasford
    I received a file that is .OLE2 format by email and I can't get it open. When I try to open it with Document Viewer (default pfd program ubuntu) it says it can't support it. I searched in the Software Center for OLE2, and it returned a program called RipOle. It says it opens that format, but you have to run it in the terminal and I don't know how. Does any one know how to open OLE2 documents? Or do you know how to work ripole? Thanks in advanced!

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  • Few questions about Thunderbird in Ubuntu 11.10

    - by Darwell
    I am happy with Ubuntu choice to replace Evolution with Thunderbird. However, I am having some issues with it. 1. What do you use to make Thunderbird minimize (and disappear from the launcher) when closing it? It should still be running (and give me notifications of new emails) but do not bother me on Launcher or in the list of windows, because I need free space. I tried using FireTray extension, it works quite okay, but it's buggy - sometimes there are two instances of Thunderbird open when using it and also, Thunderbird's global menu disappears after some time of using the extension. 2. Is there a plan to integrate Thunderbird's calendars into Date indicator in Ubuntu? I'd like to see my events when I have clicked on the time. Thanks.

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  • Broadcom BCM4312 Not Working

    - by ptran221
    I have a HP MINI 210-1010NR and just installed Ubuntu 11.04 and I can't get my wireless to work.I have checked through multiple Q&A's throughout this FAQ and tried them all. When I go over the wireless thing at the top it says "Wireless Networks device not ready(firmware missing)." Okay, now here is my lspci -vvnn | grep 14e4 02:00.0 Network controller [0280]: Broadcom Corporation BCM4312 802.11b/g LP-PHY [14e4:4315] (rev 01) Also, when I try to open additional drivers it says that "Downloading package indexes failed, please check your network status."

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  • Safety of installing Ubuntu alongside Windows

    - by giowck
    Is it really safe to chose the "Install Ubuntu alongside Windows" option from the Ubuntu installation program? I never used that option, instead I used other tools such as partition magic or windows 7's disk tool to resize my partitions. Since I'm going to install Ubuntu across a lot windows (XP, Vista and 7) machines. It would not be nice to damage those Windows partitions. What is your experience? Can I use this feature without concerns?

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  • Is there a better way to run ubuntu from usb disk

    - by Adam Butler
    I have an old laptop with a broken hard drive controller and am running the previous ubuntu from a usb. I installed this as per standard instructions by running some program that copied the live cd to the usb. This has had a few problems, it seems like it was just made for trying and not for everyday use. Ideally I would like to do a proper install to the usb disk instead of just running off the installer disk. Is there a way to do this? The main problems I have are: When adding mounts to fstab it gets overwritten on each reboot When installing updates the kernel cannot be updated

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  • Upgrade from 10.10 to 11:04 to 11.10. X starts, Unity desktop not there

    - by Stefan Lasiewski
    I upgraded my Ubuntu Desktop 10.10 system to 11.04 and then 11.10. Now, when I start Ubuntu, the Unity desktop doesn't start correctly. Here's what I do: Start computer I log in via the GUI login screen The X Window System starts. I can see an arrow icon for the mouse, and can move it around the screen. Nothing else starts. There are no desktop icons, no launcher, no taskbar, etc. Right clicking on desktop does nothing. I've tried some common keyboard shortcuts ("Alt-tab" "Ctrl-Alt-T" "Ctrl-Alt-Backspace") but nothing happens. If I go to another Virtual Console, and run the command unity, the Unity desktop will start on my primary X desktop. However I'm seeing many problems like windows which are only half-drawn, some applications run without the familiar "Minimize, Maximize, Close" What's happening here? It seems that the X Window System started, but Unity did not start? How can I debug this?

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  • Unable to change the launcher icon size

    - by takeshin
    After upgrading to 11.10 I can't change the launcher icon size to smaller. I've tried to change it using ccsm, like described in How can I configure Unity, but the changes take no effects (restarted, tried sudo - still big icons). In the previous version of Ubuntu this solution worked. How can I change the icon size? (BTW, how can I know which Unity (2D vd 3D) I'm running and switch between?). Edit: Looks like I'm using Unity 2D and have some problems with graphics: me@my-laptop ~ $ /usr/lib/nux/unity_support_test -p Xlib: extension "GLX" missing on display ":0.0". Xlib: extension "GLX" missing on display ":0.0". Xlib: extension "GLX" missing on display ":0.0". Error: unable to create the OpenGL context Edit 2 me@my-laptop ~ $ lspci | grep VGA 00:02.0 VGA compatible controller: Intel Corporation Core Processor Integrated Graphics Controller (rev 18) 01:00.0 VGA compatible controller: nVidia Corporation GT218 [GeForce 310M] (rev a2)

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