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Articles indexed in January 2011

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• Company Review: Google Products

  Google, Inc offers an array of products and services to all of its end-users. However their search capabilities are the foundation for Google’s current success and their primary business focus. Currently, Google offers over twenty different search applications that allow users to search the internet for books, maps, videos, images, products and much more. Their product decisions have allowed users demands to be met while focusing on the free based model. This allows users to access Google data free of charge and indirectly gives Google a strong competitive advantage of other competitors along with the accuracy of the search results. According to Google, Inc, they offer the following types of searching capabilities: Alerts Get email updates on the topics of your choice Blog Search Find blogs on your favorite topics  Books Search the full text of books  Custom Search Create a customized search experience for your community  Desktop Search and personalize your computer  Dictionary Search for definitions of words and phrases Directory Search the web, organized by topic or category Earth Explore the world from your computer Finance Business info, news and interactive charts GOOG-411 Find and connect for free with businesses from your phone  Images Search for images on the web Maps View maps and directions News Search thousands of news stories Patent Search Search the full text of US Patents Product Search Search for stuff to buy Scholar Search scholarly papers Toolbar Add a search box to your browser Trends Explore past and present search trends Videos Search for videos on the web Web Search Search billions of web pages Web Search Features Find movies, music, stocks, books and more mapping Google’s free based business model is only one way it differentiates itself from its competition. There is also a strong focus on the accuracy of search results and the speed in which they are returned to the end-user. Quality function deployment (QFD) is a structured method used to help connect user needs to the design features of a project proposed to address those needs. This method is particularly useful in accounting for needs that are not easily articulated or precisely defined according to the U. S. Department of Transportation Federal Highway Administration. Due to the fact that QFD is so customer driven Google is always in a constant state of change in attempt to reengineer its search algorithms, and other dependant systems so that end-users requirements are constantly being met. Value engineering is a key example of this, Google is constantly trying to improve all aspects of its products, improve system maintainability, and system interoperability. Bridgefield Group defines value engineering as an organized methodology that identifies and selects the lowest lifecycle cost options in design, materials and processes that achieves the desired level of performance, reliability and customer satisfaction. In addition, it seeks to remove unnecessary costs in the above areas and is often a joint effort with cross-functional internal teams and relevant suppliers. Common issues that appear when developing large scale systems like Google’s search applications include modular design of a product and/or service and providing accurate value analysis. A design approach that adheres to four fundamental tenets of cohesiveness, encapsulation, self-containment, and high binding to design a system component as an independently operable unit subject to change is how the Open System Joint Task Force defines modular design. More specifically M. S. Schmaltz defines modular software design as having a large collection of statements strung together in one partition of in-line code; we segment or divide the statements into logical groups called modules. Each module performs one or two tasks, and then passes control to another module. By breaking up the code into "bite-sized chunks", so to speak, we are able to better control the flow of data and control. This is especially true in large software systems. Value analysis is a process to evaluate products and services based on effectiveness, safety, and cost. Value analysis involves assessing the quality as well as the cost of a product or service as defined by the Healthcare Financial Management Association.  “Operations Management deals with the design and management of products, processes, services and supply chains. It considers the acquisition, development, and utilization of resources that firms need to deliver the goods and services their clients want.” (MIT,2010) Google, Inc encourages an open environment between all employees, also known as Googlers. This is reinforced by a cross-section team or cross-functional teams comprised from multiple departments assigned to every project so that every department like marketing, finance, and quality assurance has input on every project. In addition, Google is known for their openness to new ideas regardless of the status or seniority of an employee. In fact, Google allows for 20% of an employee’s time can be devoted to developing new ideas and/or pet projects. HumTech.com defines a cross-functional team as a collection of people with varied levels of skills and experience brought together to accomplish a task. As the name implies, Cross-Functional Team members come from different organizational units. Cross-Functional Teams may be permanent or ad hoc. Google’s search application product strategy primarily focuses on mass customization. This is allows Google to create a base search application and allows results to be returned to the end-users quickly based on specific parameters and search settings. In addition, they also store the data that is returned in case other desire the same results based on other end-users supplying the same customized settings. This allows Google to appear to render search results in virtually real-time to the user while allowing for complete customization of the searching criteria. Greg Vogl, a professor at Uganda Martyrs University, defines mass customization as when a business gives its customers the opportunity to tailor its products or services to the customer's specifications. The IT staff at Google play a key role in ensuring that the search application’s product strategy is maintained simply because the IT staff designs, develops, and maintains all of their proprietary applications. In fact, they also maintain all network infrastructure to ensure that it is available to all end-users. References: http://www.google.com/intl/en/options/ http://ops.fhwa.dot.gov/freight/publications/ftat_user_guide/sec5.htm http://www.bridgefieldgroup.com/bridgefieldgroup/glos9.htm#V http://www.acq.osd.mil/osjtf/termsdef.html http://www.cise.ufl.edu/~mssz/Pascal-CGS2462/prog-dsn.html http://www.hfma.org/publications/business_caring_newsletter/exclusives/Supply+and+Inventory+Terms+Defined.htm http://mitsloan.mit.edu/omg/om-definition.php http://www.humtech.com/opm/grtl/ols/ols3.cfm http://www.gregvogl.net/courses/mis1/glossary.htm

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• How customers view and interact with a company

  The Harvard Business Review article written by Rayport and Jaworski is aptly titled “Best Face Forward” because it sheds light on how customers view and interact with a company. In the past most business interaction between customers was performed in a face to face meeting where one party would present an item for sale and then the other would decide whether to purchase the item. In addition, if there was a problem with a purchased item then they would bring the item back to the person who sold the item for resolution. One of my earliest examples of witnessing this was when I was around 6 or 7 years old and I was allowed to spend the summer in Tennessee with my Grandparents. My Grandfather had just written a book about the local history of his town and was selling them to his friends and local bookstores. I still remember he offered to pay me a small commission for every book I helped him sell because I was carrying the books around for him. Every sale he made was face to face with his customers which allowed him to share his excitement for the book with everyone. In today’s modern world there is less and less human interaction as the use of computers and other technologies allow us to communicate within seconds even though both parties may be across the globe or just next door. That being said, customers view a company through multiple access points called faces that represent the ability to interact without actually seeing a human face. As a software engineer this is a good and a bad thing because direct human interaction and technology based interaction have both good and bad attributes based on the customer. How organizations coordinate business and IT functions, to provide quality service varies based on each individual business and the goals and directives put in place by its management. According to Rayport and Jaworski, the type of interaction used through a particular access point may lend itself to be people-dominate, machine-dominate, or a combination of both. The method by which a company communicates information through an access point is a strategic choice that relates costs and customer outcomes. To simplify this, the choice is based on what can give the customer the best experience interacting with the company when the cost of the interaction is also a factor. I personally see examples of this every day at work. The company website is machine-dominate with people updating and maintaining information, our groups department is people dominate because most of the customer interaction is done at the customers location and is backed up by machine based data sources, and our sales/member service department is a hybrid because employees work in tandem with machines in order for them to assist customers with signing up or any other issue they may have. The positive and negative aspects of human and machine interfaces are a key aspect in deciding which interface to use when allowing customers to access a company or a combination of the two. Rayport and Jaworski also used MIT professor Erik Brynjolfsson preliminary catalog of human and machine strengths. He stated that humans outperform machines in judgment, pattern recognition, exception processing, insight, and creativity. I have found this to be true based on the example of how sales and member service reps at my company handle a multitude of questions and various situations with a lot of unknown variables. A machine interface could never effectively be able to handle these scenarios because there are too many variables to consider and would not have the built-in logic to process each customer’s claims and needs. In addition, he also stated that machines outperform humans in collecting, storing, transmitting and routine processing. An example of this would be my employer’s website. Customers can simply go online and purchase a product without even talking to a sales or member services representative. The information is then stored in a database so that the customer can always go back and review there order, and access their selected services. A human, no matter how smart they are would never be able to keep track of hundreds of thousands of customers let alone know what they purchased or how much they paid. In today’s technology driven economy every company must offer their customers multiple methods of accessibly in order to survive. The more of an opportunity a company has to create a positive experience for their customers, in my opinion, they more likely the customer will return to that company again. I have noticed this with my personal shopping habits and experiences. References Rayport, J., & Jaworski, B. (2004). Best Face Forward. Harvard Business Review, 82(12), 47-58. Retrieved from Business Source Complete database.

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• Business Strategy - Google Case Study

  Business strategy defined by SMBTN.com is a term used in business planning that implies a careful selection and application of resources to obtain a competitive advantage in anticipation of future events or trends. In more general terms business strategy is positioning a company so that it has the greatest competitive advantage over others in the markets and industries that they participate in. This process involves making corporate decisions regarding which markets to provide goods and services, pricing, acceptable quality levels, and how to interact with others in the marketplace. The primary objective of business strategy is to create and increase value for all of its shareholders and stakeholders through the creation of customer value. According to InformationWeek.com, Google has a distinctive technology advantage over its competitors like Microsoft, eBay, Amazon, Yahoo. Google utilizes custom high-performance systems which are cost efficient because they can scale to extreme workloads. This hardware allows for a huge cost advantage over its competitors. In addition, InformationWeek.com interviewed Stephen Arnold who stated that Google’s programmers are 50%-100% more productive compared to programmers working for their competitors.  He based this theory on Google’s competitors having to spend up to four times as much just to keep up. In addition to Google’s technological advantage, they also have developed a decentralized management schema where employees report directly to multiple managers and team project leaders. This allows for the responsibility of the technology department to be shared amongst multiple senior level engineers and removes the need for a singular department head to oversee the activities of the department.  This is a unique approach from the standard management style. Typically a department head like a CIO or CTO would oversee the department’s global initiatives and business functionality.  This would then be passed down and administered through middle management and implemented by programmers, business analyst, network administrators and Database administrators. It goes without saying that an IT professional’s responsibilities would be directed by Google’s technological advantage and management strategy.  Simply because they work within the department, and would have to design, develop, and support the high-performance systems and would have to report multiple managers and project leaders on a regular basis. Since Google was established and driven by new and immerging technology, all other departments would be directly impacted by the technology department.  In fact, they would have to cater to the technology department since it is a huge driving for in the success of Google. Reference: http://www.smbtn.com/smallbusinessdictionary/#b http://www.informationweek.com/news/software/linux/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=192300292&pgno=1&queryText=&isPrev=

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• Collaborative Organizations build Organizational Culture

  “A Collaborative organization builds its culture based on the idea of the family or an athletic team.”(Hoefling, 2001) As I grew up, I participated in many different types of clubs, civic organizations, and sports teams.  Now looking back at the more successful undertakings, I can see three commonalities amongst them. They all shared a defined purpose or goal, defined functional roles, and a shared sense of responsibility to the group. Defined Purpose or Goal In order to unit people to work together, they must share a common goal or have a common purpose. An example of this would be the Lions Club International Foundation. There purpose is to help everyone to lead healthier and more productive lives, nurtures the potential of youth, promotes health, serves the elderly, empowers the disabled and helps victims of disasters. This organization holds localized meetings across the world and works in conjunction with other localized clubs within there organization along with other organizations to promote common goals. If there are no common goals for the group, then there is nothing that binds people to the group, and nothing will be done. Defined Functional Roles In order for an organization to work and function as a team, they must have defined roles and everyone must know how their roles are interdependent on each other. Lets shed light on this subject by looking at a football team’s offense.  Each player has an assigned role to play each time the ball is snapped. The offensive line blocks for the running back or quarterback, the quarterback passes the ball to the wide receiver or hands it off to the running back and the running back and wide receivers run with the ball towards the goal line. Each member of this team shares a common goal of scoring a touchdown, but if each team member does not fulfill their assigned roles the offences will collapse and the team will lose yards. This will provide a set back to the teams goal of scoring a touchdown because they potential are then farther away from the goal line.  In addition, if all the players do not know their roles and how they are part of a larger team then even larger yard losses can occur. Shared Sense of Personal Responsibility to the Group Shared responsibility comes with the shared common goals. Each person in the organization must do their part to promote the common shared goal or purpose based on their abilities. A prime example of this is a wrestling team competing in a match. Points are awarded to the team based on how many wins the team achieves in the meet and of that how many wins where won by decision or by pin. If a wrestler pins his opponent the teams will receive 2 points for the win, but if the wrestler wins by decision, then the team only gets one point for the win. So it is the responsibility of each person on the team to not get pinned if they are unable to win the match. If the team member gets pinned then the other team receives an additional point for the win. References: Hoefling, T. (2001). Working Virtually: Managing People for Successful Virtual Teams and Organizations. Sterling, VA: Stylus Publishing, LLC.

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• What do you think of this iterator syntax?

  - by ChaosPandion

  I've been working on an ECMAScript dialect for quite some time now and have reached a point where I am comfortable adding new language features. I would love to hear some thoughts and suggestions on the syntax. Example iterator Numbers { yield 1; yield 2; yield 3; if (true) { yield break; } yield continue iterator { yield 4; yield 5; yield 6; }; } Syntax IteratorDeclaration:     iterator  Identifier  {  IteratorBody  } IteratorExpression:     iterator  Identifieropt  {  IteratorBody  } IteratorBody:     IteratorStatementsopt IteratorStatements:     IteratorStatement IteratorStatementsopt IteratorStatement:     Statement but not one of BreakStatement ContinueStatement ReturnStatement     YieldStatement     YieldBreakStatement     YieldContinueStatement YieldStatement:     yield  Expression  ; YieldBreakStatement:     yield  break  ; YieldContinueStatement:     yield  continue  Expression  ;

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• How to be a zero-bug programmer?

  - by Elaine

  My boss ever told me that as a good programmer, who should be able to ensure the code he/she changed must be reliable, correct, thoroughly self-verified, who should completely understand what all the results and impacts that he/she did or revised will cause. I did try my best to be as this kind of programmer, test again and again. But.. bugs are still there. How could I be a zero-bug programmer? know every char of my code will cause and effect?

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• Best way to land a new job while working full time?

  - by JerryC

  I work full time as a software engineer but I would like to find another job. I'm a little worried about posting my resume directly to monster or dice just in case someone at my company finds out about it. Recruiters occasionally call me (maybe once a month or so) but I'd like some more frequent correspondence so I can speed this process up. What are some good strategies to find a new job while working?

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• How to convince an employer to move to VB.Net for new development?

  - by Dabblernl

  Some history:For the last six months I have been employed at a small firm with just three programmers, my employer among them. The firm maintains two programs written in VB6. I am asssigned as the lead programmer to one of these. In the last six months I did some maintenance and bug hunting, but created some new functionality too. I had an interview last december, which was favorable, and my contract was prolonged. I am very happy with this course of events as I only obtained a .Net certification a year ago and have no other qualifications (in the field of coding, that is). It is my strong opinion that, while migration of the existing program to .Net is advisable, it is paramount that from now on the new functionality should be written in VB.Net class libraries. After some study I found out how simple it is to integrate .Net class libraries into the VB6 development environment and how easy it is to add their functionality to existing installations by using application manifests. So, I have decided that now is the moment to roll up my sleeves and try and convince my employer that he should let me develop new code in VB.Net, using VB6 for maintenance only. We get along quite well, but I think I am going to need all the ammunition I can get to convince him. Any arguments, preferably backed up up ones, are very welcome, even arguments to dissuade me ;-)

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• Is it normal for programmer to work on multiple projects simultaneously.

  - by gasan

  On a current job I have 2 projects to work on. First is very huge system and the second one is smaller but it also big (first project is being developed for 12 years, second for 4 years). At first I was working only on first project and was trying to get used to it. Then I was moved to second project and tried there, so my knowledge about first project became shady. Now I have to work on both projects at the same time. It's very hard for me because despite they both use java, they use different frameworks and the amount of code and business-logic to understand is very big so I really can't hold both that projects in my head. Is it normal and I should get used to it, although my expertise became very squashy, what won't happen if I would work only on a single project? Or should I raise a concern or maybe change employer?

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• Gradual approaches to dependency injection

  - by JW01

  I'm working on making my classes unit-testable, using dependency injection. But some of these classes have a lot of clients, and I'm not ready to refactor all of them to start passing in the dependencies yet. So I'm trying to do it gradually; keeping the default dependencies for now, but allowing them to be overridden for testing. One approach I'm conisdering is just moving all the "new" calls into their own methods, e.g.: public MyObject createMyObject(args) { return new MyObject(args); } Then in my unit tests, I can just subclass this class, and override the create functions, so they create fake objects instead. Is this a good approach? Are there any disadvantages? More generally, is it okay to have hard-coded dependencies, as long as you can replace them for testing? I know the preferred approach is to explicitly require them in the constructor, and I'd like to get there eventually. But I'm wondering if this is a good first step.

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• Entry / JR Php Programmer - What do I learn next?

  - by dtj

  I got very interested in programming toward the end of college. Took a few classes, but learned most everything on my own via books and such. Its mostly been Php and MySQL. Right out of school, I got a job working at a company for 2 years (web media) and ended up learning a lot of stuff and programming some things for them. I am no longer at that company but I am looking for my next steps as a programmer. I really enjoy Web Development and Php and MySQL seems to be my thing. Basically, I know how to do CRUD operations, i am mediocre at OOP and still have more to learn, I know HTML and CSS quite well, I know my way around a Unix terminal and can access MySQL through it and set up cron jobs and such. I know some basic Javascript. Whats a good next step? I don't anything about 3rd party services, PDO, APIs (twitter, facebook, etc), Drupal / Joomla, Unit Testing, E-Commerce, PECL, PEAR ....in other words A LOT I get easily overwhelmed by the amount of stuff there is to learn, so I'm sort of trying to find a path. Right now, I'm digging into OOP more, as that seems like a good conceptual first-step. Any suggestions?

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• Can/should one record unstructured suggestions and feedback in an issue tracker?

  - by Ian Mackinnon

  I'd like to advocate the use of issue-tracking software within an organisation that currently does not use it. But there's one aspect of their situation for which I'm unsure of what to suggest: their projects frequently receive informal verbal feedback or casual comments in meetings or in passing from a wide group of interested parties, and all this information needs to be recorded. Most of these messages are noise, but they're vital to record and share with developers for two reasons: Good suggestions often come out of this process. It can be necessary to have evidence of clients' comments when they forget previous instructions or change their mind. Is this the sort of information that should be stored in an issue-tracking system, or kept apart in a separate solution? Are there issue-tracking systems that have particularly good support for this sort of unstructured information?

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• Tips for switching jobs and moving into web based programming?

  - by JerryC

  I graduated in 2006 with a computer science degree and got solid grades (3.5 overall 3.8 in my major) For the past 4.5 years I've been working as a Software Engineer doing primarily rich client development. Most of my experience is with Java, Swing and C++. I've done a lot of network programming and I have acquired some skill working & debugging in distributed environments. I would like to switch jobs and move into a role where I can get exposure to some new technologies and frameworks. I would like to move into a more web development role but I find my lack of web development experience is hurting me. 90% of the jobs I see advertised are looking for one of two skill sets: 1) Stereotypical server side Java web developer. Experience with Spring, Hibernate, J2EE, etc. 2) Stereotypical front end web developer. Experience with Javascript, jQuery, HTML5, GWT, CSS, etc I find most of these companies are looking really specifically for this experience and they are not willing to take on good programmers/ CS fundamental guys who lack experience with this stuff. I would love to get a job doing stuff like this, but have my skills become out of date and unmarketable? Any opinions on ways to sell myself to help get a new position?

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• How to process payments for a software (activation code)?

  - by jsoldi

  I want to sell software online and I need an easy to implement payment processing system. What I'm actually going to be selling is an activation code (one per purchase) that would activate the trial version of a product. I was about to use this one but I just found out that people without a paid email account (not hotmail or yahoo) can't process their orders, which I'm sure would discourage many, if not most, of the possible buyers.

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• Are project managers useful in Scrum?

  - by Martin Wickman

  There are three roles defined in Scrum: Team, Product Owner and Scrum Master. There is no project manager, instead the project manager job is spread across the three roles. For instance: The Scrum Master: Responsible for the process. Removes impediments. The Product Owner: Manages and prioritizes the list of work to be done to maximize ROI. Represents all interested parties (customers, stakeholders). The Team: Self manage its work by estimating and distributing it among themselves. Responsible for meeting their own commitments. So in Scrum, there is no longer a single person responsible for project success. There is no command-and-control structure in place. That seems to baffle a lot of people, specifically those not used to agile methods, and of course, PM's. I'm really interested in this and what your experiences are, as I think this is one of the things that can make or break a Scrum implementation. Do you agree with Scrum that a project manager is not needed? Do you think such a role is still required? Why?

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• Developer with 4 years experience with Java/C++. How to move into web programming? [closed]

  - by JerryC

  Possible Duplicate: Tips for switching jobs and moving into web based programming? I graduated in 2006 with a computer science degree and got solid grades (3.5 overall 3.8 in my major) For the past 4.5 years I've been working as a Software Engineer doing primarily rich client development. Most of my experience is with Java, Swing and C++. I've done a lot of network programming and I have acquired some skill working & debugging in distributed environments. I would like to switch jobs and move into a role where I can get exposure to some new technologies and frameworks. I would like to move into a more web development role but I find my lack of web development experience is hurting me. 90% of the jobs I see advertised are looking for one of two skill sets: 1) Stereotypical server side Java web developer. Experience with Spring, Hibernate, J2EE, etc. 2) Stereotypical front end web developer. Experience with Javascript, jQuery, HTML5, GWT, CSS, etc I find most of these companies are looking really specifically for this experience and they are not willing to take on good programmers/ CS fundamental guys who lack experience with this stuff. I would love to get a job doing stuff like this, but have my skills become out of date and unmarketable? Any opinions on ways to sell myself to help get a new position?

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• Are there too many qualified software development engineers chasing too few jobs?

  - by T Gregory

  I am trying to write this question in a non-argumentative way, but it is quite emotionally charged for some, so please bear with me. In the U.S., we hear constantly from CEOs that they cannot find enough qualified software engineers. In fact, it is the position of the U.S. government that demand for software engineering talent outpaces supply. This position can be clearly seen in the granting of tens of thousands of H1B visas, but also in the following excerpt from the official 2010-11 Bureau of Labor Statistics Occupational Outlook Handbook: Employment of computer software engineers is expected to increase by 32 percent from 2008-2018, which is much faster than the average for all occupations. In addition, this occupation will see a large number of new jobs, with more than 295,000 created between 2008 and 2018. Demand for computer software engineers will increase as computer networking continues to grow. For example, expanding Internet technologies have spurred demand for computer software engineers who can develop Internet, intranet, and World Wide Web applications. Likewise, electronic data-processing systems in business, telecommunications, healthcare, government, and other settings continue to become more sophisticated and complex. Implementing, safeguarding, and updating computer systems and resolving problems will fuel the demand for growing numbers of systems software engineers. New growth areas will also continue to arise from rapidly evolving technologies. The increasing uses of the Internet, the proliferation of Web sites, and mobile technology such as the wireless Internet have created a demand for a wide variety of new products. As more software is offered over the Internet, and as businesses demand customized software to meet their specific needs, applications and systems software engineers will be needed in greater numbers. In addition, the growing use of handheld computers will create demand for new mobile applications and software systems. As these devices become a larger part of the business environment, it will be necessary to integrate current computer systems with this new, more mobile technology. However, from the the employee side of the equation, we often hear the opposite. Many of the stories of SDEs with graduate degrees and decades of experience on the unemployment line, or the big tech interview war stories, are anecdotal, for sure. But, there is one piece of data that is neither anecdotal nor transitory, and that is the aggregate decisions of millions of undergraduates of what degree to pursue. Here, a different picture emerges from the data, and that picture is not good for the software profession. According the most recent Taulbee Survey from Computer Research Association, undergrad degree production in CS and CE has fallen nearly 60% since 2004. (Undergrad enrollments have ticked up in the past two years, but only modestly). Here we see that a basic disconnect between what corporate CEOs and the US government are saying and what potential employees really think about job prospects in software engineering. So my questions are these. Who are we to believe? Is there an acute talent shortage, or is there a long-term structural oversupply in the SDE labor market? Can anyone provide reliable data on long-term unemployment among SDEs? How many are leaving the profession due to lack of work? Real data is most helpful. Thanks.

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• 5 year old ubuntu system, always dist-upgraded => ok. however some tasks remain

  - by knb

  I have a PC with a current ubuntu distribution installed. I've upgraded many times since 5.10. It always went well, however some tools or features were kindof left behind in a unsatisfactory state: grub to grub2 - is it an really necessary to switch the boot loader some time to grub2. Upgrading this scares me abit. I still have ext3 devices - is it worth upgrading to ext4? should I wait for btrfs? hibernation and suspend- it only worked in 5.10, since 6.04 it was messed up. Should I really care? Any chance to repair this myself? Simply by cleanup or hacking config files. It is a desktop PC after all. So energy saving functionality is not really needed. I am using vmware workstation 6.5 and the latest kernel that supports it is 2.6.32. This is my default kernel now, ignoring 2.6.35. Am I missing anything important in the new kernel now?

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• How can I hard reset a USB device?

  - by Cory

  I have a USB device (a modem) that is really finicky. Sometimes it works fine, but other times it refuses to connect. The only solution I have found to fix it once it gets into a bad state is to physically unplug the device and plug it back in. However, I don't always have physical access to the machine it is plugged in on, so I'm looking for a way to do this through the command line. This post suggests running: sudo modprobe -w -r usb_storage; sudo modprobe usb_storage However I get an "unknown option -w" output. This slightly modified command: sudo modprobe -r usb_storage Fails with the message FATAL: Module usb_storage is in use. If I try to kill -9 the processes marked [usb-storage] before running they refuse to die (I think because they are deeply tied to the kernel). Anyone know of a way to do this? NOTE: I cross-posted this on superuser.com as I didn't know which was more appropriate. I will delete and/or link whichever one is answered first.

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• Sharing an internet connection through the Ethernet port

  - by Bob Cunningham

  I have a small living room PC (Bohica, running fully-updated Ubuntu 10.10/Maverick) connected to my HDTV that I use for web browsing and media streaming. It connects via WiFi (wlan0) to my Fedora server (Snafu) that in turn connects to the internet. I use static addressing, and everything has been working fine. I just got a Blu-ray player, and I'd like to give it wired network access to the internet via Bohica's available wired ethernet port (eth0). So far, I haven't been to get eth0 and the network configured to get the Blu-ray player talking to the internet. Here's my wlan0 configuration: ip4 addr: 192.168.0.100 mask: /24 (255.255.255.0) gateway: 192.168.0.4 (fedora box) The Blu-ray player is set to an IP of 192.168.0.98/24, with the same gateway as above. I want eth0 set to an IP of 192.168.0.99/24, but when I do this using nm-connection-editor I lose internet access (the system tries to use eth0 as the default internet access interface). How do I get my blu-ray player to talk to the internet through Bohica, and do so without disrupting my current (working) network? Thanks. Edit: Here's the relevant output from nm-tool with the Blu-ray player connected: $ nm-tool NetworkManager Tool State: connected - Device: eth0 Type: Wired Driver: forcedeth State: disconnected Default: no HW Address: 90:FB:A6:2C:94:32 Capabilities: Carrier Detect: yes Speed: 100 Mb/s Wired Properties Carrier: on - Device: wlan0 [wlan0] Type: 802.11 WiFi Driver: ndiswrapper State: connected Default: yes HW Address: 00:26:5A:C0:D0:05 IPv4 Settings: Address: 192.168.0.100 Prefix: 24 (255.255.255.0) Gateway: 192.168.0.4

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• Ubuntu Slows down over time?

  - by Lucas McCoy

  About a few months ago I was using Ubuntu (doing something in the command line) when it started lagging really bad. I would hit S (or any other key) and like 20 seconds later it would show up in my terminal. Naturally I killed the machine and rebooted. The system started working just fine, but about 30 minutes later it did the same thing. Now I'm forced to use Ubuntu in 30 minute spurts. I've looked at my running processes and none of them are taking large amounts of CPU or RAM. Luckily I've dual-booted so I could still use my machine. Now I need to get this fixed and I'm wondering what my options are. Will I be forced to do a fresh install or is there another way?

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• How do you administer cups remotely using the web interface?

  - by Evan

  I have an Ubuntu server in my apartment and I just got a printer, so it's time to share! In the past I've used CUPS on my Desktop and I'd just point the browsers to localhost:631 to set things up. Can I used the web based admin tools remotely? I've been playing with the /etc/cups/cupsd.conf file and am currently at the point where I can direct a browser on my LAN to server-ip:631 but I'm getting the 403 Forbidden error. If it's not possible or it's a bad idea for security reasons to allow remote administrator of CUPS, would it be possible to accomplish this using an SSH tunnel to the sever?

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• How do I replace the desktop by an application?

  - by Takkat

  Sometimes it may be needed that a user only has access to a certain application. Running the desktop environment then may be unwanted be it either for security reasons or for acchieving a better accessibility to the given application. In these cases it may be desired to replace the desktop by an application that runs immediately after login. Other users should have a normal access to their desktops.

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• How can I get start openbox at login using the GNOME/Openbox session?

  - by skyblue

  I want to be able to run openbox as my window manager in GNOME. If I install openbox, I get the additional choices at the GDM login window of a 'GNOME/Openbox' and an 'openbox session'. If I log in with the 'openbox session', it starts openbox successfully. However, if I log in using the 'GNOME/Openbox' session so that I can run GNOME but just replace metacity with openbox, I find that openbox does not start, and that metacity is managing my application windows. It looks something is not working in the GNOME/Openbox session in 10.04 (and possibly other versions of Ubuntu). I know that I can manually replace metacity with openbox by typing 'openbox --replace', but I want to know the correct way of starting openbox in a GNOME environment automatically at logon.

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• What functionality of an iPad can I use with Ubuntu?

  - by Andrew Ferrier

  What functionality of an iPad can I use with Ubuntu? I'm thinking about buying an iPad, but I only have Ubuntu PCs these days (no Windows, no Mac), and I'm nervous that it may be too reliant on the existence of iTunes. I'm less concerned about getting media onto and off it (and I have read that I can do this with libimobiledevice), but will I be able to activate it with iTunes? Does it need to be USB synced on a regular basis, or can I do most anything I want through the cloud (i.e. over wifi)? Edit: In answer to jrgifford's question, in theory, I'd like to do everything I would want to do with it were I using Windows/Mac. But more specifically, I think I'd want to: "Activate" it, if that's necessary Copy music / video onto it Install apps How much of this can I do without a Windows/Mac PC? Is it necessary to activate it? I don't think I'm that interested in backing it up (what would I back up?), but then again, maybe I'm confused as to how easy it is to get data on and off. Can I get a regular SFTP app for the iPad to copy data to my Ubuntu machine over wi-fi, for example?

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