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• USB Drive Warm Boot Issue. Cold boot = Perfect. Warm boot = "No boot sector found on USB device"

  - by Dan

  I'm experiencing a boot/reboot quirk similar to, yet somewhat different from others posted here. I have two Western Digital "Passport" external USB2 drives (160GB and 320GB) with Ubuntu 11.10 installed. The BIOS on my laptop is set to boot USB drives before the internal drive, and it works well. Either drive will cold-boot Ubuntu 11.10 perfectly. However, at times the computer must be restarted (warm boot) to have software updates or other changes take effect. When I warm-boot the computer, the computer goes through its normal shutdown/restart, then the usual BIOS tests, at which time the USB drive is selected momentarily (as normal), and that's when the trouble starts. I get a "No boot sector found on USB device", and the computer proceeds to boot Windows from the internal drive. If I press F12 early during the restart sequence (allows manual selection of the boot sequence), USB is still shown before the internal drive on the sequence list (as it should be). If I highlight "USB" and press ENTER, I still get a "No boot sector..." error message, but the external USB drive then proceeds to boot Ubuntu normally. I have a third external USB drive (Western Digital 160 GB Media Center) that cold-boots and warm-boots perfectly, so I know everything in the computer is set up properly. It also tells me Ubuntu is set up correctly on the drives, as all three drives were done identically, and at the same time. I've tried formatting the Passport drives NTFS and FAT32, but it didn't change anything. If I power-down the computer, then start it up again, it will boot Ubuntu from either of the Passport drives perfectly - every time. It's as if during a warm boot the Passport drives are somehow looking for the boot loader in the wrong location on the drive - yet either drives works when booting from a cold start. Not a show-stopper .. but frustrating. Computer is a Dell XPS M1530, A12 BIOS (latest), but I don't think the computer plays into the issue because one of the three drives works at all times. It's only the two WD Passport models at issue here. Thanks!

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• Unity panel, and application functionality

  - by Dan

  From the Unity panel, left-clicking on an application that has multiple instances open displays the Spread Mode, but left-clicking on a solitary application does absolutely nothing. Personally, whenever I left-click on an open application, I expect it to either minimize or maximize, and I'd like to know if there's a way to get that functionality from Unity when left-clicking on a solitary application. I'm currently running Ubuntu 12.10. Thanks.

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• Does Submit to Index on a page with new content update Content Keywords for the site?

  - by Dan Kanze

  Using Google Webmaster Tools I'm trying to update the Content Keywords of my site. I'm confused about the relationship between Submit to Index and Content Keywords Does Fetch as Google -- Submit to Index on a previously existing indexed page containing new content expidite updating the Content Keywords crawled by the real Google bot? Does Submit to Index only submit new URL's so that previously indexed URL's still point to the older cached version until Google crawls specifically for new content on its own? Does Submit to Index have anything to do with Content Keywords or crawling new content being a previously indexed page or never been indexed page?

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• Create a thread in xna Update method to find path?

  - by Dan

  I am trying to create a separate thread for my enemy's A* pathfinder which will give me a list of points to get to the player. I have placed the thread in the update method of my enemy. However this seems to cause jittering in the game every-time the thread is called. I have tried calling just the method and this works fine. Is there any way I can sort this out so that I can have the pathfinder on its own thread? Do I need to remove the thread start from the update and start it in the constructor? Is there any way this can work. Here is the code at the moment: bool running = false; bool threadstarted; System.Threading.Thread thread; public void update() { if (running == false && threadstarted == false) { thread = new System.Threading.Thread(PathThread); //thread.Priority = System.Threading.ThreadPriority.Lowest; thread.IsBackground = true; thread.Start(startandendobj); //PathThread(startandendobj); threadstarted = true; } } public void PathThread(object Startandend) { object[] Startandendarray = (object[])Startandend; Point startpoint = (Point)Startandendarray[0]; Point endpoint = (Point)Startandendarray[1]; bool runnable = true; // Path find from 255, 255 to 0,0 on the map foreach(Tile tile in Map) { if(tile.Color == Color.Red) { if (tile.Position.Contains(endpoint)) { runnable = false; } } } if(runnable == true) { running = true; Pathfinder p = new Pathfinder(Map); pathway = p.FindPath(startpoint, endpoint); running = false; threadstarted = false; } }

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• Is there any officially recognized, specific determinants that make a language programming/scripting?

  - by Dan

  I remember when I was first learning web-based programming everyone was intent on JavaScript not being a "programming language," but rather a scripting language; I have not heard that argument in quite a while now. I hear a lot of languages, like perl for example, referred to at different times as both a scripting and programming language. I know that a scripting language is less capable than a programming language, but where exactly does the line lie? Citation would be appreciated.

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• Can I include a robots meta tag outside of the head in HTML snippets indeded to be SSIed?

  - by Dan

  I have a number of files in my site which are not intended for independent viewing, but rather to be AJAXed into content within the site. They obviously don't meet HTML standards (no body, head, etc.) as independent entities. I would like to prevent search engines from indexing these pages, but do not have access to /robots.txt (which would be much more ideal). My question is, could I include the following at the top of these partial HTML files and get the desired results? <meta name="robots" content="noindex, noarchive"> I guess there are two parts to this question. Will this cause any rendering issues in any browsers? Will search engines (at least Google & Bing) interpret this as intended?

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• How do you stop yourself from programming?

  - by dan

  Lately I've started earning enough off my software to not have to do consulting to support myself. So I work full time designing and writing my own software products. The problem is that there are no boundaries between my work and my life any more. When I mostly did consulting, I was weary enough of work at the end of the workday to go home and do other things. But now, I sit down to program in the morning, and before I know it it's 11pm and I'm still writing software and not bored or tired at all. I have to force myself to go to sleep. I feel happy and fulfilled, but objectively, I know I need more balance and variety in my life. Any tips or suggestions on how to pull yourself away from the console?

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• Mouse disables on key press, but touchpad doesn't

  - by Dan

  My mouse cursor disables for 1-2 seconds when the keyboard is used. This can make gaming especially difficult. The touchpad is fine; I can use it at the same time as the keyboard. Doing some forum searching, I can see that going to mouse and touchpad touchpad disable touchpad when typing works for the touchpad, but I still have the problem when using the mouse. I've tried using synaptiks, and setting the 'automatically switch off touchpad on keyboard activity' time to 0 seconds doesn't seem to work either. I'd appreciate any help.

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• I have a library and several small programs that use it: how should I structure my git repositories?

  - by Dan

  I have some code that uses a library that I and others frequently modify (usually only by adding functions and methods). We each keep a local fork of the library for our own use. I also have a lot of small "driver" programs (~100 lines) that use the library and are used exclusively by me. Currently, I have both the driver programs and the library in the same repository, because I frequently make changes to both that are logically connected (adding a function to the library and then calling it). I'd like to merge my fork of the library with my co-workers' forks, but I don't want the driver programs to be part of the merged library. What's the best way to organize the git repositories for a large, shared library that needs to be merged frequently and a number of small programs that have changes that are connected to changes in the library?

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• Wireless very slow. Changed mode from Infracstructure to Ad-hoc

  - by Dan

  This is my first time using Linux so go easy on me :) I downloaded and installed Mint 11 couple of days ago and I was having trouble connecting to internet with wifi. Actually it says it connects but does not load any webpages. I tried to get help from this model of laptop owners (Asus G73SW) who uses mostly Ubuntu but they said they never had any problem right from install. So I decided to try out Ubuntu 11.04. Same thing. BUT now I get internet after going into Network Connection edit and changing the Mode from Infracstructure to Ad-Hoc. I get load pages but very slow. And if I'm not mistaken, as I was writing this paragraph, I might have been disconnected. However the wifi bar is full. Please help me this newb because I really want to keep using Ubuntu but I might just have to go back to W7 if nothing can be done. Thank you!

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• Wireless connects but can not connect to internet

  - by Dan

  I'm using Ubuntu 11.04 and I'm having trouble connecting to internet via wifi. Ethernet cable works though. So when I log on it auto logs on to my wifi connection at home but after about a minute or so it gives me a popup: network disabled something about .local domain and something about Avahi network (sorry if you need more on what the popup says I will reboot and look at it again). I am using Atheros wireless card. My laptop is Asus G73SW and on the forum at notebookreview.com G73SW Owner's Lounge people said they had no problem with connecting via wifi from install. Please help me because I would love to keep using this beautiful OS.

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• Accented characters representation in the URL

  - by Dan

  We have support for various languages in our website, including Spanish, French and Swedish. For now, the links in the site are NOT encoded before sent to the browser, sending the real accented chars (if such exists, i.e. href="www.(dot)example(dot)com/héllo.html") and not their HEX representation. This works & looks good on all browsers, including Chrome, FF and IE. However, we care great deal about SEO. We got this tip that encoding the links before sending them to the browser (so instead of linking to http://www.example.com/héllo, we will link to http://www.example.com/h%E9llo) will improve the way search engines will 'understand' the links and the keywords in the URL. This involves some work at our side, so we wanted to know if there's truth in that tip, but couldn't find anything addressing this issue.

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• How was 20Q made?

  - by Dan the Man

  Ever since I was a kid, I've wondered how they made the 20Q electronic game. In this game, which is it's on device, you think of an object, thing, or animal (e.g. a potato or a donkey), once you mentally choose your thing, the device goes through a series of questions such as: Is it larger than a loaf of bread? Is it found outdoors? Is it used for recreation? For each of the questions you can answer yes, no, maybe, or unknown. The way I've always thought of it to work was with immense, nested conditionals (if statements). But, I don't think that would be very likely as it would be terribly difficult to understand while coding it. I'm not looking for a discussion as SE doesn't allow it; I'm looking for concrete knowledge or solutions.

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• Does having a Google "stop word" in a domain name have less SEO benefit than not having it?

  - by Dan

  Let me explain. Let's say my keyword I want to optimize is "green giraffes". But the domain greengiraffes.com (singular, plural, no hyphen, hyphen, etc.) is not available. I know that the search results for "green giraffes" and "about green giraffes" are essentially the same because "about" is a "stop word". Does that therefore also mean that the domain name "aboutgreengiraffes.com" is as good as "greengiraffes.com" in terms of SEO value? Are all stop words equal in that regard, or a shorter one (such as "e" or "z") is better?

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• What is this chargeback scam? [on hold]

  - by Dan Friedman

  We have a scammer that is buying our e-Books and then performing chargebacks. Our e-Books don't have DRM, so if they wanted to resell them, they would only need to buy each book once. But instead, they keep buying the same books over and over again and then performing hundreds of chargebacks. We have created some additional rules in our fraud protection tools to block certain aspects, even though all the info looks legit, and are hopeful this will slow them down. But my question is: What is the scam? If they aren't getting any product and they only get chargebacks for something they already purchased, then they can't get additional money from the credit card company, so then what's their motivation?

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• If you develop on multiple operating systems, is it better to have multiple computers + displays?

  - by dan

  I develop for iOS and Linux. My preferred OS is Ubuntu. Now my software shop (me and a partner) is developing for Windows too. Now the question is, is it more efficient to have multiple workstations, one for each target OS? Efficiency and productivity is a higher priority than saving money. I have a 3.4Ghz i7 desktop workstation running Ubuntu and virtualized Windows with two displays, and I'm putting together an even more powerful i7 Hackintosh with 16GB RAM (to replace my weak 2.2Ghz i5 Macbook Pro). My specific dilemma is whether I should sell the first computer and triple boot on the second one, or buy two more displays and run both desktop systems simultaneously. Would appreciate answers from developers who write software for multiple OSes. Running guest OSes in VirtualBox on one system not ideal, because in my experience performance is seriously degraded under virtualization. So the choice is between dual/triple booting on one system vs having two systems, one for OSX+iOS/Windows (dual boot) and the other for Ubuntu (which I prefer to use as my main OS). For much of our work, I write a server-side application in Linux and a client for iOS (or for Windows or OS X) simultaneously.

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• Models, collections...and then what? Processes?

  - by Dan

  I'm a LAMP-stack dev who's been more on the JavaScript side the last few years and really enjoying the Model + Collection approach to data entities that BackboneJS, etc. uses. It's helped me organize my code in such a way that it is extremely portable, keeping all my properties and methods in the scope (model, collection, etc.) in which they apply. One thing that keeps bugging me though is how to organize the next level up, the 'process layer' as you might call it, that can potentially operate on instances of either models or collections or whatever else. Where should methods like find() (which returns a collection) and create() (which returns a model) reside? I know some people would put a create() in the Collection prototype, but while a collection operates on models I don't think it's exactly right to create them. And while a find() would return a collection I don't think it correct to have that action within the collection prototype itself (it should be a layer up). Can anyone offer some examples of any patterns that employ some kind of OOP-friendly 'process' layer? I'm sorry if this is a fairly well-known discussion but I'm afraid I can't seem to find the terminology to search for.

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• No wireless on Ubunto 12.10

  - by Dan Pitkin

  Okay, so I'm pretty new to the whole Ubuntu thing. I installed it yesterday alongside Windows 8, and it installed fine. Then I started it up and tried to connect to my wireless router. It wouldn't give me the option and the only thing that I could find was Edit Connections thing along the top which I didn't understand at all and just ended up confusing me. Can someone give me a simple explanation as to what I have to do? My laptop is a Toshiba Satellite C855-18D. Thanks guys!

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• ArrayIndexOutOfBoundsException with custom Android Adapter for multiple views in ListView

  - by Dan Watling

  I am attempting to create a custom Adapter for my ListView since each item in the list can have a different view (a link, toggle, or radio group), but when I try to run the Activity that uses the ListView I receive an error and the app stops. The application is targeted for the Android 1.6 platform. The code: public class MenuListAdapter extends BaseAdapter { private static final String LOG_KEY = MenuListAdapter.class.getSimpleName(); protected List<MenuItem> list; protected Context ctx; protected LayoutInflater inflater; public MenuListAdapter(Context context, List<MenuItem> objects) { this.list = objects; this.ctx = context; this.inflater = (LayoutInflater)this.ctx.getSystemService(Context.LAYOUT_INFLATER_SERVICE); } @Override public View getView(int position, View convertView, ViewGroup parent) { Log.i(LOG_KEY, "Position: " + position + "; convertView = " + convertView + "; parent=" + parent); MenuItem item = list.get(position); Log.i(LOG_KEY, "Item=" + item ); if (convertView == null) { convertView = this.inflater.inflate(item.getLayout(), null); } return convertView; } @Override public boolean areAllItemsEnabled() { return false; } @Override public boolean isEnabled(int position) { return true; } @Override public int getCount() { return this.list.size(); } @Override public MenuItem getItem(int position) { return this.list.get(position); } @Override public long getItemId(int position) { return position; } @Override public int getItemViewType(int position) { Log.i(LOG_KEY, "getItemViewType: " + this.list.get(position).getLayout()); return this.list.get(position).getLayout(); } @Override public int getViewTypeCount() { Log.i(LOG_KEY, "getViewTypeCount: " + this.list.size()); return this.list.size(); } } The error I receive: java.lang.ArrayIndexOutOfBoundsException at android.widget.AbsListView$RecycleBin.addScrapView(AbsListView.java:3523) at android.widget.ListView.measureHeightOfChildren(ListView.java:1158) at android.widget.ListView.onMeasure(ListView.java:1060) at android.view.View.measure(View.java:7703) I do know that the application is returning from getView and everything seems in order. Any ideas on what could be causing this would be appreciated. Thanks, -Dan

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• Team matchups for Dota Bot

  - by Dan

  I have a ghost++ bot that hosts games of Dota (a warcraft 3 map that is played 5 players versus 5 players) and I'm trying to come up with good formulas to balance the players going into a match based on their records (I have game history for several thousand games). I'm familear with some of the concepts required to match up players, like confidence based on sample size of the number of games they played, and also perameter approximation and degrees of freedom and thus throwing out any variables that don't contribute enough to the r^2. My bot collects quite a few variables for each player from each game: The Important ones: Win/Lose/Game did not finish # of Player Kills # of Player Deaths # of Kills player assisted The not so important ones: # of enemy creep kills # of creep sneak attacks # of neutral creep kills # of Tower kills # of Rax kills # of courier kills Quick explination: The kills/deaths don't determine who wins, but the gold gained and lost from this usually is enough to tilt the game. Tower/Rax kills are what the goal of the game is (once a team looses all their towers/rax their thrown can be attacked if that is destroyed they lose), but I don't really count these as important because it is pretty random who gets the credit for the tower kill, and chances are if you destroy a tower it is only because some other player is doing well and distracting the otherteam elsewhere on the map. I'm getting a bit confused when trying to deal with the fact that 5 players are on a team, so ultimately each individual isn't that responsible for the team winner or losing. Take a player that is really good at killing and has 40 kills and only 10 deaths, but in their 5 games they've only won 1. Should I give him extra credit for such a high kill score despite losing? (When losing it is hard to keep a positive kill/death ratio) Or should I dock him for losing assuming that despite the nice kill/death ratio he probably plays in a really greedy way only looking out for himself and not helping the team? Ultimately I don't think I have to guess at questions like this because I have so much data... but I don't really know how to look at the data to answer questions like this. Can anyone help me come up with formulas to help team balance and predict the outcome? Thanks, Dan

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• Is it possible to use XStream with an abstract node?

  - by Dan Watling

  My client application is making calls to a service that returns a common "root" XML, but a different result node. The "root" XML contains possible error codes. Is it possible to use XStream in this scenario? Example: public class RootNode { ErrorInfo errorInfo; BaseResult result; ... } public class ErrorInfo { String message; ... } public abstract BaseResult { } public class SearchResult extends BaseResult { List<Object> searchResults; ... } public class AccountResult extends BaseResult { String name; ... } The XML coming back could be one of two formats: <root> <errorInfo><message>...</message></errorInfo> <result> <searchResults>...</searchResults> </result> </root> OR <root> <errorInfo><message>...</message></errorInfo> <result> <name>...</name> </result> </root> I have set up my XStream object as follows: XStream x = new XStream(); x.alias("root", Root.class); x.alias("errorInfo", ErrorInfo.class); x.alias("result", <SearchResult.class OR AccountResult.class depending on what I am expecting back>); Of course, when I run this I receive an error telling me XStream cannot instantiate the base class (BaseResult). For fun, I also converted the BaseResult into an interface but received a similar error. I've looked through XStream's documentation and it isn't clear to me how to handle a situation like the one I just described. Is it even possible to do using XStream? Thanks, -Dan

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• RMI applet is making requests on random ports and blocked consequently

  - by Dan

  /// I have set up RMI system successfully on local ubuntu srver. Registry port 1099 and remote object export on 1100(fixed by calling super(1100)) Now I am trying to make it work on Ubuntu over internet with a public IP. I could bind service properly with public ip.But the client applet is trying to connect to ubuntu server at random ports. Below is the error thrown by client applet: // Exception network: Connecting public-ip:1100 with proxy=DIRECT network: Connecting public-ip/cgi-bin/java-rmi.cgi?forward=1099 with proxy=DIRECT network: Connecting public-ip:3733 with proxy=DIRECT network: Connecting public-ip:3721 with proxy=DIRECT // java.rmi.ConnectException: Connection refused to host: public-ip; nested exception is: java.net.ConnectException: Connection refused: connect at sun.rmi.transport.tcp.TCPEndpoint.newSocket(Unknown Source)Source) at java.net.AbstractPlainSocketImpl.connectToAddress(Unknown Source) ... // // I have only 2 ports open on server, i.e., 1099(registry) and 1100(export). How can I fix ports in applet requests such that it does always connect server on same open port? // // Another issue.As I have bound service on public IP i.e. //public-ip:1099/ServiceName, a job running on server to send message to clinets is not able to make request to RMI service. public-ip URL does not work on same machine,i.e., server.Do you think I should use fixed socket factory?If so please give me code snippet and guide me how i can set it up. //Exception java.rmi.ConnectException: Connection refused to host: public-ip; nested exception is: java.net.ConnectException: Connection refused at sun.rmi.transport.tcp.TCPEndpoint.newSocket(TCPEndpoint.java:619) at sun.rmi.transport.tcp.TCPChannel.createConnection(TCPChannel.java:216) at sun.rmi.transport.tcp.TCPChannel.newConnection(TCPChannel.java:202) at sun.rmi.server.UnicastRef.invoke(UnicastRef.java:128) at java.rmi.server.RemoteObjectInvocationHandler.invokeRemoteMethod(RemoteObjectInvocationHandler.java:194) at java.rmi.server.RemoteObjectInvocationHandler.invoke(RemoteObjectInvocationHandler.java:148) at $Proxy5.getUserID(Unknown Source) at rmi.source.xxxxxx$JobScheduler.run(xxxxServerImpl.java:293) at java.util.TimerThread.mainLoop(Timer.java:555) at java.util.TimerThread.run(Timer.java:505) Caused by: java.net.ConnectException: Connection refused at java.net.PlainSocketImpl.socketConnect(Native Method) at java.net.AbstractPlainSocketImpl.doConnect(AbstractPlainSocketImpl.java:337) at java.net.AbstractPlainSocketImpl.connectToAddress(AbstractPlainSocketImpl.java:198) at java.net.AbstractPlainSocketImpl.connect(AbstractPlainSocketImpl.java:180) at java.net.SocksSocketImpl.connect(SocksSocketImpl.java:391) at java.net.Socket.connect(Socket.java:579) at java.net.Socket.connect(Socket.java:528) at java.net.Socket.(Socket.java:425) at java.net.Socket.(Socket.java:208) at sun.rmi.transport.proxy.RMIDirectSocketFactory.createSocket(RMIDirectSocketFactory.java:40) at sun.rmi.transport.proxy.RMIMasterSocketFactory.createSocket(RMIMasterSocketFactory.java:146) at sun.rmi.transport.tcp.TCPEndpoint.newSocket(TCPEndpoint.java:613) ... 9 more Coould you please help me? Thanks a lot in advance. Dan

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• BI and EPM Landscape

  - by frank.buytendijk

  Most of my blog entries are not about Oracle products, and most of the latest entries are about topics such as IT strategy and enterprise architecture. However, given my background at Gartner, and at Hyperion, I still keep a close eye on what's happening in BI and EPM. One important reason is that I believe there is significant competitive value for organizations getting BI and EPM right. Davenport and Harris wrote a great book called "Competing on Analytics", in which they explain this in a very engaging and convincing way. At Oracle we have defined the concept of "management excellence" that outlines what organizations have to do to keep or create a competitive edge. It's not only in the business processes, but also in the management processes. Recently, Gartner published its 2009 market shares report for BI, Analytics, and Performance Management. Gartner identifies the same three segments that Oracle does: (1) CPM Suites (Oracle refers not to Corporate Performance Management, but Enterprise Performance Management), (2) BI Platform, and (3) Analytic Applications & Performance Management. According to Gartner, Oracle's share is increasing with revenue growing by more than 5%. Oracle currently holds the #2 market share position in the overall BI Software space based on total BI software revenue. Source: Gartner Dataquest Market Share: Business Intelligence, Analytics and Performance Management Software, Worldwide, 2009; Dan Sommer and Bhavish Sood; Apr 2010 Gartner has ranked Oracle as #1 in the CPM Suites worldwide sub-segment based on total BI software revenue, and Oracle is gaining share with revenue growing by more than 6% in 2009. Source: Gartner Dataquest Market Share: Business Intelligence, Analytics and Performance Management Software, Worldwide, 2009; Dan Sommer and Bhavish Sood; Apr 2010 The Analytic Applications & Performance Management subsegment is more fragmented. It has for instance a very large "Other Vendors" category. The largest player traditionally is SAS. Analytic Applications are often meant for very specific analytic needs in very specific industry sectors. According to Gartner, from the large vendors, again Oracle is the one who is gaining the most share - with total BI software revenue growth close to 15% in 2009. Source: Gartner Dataquest Market Share: Business Intelligence, Analytics and Performance Management Software, Worldwide, 2009; Dan Sommer and Bhavish Sood; Apr 2010 I believe this shows Oracle's integration strategy is working. In fact, integration actually is the innovation. BI and EPM have been silo technology platforms and application suites way too long. Management and measuring performance should be very closely linked to strategy execution, which is the domain of other business application areas such as CRM, ERP, and Supply Chain. BI and EPM are not about "making better decisions" anymore, but are part of a tangible action framework. Furthermore, organizations are getting more serious about ecosystem thinking. They do not evaluate single tools anymore for different application areas, but buy into a complete ecosystem of hardware, software and services. The best ecosystem is the one that offers the most options, in environments where the uncertainty is high and investments are hard to reverse. The key to successfully managing such an environment is middleware, and BI and EPM become increasingly middleware intensive. In fact, given the horizontal nature of BI and EPM, sitting on top of all business functions and applications, you could call them "upperware". Many are active in the BI and EPM space. Big players can offer a lot, but there are always many areas that are covered by specialty vendors. Oracle openly embraces those technologies within the ecosystem as well. Complete, open and integrated still accurately describes the Oracle product strategy. frank

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• Patching and PCI Compliance

  - by Joel Weise

  One of my friends and master of the security universe, Darren Moffat, pointed me to Dan Anderson's blog the other day.  Dan went to Toorcon which is a security conference where he went to a talk on security patching titled, "Stop Patching, for Stronger PCI Compliance".  I realize that often times speakers will use a headline grabbing title to create interest in their talk and this one certainly got my attention.  I did not go to the conference and did not see the presentation, so I can only go by what is in the Toorcon agenda summary and on Dan's blog, but the general statement to stop patching for stronger PCI compliance seems a bit misleading to me.  Clearly patching is important to all systems management and should be a part of any organization's security hygiene.  Further, PCI does require the patching of systems to maintain compliance.  So it's important to mention that organizations should not simply stop patching their systems; and I want to believe that was not the speakers intent. So let's look at PCI requirement 6: "Unscrupulous individuals use security vulnerabilities to gain privileged access to systems. Many of these vulnerabilities are fixed by vendor- provided security patches, which must be installed by the entities that manage the systems. All critical systems must have the most recently released, appropriate software patches to protect against exploitation and compromise of cardholder data by malicious individuals and malicious software." Notice the word "appropriate" in the requirement.  This is stated to give organizations some latitude and apply patches that make sense in their environment and that target the vulnerabilities in question.  Haven't we all seen a vulnerability scanner throw a false positive and flag some module and point to a recommended patch, only to realize that the module doesn't exist on our system?  Applying such a patch would obviously not be appropriate.  This does not mean an organization can ignore the fact they need to apply security patches.  It's pretty clear they must.  Of course, organizations have other options in terms of compliance when it comes to patching.  For example, they could remove a system from scope and make sure that system does not process or contain cardholder data.  [This may or may not be a significant undertaking.  I just wanted to point out that there are always options available.] PCI DSS requirement 6.1 also includes the following note: "Note: An organization may consider applying a risk-based approach to prioritize their patch installations. For example, by prioritizing critical infrastructure (for example, public-facing devices and systems, databases) higher than less-critical internal devices, to ensure high-priority systems and devices are addressed within one month, and addressing less critical devices and systems within three months." Notice there is no mention to stop patching one's systems.  And the note also states organization may apply a risk based approach. [A smart approach but also not mandated].  Such a risk based approach is not intended to remove the requirement to patch one's systems.  It is meant, as stated, to allow one to prioritize their patch installations.   So what does this mean to an organization that must comply with PCI DSS and maintain some sanity around their patch management and overall operational readiness?  I for one like to think that most organizations take a common sense and balanced approach to their business and security posture.  If patching is becoming an unbearable task, review why that is the case and possibly look for means to improve operational efficiencies; but also recognize that security is important to maintaining the availability and integrity of one's systems.  Likewise, whether we like it or not, the cyber-world we live in is getting more complex and threatening - and I dont think it's going to get better any time soon.

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• PASS Summit 2011 &ndash; Part II

  - by Tara Kizer

  I arrived in Seattle last Monday afternoon to attend PASS Summit 2011.  I had really wanted to attend Gail Shaw’s (blog|twitter) and Grant Fritchey’s (blog|twitter) pre-conference seminar “All About Execution Plans” on Monday, but that would have meant flying out on Sunday which I couldn’t do.  On Tuesday, I attended Allan Hirt’s (blog|twitter) pre-conference seminar entitled “A Deep Dive into AlwaysOn: Failover Clustering and Availability Groups”.  Allan is a great speaker, and his seminar was packed with demos and information about AlwaysOn in SQL Server 2012.  Unfortunately, I have lost my notes from this seminar and the presentation materials are only available on the pre-con DVD.  Hmpf! On Wednesday, I attended Gail Shaw’s “Bad Plan! Sit!”, Andrew Kelly’s (blog|twitter) “SQL 2008 Query Statistics”, Dan Jones’ (blog|twitter) “Improving your PowerShell Productivity”, and Brent Ozar’s (blog|twitter) “BLITZ! The SQL – More One Hour SQL Server Takeovers”.  In Gail’s session, she went over how to fix bad plans and bad query patterns.  Update your stale statistics! How to fix bad plans Use local variables – optimizer can’t sniff it, so it’ll optimize for “average” value Use RECOMPILE (at the query or stored procedure level) – CPU hit OPTIMIZE FOR hint – most common value you’ll pass How to fix bad query patterns Don’t use them – ha! Catch-all queries Use dynamic SQL OPTION (RECOMPILE) Multiple execution paths Split into multiple stored procedures OPTION (RECOMPILE) Modifying parameter values Use local variables Split into outer and inner procedure OPTION (RECOMPILE) She also went into “last resort” and “very last resort” options, but those are risky unless you know what you are doing.  For the average Joe, she wouldn’t recommend these.  Examples are query hints and plan guides. While I enjoyed Andrew’s session, I didn’t take any notes as it was familiar material.  Andrew is a great speaker though, and I’d highly recommend attending his sessions in the future. Next up was Dan’s PowerShell session.  I need to look into profiles, manifests, function modules, and function import scripts more as I just didn’t quite grasp these concepts.  I am attending a PowerShell training class at the end of November, so maybe that’ll help clear it up.  I really enjoyed the Excel integration demo.  It was very cool watching PowerShell build the spreadsheet in real-time.  I must look into this more!  On a side note, I am jealous of Dan’s hair.  Fabulous hair! Brent’s session showed us how to quickly gather information about a server that you will be taking over database administration duties for.  He wrote a script to do a fast health check and then later wrapped it into a stored procedure, sp_Blitz.  I can’t wait to use this at my work even on systems where I’ve been the primary DBA for years, maybe there’s something I’ve overlooked.  We are using EPM to help standardize our environment and uncover problems, but sp_Blitz will definitely still help us out.  He even provides a cloud-based update feature, sp_BlitzUpdate, for sp_Blitz so you don’t have to constantly update it when he makes a change.  I think I’ll utilize his update code for some other challenges that we face at my work.

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