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  • The Jack LaLanne School of Sysadmins

    - by rickramsey
    Two of my childhood heroes were Tarzan and Jack LaLanne. Tarzan was an obvious choice: what boy wouldn't want to spend his days bungee jumping through the jungle with his own pack of gorillas? Jack Lalanne had a disturbing habit of wearing stretch pants, but he was so damn fit for an old guy that you couldn't help but be impressed. Especially back then, when nobody knew what a dumb bell was, much less Cross-Fit. Here's what he did to celebrate his 70th birthday. Sooner or later we all face a choice in our careers: surrender to the life of a has-been like Bruce Sprinsteen's baseball player or become an unstoppable sysadmin like Jack Lalanne. If you'd rather keep on fighting like Jack, give these resources a look. Brian Bream's blog provides specific suggestions for keeping your skills up to date. The video interviews describe the types of technologies that are challenging what you used to know. Blog: The Old School Sysadmin - A Dying Breed? by Brian Bream "The sysadmin role has been far too dependent on performing repetitive tasks and working in a reactionary mode ... the sysadmin must grow a much larger skill set to be successful. Don’t grow vertically in one technology, grow horizontally amongst many technologies." Just one of the suggestions Brian Bream provides in this excellent blog post. Video: Freeing the Sysadmin From Repetitive Tasks Interview with Marshall Choy Marshall Choy, Director of Optimized Solutions at Oracle was once a sysadmin. And a Solaris engineer. He explains what optimized solutions are, how they are developed and tested, how they handle patching, and how these vertically integrated systems impact the job and duties of a sysadmin. Video: The Oracle Database Appliance Interview with Bob Thome Bob Thome, Senior Director of Product Management, explains what makes the Database Appliance simple, reliable, and affordable, and how it could change the economies and processes of the data center. Video: Why Pinellas County Chose Oracle Exalytics Interview with Gautham Gautham (pronounced like Batman's Gotham) recently led an effort to refresh the Pinellas County hardware systems. He'll explain what they were looking for, why they chose Oracle Exalytics, how they became convinced it was the right decision, and how it changed the way they managed their data center. Video: DTrace for System Administrators Interview with Brendan Gregg This video interview will give you an idea of some of the value-add tasks you can perform when you are freed from the reactive mode that Brian Bream describes in his blog. Brendan Gregg describes the best ways for sysadmins to tune deployed applications to get more performance out of them in their particular computing environment photograph of Ford Mustang GT 500 taken at Gateway Museum copyright by Rick Ramsey -Rick Follow me on: Blog | Facebook | Twitter | Personal Twitter | YouTube | The Great Peruvian Novel

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  • Game of Phones

    - by Carlos Chang
    Game  of  Phones There’s an excellent DZone article titled: 2014 Guide to Mobile Development. It’s loaded with excellent information including some results from a mobile related survey to more than 1000 IT professionals. Without giving away too much, these highlights should convince you to read the entire article.  Web and Hybrid apps are gaining tons of traction particularly in the enterprise. If you want to better understand the differences between Web, Native and Hybrid, this article has you covered. Enterprise developers are increasingly more interested in cross platform tools. Makes sense right?  I mean, unless you have infinite resources (e.g. Facebook) and can afford to write native apps to every platform, finding something that can meet your needs for iOS and Android makes sense.  And toss in the possibility of Windows Phone …and oh, just to be current, the addition of Apple’s new mobile language, Swift, to add to Objective C.. and oh boy.  Why not check out cross platform tools? BTW, don’t  forget testing on each platform, and maintenance and the next versions of the app. It’s not one and done. If you’re successful, you’re never done. Various mobile vendors are represented and many provide some great information.  Oracle's own Suhas Uliyar, VP of Mobile Strategy, represented with some great insights into the challenges of mobile back end integration (SOA, mBaaS, etc.) and moving from "mobile first" to a mobile plus world. BTW, Suhas was recently named Top 100 Wireless Technology Experts for 2014 by Today's Wireless World magazine.  And if your not yet convinced, DZone did a very nice job with their mobile infographic stylized after the insanely popular series, Game of Thrones.  Even though there were no dragons illustrated, worth the price of admission just for that.   Check it out here.

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  • OpenWorld Day 1

    - by Antony Reynolds
    A Day in the Life of an OpenWorld Attendee Part I Lots of people are blogging insightfully about OpenWorld so I thought I would provide some non-insightful remarks to buck the trend! With 50,000 attendees I didn’t expect to bump into too many people I knew, boy was I wrong!  I walked into the registration area and immediately was hailed by a couple of customers I had worked with a few months ago.  Moving to the employee registration area in a different hall I bumped into a colleague from the UK who was also registering.  As soon as I got my badge I bumped into a friend from Ireland!  So maybe OpenWorld isn’t so big after all! First port of call was Larrys Keynote.  As always Larry was provocative and thought provoking.  His key points were announcing the Oracle cloud offering in IaaS, PaaS and SaaS, pointing out that Fusion Apps are cloud enabled and finally announcing the 12c Database, making a big play of its new multi-tenancy features.  His contention was that multi-tenancy will simplify cloud development and provide better security by providing DB level isolation for applications and customers. Next day, Monday, was my first full day at OpenWorld.  The first session I attended was on monitoring of OSB, very interesting presentation on the benefits achieved by an Illinois area telco – US Cellular.  Great discussion of why they bought the SOA Management Packs and the benefits they are already seeing from their investment in terms of improved provisioning and time to market, as well as better performance insight and assistance with capacity planning. Craig Blitz provided a nice walkthrough of where Coherence has been and where it is going. Last night I attended the BOF on Managed File Transfer where Dave Berry replayed Oracles thoughts on providing dedicated Managed File Transfer as part of the 12c SOA release.  Dave laid out the perceived requirements and solicited feedback from the audience on what if anything was missing.  He also demoed an early version of the functionality that would simplify setting up MFT in SOA Suite and make tracking activity much easier. So much for Day 1.  I also ran into scores of old friends and colleagues and had a pleasant dinner with my friend from Ireland where I caught up on the latest news from Oracle UK.  Not bad for Day 1!

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  • ATI (fglrx) Dual monitor / laptop hot-plugging

    - by Brendan Piater
    I feel like I've gone back 5 years on my desktop today. I'll try not dump to much frustration here... I been running 12.04 since alpha with the ATI open source drivers and the gnome 3 desktop. I been generally very happy with them with only small issues along the way. Now of course it does not support 3D acceleration 100%, so games like my newly purchased Amnesia from the Humble bundle would not play. OK, no worries, the ATI driver is in the repos so let me have a go I thought. With all this testing that's been done with multi-monitor support, what could go wrong...? How I use my computer: It's laptop, with a HD 3670 card in it. I spend about 50% of the time working directly on the laptop (at home) and about 50% of the time working with an additional display connected (at work), multi desktop environment. What happening now: installed drivers things seemed to working, save some small other bugs (not critical) this morning I take my machine and plug the additional monitor into it, and nothing happens... ok fine. open "displays" try configure dual display, won't work open ati config "thing" (cause it is a thing, a crap thing) and set-up monitors there reboot it says (oh ffs, really.... ok) reboot, login and wow, I got a gnome 2 desktop (presume gnome 3 fall back) and no multi-monitor...great. (screenshot: http://ubuntuone.com/5tFe3QNFsTSIGvUSVLsyL7 ) after getting into a situation where I had to Ctrl + Alt + Del to get out of a frozen display, I eventually manage to set-up a single display desktop on the "main" monitor ok.. time to go home... unplug monitor... nothing happens.. oh boy here we go... try displays again, nothing, just hangs the display.. great. crash all the apps and reboot... So it's been a trying day... What I really hope is that someone else has figured out how to avoid this PAIN. Please help with a solution that: allows me run fglrx (so I can run the games I want) allows me to hot-plug a monitor to my laptop and remove it again allows me to change the display so include the hot-plugged monitor (preferable automatically like it did with the open drivers) Next best if that's not possible: switch between laptop only display and monitor only display easily (i.e. not having to reboot/logout/suspened etc) Really appreciate the time of anyone that has a solution. Thanks in advance. Regards Brendan PS: I guess I should file a bug about this too, so some direction as to the best place to file this would be appreciated too.

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  • Deploying, but without those pesky test files!

    - by Chris Skardon
    Silverlight testing is great, we all know that (don’t we??), we’re expected to do it as part of the development process, but once we’ve got an awesome application written and we come to deploy it, we don’t want the test files going out with it… You might be like me, have the files in a Web project – let’s face it, that’s how we’re pushed into doing it… So let’s stick with it! Now. I’m deploying via the wonders of the Web Deployment shizzle, but this also applies to the classic ‘installer’ project as well.. Baaaasically, we’re going to use the ‘Debug’ / ‘Release’ configurations to include given files. ?? OK, you know in the top of your visual studio editor, you (usually) have a drop down which predominantly reads ‘Debug’? Those are ‘configurations’. Mostly we don’t bother changing it, primarily due to laziness, but also the fact that we generally don’t see ‘Release’ as actually doing anything other than making it harder to find problems :) Well today my friends we’re going to change that bad boy… The next few steps are just helping you set up a new ‘Debug’ configuration, but you can just switch to the ‘Release’ configuration and skip to the end… First let’s go to the Configuration Manager. There are multiple ways, through the ‘Build’ menu (at the bottom), or via the drop down which currently has ‘Debug’ in it :) Got it? Select ‘New’ from the ‘Active solution configuration’ drop down: Create a new configuration, kind of like the picture below shows (or for those graphically challenged – Name: DebugWithNoTests, and Copy settings from: ‘Debug’, ensuring the ‘Create new project configurations’ checkbox is checked). Press OK. VS will do some shizzle, and in the Configuration manager, you will see pretty much exactly what you did before, only with ‘Debug’ replaced with ‘DebugWithNoTests’. Turn off the build options for the test projects. We won’t need them.. IF you skipped down from the top, this is where you’ll be wanting to stop!!! Close and now we’re one notepad step away from achieving our goals. Yes, I said notepad. You can’t do what we’re going to do in VS. (Pity). Go to the folder where your web project is, and right click on the ‘.csproj’ file. Now open it with notepad. Head on down to the ‘<Content Include’ bits, they’ll look like this: <ItemGroup> <Content Include="ClientBin\Tests.xap" /> ... </ItemGroup> Take this and modify each of the files you don’t want deployed and change to: <Content Include="ClientBin\Tests.xap" Condition="'$(Configuration)' == 'Debug'" /> Once you’ve got that sorted publish your project, once with the Debug configuration selected, and another with any other configuration (‘Release’, ‘DebugWithNoTests’ etc).. No files! Huzzah!

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  • How can I create a flexible system for tiling a 2D RPG map?

    - by CptSupermrkt
    Using libgdx here. I've just finished learning some of the basics of creating a 2D environment and using an OrthographicCamera to view it. The tutorials I went through, however, hardcoded their tiled map in, and none made mention of how to do it any other way. By tiled map, I mean like Final Fantasy 1, where the world map is a grid of squares, each with a different texture. So for example, I've got a 6 tile x 6 tile map, using the following code: Array<Tile> tiles = new Array<Tile>(); tiles.add(new Tile(new Vector2(0,5), TileType.FOREST)); tiles.add(new Tile(new Vector2(1,5), TileType.FOREST)); tiles.add(new Tile(new Vector2(2,5), TileType.FOREST)); tiles.add(new Tile(new Vector2(3,5), TileType.GRASS)); tiles.add(new Tile(new Vector2(4,5), TileType.STONE)); tiles.add(new Tile(new Vector2(5,5), TileType.STONE)); //... x5 more times. Given the random nature of the environment, for loops don't really help as I have to start and finish a loop before I was able to do enough to make it worth setting up the loop. I can see how a loop might be helpful for like tiling an ocean or something, but not in the above case. The above code DOES get me my final desired output, however, if I were to decide I wanted to move a piece or swap two pieces out, oh boy, what a nightmare, even with just a 6x6 test piece, much less a 1000x1000 world map. There must be a better way of doing this. Someone on some post somewhere (can't find it now, of course) said to check out MapEditor. Looks legit. The question is, if that is the answer, how can I make something in MapEditor and have the output map plug in to a variable in my code? I need the tiles as objects in my code, because for example, I determine whether or not a tile is can be passed through or collided with based on my TileTyle enum variable. Are there alternative/language "native" (i.e. not using an outside tool) methods to doing this?

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  • Skype Connect as SIP/Trunk for Asterisk

    - by Kaurin
    First off: I'm not sure if this should be on superuser or here. I have recently built a few Asterisk boxes with OpenVOX FXO/FXS ports little or no trouble. My current project is building an Asterisk box with SIP trunks. My current employer insisted on getting Skype Business/Skype connect for that purpose. After reviewing the Skype Connect plan, I agreed, because I thought it is going to be straightforward: Purchase G729 licences and setup SIP trunk/trunks. Boy was i wrong :) Here is the setup: The setup is for calling US numbers only via skype (we got skype US minute bundles in skype connect) AsteriskNOW - Asterisk 1.4 + asterisk-gui Trunks: SIP Trunk configured with Skype Connect - shows as registered Users: 2 test extensions. Both work fine when calling each other, voicemail etc works fine too The asterisk box is behind a Mikrotik router which i configured to forward all relevant ports: 5060-5090 UDP, 10000-20000 UDP. When trying out an extension outside of my LAN, it worked. I could make calls to the other extension. Outgoing rule: _NXXXXXXXXX Strip:0 Prepend:+1 Use skype trunk Inbound rule: Trunk: Skype Pattern: s Destination: Extension1 (6210) Here is the output of asterisk CLI (-rvvvvv) with outgoing calls: http://pastebin.com/eWVpL72e you can see the circuit-busy response when using trunk1 (skype) When calling my Skype Connect number from the outside, I get nothing in the logs. Can anyone with Skype Connect / Asterisk experience help out? :)

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  • Anyone know a good mind mapper that works with a scheduler?

    - by GLycan
    TL;DR: Mind mapping tasks to be processed into a schedule based on task metadata. I have all sorts of ideas about what to invest resources (mainly time) in, but when I actually have time to do something I useually end up browsing reddit for not knowing what do to, and the frequancy with which I forget deadlines scares me. I'd love to bring order and structure into my mind, and always know what to do next. So, I want a mind mapping app, where I'd give each branch (types and subtypes of things I want to do) a importance score (if there were two branches, and one had 60 while the other 40, they would respectivily get 60% and 40% of the parent's importance, with the root being 100) and a how soon that branch should be revised/updated (an hobby I want to try out might be checked, say, once a week, while a school subject should be checked once a day) and give each leaf (something I want/need to do) how much time it takes, deadline (if any), and optionally an absolute importance, reoccurrence (guitar practice might repeat once a week), and prerequisites (reading something requires that book (although that could be brought somewhere), coding requires a box, jogging requires being outside) and maybe some other flags, like if it's enjoyable or not. It should either be packaged or working with a schedular app, to which I'd say, look, my day works this way (completely busy from 8 to 9:15, then 15 minutes of being inside with nothing, ..., two hours with box and possibility to go outside, etc), saying that such-and-such pattern is school and happens ever weekday except such-and-such days. The output should be of the form of a schedule, fit for printing or, when I finally get an android, mobile viewing, that schedules tasks with regards to availability of resources and importance (importance being derived from the leaf-task's parent branches), and the set of flags (all work and no play makes me a dull boy). One of these tasks should be reviewing anything that should be updated on that day, including future day layouts (e.g, if the time slots of future days have changed. This should be done every day.) Does anyone know some collection of preferably open-source (or free, or pirateable) tools, or better yet a single one, that accomplishes this task? I know python pretty well, and should be able to write any necessary glue.

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  • Installing Windows 7 over PXE, preferably with domain autojoin

    - by Ivan Vucica
    At an educational non-profit, I've inherited a previously set-up Windows domain that, after the first reinstall of the machines, we ended up not using by simply not joining machines back into the domain. Over last summer, before the annual reinstall for shipping machines to the summer school, I toyed with the idea of installing Windows 7 over network, instead of just imaging the machines. It took a bit longer than I expected to figure out the basics; honestly, I expected that Windows would be more friendly for PXE installation out of the box. What I'm interested in is best practices for installing Windows 7 over PXE with domain autojoin. I'd love it if the whole setup could optionally be hosted on a UNIX based system as well. I've had some success by preparing an ISO using Windows Deployment Kit, and loading the ISO into memory. This was needed since I wanted a menu, and I think I couldn't get PXELINUX to chainload into Windows' bootloader. Unfortunately, I couldn't figure out much about customization of the Windows setup in that timeframe nor could I get Samba to work properly; studying the stuff ended up being too lengthy, especially the portion where I edited a disk image on Windows and copied it outside. WDK didn't make things easier by mounting the disk image into RAM, and writing it in its entirety when done with it, making me a very sad boy. I've recently found a different approach, too, that appears to be closer to Microsoft's original idea for netboot deployment and does not involve ISOs. So my question boils down to the following. What exact approach do you use for netbooting Windows 7 setup? How can Windows 7 setup be best customized to be completely unattended, including installation on specific system partition and not destroying the data partition, creation of passworded admin and default user, choice of MAC-address-based hostname, and joining a domain? As much details as possible for everyone's future reference would be appreciated. WDS isn't a bad choice, but if a Linux-based install can be used, that'd be better.

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  • Developer’s Life – Every Developer is a Batman

    - by Pinal Dave
    Batman is one of the darkest superheroes in the fantasy canon.  He does not come to his powers through any sort of magical coincidence or radioactive insect, but through a lot of psychological scarring caused by witnessing the death of his parents.  Despite his dark back story, he possesses a lot of admirable abilities that I feel bear comparison to developers. Batman has the distinct advantage that his alter ego, Bruce Wayne is a millionaire (or billionaire in today’s reboots).  This means that he can spend his time working on his athletic abilities, building a secret lair, and investing his money in cool tools.  This might not be true for developers (well, most developers), but I still think there are many parallels. So how are developers like Batman? Well, read on my list of reasons. Develop Skills Batman works on his skills.  He didn’t get the strength to scale Gotham’s skyscrapers by inheriting his powers or suffering an industrial accident.  Developers also hone their skills daily.  They might not be doing pull-ups and scaling buldings, but I think their skills are just as impressive. Clear Goals Batman is driven to build a better Gotham.  He knows that the criminal who killed his parents was a small-time thief, not a super villain – so he has larger goals in mind than simply chasing one villain.  He wants his city as a whole to be better.  Developers are also driven to make things better.  It can be easy to get hung up on one problem, but in the end it is best to focus on the well-being of the system as a whole. Ultimate Teamplayers Batman is the hero Gotham needs – even when that means appearing to be the bad guys.  Developers probably know that feeling well.  Batman takes the fall for a crime he didn’t commit, and developers often have to deliver bad news about the limitations of their networks and servers.  It’s not always a job filled with glory and thanks, but someone has to do it. Always Ready Batman and the Boy Scouts have this in common – they are always prepared.  Let’s add developers to this list.  Batman has an amazing tool belt with gadgets and gizmos, and let’s not even get into all the functions of the Batmobile!  Developers’ skills might be the knowledge and skills they have developed, not tools they can carry in a utility belt, but that doesn’t make them any less impressive. 100% Dedication Bruce Wayne cultivates the personality of a playboy, never keeping the same girlfriend for long and spending his time partying.  Even though he hides it, his driving force is his deep concern and love for his friends and the city as a whole.  Developers also care a lot about their company and employees – even when it is driving them crazy.  You do your best work when you care about your job on a personal level. Quality Output Batman believes the city deserves to be saved.  The citizens might have a love-hate relationship with both Batman and Bruce Wayne, and employees might not always appreciate developers.  Batman and developers, though, keep working for the best of everyone. I hope you are all enjoying reading about developers-as-superheroes as much as I am enjoying writing about them.  Please tell me how else developers are like Superheroes in the comments – especially if you know any developers who are faster than a speeding bullet and can leap tall buildings in a single bound. Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.sqlauthority.com)Filed under: PostADay, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL Query, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, T SQL Tagged: Developer, Superhero

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  • Airtel 3G in Chennai – User experience, Price & What’s the catch?

    - by Boonei
    Finally ! Here we are with Airtel 3G in India. Now Airtel customers can have a go at real 3G speed. Sources suggest that the delay in rolling out 3G was due to hardware problems. It was provided by Ericsson. Now first things first. Let me get to the point. I had subscribed to Airtel’s 3G pack Rs.100 for 100 MB. This is to check out how good it is, did not want to pay a hefty sum at the first instance. It was pretty smooth upgrading.. After the upgrade I did see the much awaited 3G signal bar on my phone. Ok! now its testing time. User experience First I did a bit of browsing, boy ! it was pretty quick, web pages loaded in a jiffy. I really did not time it because it loaded really quick. I loaded a YouTube Video, no buffering, watched the 4 min Video with no problems, it took around 6 MB of data usage Made a Skype call for about 6 min, voice clarity was really good and data usage was around 4-5 MB Tried Google Maps everything was so fast could not see the difference between computer and my phone, used it for about couple of minutes. Did listen to an Online Radio for about 5 min took about 8 MB of data usage Guess there is no need to say about Facebook or Twitter. It was good obviously. Video Call – Not yet tested Price – Do you get what you pay for ? 3G speed is fantastic, you have to really feel it to enjoy it. But currently in Airtel, 3G is available only in 3 places wiz. Bengaluru, Chennai, Coimbatore. ok ! Its not even there in all the metros? hmmm. 3G signal was not available in all parts of Chennai, often in many places it changed to 2G. Let alone all the places, even in my house when walking from one room to another sometimes its shows 2G. When it chaged from 3G to 2G there was lag in the application when it was loading data which often made me wonder if the application hanged. Currently prices not low. 2G plans in Airtel is Rs.98 for 2GB and for Rs.100 its only 100MB in 3G. Now you decide please, it’s quite a debate. The Catch – There is always a catch right ? If you have bought 3G connection and in places where 3G is not available (2G) and use any application that requires data connections (youtube, browse, chat etc) its changed with 3G!. Meaning if you have bought 100MB of 3G by paying Rs.100 like I did, suppose you used the connection for about 10MB using 2G, then it would reduce from the 100MB to 90 MB….That’s bad ! You cannot have 2G and 3G plans activated at the same point of time in your phone. You will pay 3G price for using 2G. This article titled,Airtel 3G in Chennai – User experience, Price & What’s the catch?, was originally published at Tech Dreams. Grab our rss feed or fan us on Facebook to get updates from us.

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  • Building a Mafia&hellip;TechFest Style

    - by David Hoerster
    It’s been a few months since I last blogged (not that I blog much to begin with), but things have been busy.  We all have a lot going on in our lives, but I’ve had one item that has taken up a surprising amount of time – Pittsburgh TechFest 2012.  After the event, I went through some minutes of the first meetings for TechFest, and I started to think about how it all came together.  I think what inspired me the most about TechFest was how people from various technical communities were able to come together and build and promote a common event.  As a result, I wanted to blog about this to show that people from different communities can work together to build something that benefits all communities.  (Hopefully I've got all my facts straight.)  TechFest started as an idea Eric Kepes and myself had when we were planning our next Pittsburgh Code Camp, probably in the summer of 2011.  Our Spring 2011 Code Camp was a little different because we had a great infusion of some folks from the Pittsburgh Agile group (especially with a few speakers from LeanDog).  The line-up was great, but we felt our audience wasn’t as broad as it should have been.  We thought it would be great to somehow attract other user groups around town and have a big, polyglot conference. We started contacting leaders from Pittsburgh’s various user groups.  Eric and I split up the ones that we knew about, and we just started making contacts.  Most of the people we started contacting never heard of us, nor we them.  But we all had one thing in common – we ran user groups who’s primary goal is educating our members to make them better at what they do. Amazingly, and I say this because I wasn’t sure what to expect, we started getting some interest from the various leaders.  One leader, Greg Akins, is, in my opinion, Pittsburgh’s poster boy for the polyglot programmer.  He’s helped us in the past with .NET Code Camps, is a Java developer (and leader in Pittsburgh’s Java User Group), works with Ruby and I’m sure a handful of other languages.  He helped make some e-introductions to other user group leaders, and the whole thing just started to snowball. Once we realized we had enough interest with the user group leaders, we decided to not have a Fall Code Camp and instead focus on this new entity. Flash-forward to October of 2011.  I set up a meeting, with the help of Jeremy Jarrell (Pittsburgh Agile leader) to hold a meeting with the leaders of many of Pittsburgh technical user groups.  We had representatives from 12 technical user groups (Python, JavaScript, Clojure, Ruby, PittAgile, jQuery, PHP, Perl, SQL, .NET, Java and PowerShell) – 14 people.  We likened it to a scene from a Godfather movie where the heads of all the families come together to make some deal.  As a result, the name “TechFest Mafia” was born and kind of stuck. Over the next 7 months or so, we had our starts and stops.  There were moments where I thought this event would not happen either because we wouldn’t have the right mix of topics (was I off there!), or enough people register (OK, I was wrong there, too!) or find an appropriate venue (hmm…wrong there, too) or find enough sponsors to help support the event (wow…not doing so well).  Overall, everything fell into place with a lot of hard work from Eric, Jen, Greg, Jeremy, Sean, Nicholas, Gina and probably a few others that I’m forgetting.  We also had a bit of luck, too.  But in the end, the passion that we had to put together an event that was really about making ourselves better at what we do really paid off. I’ve never been more excited about a project coming together than I have been with Pittsburgh TechFest 2012.  From the moment the first person arrived at the event to the final minutes of my closing remarks (where I almost lost my voice – I ended up being diagnosed with bronchitis the next day!), it was an awesome event.  I’m glad to have been part of bringing something like this to Pittsburgh…and I’m looking forward to Pittsburgh TechFest 2013.  See you there!

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  • What Counts For a DBA: Imagination

    - by drsql
    "Imagination…One little spark, of inspiration… is at the heart, of all creation." – From the song "One Little Spark", by the Sherman Brothers I have a confession to make. Despite my great enthusiasm for databases and programming, it occurs to me that every database system I've ever worked on has been, in terms of its inputs and outputs, downright dull. Most have been glorified e-spreadsheets, many replacing manual systems built on actual spreadsheets. I've created a lot of database-driven software whose main job was to "count stuff"; phone calls, web visitors, payments, donations, pieces of equipment and so on. Sometimes, instead of counting stuff, the database recorded values from other stuff, such as data from sensors or networking devices. Yee hah! So how do we, as DBAs, maintain high standards and high spirits when we realize that so much of our work would fail to raise the pulse of even the most easily excitable soul? The answer lies in our imagination. To understand what I mean by this, consider a role that, in terms of its output, offers an extreme counterpoint to that of the DBA: the Disney Imagineer. Their job is to design Disney's Theme Parks, of which I'm a huge fan. To me this has always seemed like a fascinating and exciting job. What must an Imagineer do, every day, to inspire the feats of creativity that are so clearly evident in those spectacular rides and shows? Here, if ever there was one, is a role where "dull moments" must be rare indeed, surely? I wanted to find out, and so parted with a considerable sum of money for my wife and I to have lunch with one; I reasoned that if I found one small way to apply their secrets to my own career, it would be money well spent. Early in the conversation with our Imagineer (Cindy Cote), the job did indeed sound magical. However, as talk turned to management meetings, budget-wrangling and insane deadlines, I came to the strange realization that, in fact, her job was a lot more like mine than I would ever have guessed. Much like databases, all those spectacular Disney rides bring with them a vast array of complex plumbing, lighting, safety features, and all manner of other "boring bits", kept well out of sight of the end user, but vital for creating the desired experience; and, of course, it is these "boring bits" that take up much of the Imagineer's time. Naturally, there is still a vital part of their job that is spent testing out new ideas, putting themselves in the place of a park visitor, from a 9-year-old boy to a 90-year-old grandmother, and trying to imagine what experiences they'd like to have. It is these small, but vital, sparks of imagination and creativity that have the biggest impact. The real feat of a successful Imagineer is clearly to never to lose sight of this fact, in among all the rote tasks. It is the same for a DBA. Not matter how seemingly dull is the task at hand, try to put yourself in the shoes of the end user, and imagine how your input will affect the experience he or she will have with the database you're building, and how that may affect the world beyond the bits stored in your database. Then, despite the inevitable rush to be "done", find time to go the extra mile and hone the design so that it delivers something as close to that imagined experience as you can get. OK, our output still can't and won't reach the same spectacular heights as the "Journey into The Imagination" ride at EPCOT Theme Park in Orlando, where I first heard "One Little Spark". However, our imaginative sparks and efforts can, and will, make a difference to the user who now feels slightly more at home with a database application, or to the manager holding a report presented with enough clarity to drive an interesting decision or two. They are small victories, but worth having, and appreciated, or at least that's how I imagine it.

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  • Kill all the project files!

    - by jamiet
    Like many folks I’m a keen podcast listener and yesterday my commute was filled by listening to Scott Hunter being interviewed on .Net Rocks about the next version of ASP.Net. One thing Scott said really struck a chord with me. I don’t remember the full quote but he was talking about how the ASP.Net project file (i.e. the .csproj file) is going away. The rationale being that the main purpose of that file is to list all the other files in the project, and that’s something that the file system is pretty good at. In Scott’s own words (that someone helpfully put in the comments): A file that lists files is really redundant when the OS already does this Romeliz Valenciano correctly pointed out on Twitter that there will still be a project.json file however no longer will there be a need to keep a list of files in a project file. I suspect project.json will simply contain a list of exclusions where necessary rather than the current approach where the project file is a list of inclusions. On the face of it this seems like a pretty good idea. I’ve long been a fan of convention over configuration and this is a great example of that. Instead of listing all the files in a separate file, just treat all the files in the directory as being part of the project. Ostensibly the approach is if its in the directory, its part of the project. Simple. Now I’m not an ASP.net developer, far from it, but it did occur to me that the same approach could be applied to the two Visual Studio project types that I am most familiar with, SSIS & SSDT. Like many people I’ve long been irritated by SSIS projects that display a faux file system inside Solution Explorer. As you can see in the screenshot below the project has Miscellaneous and Connection Managers folders but no such folders exist on the file system: This may seem like a minor thing but it means useful Solution Explorer features like Show All Files and Open Folder in Windows Explorer don’t work and quite frankly it makes me feel like a second class citizen in the Microsoft ecosystem. I’m a developer, treat me like one. Don’t try and hide the detail of how a project works under the covers, show it to me. I’m a big boy, I can handle it! Would it not be preferable to simply treat all the .dtsx files in a directory as being part of a project? I think it would, that’s pretty much all the .dtproj file does anyway (that, and present things in a non-alphabetic order – something else that wildly irritates me), so why not just get rid of the .dtproj file? In the case of SSDT the .sqlproj actually does a whole lot more than simply list files because it also states the BuildAction of each file (Build, NotInBuild, Post-Deployment, etc…) but I see no reason why the convention over configuration approach can’t help us there either. Want to know which is the Post-deployment script? Well, its the one called Post-DeploymentScript.sql! Simple! So that’s my new crusade. Let’s kill all the project files (well, the .dtproj & .sqlproj ones anyway). Are you with me? @Jamiet

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  • Personal Financial Management – The need for resuscitation

    - by Salil Ravindran
    Until a year or so ago, PFM (Personal Financial Management) was the blue eyed boy of every channel banking head. In an age when bank account portability is still fiction, PFM was expected to incentivise customers to switch banks. It still is, in some emerging economies, but if the state of PFM in matured markets is anything to go by, it is in a state of coma and badly requires resuscitation. Studies conducted around the year show an alarming decline and stagnation in PFM usage in mature markets. A Sept 2012 report by Aite Group – Strategies for PFM Success shows that 72% of users hadn’t used PFM and worse, 58% of them were not kicked about using it. Of the rest who had used it, only half did on a bank site. While there are multiple reasons for this lack of adoption, some are glaringly obvious. While pretty graphs and pie charts are important to provide a visual representation of my income and expense, it is simply not enough to encourage me to return. Static representation of data without any insightful analysis does not help me. Budgeting and Cash Flow is important but when I have an operative account, a couple of savings accounts, a mortgage loan and a couple of credit cards help me with what my affordability is in specific contexts rather than telling me I just busted my budget. Help me with relative importance of each budget category so that I know it is fine to go over budget on books for my daughter as against going over budget on eating out. Budget over runs and spend analysis are post facto and I am informed of my sins only when I return to online banking. That too, only if I decide to come to the PFM area. Fundamentally, PFM should be a part of my banking engagement rather than an analysis tool. It should be contextual so that I can make insight based decisions. So what can be done to resuscitate PFM? Amalgamation with banking activities – In most cases, PFM tools are integrated into online banking pages and they are like chapter 37 of a long story. PFM needs to be a way of banking rather than a tool. Available balances should shift to Spendable Balances. Budget and goal related insights should be integrated with transaction sessions to drive pre-event financial decisions. Personal Financial Guidance - Banks need to think ground level and see if their PFM offering is really helping customers achieve self actualisation. Banks need to recognise that most customers out there are non-proficient about making the best value of their money. Customers return when they know that they are being guided rather than being just informed on their finance. Integrating contextual financial offers and financial planning into PFM is one way ahead. Yet another way is to help customers tag unwanted spending thereby encouraging sound savings habits. Mobile PFM – Most banks have left all those numbers on online banking. With access mostly having moved to devices and the success of apps, moving PFM on to devices will give it a much needed shot in the arm. This is not only about presenting the same wine in a new bottle but also about leveraging the power of the device in pushing real time notifications to make pre-purchase decisions. The pursuit should be to analyse spend, budgets and financial goals real time and push them pre-event on to the device. So next time, I should know that I have over run my eating out budget before walking into that burger joint and not after. Increase participation and collaboration – Peer group experiences and comments are valued above those offered by the bank. Integrating social media into PFM engagement will let customers share and solicit their financial management experiences with their peer group. Peer comparisons help benchmark one’s savings and spending habits with those of the peer group and increases stickiness. While mature markets have gone through this learning in some way over the last one year, banks in maturing digital banking economies increasingly seem to be falling into this trap. Best practices lie in profiling and segmenting customers, being where they are and contextually guiding them to identify and achieve their financial goals. Banks could look at the likes of Simple and Movenbank to draw inpiration from.

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  • Passed: Exam 70-480: Programming in HTML5 with JavaScript and CSS3

    First off: Mission accomplished successfully. And it was fun! Using the resources listed in my previous article about Learning Content, I'd like to thank Microsoft Technical Evangelists Jeremy Foster and Michael Palermo for their excellent jump start videos on Channel 9, and the various authors at Pluralsight. Local Prometric testing centre Back in November I chose a local testing centre which was the easiest to access from my office despite the horrible traffic you might experience here on the island. Actually, it was not the closest one. But due to their website, their awards as Microsoft Learning Center, and my general curiosity about the premises, I gave FRCI my priority. Boy, how should I regret this decision this morning... The official Prometric exam guide asks any attendee to show up at least 30 minutes prior to the scheduled time of the test. Well, this should have been the easier part but unfortunately due to heavier traffic than usual I arrived only 20 minutes before time. Not too bad but more to come. The building called 'le Hub' is nicely renovated and provides the right environment for an IT group of companies like FRCI. I think they have currently 5 independent IT departments over there. Even the handling at the reception was straight forward, welcoming and at my ease. But then... first shock: "We don't have any exam registration for today." - Hm, that's nice... Here's my mail confirmation from Prometric. First attack successfully handled and the lady went off again to check their records. Next shock: A couple of minutes later, another guy tries to explain me that "the staff of the testing centre is already on vacation and the centre is officially closed." - Are you kidding me? Here's the official confirmation by Prometric, and I don't find it funny that I take a day off today only to hear this kind of blubbering nonsense. I thought that I'll be on the safe side choosing a company with a good reputation here on the island. Another 40 (!) minutes later, they finally come back to the waiting area with a pre-filled form about the test appointment. And finally, after an hour of waiting, discussing, restarting the testing PC, and lots of talk, I am allowed to sit down and take the exam. Exam details Well, you know the rules. Signing an NDA doesn't allow me to provide you any details about the questions or topics that have been covered. Please check out the official exam description, and you're on the right way. Sorry, guys... ;-) The result "Congratulations! You have passed this Microsoft Certification exam." - In general, I have to admit that the parts on HTML5 and CSS3 were the easiest after all, and that I have to get myself a little bit more familiar with certain Javascript features like class definitions, inheritance and data security. Anyway, exam passed - who cares about the details? Next goal Of course, the journey to Microsoft Certifications continues and my next goal is to pass exams 70-481 - Essentials of Developing Windows Store Apps using HTML5 and JavaScript and 70-482 - Advanced Windows Store App Development using HTML5 and JavaScript. This would allow me to achieve the certification of MCSD: Windows Store Apps using HTML5. I guess, during 2013 I'll be busy with various learning and teaching lessons.

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  • Make the Time

    - by WonderOfItAll
    Took the little one to the pool tonight for swim lessons. Okay, Okay. They're not really lessons so much as they are "Hey, here's a few bucks, let me rent out a small section of your pool to swim around with my little one" Saw a dad at the pool. Bluetooth on, iPad in hand, and two year old somewhere around there. Saw a mom at the pool. Arguing with her five year old to NOT take a shower after swimming. Bluetooth on, iPad in hand, work laptop open on stadium seats. Her reasoning for not wanting the child to shower "Look, I have to get this stuff to the office by 6:30, we don't have time for you to shower. Let's go" Wait, isn't the whole point of this little experience called Mommy and Me (or, as in my case, Daddy and Me). Wherein Mommy/Daddy is supposed to spend time with little one. Not with the Bluetooth. Not with the work laptop. Dad (yeah, the same dad from earlier), in the pool. Bluetooth off (it's not waterproof or I'm sure he would've had it on), two year old in hand and iPad somewhere put away. Getting frustrated with kid because he won't 'perform' on command. Here's a little exchange Kid: "I don't wanna get in the water" Dad: "Well, we're here for 30 minutes, get in the water" Kid: "No, don't wanna" Dad: "Fine, I'm getting in" and, true to his word, in he goes, off to swim. Kid: Crying Dad: "Well, c'mon" Kid: Walking to stands Dad: Ignoring kid Kid: At stands Dad: Out of pool, drying off. Frustrated. Grabs bag, grabs kid, leaves How sad. It really seems like I am living in a generation of parents who view their children as one big scheduled distraction to another. It's almost like the dad was saying "Look, little 2 year old boy, I have a busy scheduled. Right now my Outlook Calendar tells me that I have 30 mins to spend with you, so, let's go kid: PERFORM because I have the time" Really? Can someone please tell me when the hell this happened? When did spending time with your kid, spending time with your family, spending time with your spouse, etc... become a distraction? I've seen people at work all day Tweeting throughout the day, checked in with Four Square, IM up and running constantly so they can 'stay in touch' only to see these same folks come home and be irritated because their kids or their spouse wants to connect with the. I've seen these very same people leave the house, go to the corner bar/store/you-name-the-place to be 'alone' only to find them there, plugged in, tweeting away, etc, etc, etc I LOVE technology. I love working with technology. But I also know that I am a human being. A person who, by very definition, is a social being. I needed social interactions and contact--and, no, I'm not talking about the Social Graph kind of connections, I'm talking about those interactions which, *GASP* involve eye to eye contact and human contact. A recent study found that the number one complaint of kids is that they feel they have to compete with technology for their parents time and attention. The number one wish from high school kids? That there parents would turn off the computer/tv/cell phone at dinner. This, coming from high school kids. Shouldn't that tell you a whole helluva lot? So, do yourself a favor tomorrow. Plug into technology all day. Throw yourself into it. Be passionate about what you do. When you walk through the door to your family, turn it all off for 30 mins and be there with your loved ones. If you can manage to play Angry Birds, I'm sure you can handle being disconnected for 30 minutes. Make the time

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  • Javascript :(….. Oh!! So its jquery? Now what?? I’m a C# Guy

    - by Shekhar_Pro
    Hi guys I want you to Guide me here. This other day I was working out some AJAX for my ASP.Net website and handling client side code in Java was taking the hell out of me. Then I got my hands on this Book jQuery In Action 2nd Edition and solved my problem with the help of Example code in the book. Now as I checked the contents I got an overview that whatever I had ever thought of doing can be done by this jQuery so easily and quite cleanly. I am actually pretty new to web development (say abt 4months ) and from C# world where we have cool libraries and Simple and Elegant coding style. (yeah including those generic, Ienumerable, lambadas, chained statements.. you got it…) and you know what you’re doing when writing some code. And we have so great IntelliSense to care., and above all we have everything Strongly Typed. But in Javascript everything is so messy.. . (and I don’t know why they are not properly indented.. see page source ) Now tell me what should I do, go straight with jQuery or should I first learn Javascript (like a disciplined boy…I even have a book for that too… got in gift :) …. ) I have seen Is it a good idea to learn JavaScript before learning jQuery? but remember I have already got a project on my hand…

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  • Java & Maven generating -and using- my own archetype

    - by Random
    Hello again! I have been busy in my project creating a webapp (in struts) that manages maven, using maven-2.2.1-uber.jar link text. The problem comes when the boss says it has to use some archetypes the company has created (so no predefined archetypes for you naughty boy!). So ok, I use the -DarchetypeRepository option (with ServletWrapper I get my complete web direction, becouse the repository will be inside the app), and the log seems to find it, but then the build fails -miserably- with this little text 'Build Failure - The defined artifact is not an archetype' as simple as that. Of course I have a lot of INFO lines that say abslutily nothig related. I have read the maven definitive guide searching for some kind of help, but it has been disapointing at best. My thoughts are thatmaybe I am missing in somewhere of all the folders tree some xml that actually sais maven that my pom.xml is an archetype not a project. But I really, really, can't find anything on the net or in the manuals that explains easy-handed how the archetype:generate (with special parameters) works and where I have to put every folder and/or file. So just to say my thoughts aloud (and hopefully you understand what I am trying to ask): I have a template where I do some xml changes (variables, etc...), then I have to call maen and do an archetype:generate with a variable project. The problem seems to be that my actual confuguration doesn't like what I am doing. After the generation of the archetype, witch luckly will create some directory trees and leave me a POM.xml somewhere I still have to do some variable changes and more xml manage stuff, so it whould be very kind from maven to don't destroy anything in this process. Any ideas why this maven-thing is not happly-ever-after asuming that my archetype is defintly an archetype? Allthought I think the code is ok, it could be wrong, as I am using maven-ubber and I call the actual CSMavenCli.main(String[, ClassWorld), I don't think it is the case this time. Thanks and all! :) Random.

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  • How do I Handle Ties When Ranking Results in MySQL?

    - by Laxmidi
    Hi, How does one handle ties when ranking results in a mysql query? I've simplified the table names and columns in this example, but it should illustrate my problem: SET @rank=0; SELECT student_names.students, @rank := @rank +1 AS rank, scores.grades FROM student_names LEFT JOIN scores ON student_names.students = scores.students ORDER BY scores.grades DESC So imagine the the above query produces: Students Rank Grades Al 1 90 Amy 2 90 George 3 78 Bob 4 73 Mary 5 NULL William 6 NULL Even though Al and Amy have the same grade, one is ranked higher than the other. Amy got ripped-off. How can I make it so that Amy and Al have the same ranking, so that they both have a rank of 1. Also, William and Mary didn't take the test. They bagged class and were smoking in the boy's room. They should be tied for last place. The correct ranking should be: Students Rank Grades Al 1 90 Amy 1 90 George 3 78 Bob 4 73 Mary 5 NULL William 5 NULL If anyone has any advice, please let me know. Thank you! -Laxmidi

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  • Doctesting functions that receive and display user input - Python (tearing my hair out)

    - by GlenCrawford
    Howdy! I am currently writing a small application with Python (3.1), and like a good little boy, I am doctesting as I go. However, I've come across a method that I can't seem to doctest. It contains an input(), an because of that, I'm not entirely sure what to place in the "expecting" portion of the doctest. Example code to illustrate my problem follows: """ >>> getFiveNums() Howdy. Please enter five numbers, hit <enter> after each one Please type in a number: Please type in a number: Please type in a number: Please type in a number: Please type in a number: """ import doctest numbers = list() # stores 5 user-entered numbers (strings, for now) in a list def getFiveNums(): print("Howdy. Please enter five numbers, hit <enter> after each one") for i in range(5): newNum = input("Please type in a number:") numbers.append(newNum) print("Here are your numbers: ", numbers) if __name__ == "__main__": doctest.testmod(verbose=True) When running the doctests, the program stops executing immediately after printing the "Expecting" section, waits for me to enter five numbers one after another (without prompts), and then continues. As shown below: I don't know what, if anything, I can place in the Expecting section of my doctest to be able to test a method that receives and then displays user input. So my question (finally) is, is this function doctestable?

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  • Linq2sql code generator misbehaving

    - by Martin
    Sometime the linq2sql just makes its mind up about things. I've been pulling my hair for the past hours trying to work out what I'm doing differently from all the other times when I don't get ForeignKeyReferenceAlreadyHasValueException. Turns out that if (this._Activity.HasLoadedOrAssignedValue) { throw new System.Data.Linq.ForeignKeyReferenceAlreadyHasValueException(); } is present on my primary key in this particular table, and in no other. No matter what I do with the association, I've even tried deleting and dragging the thing back to the designer, it's still there and I'm sure it's not supposed to be. I know why, of course, but I don't know why, so to speak. A while back the association went the other way. Whereas I've left that era behind me, the code generator seems to exhibit phantom pains. The same phenomenon, is responsible for me having to change the namespace in the designer.cs everytime I make changes in the designer. I made the mistake of renaming my namespace and the code generator just doesn't get it. Somebody please help this poor boy out.

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  • Techniques for sharing a value among classes in a program

    - by Kenneth Cochran
    I'm using Environment.GetFolderPath(Environment.SpecialFolder.CommonApplicationData) + "\MyProgram" As the path to store several files used by my program. I'd like to avoid pasting the same snippet of code all over the my applcation. I need to ensure that: The path cannot be accidentally changed once its been set The classes that need it have access to it. I've considered: Making it a singleton Using constructor dependency injection Using property dependency injection Using AOP to create the path where its needed. Each has pros and cons. The singleton is everyone's favorite whipping boy. I'm not opposed to using one but there are valid reasons to avoid it if possible. I'm already heavily using constructor injection through Castle Windsor. But this is a path string and Windsor doesn't handle system type dependencies very gracefully. I could always wrap it in a class but that seems like overkill for something as simple as a passing around a string value. In any case this route would add yet another constructor argument to each class where it is used. The problem I see with property injection in this case is that there is a large amount of indirection from the where the value is set to where it is needed. I would need a very long line of middlemen to reach all the places where its used. AOP looks promising and I'm planning on using AOP for logging anyway so this at least sounds like a simple solution. Is there any other options I haven't considered? Am I off base with my evaluation of the options I have considered?

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  • Moral fits the story or suggest me a nice moral?

    - by Gobi
    A 25 year old son was sitting beside his old father in a train one day. When the train was about to leave, all the passengers started settling down in their seats. The son was filled with joy and anxiety. He was seated by the window. He put his hand out and felt the breeze and screamed, “ Papa look at all the trees, they are moving behind”. The old father smiled and admired his son’s feelings. Beside the old man, a couple was also travelling and observed this strange behavior. They found something awkward and childish in the behavior of this 25 year old man. All of a sudden, the son shouted again “Papa see! The clouds are moving about; there is a pond down and many cows are drinking it’s water”. It soon started drizzling. Once again, the young man felt exited and said “papa, I can see and feel the rain drops touching my hand”. The couple seeing this and feeling concerned, asked the old man “why don’t you consult a good doctor and treat your son; don’t you find something abnormally different in him ?” The old man replied, “Yes, I have provided the best treatment for my only boy. We are just returning from the hospital. I am happy for today is the day he has received his sense of sight. It’s for the first time my son is seeing and relishing these little wonders which we have been watching and ignoring in our routine life!” The couple had no words to reply and felt sorry for their remarks. Moral of the story: “ “don’t judge a book by its cover”. is this the moral fits the story or provide me some moral for this story :)

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  • E-Commerce Security: Only Credit Card Fields Encrypted?!

    - by bizarreunprofessionalanddangerous
    I'd like your opinions on how a major bricks-and-mortar company is running the security for its shopping Web site. After a recent update, when you are logged into your shopping account, the session is now not secured. No 'https', no browser 'lock'. All the personal contact info, shopping history -- and if I'm not mistaken submit and change password -- are being sent unencrypted. There is a small frame around the credit card fields that is https. There's a little notice: "Our website is secure. Our website uses frames and because of this the secure icon will not appear in your browser" On top of this the most prominent login fields for the site are broken, and haven't gotten fixed for a week or longer (giving the distinct impression they have no clue what's going on and can't be trusted with anything). Now is it just me -- or is this simply incomprehensible for a billion dollar company, significant shopping site, in the year 2010. No lock. "We use frames" (maybe they forget "Best viewed in IE4"). Customers complaining, as you can see from their FAQ "explaining" why you aren't seeing https. I'm getting nowhere trying to convince customer service that they REALLY need to do something about this, and am about to head for the CEO. But I just want to make sure this is as BIZARRE and unprofessional and dangerous a situation as I think it is. (I'm trying to visualize what their Web technical team consists of. I'm getting A) some customer service reps who were given a 3 hour training course on Web site maintenance, B) a 14 year old boy in his bedroom masquerading as a major technical services company, C) a guy in a hut in a jungle with an e-commerce book from 1996.)

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