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• Do abstractions have to reduce code readability?

  - by Martin Blore

  A good developer I work with told me recently about some difficulty he had in implementing a feature in some code we had inherited; he said the problem was that the code was difficult to follow. From that, I looked deeper into the product and realised how difficult it was to see the code path. It used so many interfaces and abstract layers, that trying to understand where things began and ended was quite difficult. It got me thinking about the times I had looked at past projects (before I was so aware of clean code principles) and found it extremely difficult to get around in the project, mainly because my code navigation tools would always land me at an interface. It would take a lot of extra effort to find the concrete implementation or where something was wired up in some plugin type architecture. I know some developers strictly turn down dependency injection containers for this very reason. It confuses the path of the software so much that the difficulty of code navigation is exponentially increased. My question is: when a framework or pattern introduces so much overhead like this, is it worth it? Is it a symptom of a poorly implemented pattern? I guess a developer should look to the bigger picture of what that abstractions brings to the project to help them get through the frustration. Usually though, it's difficult to make them see that big picture. I know I've failed to sell the needs of IOC and DI with TDD. For those developers, use of those tools just cramps code readability far too much.

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• Integrating Twitter Into An ASP.NET Website

  Twitter is a popular social networking web service for writing and sharing short messages. These tidy text messages are referred to as tweets and are limited to 140 characters. Users can leave tweets and follow other users directly from Twitter's website or by using the Twitter API. Twitter's API makes it possible to integrate Twitter with external applications. For example, you can use the Twitter API to display your latest tweets on your blog. A mom and pop online store could integrate Twitter such that a new tweet was added each time a customer completed an order. And ELMAH, a popular open-source error logging library, can be configured to send error notifications to Twitter. Twitter's API is implemented over HTTP using the design principles of Representational State Transfer (REST). In a nutshell, inter-operating with the Twitter API involves a client - your application - sending an XML-formatted message over HTTP to the server - Twitter's website. The server responds with an XML-formatted message that contains status information and data. While you can certainly interface with this API by writing your own code to communicate with the Twitter API over HTTP along with the code that creates and parses the XML payloads exchanged between the client and server, such work is unnecessary since there are many community-created Twitter API libraries for a variety of programming frameworks. This article shows how to integrate Twitter with an ASP.NET website using the Twitterizer library, which is a free, open-source .NET library for working with the Twitter API. Specifically, this article shows how to retrieve your latest tweets and how to post a tweet using Twitterizer. Read on to learn more! Read More >

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• [GEEK SCHOOL] Network Security 1: Securing User Accounts and Passwords in Windows

  - by Matt Klein

  This How-To Geek School class is intended for people who want to learn more about security when using Windows operating systems. You will learn many principles that will help you have a more secure computing experience and will get the chance to use all the important security tools and features that are bundled with Windows. Obviously, we will share everything you need to know about using them effectively. In this first lesson, we will talk about password security; the different ways of logging into Windows and how secure they are. In the proceeding lesson, we will explain where Windows stores all the user names and passwords you enter while working in this operating systems, how safe they are, and how to manage this data. Moving on in the series, we will talk about User Account Control, its role in improving the security of your system, and how to use Windows Defender in order to protect your system from malware. Then, we will talk about the Windows Firewall, how to use it in order to manage the apps that get access to the network and the Internet, and how to create your own filtering rules. After that, we will discuss the SmartScreen Filter – a security feature that gets more and more attention from Microsoft and is now widely used in its Windows 8.x operating systems. Moving on, we will discuss ways to keep your software and apps up-to-date, why this is important and which tools you can use to automate this process as much as possible. Last but not least, we will discuss the Action Center and its role in keeping you informed about what’s going on with your system and share several tips and tricks about how to stay safe when using your computer and the Internet. Let’s get started by discussing everyone’s favorite subject: passwords. The Types of Passwords Found in Windows In Windows 7, you have only local user accounts, which may or may not have a password. For example, you can easily set a blank password for any user account, even if that one is an administrator. The only exception to this rule are business networks where domain policies force all user accounts to use a non-blank password. In Windows 8.x, you have both local accounts and Microsoft accounts. If you would like to learn more about them, don’t hesitate to read the lesson on User Accounts, Groups, Permissions & Their Role in Sharing, in our Windows Networking series. Microsoft accounts are obliged to use a non-blank password due to the fact that a Microsoft account gives you access to Microsoft services. Using a blank password would mean exposing yourself to lots of problems. Local accounts in Windows 8.1 however, can use a blank password. On top of traditional passwords, any user account can create and use a 4-digit PIN or a picture password. These concepts were introduced by Microsoft to speed up the sign in process for the Windows 8.x operating system. However, they do not replace the use of a traditional password and can be used only in conjunction with a traditional user account password. Another type of password that you encounter in Windows operating systems is the Homegroup password. In a typical home network, users can use the Homegroup to easily share resources. A Homegroup can be joined by a Windows device only by using the Homegroup password. If you would like to learn more about the Homegroup and how to use it for network sharing, don’t hesitate to read our Windows Networking series. What to Keep in Mind When Creating Passwords, PINs and Picture Passwords When creating passwords, a PIN, or a picture password for your user account, we would like you keep in mind the following recommendations: Do not use blank passwords, even on the desktop computers in your home. You never know who may gain unwanted access to them. Also, malware can run more easily as administrator because you do not have a password. Trading your security for convenience when logging in is never a good idea. When creating a password, make it at least eight characters long. Make sure that it includes a random mix of upper and lowercase letters, numbers, and symbols. Ideally, it should not be related in any way to your name, username, or company name. Make sure that your passwords do not include complete words from any dictionary. Dictionaries are the first thing crackers use to hack passwords. Do not use the same password for more than one account. All of your passwords should be unique and you should use a system like LastPass, KeePass, Roboform or something similar to keep track of them. When creating a PIN use four different digits to make things slightly harder to crack. When creating a picture password, pick a photo that has at least 10 “points of interests”. Points of interests are areas that serve as a landmark for your gestures. Use a random mixture of gesture types and sequence and make sure that you do not repeat the same gesture twice. Be aware that smudges on the screen could potentially reveal your gestures to others. The Security of Your Password vs. the PIN and the Picture Password Any kind of password can be cracked with enough effort and the appropriate tools. There is no such thing as a completely secure password. However, passwords created using only a few security principles are much harder to crack than others. If you respect the recommendations shared in the previous section of this lesson, you will end up having reasonably secure passwords. Out of all the log in methods in Windows 8.x, the PIN is the easiest to brute force because PINs are restricted to four digits and there are only 10,000 possible unique combinations available. The picture password is more secure than the PIN because it provides many more opportunities for creating unique combinations of gestures. Microsoft have compared the two login options from a security perspective in this post: Signing in with a picture password. In order to discourage brute force attacks against picture passwords and PINs, Windows defaults to your traditional text password after five failed attempts. The PIN and the picture password function only as alternative login methods to Windows 8.x. Therefore, if someone cracks them, he or she doesn’t have access to your user account password. However, that person can use all the apps installed on your Windows 8.x device, access your files, data, and so on. How to Create a PIN in Windows 8.x If you log in to a Windows 8.x device with a user account that has a non-blank password, then you can create a 4-digit PIN for it, to use it as a complementary login method. In order to create one, you need to go to “PC Settings”. If you don’t know how, then press Windows + C on your keyboard or flick from the right edge of the screen, on a touch-enabled device, then press “Settings”. The Settings charm is now open. Click or tap the link that says “Change PC settings”, on the bottom of the charm. In PC settings, go to Accounts and then to “Sign-in options”. Here you will find all the necessary options for changing your existing password, creating a PIN, or a picture password. To create a PIN, press the “Add” button in the PIN section. The “Create a PIN” wizard is started and you are asked to enter the password of your user account. Type it and press “OK”. Now you are asked to enter a 4-digit pin in the “Enter PIN” and “Confirm PIN” fields. The PIN has been created and you can now use it to log in to Windows. How to Create a Picture Password in Windows 8.x If you log in to a Windows 8.x device with a user account that has a non-blank password, then you can also create a picture password and use it as a complementary login method. In order to create one, you need to go to “PC settings”. In PC Settings, go to Accounts and then to “Sign-in options”. Here you will find all the necessary options for changing your existing password, creating a PIN, or a picture password. To create a picture password, press the “Add” button in the “Picture password” section. The “Create a picture password” wizard is started and you are asked to enter the password of your user account. You are shown a guide on how the picture password works. Take a few seconds to watch it and learn the gestures that can be used for your picture password. You will learn that you can create a combination of circles, straight lines, and taps. When ready, press “Choose picture”. Browse your Windows 8.x device and select the picture you want to use for your password and press “Open”. Now you can drag the picture to position it the way you want. When you like how the picture is positioned, press “Use this picture” on the left. If you are not happy with the picture, press “Choose new picture” and select a new one, as shown during the previous step. After you have confirmed that you want to use this picture, you are asked to set up your gestures for the picture password. Draw three gestures on the picture, any combination you wish. Please remember that you can use only three gestures: circles, straight lines, and taps. Once you have drawn those three gestures, you are asked to confirm. Draw the same gestures one more time. If everything goes well, you are informed that you have created your picture password and that you can use it the next time you sign in to Windows. If you don’t confirm the gestures correctly, you will be asked to try again, until you draw the same gestures twice. To close the picture password wizard, press “Finish”. Where Does Windows Store Your Passwords? Are They Safe? All the passwords that you enter in Windows and save for future use are stored in the Credential Manager. This tool is a vault with the usernames and passwords that you use to log on to your computer, to other computers on the network, to apps from the Windows Store, or to websites using Internet Explorer. By storing these credentials, Windows can automatically log you the next time you access the same app, network share, or website. Everything that is stored in the Credential Manager is encrypted for your protection.

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• Inside the Concurrent Collections: ConcurrentBag

  - by Simon Cooper

  Unlike the other concurrent collections, ConcurrentBag does not really have a non-concurrent analogy. As stated in the MSDN documentation, ConcurrentBag is optimised for the situation where the same thread is both producing and consuming items from the collection. We'll see how this is the case as we take a closer look. Again, I recommend you have ConcurrentBag open in a decompiler for reference. Thread Statics ConcurrentBag makes heavy use of thread statics - static variables marked with ThreadStaticAttribute. This is a special attribute that instructs the CLR to scope any values assigned to or read from the variable to the executing thread, not globally within the AppDomain. This means that if two different threads assign two different values to the same thread static variable, one value will not overwrite the other, and each thread will see the value they assigned to the variable, separately to any other thread. This is a very useful function that allows for ConcurrentBag's concurrency properties. You can think of a thread static variable: [ThreadStatic] private static int m_Value; as doing the same as: private static Dictionary<Thread, int> m_Values; where the executing thread's identity is used to automatically set and retrieve the corresponding value in the dictionary. In .NET 4, this usage of ThreadStaticAttribute is encapsulated in the ThreadLocal class. Lists of lists ConcurrentBag, at its core, operates as a linked list of linked lists: Each outer list node is an instance of ThreadLocalList, and each inner list node is an instance of Node. Each outer ThreadLocalList is owned by a particular thread, accessible through the thread local m_locals variable: private ThreadLocal<ThreadLocalList<T>> m_locals It is important to note that, although the m_locals variable is thread-local, that only applies to accesses through that variable. The objects referenced by the thread (each instance of the ThreadLocalList object) are normal heap objects that are not specific to any thread. Thinking back to the Dictionary analogy above, if each value stored in the dictionary could be accessed by other means, then any thread could access the value belonging to other threads using that mechanism. Only reads and writes to the variable defined as thread-local are re-routed by the CLR according to the executing thread's identity. So, although m_locals is defined as thread-local, the m_headList, m_nextList and m_tailList variables aren't. This means that any thread can access all the thread local lists in the collection by doing a linear search through the outer linked list defined by these variables. Adding items So, onto the collection operations. First, adding items. This one's pretty simple. If the current thread doesn't already own an instance of ThreadLocalList, then one is created (or, if there are lists owned by threads that have stopped, it takes control of one of those). Then the item is added to the head of that thread's list. That's it. Don't worry, it'll get more complicated when we account for the other operations on the list! Taking & Peeking items This is where it gets tricky. If the current thread's list has items in it, then it peeks or removes the head item (not the tail item) from the local list and returns that. However, if the local list is empty, it has to go and steal another item from another list, belonging to a different thread. It iterates through all the thread local lists in the collection using the m_headList and m_nextList variables until it finds one that has items in it, and it steals one item from that list. Up to this point, the two threads had been operating completely independently. To steal an item from another thread's list, the stealing thread has to do it in such a way as to not step on the owning thread's toes. Recall how adding and removing items both operate on the head of the thread's linked list? That gives us an easy way out - a thread trying to steal items from another thread can pop in round the back of another thread's list using the m_tail variable, and steal an item from the back without the owning thread knowing anything about it. The owning thread can carry on completely independently, unaware that one of its items has been nicked. However, this only works when there are at least 3 items in the list, as that guarantees there will be at least one node between the owning thread performing operations on the list head and the thread stealing items from the tail - there's no chance of the two threads operating on the same node at the same time and causing a race condition. If there's less than three items in the list, then there does need to be some synchronization between the two threads. In this case, the lock on the ThreadLocalList object is used to mediate access to a thread's list when there's the possibility of contention. Thread synchronization In ConcurrentBag, this is done using several mechanisms: Operations performed by the owner thread only take out the lock when there are less than three items in the collection. With three or greater items, there won't be any conflict with a stealing thread operating on the tail of the list. If a lock isn't taken out, the owning thread sets the list's m_currentOp variable to a non-zero value for the duration of the operation. This indicates to all other threads that there is a non-locked operation currently occuring on that list. The stealing thread always takes out the lock, to prevent two threads trying to steal from the same list at the same time. After taking out the lock, the stealing thread spinwaits until m_currentOp has been set to zero before actually performing the steal. This ensures there won't be a conflict with the owning thread when the number of items in the list is on the 2-3 item borderline. If any add or remove operations are started in the meantime, and the list is below 3 items, those operations try to take out the list's lock and are blocked until the stealing thread has finished. This allows a thread to steal an item from another thread's list without corrupting it. What about synchronization in the collection as a whole? Collection synchronization Any thread that operates on the collection's global structure (accessing anything outside the thread local lists) has to take out the collection's global lock - m_globalListsLock. This single lock is sufficient when adding a new thread local list, as the items inside each thread's list are unaffected. However, what about operations (such as Count or ToArray) that need to access every item in the collection? In order to ensure a consistent view, all operations on the collection are stopped while the count or ToArray is performed. This is done by freezing the bag at the start, performing the global operation, and unfreezing at the end: The global lock is taken out, to prevent structural alterations to the collection. m_needSync is set to true. This notifies all the threads that they need to take out their list's lock irregardless of what operation they're doing. All the list locks are taken out in order. This blocks all locking operations on the lists. The freezing thread waits for all current lockless operations to finish by spinwaiting on each m_currentOp field. The global operation can then be performed while the bag is frozen, but no other operations can take place at the same time, as all other threads are blocked on a list's lock. Then, once the global operation has finished, the locks are released, m_needSync is unset, and normal concurrent operation resumes. Concurrent principles That's the essence of how ConcurrentBag operates. Each thread operates independently on its own local list, except when they have to steal items from another list. When stealing, only the stealing thread is forced to take out the lock; the owning thread only has to when there is the possibility of contention. And a global lock controls accesses to the structure of the collection outside the thread lists. Operations affecting the entire collection take out all locks in the collection to freeze the contents at a single point in time. So, what principles can we extract here? Threads operate independently Thread-static variables and ThreadLocal makes this easy. Threads operate entirely concurrently on their own structures; only when they need to grab data from another thread is there any thread contention. Minimised lock-taking Even when two threads need to operate on the same data structures (one thread stealing from another), they do so in such a way such that the probability of actually blocking on a lock is minimised; the owning thread always operates on the head of the list, and the stealing thread always operates on the tail. Management of lockless operations Any operations that don't take out a lock still have a 'hook' to force them to lock when necessary. This allows all operations on the collection to be stopped temporarily while a global snapshot is taken. Hopefully, such operations will be short-lived and infrequent. That's all the concurrent collections covered. I hope you've found it as informative and interesting as I have. Next, I'll be taking a closer look at ThreadLocal, which I came across while analyzing ConcurrentBag. As you'll see, the operation of this class deserves a much closer look.

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• Partner Webcast: Oracle SOA Governance - 4 October 2012

  - by Thanos

  Oracle is pleased to invite you to a webcast on "Oracle SOA Governance Strategy" intended for our partners. SOA Governance is the framework that enables you to define and enforce rules for communication, collaboration, service development, management and usage across the enterprise and among the decision makers. It also allows you to define metrics to assess the quality of services and to measure their cost and benefits for your organization. Service Oriented Architecture comes with a promise! A promise to make your business more agile by the ability to create reusable services developed and deployed in cooperation between the business and IT. This promise can only be kept, if all the involved parties in your enterprise, across departments communicate and collaborate efficiently on establishing and maintaining and developing the service oriented assets. Such collaboration requires guidance and control. In this webcast you will hear about the key factors needed to establish successful SOA governance both from organizational as well as from technical point of view. Agenda: Introduction to SOA Challenges of SOA governance SOA governance principles Governing Service lifecycle Rules for choosing a service Q&A session Delivery Format This FREE online LIVE eSeminar will be delivered over the Web. Registrations received less than 24hours prior to start time may not receive confirmation to attend. Duration: 1 hour Register Now Also make sure to checkout the relevant SOA Governance Resource Kit For any questions please contact us at [email protected]

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• Partner Webcast: Oracle SOA Governance - 4 October 2012

  - by J Swaroop

  Oracle is pleased to invite you to a webcast on "Oracle SOA Governance Strategy" intended for our partners. SOA Governance is the framework that enables you to define and enforce rules for communication, collaboration, service development, management and usage across the enterprise and among the decision makers. It also allows you to define metrics to assess the quality of services and to measure their cost and benefits for your organization. Service Oriented Architecture comes with a promise! A promise to make your business more agile by the ability to create reusable services developed and deployed in cooperation between the business and IT. This promise can only be kept, if all the involved parties in your enterprise, across departments communicate and collaborate efficiently on establishing and maintaining and developing the service oriented assets. Such collaboration requires guidance and control. In this webcast you will hear about the key factors needed to establish successful SOA governance both from organizational as well as from technical point of view. Agenda: Introduction to SOA Challenges of SOA governance SOA governance principles Governing Service lifecycle Rules for choosing a service Q&A session Delivery Format This FREE online LIVE eSeminar will be delivered over the Web. Registrations received less than 24hours prior to start time may not receive confirmation to attend. Duration: 1 hour Register Now Also make sure to checkout the relevant SOA Governance Resource Kit For any questions please contact us at [email protected]

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• MSCC: Purpose and benefits of Version Control Systems (VCS)

  You're working in IT and not using any kind of version control system? Sorry, then you're doing something wrong! RSVP for MSCC meetup of June This month's meetup will be an introduction into the mechanics of version control systems (VCS) like git, Mercurial, TFS, and others in general. VCS are not optional but compulsory in any area of IT. Whether you're developing source code for the next buzz app, writing SQL scripts for your database, or automating your administrative tasks with shell scripts it's better to have a "time machine" in order to keep multiple version, stay organised and leverage the power of differences. git - a modern approach to VCS - Nayar Nayar is going to give us a brief overview of the basic principles of working with git. Which are the necessary steps to get started and which are the usual commands in order to get the most out of git. Visual Studio Online (VSO) - Jochen Are you mainly rooted on the Windows platform and looking for a good alternative to Team Foundation Services (TFS), then VSO might give you hand at achieving this. Similar to git VSO is an open infrastructure but plays very well together with the Microsoft Azure cloud infrastructure. Recent and upcoming events in Mauritius Let's have a chat about recent events like WebCup 2014 or Emtel Knowledge Series and have a head start on upcoming events like Code Challenge, and others to come. Networking and general discussions Of course, there will be plenty of time to chat and exchange with other like-minded craftsmen. Bring your topics and discuss various issues with other professionals. Share your experience and use the ability to learn from others. Looking forward to meet soon.

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• Get to Know a Candidate (7 of 25): Will Christensen&ndash;Independent American Party

  - by Brian Lanham

  DISCLAIMER: This is not a post about “Romney” or “Obama”. This is not a post for whom I am voting. Information sourced for Wikipedia. NOTE: Wikipedia does not have a page for Christensen.  If you follow links to the party site you can find information about him. Christensen served in the United States Marine Corps and has degrees from Penn State University (my alma mater), Drexel Institute of Technology, University of Utah, and Brigham Young University (BYU) focusing on Math, Physics, and Electrical Engineering.  He has worked for IBM and BYU but for the last 35 years has run small businesses including an Internet book business as well as an Amway franchise. He has held numerous offices in various political parties including, County Campaign Chairman for Barry Goldwater in 1964, County Central Committee, Republican Party; National Committeeman, and State Chairman of the American Party; one of the Founders, and the State Chairman of the Independent American Party of Utah; Vice-Chairman, Chairman, and the Treasurer of the National Independent American Party. The Independent American Party (IAP) officially started in 1998 and began as the Utah Independent American Party. The founders claim to have been inspired by a speech given by Ezra Taft Benson, former United States Secretary of Agriculture, entitled “The Proper Role of Government”. The 15 principles for the proper role of government, taken from his speech, are held as the IAP’s basis for recruiting. Learn more about the Independent American Party on Wikipedia.

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• Multi MVC processing vs Single MVC process

  - by lordg

  I've worked fairly extensively with the MVC framework cakephp, however I'm finding that I would rather have my pages driven by the multiple MVC than by just one MVC. My reason is primarily to maintain an a more DRY principle. In CakePHP MVC: you call a URL which calls a single MVC, which then calls the layout. What I want is: you call a URL, it processes a layout, which then calls multiple MVC's per component/block of html on the page. When you compare JavaScript components, AJAX, and server side HTML rendering, it seems the most consistent method for building pages is through blocks of components or HTML views. That way, the view block could be situated either on the server or the client. This is technically my ONLY disagreement with the MVC model. Outside of this, IMHO MVC rocks! My question is: What other RAD frameworks follow the same principles as MVC but are driven rather by the View side of MVC? I've looked at Django and Ruby on Rails, yet they seems to be more Controller driven. Lift/Scala appears to be somewhat of a good fit, but i'm interested to see what others exist.

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• The Social Business Thought Leaders - Steve Denning

  - by kellsey.ruppel

  How is the average organization doing? Not very well according to a number of recent books and reports. A few indicators provide quite a gloomy picture: Return on assets and invested capitals dropped to 25% of its value in 1965 in the entire US market (see The Shift Index by John Hagel) Firms are dying faster and faster with the average lifespan of companies listed in the S&P 500 index gone from 67 years in the 1920s to 15 years today (see Creative Disruption by Richard Foster) Employee engagement ratio, a high level indicator of an organization’s health proved to affect performance outcomes, does not exceed on average 20%-30% (see Employee Engagement, Gallup or The Engagement Gap, Towers Perrin) In one of the most enjoyable keynotes of the Social Business Forum 2012, Steve Denning (Author of Radical Management and Independent Management Consultant) explained why this is happening and especially what leaders should do to reverse the worrying trends. In this Social Business Thought Leaders series, we asked Steve to collapse some key suggestions in a 2 minutes video that we strongly recommend. Steve discusses traditional management - that set of principles and practices born in the early 20th century and largely inspired by thinkers such as Frederick Taylor and Henry Ford - as the main responsible for the declining performance of modern organizations. While so many things have changed in the last 100 or so years, most companies are in fact still primarily focused on maximizing profits and efficiency, cutting costs, coordinating individuals top-down through command and control. The issue is, in a knowledge intensive, customer centred, turbulent market like the one we are experiencing, similar concepts are not just alienating employees' passion but also destroying the last source of competitive differentiation left: creativity and the innovative potential. According to Steve Denning, in a phase change from old industrial to a creative, collaborative, knowledge economy, the answer is hidden in a whole new business ecosystem that puts the individual (both the employee and the customer) at the center of the organization. He calls this new paradigm Radical Management and in the video interview he articulates the huge challenges and amazing rewards our enterprises are facing during this inevitable transition.

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• Using Scrum on small projects where Owner doesn't want to be involved

  - by Andrej Mohar

  Recently I've been reading and learning quite a lot about scrum and I like it a lot. However, I do have a couple of likely scenarios in my head to which I don't know the solution. So let's say that I might want to organize an agile team of (for instance) four web developers (one of them UI/UX designer). This team would operate on scrum principles. Initially we would probably be working on projects like landing pages for ordinary people's small businesses, like renting apartments, selling cookies... Such customers simply can't be set with Product Owner role (IMHO), because they usually expect to hire a company, give them the overall project goal with some details, and then expect the job to be done (including a lot of decision making) with as little of their involvement as possible (in their opinion, they have more important things to do). Let's say I'd like to engage myself in a developer/scrum master role (I know that even that is debatable, being a team member and scrum master at once), so I simply shouldn't take the role of the product owner as well. So as for my questions: If I'm my company's business owner, do I simply need to be a product owner as well (do these roles include each other)? Can I employ a sales person which might have the product owner role? Would it be better if it is an experienced developer instead of a sales person? Is this even a smart move? Lastly, is there another agile approach that might better suit my position? EDIT: Thank you everyone for good inputs. I added some comments, any aditional info will be greatly appreciated.

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• Integrating Twitter Into An ASP.NET Website

  Twitter is a popular social networking web service for writing and sharing short messages. These tidy text messages are referred to as tweets and are limited to 140 characters. Users can leave tweets and follow other users directly from Twitter's website or by using the Twitter API. Twitter's API makes it possible to integrate Twitter with external applications. For example, you can use the Twitter API to display your latest tweets on your blog. A mom and pop online store could integrate Twitter such that a new tweet was added each time a customer completed an order. And ELMAH, a popular open-source error logging library, can be configured to send error notifications to Twitter. Twitter's API is implemented over HTTP using the design principles of Representational State Transfer (REST). In a nutshell, inter-operating with the Twitter API involves a client - your application - sending an XML-formatted message over HTTP to the server - Twitter's website. The server responds with an XML-formatted message that contains status information and data. While you can certainly interface with this API by writing your own code to communicate with the Twitter API over HTTP along with the code that creates and parses the XML payloads exchanged between the client and server, such work is unnecessary since there are many community-created Twitter API libraries for a variety of programming frameworks. This article shows how to integrate Twitter with an ASP.NET website using the Twitterizer library, which is a free, open-source .NET library for working with the Twitter API. Specifically, this article shows how to retrieve your latest tweets and how to post a tweet using Twitterizer. Read on to learn more! Read More >

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• Get to Know a Candidate (15 of 25): Jerry White&ndash;Socialist Equality Party

  - by Brian Lanham

  DISCLAIMER: This is not a post about “Romney” or “Obama”. This is not a post for whom I am voting. Information sourced for Wikipedia. White (born Jerome White) is an American politician and journalist, reporting for the World Socialist Web Site.  White's Presidential campaign keeps four core components: * International unity in the working class * Social equality * Opposition to imperialist militarism and assault on democratic rights * Opposition to the political subordination of the working class to the Democrats and Republicans The White-Scherrer ticket is currently undergoing a review by the Wisconsin election committee concerning the ballot listing of the party for the 2012 Presidential elections. White has visited Canada, Germany, and Sri Lanka to campaign for socialism and an international working class movement. The Socialist Equality Party (SEP) is a Trotskyist political party in the United States, one of several Socialist Equality Parties around the world affiliated to the International Committee of the Fourth International (ICFI). The ICFI publishes daily news articles, perspectives and commentaries on the World Socialist Web Site. The party held public conferences in 2009 and 2010. It led an inquiry into utility shutoffs in Detroit, Michigan earlier in 2010, after which it launched a Committee Against Utility Shutoffs. Recently it sent reporters to West Virginia to report on the Upper Big Branch Mine disaster and the way that Massey Energy has treated its workers. It also sent reporters to the Gulf Coast to report on the Deepwater Horizon oil spill. In addition, it has participated in elections with the aim of opposing the American occupation of Iraq and building a mass socialist party with an international perspective. Despite having been active for over a decade, the Socialist Equality Party held its founding congress in 2008, where it adopted a statement of principles and a historical document. White has Ballot Access in: CO, LA, WI Learn more about Jerry White and Socialist Equality Party on Wikipedia

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• Scaling Scrum within a group of 100s of programmers

  - by blunders

  Most Scrum teams lean toward 7-15 people **, though it's not clear how to scale Scrum among 100s of people, or how the effectiveness of a given team might be compared to another team within the group; meaning beyond just breaking the group into Scrum teams of 7-15 people, it's unclear how efforts between the teams are managed, compared, etc. Any suggestions related to either of these topics, or additional related topics that might be of more importance to account for in planning a large scale SCRUM grouping? ** In reviewing research related to the suggested size of software development teams, which appears to be the basis for the suggested Scrum team size, I found what appears to be an error in the research which oddly appears to show that bigger teams (15+ ppl), not smaller teams (7 ppl) are better. UPDATE, "Re: Scrum doesn't scale": Made huge amounts of progress on personally researching the topic, but thought I'd respond to the general belief of some that Scrum doesn't scale by citing a quote from Succeeding with Agile by Mike Cohn : Scrum Does Scale: You have to admire the intellectual honesty of the earliest agile authors. They were all very careful to say that agile methodolgies like Scrum were for small projects. This conservatism wasn’t because agile or Scrum turned out to be unsuited for large projects but because they hadn’t used these processes on large projects and so were reluctant to advise their readers to do so. But, in the years since the Agile Manifesto and the books that came shortly before and after it, we have learned that the principles and practices of agile development can be scaled up and applied on large projects, albeit it with a considerable amount of overhead. Fortunately, if large organizations use the techniques described regarding the role of the product owner, working with a shared product backlog, being mindful of dependencies, coordinating work among teams, and cultivating communities of practice, they can successfully scale a Scrum project. SOURCE: (ran across the book thanks to Ladislav Mrnka answer)

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• links for 2011-01-07

  - by Bob Rhubart

  Enterprise Software Development with Java: GlassFish 3 vs. JBoss 6 - Is the Web Profile ready for the Enterprise? (tags: ping.fm) Bay Area Coherence Special Interest Group (BACSIG) Jan 20 The Jan 20 meeting of the Bay Area Coherence Special Interest Group (BACSIG) features presentations by Rob Lee (Coherence 3.6 Clustering Features), Rao Bhethanabotla (Efficient Management and Update of Coherence Clusters to Reduce Down Time), and Christer Fahlgren (How To Build a Coherence Practice). (tags: oracle otn coherence sig) Michael T. Dinh: VirtualBox Command Line "I have manually configured VirtualBox Host-Only Ethernet Adapter for static IP. However, the IP can change after reboot which affects connectivity with the Guest with static IP." - Michael T. Dinh (tags: oracle virtualization virtualbox) Michel Schildmeijer: Oracle WebLogic - Configuring DyeInjection Monitor "A fairly unknown tool within WLDF (WebLogic Diagnostic Framework) is the DyeInjection Monitor. With this monitor configured one can track a  user or client address within a WebLogic system." - Michel Schildmeijer (tags: oracle weblogic) David Butler: Master Data Management Implementation Styles "Oracle MDM Solutions provide strong data federation and integration capabilities which are key to enabling the use of the Confederated Hub as a possible architectural style approach." - David Butler (tags: oracle otn softwarearchitecture) Kenneth Downs: Can You Really Create A Business Logic Layer? "Don't be afraid to use the database for what it is good for, and leave the arguments about "where everything belongs" to those with too much time on their hands." - Kenneth Downs (tags: businesslogic database softwarearchitecture) IASA Perspectives Magazine - Fall 2010 Fall 2010 edition of International Association of Software Architects (IASA) Perspectives magazine: (tags: softwarearchitecture iasi entarch) Using the DB Adapter in Oracle SOA Suite: returning status information "In this tutorial I will show you an example of how how can implement this within the Oracle SOA Suite (and because the DB Adapter can also be used within the Oracle Service Bus, the principles also apply to implementing it within the OSB)." - Henk Jan van Wijk (tags: oracle otn soa soasuite database) 4th International SOA Symposium + 3rd International Cloud Symposium by Thomas Erl - call for presentations (SOA Partner Community Blog) The International SOA and Cloud Symposium brings together lessons learned and emerging topics from SOA and Cloud projects, practitioners and experts. The two-day conference agenda will be organized into several tracks. (tags: oracle otn soa cloud)

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• Azure eBook Update #1 &ndash; 16 authors so far!

  - by Eric Nelson

  I just wanted to share with folks where we are up to with the Windows Azure eBook (Check out the original post for full details) I have had lots of great submissions from folks with some awesome stuff to share on Azure. Currently we have 16 authors and 25 proposed articles. There is still a couple of days left to submit your proposal if you would like to get involved (see the original post ) and some topic suggestions below for which we don’t currently have authors. It is official – I’m excited! :-) Article Area Accepted Wikipedia Explorer: A case study how we did it and why. CaseSetudy Optional Patterns for the Windows Azure Platform (picking up 1 or 2 patterns that seem to be evolving) Architecture Optional Azure and cost-oriented architecture. Architecture Yes Code walkthrough of a comprehensive application submitted to newCloudApp contest CaseSetudy Yes Principles of highly scalable apps on Azure Compute Optional Auto-Scaling Azure Compute Yes Implementing a distributed cache using memcached with worker roles Interop Yes Building a content-based router service to direct requests to internal HTTP endpoints Compute Optional How to debug an Azure app by with a custom TraceListener & the AppFabric Service Bus AppFabric Yes How to host Java apps in Azure Interop Yes Bing Maps Tile Servers using Azure Blog Storage Interop Yes Tricks for storing time and date fields in Table Storage Storage Yes Service Runtime in Windows Azure Compute Yes Azure Drive Storage Optional Queries in Azure Table Storage Optional Getting RubyOnRails running on Azure Interop Yes Consuming Azure services within Windows Phone Interop Yes De-risking Your First Azure Project Architecture Yes Designing for failure Architecture Optional Connecting to SQL Azure In x Minutes SQLAzure Yes Using Azure Table Service as a NoSQL store via the REST API Storage Yes Azure Table Service REST API Storage Optional Threading, Scalability and Reliability in the Cloud Compute Yes Azure Diagnostics Compute Yes 5 steps to getting started with Windows Azure Introduction Yes The best tools for working with Windows Azure Tools Author Needed Understanding how SQL Azure works SQLAzure Author Needed Getting started with AppFabric Control Services AppFabric Author Needed Using the Microsoft Sync Framework with SQL Azure SQLAzure Author Needed Dallas - just a TV show or something more? Dallas Author Needed Comparing Azure to other cloud offerings Interop Author Needed Hybrid solutions using Azure and on-premise Interop Author Needed

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• Functional Languages that compile to Android's Dalvik VM?

  - by Berin Loritsch

  I have a software problem that fits the functional approach to programming, but the target market will be on the Android OS. I ask because there are functional languages that compile to Java's VM, but Dalvik bytecode != Java bytecode. Alternatively, do you know if the dx utility can intelligently convert the .class files generated from functional languages like Scala? Edit: In order to add a bit more helpfulness to the community, and also to help me choose better, can I refine the question a bit? Have you used any alternate languages with Dalvik? Which ones? What are some "gotchas" (problems) that I might run into? Is performance acceptable? By that, I mean the application still feels responsive to the user. I've never done mobile phone development, but I grew up on constrained devices and I'm under no illusion that there is a cost to using non-standard languages with the platform. I just need to know if the cost is such that I should shoe-horn my approach into default language (i.e. apply functional principles in the OOP language).

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• Free Oracle Special Edition eBooks - Cloud Architecture & Enterprise Cloud

  - by Thanos

  Cloud computing can improve your business agility, lower operating costs, and speed innovation. The key to making it work is the architecture. Learn how to define your architectural requirements and get started on your path to cloud computing with the free oracle special edition e-book, Cloud Architecture for Dummies.   Topics covered in this quick reference guide include: Cloud architecture principles and guidelines Scoping your project and choosing your deployment model Moving toward implementation with vertically integrated engineered systems Learn how to architect and model your cloud implementation to drive efficiency and leverage economies of scale. For more information, visit oracle.com/cloud and our cloud services at cloud.oracle.com Specifically Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) is critical to the success of many enterprises. Want to build a private Cloud infrastructure and cut down IT costs? Learn more about Oracle's highly integrated infrastructure software and hardware to help you architect and deploy a cloud infrastructure that is optimized for the needs of your enterprise from day one. Download the free e-book of Enterprise Cloud Infrastructure for Dummies to: Realize the benefits of consolidation with the added cloud capabilities Simplify deployments and reduce risks with tested and proven guidelines Achieve up to 50% lower TCO than comparable multi-vendor alternatives Choosing the right infrastructure technologies is essential to capitalizing on the benefits of cloud computing. Oracle Optimized Solution for Enterprise Cloud Infrastructure helps identify the right hardware and software stack and provides configuration guidelines for your cloud. With this book, you come to understand Enterprise Cloud Infrastructure and find out how to jumpstart your IaaS cloud plans. You also discover Oracle Optimized Solutions and learn how integration testing and proven best practices maximize your IT investments. In addition, you see how to architect and deploy your IaaS cloud to drive down costs and improve performance, how to understand and select the right private cloud strategy for you, what key cloud infrastructure elements are and how to use them to achieve your business goals, and more. For more information, visit oracle.com/oos.

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• How to build MVC Views that work with polymorphic domain model design?

  - by Johann de Swardt

  This is more of a "how would you do it" type of question. The application I'm working on is an ASP.NET MVC4 app using Razor syntax. I've got a nice domain model which has a few polymorphic classes, awesome to work with in the code, but I have a few questions regarding the MVC front-end. Views are easy to build for normal classes, but when it comes to the polymorphic ones I'm stuck on deciding how to implement them. The one (ugly) option is to build a page which handles the base type (eg. IContract) and has a bunch of if statements to check if we passed in a IServiceContract or ISupplyContract instance. Not pretty and very nasty to maintain. The other option is to build a view for each of these IContract child classes, breaking DRY principles completely. Don't like doing this for obvious reasons. Another option (also not great) is to split the view into chunks with partials and build partial views for each of the child types that are loaded into the main view for the base type, then deciding to show or hide the partial in a single if statement in the partial. Also messy. I've also been thinking about building a master page with sections for the fields that only occur in subclasses and to build views for each subclass referencing the master page. This looks like the least problematic solution? It will allow for fairly simple maintenance and it doesn't involve code duplication. What are your thoughts? Am I missing something obvious that will make our lives easier? Suggestions?

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• Advice on a good comeback strategy after years of java abstinence

  - by simou

  It's almost 5 yrs since I left the java IT-project/enterprise business. Before I was a highly skilled enterprise developer / OO architect with more than 10 years experience in the business. I was proficient in many of those enterprise related technologies, including DWHing. Since then I haven't been doing any large scale programming, a little bit of C, Python, some dips into Scala, hacking a small java-plugin framework, opengl, but only as fun projects. Now I want to re-enter the java stage again, i.e. I'm looking for job opportunities as a developer. But I fear I might have lost much of my former punching strength, e.g. I would have to give my SQL knowledge a deep refreshing breath, re-visit basic stuff like design patterns, enterprise architectures, etc. and probably learn the new stuff like EJB3.1, JEE 6 too. I also missed the whole scrum craze. So from your own experience, what subject should I tackle first? Like technology (which ones?) or design skills (uml..)? But what I'm also wondering is since the basic design / architectural principles haven't changed much by now, what would be the chance on the job market for someone like me who left the java-world at a time where everything was less fragmented and EJB2.1 and XDoclet were de-facto standards? And how could I convince a potential employer that I'm still an effective on-the-job learner? Should I rather aim for "junior positions" ? Lots of questions but I'd be really glad if you could share your (encouraging :) thoughts with me. cheers! (btw I'm based in Austria)

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• ASP.NET MVC Application In Action - I (DailyJournal)

  - by Rajesh Pillai

  Its been long due I was planning to write an article on creating some useful ASP.NET MVC application. I have code named it "DailyJournal". Its a simple application which allows creation of multiple activities and assign tasks to these activities. Its' kind of "Yet another Task/Todo application". The credentials which you can use with the attached demo application is shown below.   Collapse Copy Code User Name : admin Password : admin123 Framework/Libraries Used ASP.NET MVC jQuery + jQuery UI (for ajax and UI) ELMAH for Error logging Warning Ahead This is just a rough draft and so I am putting down some of the known limitation. Some points of warning before we move further with this application. This is just an early prototype. As such many of the design principles have been ignored. But, I try to cover that up in the next update once I get my head around this. The application in its current state supports the following features Create users Assign Activities to users Assign tasks to activities Assign a status to a task The user creation/authentication is being done by the default Membership provider. Most of the activities are highly visual i.e. you can drag-drop task to different areas, in-place edition of task details and so on.   The following are the current issues with the design which I promise to refactor in the second version. No Validations Fat Controller XSS/CSS vulnerable No Service model/abstraction yet. For the demo LINQ to SQL is implemented. No separation of layers UI Design et el... This is just an extract.  For source code and more information proceed to http://www.codeproject.com/KB/aspnet/mvcinaction.aspx Hope you like this!

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• ArchBeat Link-o-Rama for 2012-03-29

  - by Bob Rhubart

  A surefire recipe for cloud failure | @DavidLinthicum www.infoworld.com "Foundational planning for the use of cloud computing is an architectural problem," says David Linthicum. "You need to consider the enterprise holistically, starting with the applications, data, services, and storage. Understand where it is and what it does." Validating an Oracle IDM Environment (including a Fusion Apps build out) | Brian Eidelman fusionsecurity.blogspot.com Brian Eidelman shows how to "validate an Oracle Identity Management build out containing OID, OVD, OIM, and OAM." Oracle Enterprise Manager Ops Center 12c Launch - Interactive Webcast and Live Chat www.oracle.com Thursday, April 12, 2012. 9 a.m. PT / 12 p.m. ET / 4 p.m. GMT. Learn how your enterprise cloud can achieve 10x improved performance and 12x operational agility. Includes demo session. Speakers: Steve Wilson (VP Systems Management, Oracle) John Fowler (Exec VP Systems, Oracle) Brad Cameron (VP Development, Oracle Fusion Middleware) Bill Nesheim (VP Oracle Solaris) Dennis Reno (VP Customer Portal Experience, Oracle) Mike Wookey (Chief Architect, Oracle Enterprise Manager Ops Center) Prasad Pai (Sr Director, Oracle Enterprise Manager Ops Center) 2012 Real World Performance Tour Dates |Performance Tuning | Performance Engineering www.ioug.org Coming to your town: a full day of real world database performance with Tom Kyte, Andrew Holdsworth, and Graham Wood. Rochester, NY - March 8 Los Angeles, CA - April 30 Orange County, CA - May 1 Redwood Shores, CA - May 3 Thought for the Day "At first sight, the idea of any rules or principles being superimposed on the creative mind seems more likely to hinder than to help, but this is quite untrue in practice. Disciplined thinking focuses inspiration rather than blinkers it." — G. L. Glegg

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• Can One Get a Solid Programming Foundation Without Going To College/University?

  - by Daniel

  First, I have already searched the site and read all the previous "self-taught vs. college" topics. The majority of the answers defended that going to college was the best choice, for two main reasons: Going to college gives you the paper, which is essential to landing jobs, especially in tough economic times. Going to college gives you a solid programming base, teaching you the principles that will be essential regardless of the language/path you take after. Here comes my question: I am not worried about reason 1 at all, because I already have my own company (I build websites/ do affiliate marketing) and a stable financial situation, so I am pretty sure I won't need to look around for a job. I am worried about reason 2 though. That is, I want to make sure I'll have as solid a programming foundation as anyone else out there, and I am wondering if that is possible with self-learning. Suppose I take my time to study the very basics, like discrete maths, algorithm design, programming logic, computer architecture, Assembly, C programming, databases and data structures - mostly using books,online resources and lots of coding. Say I spend 1-2 years covering those basics. Do you think my foundation would be solid, or still lack in comparison to someone who went to college?

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• Good SLA

  - by PointsToShare

  © 2011 Dov Trietsch What is a good SLA? I have frequently pondered about Service Level Agreements (SLA). Yesterday after ordering and while waiting, and waiting, and waiting for the food to arrive, I passed the time reading and re-reading the restaurant menu (again and again..) until I noticed their very interesting SLA.   Because (as promised) we had to wait even longer and the conversation around me was mostly in Russian, I ended doodling some of my thoughts of the menu, on the menu. People are both providers and consumers of services. As a service consumer – maybe the SLA above sucks – though to be honest, had the service been better, I would not have noticed this and you, the reader, would have been spared this rambling monograph. As a provider, I think it’s great! Because I provide services in the form of business software, I extend the idea to the following principles of design: 1: Wygiwyg. You guessed it. What You Get Is What You Get. 2: Ugiwugi.  U Get It When U Get It. How’s this for a developer friendly SLA? I’ll never be off the spec, or late. And BTW, the food was good, so when I finally got what I got, I liked it. That's All Folks!!

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• How to manage a developer who has poor communication skills

  - by djcredo

  I manage a small team of developers on an application which is in the mid-point of its lifecycle, within a big firm. This unfortunately means there is commonly a 30/70 split of Programming tasks to "other technical work". This work includes: Working with DBA / Unix / Network / Loadbalancer teams on various tasks Placing & managing orders for hardware or infrastructure in different regions Running tests that have not yet been migrated to CI Analysis Support / Investigation Its fair to say that the Developers would all prefer to be coding, rather than doing these more mundane tasks, so I try to hand out the fun programming jobs evenly amongst the team. Most of the team was hired because, though they may not have the elite programming skills to write their own compiler / game engine / high-frequency trading system etc., they are good communicators who "can get stuff done", work with other teams, and somewhat navigate the complex beaurocracy here. They are good developers, but they are also good all-round technical staff. However, one member of the team probably has above-average coding skills, but below-average communication skills. Traditionally, the previous Development Manager tended to give him the Programming tasks and not the more mundane tasks listed above. However, I don't feel that this is fair to the rest of the team, who have shown an aptitute for developing a well-rounded skillset that is commonly required in a big-business IT department. What should I do in this situation? If I continue to give him more programming work, I know that it will be done faster (and conversly, I would expect him to complete the other work slower). But it goes against my principles, and promotes the idea that you can carve out a "comfortable niche" for yourself simply by being bad at the tasks you don't like.

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