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• 24HOP gets off to a good start

  - by Rob Farley

  Session 11 is on as I write this – Ami Levin presenting about Primary Keys. It’s a good session. But actually, they’ve all been excellent so far, not just Ami’s. I’ve heard only good things about the content. So if you’re reading this and 24HOP is still on, then tune in and take part. If it’s finished, get yourself over to http://sqlpass.org/24hours and see if the sessions have been made available on-demand. Yes – you should be able to watch the sessions when you want to for a year. Watching live is best, because you can ask questions and have them answered during the session, but if there are ones you just couldn’t make, then watching them on-demand is a good option. Numbers have been “not bad”. At the moment it’s still the middle of the night for most Americans – about 6:30am in New York, and yet we’ve had well over a hundred at all the sessions so far, getting up to well over 300 for some sessions. And when I look through the list of names, I see a bunch of names that suggest we’re reaching people from all around the world. I’m seriously looking forward to seeing the stats about which countries have been represented in the audiences. There have been a few comments about the platform. Everyone seems to consider IBTalk an improvement on LiveMeeting, but the closed captioning has met a mixed reception. Some people are loving it, whereas other people are finding the translations leave quite a bit of space for improvement. If you have feedback on this, please feel free to drop me an email (my name with an underscore at hotmail.com, or with a dot at sqlpass.org should reach me just fine, or Twitter, etc). I don’t know how many of the sessions I’ll get to watch overnight – but I’m looking forward to seeing how things go as the day progresses. Big thanks to everyone who’s involved – the sponsors, PASS HQ team and the IBTalk folk who have stayed up overnight to facilitate, plus the moderators, the people doing the live captioning, and of course the speakers and attendees. I love how the SQL Community gets behind things like this. Earlier, the Adelaide SQL Server User Group gathered and watched Denny Lee’s session on BigData, and everyone in the group agreed that it worked really well. I took a picture of our cinema room, although you could only see a small section of the audience. @rob_farley

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• How can I set the date format to my country setting?

  - by Jamina Meissner

  I am German, but I use only English software. Hence, I am also using English Ubuntu. It's not because I don't know how to install German Ubuntu. It's because I prefer to work with English software environment. However, I would like to keep date & time format in German format, just as I use a German keyboard layout in English Ubuntu. I can set the time format to 24h time. But how can I set the date format to German time format? It is irritating for me to have the day number before the time numbers: In other words, instead of "Oct 14 15:16" I want it to display "14 Okt" or (if only English language is available) "14 Oct 15:16" or "14th Oct 15:16". At least, the number of the day should be displayed before the month. In Windows, it was no problem to choose time/date/currency settings according to a chosen country. Where can I do this in Ubuntu? The best would be if I could freely enter the date/time format myself with variables (DD.MM hh.mm.ss etc). I found answers for Ubuntu 11.04, but not for Ubuntu 12.04. I am using Ubuntu 12.04, 64-bit. Keep in mind that I am a beginner. So I'd like to be able to do this via GUI, if possible. EDIT: I found the answer in a forum. Go to System Settings... and choose Language Support. There are two tabs, Language and Reginal Formats. You are by default on the Language tab. On the Language tab, click Install / Remove Languages. A window with a list of languages opens. Mark the language(s) you want to add for your time/date/currency format. Click Apply Changes. Ubuntu will now download and install the additional language files, as well as help files of other applications in this language. So don't be irritated. When Ubuntu has finished applying the changes, switch to Regional Formats tab. (Do not change the Language for menus and windows on the Language tab if you only want to change the date/time/unit format). There you can choose from the dropdown list the language for your preferred format for date/time/currency/unit. Log out and log in again to have the changes take effect.

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• String contains trailing zeroes when converted from decimal [migrated]

  - by Locke

  I've run into an unusual quirk in a program I'm writing, and I was trying to figure out if anyone knew the cause. Note that fixing the issue is easy enough. I just can't figure out why it is happening in the first place. I have a WinForms program written in VB.NET that is displaying a subset of data. It contains a few labels that show numeric values (the .Text property of the labels are being assigned directly from the Decimal values). These numbers are being returned by a DLL I wrote in C#. The DLL calls a webservice which initially returns the values in question. It returns one as a string, the other as a decimal (I don't have any control over the webservice, I just consume it). The DLL assigns these to properties on an object (both of which are decimals) then returns that object back to the WinForm program that called the DLL. Obviously, there's a lot of other data being consumed from the webservice, but no other operations are happening which could modify these properties. So, the short version is: WinForm requests a new Foo from the DLL. DLL creates object Foo. DLL calls webservice, which returns SomeOtherFoo. //Both Foo.Bar1 and Foo.Bar2 are decimals Foo.Bar1 = decimal.Parse(SomeOtherFoo.Bar1); //SomeOtherFoo.Bar1 is a string equal to "2.9000" Foo.Bar2 = SomeOtherFoo.Bar2; //SomeOtherFoo.Bar2 is a decimal equal to 2.9D DLL returns Foo to WinForm. WinForm.lblMockLabelName1.Text = Foo.Bar1 //Inspecting Foo.Bar1 indicates my value is 2.9D WinForm.lblMockLabelName2.Text = Foo.Bar2 //Inspecting Foo.Bar2 also indicates I'm 2.9D So, what's the quirk? WinForm.lblMockLabelName1.Text displays as "2.9000", whereas WinForm.lblMockLabelname2.Text displays as "2.9". Now, everything I know about C# and VB indicates that the format of the string which was initially parsed into the decimal should have no bearing on the outcome of a later decimal.ToString() operation called on the same decimal. I would expect that decimal.Parse(someDecimalString).ToString() would return the string without any trailing zeroes. Everything I find online seems to corroborate this (there are countless Stack Overflow questions asking exactly the opposite...how to keep the formatting from the initial parsing). At the moment, I've just removed the trailing zeroes from the initial string that gets parsed, which has hidden the quirk. However, I'd love to know why it happens in the first place.

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• Puppet: Getting Started On Windows

  - by Robz / Fervent Coder

  Originally posted on: http://geekswithblogs.net/robz/archive/2014/08/07/puppet-getting-started-on-windows.aspxNow that we’ve talked a little about Puppet. Let’s see how easy it is to get started. Install Puppet Let’s get Puppet Installed. There are two ways to do that: With Chocolatey: Open an administrative/elevated command shell and type: choco install puppet Download and install Puppet manually - http://puppetlabs.com/misc/download-options Run Puppet Let’s make pasting into a console window work with Control + V (like it should): choco install wincommandpaste If you have a cmd.exe command shell open, (and chocolatey installed) type: RefreshEnv The previous command will refresh your environment variables, ala Chocolatey v0.9.8.24+. If you were running PowerShell, there isn’t yet a refreshenv for you (one is coming though!). If you have to restart your CLI (command line interface) session or you installed Puppet manually open an administrative/elevated command shell and type: puppet resource user Output should look similar to a few of these: user { 'Administrator': ensure => 'present', comment => 'Built-in account for administering the computer/domain', groups => ['Administrators'], uid => 'S-1-5-21-some-numbers-yo-500', } Let's create a user: puppet apply -e "user {'bobbytables_123': ensure => present, groups => ['Users'], }" Relevant output should look like: Notice: /Stage[main]/Main/User[bobbytables_123]/ensure: created Run the 'puppet resource user' command again. Note the user we created is there! Let’s clean up after ourselves and remove that user we just created: puppet apply -e "user {'bobbytables_123': ensure => absent, }" Relevant output should look like: Notice: /Stage[main]/Main/User[bobbytables_123]/ensure: removed Run the 'puppet resource user' command one last time. Note we just removed a user! Conclusion You just did some configuration management /system administration. Welcome to the new world of awesome! Puppet is super easy to get started with. This is a taste so you can start seeing the power of automation and where you can go with it. We haven’t talked about resources, manifests (scripts), best practices and all of that yet. Next we are going to start to get into more extensive things with Puppet. Next time we’ll walk through getting a Vagrant environment up and running. That way we can do some crazier stuff and when we are done, we can just clean it up quickly.

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• What is the rationale behind snazzy Window Managers/Composers?

  - by Emanuele

  This is more of a generic question, based on trying out Window Managers like Awesome, Mate and others. To me looks like that other Window Managers like Gnome3 and/or Unity are heavy and pointless. I do understand that having all the composed UIs is more pleasant for the eye, but apart that, what are the other major benefits? To make an example, when I run the game Heroes of Newerth (using nVidia drivers) under: Unity : the FPS drops sharply Gnome3 : FPS is ok, but X and other processes use 15~20% of CPU and quite some additional memory Awesome : FPS is ok, and other processes use very little memory and CPU Below some numbers regarding what I'm saying (please note my system is 64 bit, AMD Phenom II X4, 8 GB RAM, nd nVidia 470 GTX, SSD disk). All data is sorted by mem usage (watch -d -n 10 "ps -e -o pcpu,pmem,pid,user,cmd --sort=-pmem | head -20"); again note that CPU time of ./hon-x86_64 might be different due to the fact I can't take the snapshot of the system during exactly same time. Awesome: %CPU %MEM PID USER CMD 91.8 21.6 3579 ema ./hon-x86_64 2.4 0.9 3223 root /usr/bin/X :0 -auth /var/run/lightdm/root/:0 -nolisten tcp vt7 -novtswitch 1.6 0.4 2600 ema /usr/lib/erlang/erts-5.8.5/bin/beam.smp -Bd -K true -A 4 -- -root /usr/lib/erlang -progname erl -- -home /home/ema -- -noshell -noinp 0.3 0.2 3602 ema gnome-terminal 0.0 0.2 2698 ema /usr/bin/python /usr/lib/desktopcouch/desktopcouch-service Gnome3: %CPU %MEM PID USER CMD 82.7 21.0 5528 ema ./hon-x86_64 17.7 1.7 5315 ema /usr/bin/gnome-shell 5.8 1.2 5062 root /usr/bin/X :0 -auth /var/run/lightdm/root/:0 -nolisten tcp vt7 -novtswitch 1.0 0.4 5657 ema /usr/bin/python /usr/lib/ubuntuone-client/ubuntuone-syncdaemon 0.7 0.3 5331 ema nautilus -n 1.6 0.3 2600 ema /usr/lib/erlang/erts-5.8.5/bin/beam.smp -Bd -K true -A 4 -- -root /usr/lib/erlang -progname erl -- -home /home/ema -- - 0.9 0.2 5451 ema gnome-terminal 0.1 0.2 5400 ema /usr/bin/python /usr/lib/desktopcouch/desktopcouch-service Unity 3D: %CPU %MEM PID USER CMD 87.2 21.1 6554 ema ./hon-x86_64 10.7 2.6 6105 ema compiz 17.8 1.1 5842 root /usr/bin/X :0 -auth /var/run/lightdm/root/:0 -nolisten tcp vt7 -novtswitch 1.3 0.9 6672 root /usr/bin/python /usr/sbin/aptd 0.4 0.4 6606 ema /usr/bin/python /usr/lib/ubuntuone-client/ubuntuone-syncdaemon 0.5 0.3 6115 ema nautilus -n 1.5 0.3 2600 ema /usr/lib/erlang/erts-5.8.5/bin/beam.smp -Bd -K true -A 4 -- -root /usr/lib/erlang -progname erl -- -home /home/ema -- -noshell -noinput -sasl errl 0.3 0.2 6180 ema /usr/lib/unity/unity-panel-service So my point is, what's the rationale behind going towards such heavy WMs/Composers?

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• Data Auditor by Example

  - by Jinjin.Wang

  OWB has a node Data Auditors under Oracle Module in Projects Navigator. What is data auditor and how to use it? I will give an introduction to data auditor and show its usage by examples. Data auditor is an important tool in ensuring that data quality levels meet business requirements. Data auditor validates data against a set of data rules to determine which records comply and which do not. It gathers statistical metrics on how well the data in a system complies with a rule by auditing and marking how many errors are occurring against the audited table. Data auditors are typically scheduled for regular execution as part of a process flow, to monitor the quality of the data in an operational environment such as a data warehouse or ERP system, either immediately after updates like data loads, or at regular intervals. How to use data auditor to monitor data quality? Only objects with data rules can be monitored, so the first step is to define data rules according to business requirements and apply them to the objects you want to monitor. The objects can be tables, views, materialized views, and external tables. Secondly create a data auditor containing the objects. You can configure the data auditor and set physical deployment parameters for it as optional, which will be used while running the data auditor. Then deploy and run the data auditor either manually or as part of the process flow. After execution, the data auditor sets several output values, and records that are identified as not complying with the defined data rules contained in the data auditor are written to error tables. Here is an example. We have two tables DEPARTMENTS and EMPLOYEES (see pic-1 and pic-2. Click here for DDL and data) imported into OWB. We want to gather statistical metrics on how well data in these two tables satisfies the following requirements: a. Values of the EMPLOYEES.EMPLOYEE_ID attribute are three-digit numbers. b. Valid values for EMPLOYEES.JOB_ID are IT_PROG, SA_REP, SH_CLERK, PU_CLERK, and ST_CLERK. c. EMPLOYEES.EMPLOYEE_ID is related to DEPARTMENTS.MANAGER_ID. Pic-1 EMPLOYEES Pic-2 DEPARTMENTS 1. To determine legal data within EMPLOYEES or legal relationships between data in different columns of the two tables, firstly we define data rules based on the three requirements and apply them to tables. a. The first requirement is about patterns that an attribute is allowed to conform to. We create a Domain Pattern List data rule EMPLOYEE_PATTERN_RULE here. The pattern is defined in the Oracle Database regular expression syntax as ^([0-9]{3})$ Apply data rule EMPLOYEE_PATTERN_RULE to table EMPLOYEES.

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• June 23, 1983: First Successful Test of the Domain Name System [Geek History]

  - by Jason Fitzpatrick

  Nearly 30 years ago the first Domain Name System (DNS) was tested and it changed the way we interacted with the internet. Nearly impossible to remember number addresses became easy to remember names. Without DNS you’d be browsing a web where numbered addresses pointed to numbered addresses. Google, for example, would look like http://209.85.148.105/ in your browser window. That’s assuming, of course, that a numbers-based web every gained enough traction to be popular enough to spawn a search giant like Google. How did this shift occur and what did we have before DNS? From Wikipedia: The practice of using a name as a simpler, more memorable abstraction of a host’s numerical address on a network dates back to the ARPANET era. Before the DNS was invented in 1983, each computer on the network retrieved a file called HOSTS.TXT from a computer at SRI. The HOSTS.TXT file mapped names to numerical addresses. A hosts file still exists on most modern operating systems by default and generally contains a mapping of the IP address 127.0.0.1 to “localhost”. Many operating systems use name resolution logic that allows the administrator to configure selection priorities for available name resolution methods. The rapid growth of the network made a centrally maintained, hand-crafted HOSTS.TXT file unsustainable; it became necessary to implement a more scalable system capable of automatically disseminating the requisite information. At the request of Jon Postel, Paul Mockapetris invented the Domain Name System in 1983 and wrote the first implementation. The original specifications were published by the Internet Engineering Task Force in RFC 882 and RFC 883, which were superseded in November 1987 by RFC 1034 and RFC 1035.Several additional Request for Comments have proposed various extensions to the core DNS protocols. Over the years it has been refined but the core of the system is essentially the same. When you type “google.com” into your web browser a DNS server is used to resolve that host name to the IP address of 209.85.148.105–making the web human-friendly in the process. Domain Name System History [Wikipedia via Wired] What is a Histogram, and How Can I Use it to Improve My Photos?How To Easily Access Your Home Network From Anywhere With DDNSHow To Recover After Your Email Password Is Compromised

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• 3D terrain map with Hexagon Grids (XNA)

  - by Rob

  I'm working on a hobby project (I'm a web/backend developer by day) and I want to create a 3D Tile (terrain) engine. I'm using XNA, but I can use MonoGame, OpenGL, or straight DirectX, so the answer does not have to be XNA specific. I'm more looking for some high level advice on how to approach this problem. I know about creating height maps and such, there are thousands of references out there on the net for that, this is a bit more specific. I'm more concerned with is the approach to get a 3D hexagon tile grid out of my terrain (since the terrain, and all 3d objects, are basically triangles). The first approach I thought about is to basically draw the triangles on the screen in the following order (blue numbers) to give me the triangles for terrain (black triangles) and then make hexes out of the triangles (red hex). http://screencast.com/t/ebrH2g5V This approach seems complicated to me since i'm basically having to draw 4 different types of triangles. The next approach I thought of was to use the existing triangles like I did for a square grid and get my hexes from 6 triangles as follows http://screencast.com/t/w9b7qKzVJtb8 This seems like the easier approach to me since there are only 2 types of triangles (i would have to play with the heights and widths to get a "perfect" hexagon, but the idea is the same. So I'm looking for: 1) Any suggestions on which approach I should take, and why. 2) How would I translate mouse position to a hexagon grid position (especially when moving the camera around), for example in the second image if the mouse pointer were the green circle, how would I determine to highlight that hexagon and then translating that into grid coordinates (assuming it is 0,0)? 3) Any references, articles, books, etc - to get me going in the right direction. Note: I've done hex grid's and mouse-grid coordinate conversion before in 2d. looking for some pointers on how to do the same in 3d. The result I would like to achieve is something similar to the following: http :// www. youtube .com / watch?v=Ri92YkyC3fw (sorry about the youtube link, but it will only let me post 2 links in this post... same rep problem i mention below...) Thanks for any help! P.S. Sorry for not posting the images inline, I apparently don't have enough rep on this stack exchange site.

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• Setting up port forwarding for 7000 appliance VM in VirtualBox

  - by uejio

  I've been using the 7000 appliance VM for a lot of testing lately and relied on others to set up the networking for the VM for me, but finally, I decided to take the dive and do it myself.  After some experimenting, I came up with a very brief number of steps to do this all using the VirtualBox CLI instead of the GUI. First download the VM image and unpack it somewhere.  I put it in /var/tmp. Then, set your VBOX_USER_HOME to some place with lots of disk space and import the VM: export VBOX_USER_HOME=/var/tmp/MyVirtualBoxVBoxManage import /var/tmp/simulator/vbox-2011.1.0.0.1.1.8/Sun\ ZFS\ Storage\ 7000.ovf (go get a cup of tea...) Then, set up port forwarding of the VM appliance BUI and shell:First set up port as NAT:VBoxManage modifyvm Sun_ZFS_Storage_7000 --nic1 nat Then set up rules for port forwarding (pick some unused port numbers):VBoxManage modifyvm Sun_ZFS_Storage_7000 --natpf1 "guestssh,tcp,,4622,,22"VBoxManage modifyvm Sun_ZFS_Storage_7000 --natpf1 "guestbui,tcp,,46215,,215" Verify the settings using:VBoxManage showvminfo Sun_ZFS_Storage_7000 | grep -i nic Start the appliance:$ VBoxHeadless --startvm Sun_ZFS_Storage_7000 & Connect to it using your favorite RDP client.  I use a Sun Ray, so I use the Sun Ray Windows Connector client: $ /opt/SUNWuttsc/bin/uttsc -g 800x600 -P <portnumber> <your-hostname> & The portnumber is displayed in the output of the --startvm command.(This did not work after I updated to VirtualBox 4.1.12, so maybe at this point, you need to use the VirtualBox GUI.) It takes a while to first bring up the VM, so please be patient. The longest time is in loading the smf service descriptions, but fortunately, that only needs to be done the first time the VM boots.  There is also a delay in just booting the appliance, so give it some time. Be sure to set the NIC rule on only one port and not all ports otherwise there will be a conflict in ports and it won't work. After going through the initial configuration screen, you can connect to it using ssh or your browser: ssh -p 45022 root@<your-host-name> https://<your-host-name>:45215 BTW, for the initial configuration, I only had to set the hostname and password.  The rest of the defaults were set by VirtualBox and seemed to work fine.

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• Good Customer Service Example

  - by MightyZot

  Here’s another good customer service example for you! My wife purchased a Galaxy last week and she loves the phone.  She asked me to add it to our AT&T Microcell last night. I purchased the AT&T Microcell a couple of years ago, because cell signal out where I live sucks! Since microcells are managed on the AT&T web site, I went to the site and tried to sign in. Naturally, having not managed that microcell in a couple of years…and much to my chagrin…I discovered that I didn’t know my password OR my user ID. So, I decided to call and see if I could get my account reset that late in the day (we’re talking last night, so it was well after 7pm.) I called the technical support line, touched the appropriate numbers to navigate to microcell support, turned on my speaker phone, and prepared for the long wait. After about 45 seconds I was delighted to hear “Jeffrey” break in and ask what he could help me with. I explained that I have not managed my microcell for some time and had forgotten the user name and password.  “No problem”, he replied, and he asked me for the line I used to register the microcell. After confirming the last four digits of my IMEI number, he asked me for my wife’s number. I gave him my wife’s number and he said, “I’ve taken care of it Mr Pope. Just have her reboot her phone and you should see your microcell.” We rebooted her phone, it connected to the microcell, and voila, she was online! “Is there anything else I can help you with while I’ve got you on the line”, he said. “Nope”, I replied. “Ok, have a great night.” What made this a great customer service experience for me was that “Jeffrey” didn’t stop at giving me my user account and password, which I would probably forget anyway after setting up my wife’s new phone. Instead, he solved the real problem for me – adding my wife’s new phone to my microcell. Great job Jeffrey!

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• Misadventures at Radio Shack

  - by Chris Williams

  While I'm waiting for my Arduino kits to show up, I started reading the Getting Started With Arduino book from O'Reilly (review coming later) and I'm about 40 pages in when I get to a parts list for one of the first projects. Looks pretty straightforward, and even has Radio Shack part numbers next to almost everything. So on my lunch today, I decided to run out to "The Shack" (seriously, that's their rebranding?) to pick up some basics, like a couple resistors, a breadboard, a momentary switch and a pack of pre-cut jumper wires. I found the resistors without any difficulty, and while they didn't have the exact switch I wanted, it was easy enough to find one that would do. That's where my good luck abruptly ended. I was surprised that I couldn't find a breadboard or any jumper wires, so while I was looking around, a guy came up and asked me if I needed some help. I told him I did, explained what I needed and even gave him the Radio Shack part number for the pack of jumper wires. After a couple minutes he says he can't find anything in the system, which was unfortunate but not the end of the world.  So then I asked him about the breadboard, and he pointed me to some blank circuitboards (which are not the same thing) and I said (nicely) that those weren't breadboards and attempted to explain (again) what I needed, at which point he says to me "I don't even know what the hell you're looking for!" I stood there for a moment and tried to process his words. About that time, another salesperson came up and asked what I was trying to find. I told her I needed a breadboard, and she pointed to the blank circuit boards and said "they're right in front of you..." After seeing the look on my face, she thought for a minute and said... "OH! you mean those white things. We don't have those anymore." I thanked her, set everything down on the counter and left. (I wasn't going to buy only half the stuff I needed.. and I was pretty sure I was never going to be buying ANYTHING at that particular location ever again.) Guess I'll be ordering more stuff online at this point. It's a shame really, because I used to LOVE going to Radio Shack as a kid, and looking through all the cool electronics components and stuff, even if I didnt understand what most of them were at the time. Seems like the only thing they carry in any quantity/variety now is cell phones and random stereo connectors.

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• Question about BoundingSpheres and Ray intersections

  - by NDraskovic

  I'm working on a XNA project (not really a game) and I'm having some trouble with picking algorithm. I have a few types of 3D models that I draw to the screen, and one of them is a switch. So I'm trying to make a picking algorithm that would enable the user to click on the switch and that would trigger some other function. The problem is that the BoundingSphere.Intersect() method always returns null as result. This is the code I'm using: In the declaration section: ` //Basic matrices private Matrix world = Matrix.CreateTranslation(new Vector3(0, 0, 0)); private Matrix view = Matrix.CreateLookAt(new Vector3(10, 10, 10), new Vector3(0, 0, 0), Vector3.UnitY); private Matrix projection = Matrix.CreatePerspectiveFieldOfView(MathHelper.ToRadians(45), 800f / 600f, 0.01f, 100f); //Collision detection variables Viewport mainViewport; List<BoundingSphere> spheres = new List<BoundingSphere>(); Ray ControlRay; Vector3 nearPoint, farPoint, nearPlane, farPlane, direction; ` And then in the Update method: ` nearPlane = new Vector3((float)Mouse.GetState().X, (float)Mouse.GetState().Y, 0.0f); farPlane = new Vector3((float)Mouse.GetState().X, (float)Mouse.GetState().Y, 10.0f); nearPoint = GraphicsDevice.Viewport.Unproject(nearPlane, projection, view, world); farPoint = GraphicsDevice.Viewport.Unproject(farPlane, projection, view, world); direction = farPoint - nearPoint; direction.Normalize(); ControlRay = new Ray(nearPoint, direction); if (spheres.Count != 0) { for (int i = 0; i < spheres.Count; i++) { if (spheres[i].Intersects(ControlRay) != null) { Window.Title = spheres[i].Center.ToString(); } else { Window.Title = "Empty"; } } ` The "spheres" list gets filled when the 3D object data gets loaded (I read it from a .txt file). For every object marked as switch (I use simple numbers to determine which object is to be drawn), a BoundingSphere is created (center is on the coordinates of the 3D object, and the diameter is always the same), and added to the list. The objects are drawn normally (and spheres.Count is not 0), I can see them on the screen, but the Window title always says "Empty" (of course this is just for testing purposes, I will add the real function when I get positive results) meaning that there is no intersection between the ControlRay and any of the bounding spheres. I think that my basic matrices (world, view and projection) are making some problems, but I cant figure out what. Please help.

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• UK Oracle User Group Event: Trends in Identity Management

  - by B Shashikumar

  As threat levels rise and new technologies such as cloud and mobile computing gain widespread acceptance, security is occupying more and more mindshare among IT executives. To help prepare for the rapidly changing security landscape, the Oracle UK User Group community and our partners at Enline/SENA have put together an User Group event in London on Apr 19 where you can learn more from your industry peers about upcoming trends in identity management. Here are some of the key trends in identity management and security that we predicted at the beginning of last year and look how they have turned out so far. You have to admit that we have a pretty good track record when it comes to forecasting trends in identity management and security. Threat levels will grow—and there will be more serious breaches:   We have since witnessed breaches of high value targets like RSA and Epsilon. Most organizations have not done enough to protect against insider threats. Organizations need to look for security solutions to stop user access to applications based on real-time patterns of fraud and for situations in which employees change roles or employment status within a company. Cloud computing will continue to grow—and require new security solutions: Cloud computing has since exploded into a dominant secular trend in the industry. Cloud computing continues to present many opportunities like low upfront costs, rapid deployment etc. But Cloud computing also increases policy fragmentation and reduces visibility and control. So organizations require solutions that bridge the security gap between the enterprise and cloud applications to reduce fragmentation and increase control. Mobile devices will challenge traditional security solutions: Since that time, we have witnessed proliferation of mobile devices—combined with increasing numbers of employees bringing their own devices to work (BYOD) — these trends continue to dissolve the traditional boundaries of the enterprise. This in turn, requires a holistic approach within an organization that combines strong authentication and fraud protection, externalization of entitlements, and centralized management across multiple applications—and open standards to make all that possible.  Security platforms will continue to converge: As organizations move increasingly toward vendor consolidation, security solutions are also evolving. Next-generation identity management platforms have best-of-breed features, and must also remain open and flexible to remain viable. As a result, developers need products such as the Oracle Access Management Suite in order to efficiently and reliably build identity and access management into applications—without requiring security experts. Organizations will increasingly pursue "business-centric compliance.": Privacy and security regulations have continued to increase. So businesses are increasingly look for solutions that combine strong security and compliance management tools with business ready experience for faster, lower-cost implementations.  If you'd like to hear more about the top trends in identity management and learn how to empower yourself, then join us for the Oracle UK User Group on Thu Apr 19 in London where Oracle and Enline/SENA product experts will come together to share security trends, best practices, and solutions for your business. Register Here.

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• Grub rescue - error: unknown filesystem

  - by user53817

  I have a multiboot system set up. The system has three drives. Multiboot is configured with Windows XP, Windows 7, and Ubuntu - all on the first drive. I had a lot of unpartitioned space left on the drive and was reserving it for adding other OSes and for storing files there in the future. One day I went ahead and downloaded Partition Wizard and created a logical NTFS partition from within Windows 7, still some unpartitioned space left over. Everything worked fine, until I rebooted the computer a few days later. Now I'm getting: error: unknown filesystem. grub rescue First of all I was surprised not to find any kind of help command, by trying: help, ?, man, --help, -h, bash, cmd, etc. Now I'm stuck with non-bootable system. I have started researching the issue and finding that people usually recommend to boot to a Live CD and fix the issue from there. Is there a way to fix this issue from within grub rescue without the need for Live CD? UPDATE By following the steps from persist commands typed to grub rescue, I was able to boot to initramfs prompt. But not anywhere further than that. So far from reading the manual on grub rescue, I was able to see my drives and partitions using ls command. For the first hard drive I see the following: (hd0) (hd0,msdos6) (hd0,msdos5) (hd0,msdos2) (hd0,msdos1) I now know that (hd0,msdos6) contains Linux on it, since ls (hd0,msdos6)/ lists directories. Others will give "error: unknown filesystem." UPDATE 2 After the following commands I am now getting to the boot menu and can boot into Windows 7 and Ubuntu, but upon reboot I have to repeat these steps. ls ls (hd0,msdos6)/ set root=(hd0,msdos6) ls / set prefix=(hd0,msdos6)/boot/grub insmod /boot/grub/linux.mod normal UPDATE 3 Thanks Shashank Singh, with your instructions I have simplified my steps to the following. I have learned from you that I can replace msdos6 with just a 6 and that I can just do insmod normal instead of insmod /boot/grub/linux.mod. Now I just need to figure out how to save this settings from within grub itself, without booting into any OS. set root=(hd0,6) set prefix=(hd0,6)/boot/grub insmod normal normal UPDATE 4 Well, it seems like it is a requirement to boot into Linux. After booting into Ubuntu I have performed the following steps described in the manual: sudo update-grub udo grub-install /dev/sda This did not resolve the issue. I still get the grub rescue prompt. What do I need to do to permanently fix it? I have also learned that drive numbers as in hd0 need to be translated to drive letters as in /dev/sda for some commands. hd1 would be sdb, hd2 would be sdc, and so on. Partitions listed in grub as (hd0,msdos6) would be translated to /dev/sda6.

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• 2D camera perspective projection from 3D coordinates -- HOW?

  - by Jack

  I am developing a camera for a 2D game with a top-down view that has depth. It's almost a 3D camera. Basically, every object has a Z even though it is in 2D, and similarly to parallax layers their position, scale and rotation speed vary based on their Z. I guess this would be a perspective projection. But I am having trouble converting the objects' 3D coordinates into the 2D space of the screen so that everything has correct perspective and scale. I never learned matrices though I did dig the topic a bit today. I tried without using matrices thanks to this article but every attempt gave awkward results. I'm using ActionScript 3 and Flash 11+ (Starling), where the screen coordinates work like this: Left-handed coordinates system illustration I can explain further what I did if you want to help me sort out what's wrong, or you can directly tell me how you would do it properly. In case you prefer the former, read on. These are images showing the formulas I used: upload.wikimedia.org/math/1/c/8/1c89722619b756d05adb4ea38ee6f62b.png upload.wikimedia.org/math/d/4/0/d4069770c68cb8f1aa4b5cfc57e81bc3.png (Sorry new users can't post images, but both are from the wikipedia article linked above, section "Perspective projection". That's where you'll find what all variables mean, too) The long formula is greatly simplified because I believe a normal top-down 2D camera has no X/Y/Z rotation values (correct ?). Then it becomes d = a - c. Still, I can't get it to work. Maybe you could explain what numbers I should put in a(xyz), c(xyz), theta(xyz), and particularly, e(xyz) ? I don't quite get how e is different than c in my case. c.z is also an issue to me. If the Z of the camera's target object is 0, should the camera's Z be something like -600 ? ( = focal length of 600) Whatever I do, it's wrong. I only got it to work when I used arbitrary calculations that "looked" right, like most cameras with parallax layers seem to do, but that's fake! ;) If I want objects to travel between Z layers I might as well do it right. :) Thanks a lot for your help!

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• Dual-boot computer won't boot without external hard drive

  - by FrankP

  I have Ubuntu loaded on my external HDD. I tried to unplug the external drive so that this way I could run Windows as the default OS to boot when the computer turns on, but it gives me an error. I need to know how I can make it so that when my computers boots it stops saying Error: no such device: (a whole bunch of numbers and letters) then it says grub rescue>_. If I plug the external HDD in, and I let Ubuntu run the boot process, then it gives me a list of OS's/ HDD's to choose from and Windows 7 is there. The only problem is that I want Windows be my default OS, not the other way around. P.S. I have found that I dislike Ubuntu because I can't even figure out how to install the necessary programs to learn how to start writing Ruby On Rails. So installing it was a waste of my time, in my opinion. Now that I have it on the external hard drive, I will leave it installed though. I just dont want to have to keep that external drive plugged in to my computer all the time. Thank you a ton to whoever can help me! Thank you for the detail'd instructions. I am doing my best to follow you and it makes sense when I read it but, Rescatux is not doing what you said it would. None of the options you said would appear are not there. On my screen there is 4 options when MBR run's none look familiar and when I picked the best possible option based on my educated guesses it said success. I tried to restart my computer and it said Please insert windows recovery disc and hit enter. Problem being I don't have the windows recovery disc. I bought my computer from a local Computer tec and he loads windows on it for you. I have no time to run my compute over to him as sunday is my only day free. I think that I just wrecked my computer in the process of this attempted fix windows refuses to boot now WITH or WITHOUT the HDD. Please help this is getting out of hand

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• ArchBeat Link-o-Rama for 2012-08-29

  - by Bob Rhubart

  ORCLville: OOW 2012 - Crystal BallOracle ACE Director Floyd Teter cooks up some tongue-in-cheek predictions for news and announcements that might come out of Oracle OpenWorld 2012. What's your prediction? Oracle Optimized Solutions at Oracle OpenWorld 2012 | Oracle Hardware Hardware matters, too! The people behind the Oracle Hardware blog have put together a list of Oracle Openworld 2012 sessions focused Oracle Optimized Solutions, "designed, pre-tested, tuned and fully documented architectures for optimal performance and availability." Just plug the session ID numbers into Schedule Builder and you're good to go. AIX Checklist for stable OBIEE deployment | Dick Dunbar "OBIEE is a complicated system with many moving parts and connection points," according to Oracle Business Inteligence escalation engineer Dick Dunbar. "The purpose of this article is to provide a checklist to discuss OBIEE deployment with your systems administrators." Demo for OPN: Coherence Management with EM Cloud Control 12c Oracle Partner Network members can check out a new Coherence Management demo that showcases some of the key capabilities of Management Pack for Oracle Coherence and JVM Diagnostics. "The demo flow showcases the key enhancements made in Enterprise Manager 12c release which includes new customizable performance summary, cache data management and configuration management," according to the WebLogic Partner Community EMEA blog. The Pragmatic Architect: To Boldly Go Where No One Has Gone Before | Frank Buschmann "Many architects have technical knowledge that's both impressive and sound, which is indeed an inevitable basis for design success," says Frank Buschmann. "Yet, a lot of software projects fail or suffer due to severe challenges in their architecture. The key to mastery is how architects approach design, what they value, and where they focus their attention and work." As retail dies, whom will be the winners? | Peter Evans-Greenwood "The problem for many retailers is that how consumers shop has changed but the the retailers haven't adapted, " says Peter Evans-Greenwood. "Their sole virtue was to be the last step in a supply chain delivering somebody else's products to the consumer. However, being the last step in the supply chain is no longer a virtue when consumers skip across channels and can reach around the globe, no longer dependant on or limited to what they can find locally." Thought for the Day "Brains require stimulation. If you're locked into a pattern of work, work, and more work, your brain soon habituates - the same way that it lets you stop hearing a clock ticking. So, if you want to be more effective at work, you must, paradoxically, be less single-minded in your devotion to work. Anything you do—anything—that stimulates new segments of your brain will make you a more effective programmer or analyst. I promise, with a money-back guarantee." — Gerald M. Weinberg Source: SoftwareQuotes.com

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• What Precalculus knowledge is required before learning Discrete Math Computer Science topics?

  - by Ein Doofus

  Below I've listed the chapters from a Precalculus book as well as the author recommended Computer Science chapters from a Discrete Mathematics book. Although these chapters are from two specific books on these subjects I believe the topics are generally the same between any Precalc or Discrete Math book. What Precalculus topics should one know before starting these Discrete Math Computer Science topics?: Discrete Mathematics CS Chapters 1.1 Propositional Logic 1.2 Propositional Equivalences 1.3 Predicates and Quantifiers 1.4 Nested Quantifiers 1.5 Rules of Inference 1.6 Introduction to Proofs 1.7 Proof Methods and Strategy 2.1 Sets 2.2 Set Operations 2.3 Functions 2.4 Sequences and Summations 3.1 Algorithms 3.2 The Growths of Functions 3.3 Complexity of Algorithms 3.4 The Integers and Division 3.5 Primes and Greatest Common Divisors 3.6 Integers and Algorithms 3.8 Matrices 4.1 Mathematical Induction 4.2 Strong Induction and Well-Ordering 4.3 Recursive Definitions and Structural Induction 4.4 Recursive Algorithms 4.5 Program Correctness 5.1 The Basics of Counting 5.2 The Pigeonhole Principle 5.3 Permutations and Combinations 5.6 Generating Permutations and Combinations 6.1 An Introduction to Discrete Probability 6.4 Expected Value and Variance 7.1 Recurrence Relations 7.3 Divide-and-Conquer Algorithms and Recurrence Relations 7.5 Inclusion-Exclusion 8.1 Relations and Their Properties 8.2 n-ary Relations and Their Applications 8.3 Representing Relations 8.5 Equivalence Relations 9.1 Graphs and Graph Models 9.2 Graph Terminology and Special Types of Graphs 9.3 Representing Graphs and Graph Isomorphism 9.4 Connectivity 9.5 Euler and Hamilton Ptahs 10.1 Introduction to Trees 10.2 Application of Trees 10.3 Tree Traversal 11.1 Boolean Functions 11.2 Representing Boolean Functions 11.3 Logic Gates 11.4 Minimization of Circuits 12.1 Language and Grammars 12.2 Finite-State Machines with Output 12.3 Finite-State Machines with No Output 12.4 Language Recognition 12.5 Turing Machines Precalculus Chapters R.1 The Real-Number System R.2 Integer Exponents, Scientific Notation, and Order of Operations R.3 Addition, Subtraction, and Multiplication of Polynomials R.4 Factoring R.5 Rational Expressions R.6 Radical Notation and Rational Exponents R.7 The Basics of Equation Solving 1.1 Functions, Graphs, Graphers 1.2 Linear Functions, Slope, and Applications 1.3 Modeling: Data Analysis, Curve Fitting, and Linear Regression 1.4 More on Functions 1.5 Symmetry and Transformations 1.6 Variation and Applications 1.7 Distance, Midpoints, and Circles 2.1 Zeros of Linear Functions and Models 2.2 The Complex Numbers 2.3 Zeros of Quadratic Functions and Models 2.4 Analyzing Graphs of Quadratic Functions 2.5 Modeling: Data Analysis, Curve Fitting, and Quadratic Regression 2.6 Zeros and More Equation Solving 2.7 Solving Inequalities 3.1 Polynomial Functions and Modeling 3.2 Polynomial Division; The Remainder and Factor Theorems 3.3 Theorems about Zeros of Polynomial Functions 3.4 Rational Functions 3.5 Polynomial and Rational Inequalities 4.1 Composite and Inverse Functions 4.2 Exponential Functions and Graphs 4.3 Logarithmic Functions and Graphs 4.4 Properties of Logarithmic Functions 4.5 Solving Exponential and Logarithmic Equations 4.6 Applications and Models: Growth and Decay 5.1 Systems of Equations in Two Variables 5.2 System of Equations in Three Variables 5.3 Matrices and Systems of Equations 5.4 Matrix Operations 5.5 Inverses of Matrices 5.6 System of Inequalities and Linear Programming 5.7 Partial Fractions 6.1 The Parabola 6.2 The Circle and Ellipse 6.3 The Hyperbola 6.4 Nonlinear Systems of Equations

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• SQL Saturday 43 (Redmond, WA) Review

  - by BuckWoody

  Last Saturday (June 12th) we held a “SQL Saturday” (more about those here) event in Redmond, Washington. The event was held at the Microsoft campus, at the Mixer in our new location called the “Commons”. This is a mall-like area that we have on campus, and the Mixer is a large building with lots of meeting rooms, so it made a perfect location for the event. There was a sign to find the parking, and once there they had a sign to show how to get to the building. Since it’s a secure facility, Greg Larsen and crew had a person manning the door so that even late arrivals could get in. We had about 400 sign up for the event, and a little over 300 attend (official numbers later). I think we would have had a lot more, but the sun was out – and you just can’t underestimate the effect of that here in the Pacific Northwest. We joke a lot about not seeing the sun much, but when a day like what we had on Saturday comes around, and on a weekend at that, you’d cancel your wedding to go outside to play in the sun. And your spouse would agree with you for doing it. We had some top-notch speakers, including Clifford Dibble and Kalen Delany. The food was great, we had multiple sponsors (including Confio who seems to be at all of these) and the attendees were from all over the professional spectrum, from developers to BI to DBA’s. Everyone I saw was very engaged, and when I visited room-to-room I saw almost no one in the halls – everyone was in the sessions. I also saw a much larger Microsoft presence this year, especially from Dan Jones’ team. I had a great turnout at my session, and yes, I was wearing an Oracle staff shirt. I did that because I wanted to show that the session I gave on “SQL Server for the Oracle DBA” was non-marketing – I couldn’t exactly bash Oracle wearing their colors! These events are amazing. I can’t emphasize enough how much I appreciate the volunteers and how much work they put into these events, and to you for coming. If you’re reading this and you haven’t attended one yet, definitely find out if there is one in your area – and if not, start one. It’s a lot of work, but it’s totally worth it.       Share this post: email it! | bookmark it! | digg it! | reddit! | kick it! | live it!

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• MatheMagics - Guess My Age Method 1

  - by PointsToShare

  © 2011 By: Dov Trietsch. All rights reserved MatheMagic – Guess My Age – Method 1 The Mathemagician stands on the stage and asks an adult to do the following: ·         Do the next few steps on your calculator, or the calculator in your phone, or even on a piece of paper. ·         Do it silently! Don’t tell me the results until I ask for them directly ·         Compute a single digit multiple of 9 – any one of 9, 18, 27, … all the way to 81, will do. ·         Now multiply your age by 10 ·         Subtract the 9 multiple from this number. ·         Tell me the result. Notice that I don’t know which multiple of 9 you subtracted from 10 times your age. I will nonetheless immediately tell you what your age is. How do I do this? Let’s do the algebra. 10X – 9Y = 10X – 10Y + Y = 10(X – Y) + Y Now remember, you asked an adult, so his/her age is a two digit number (maybe even 3 digits), thus reducing it by the single digit multiplied by nine is still positive – the lowest is can be is 100 – 81 which yields 19. Now make two numbers out of the result. The last digit and the number before it. This number is X – Y or the age minus the single digit you selected. The last digit is this very single digit. This is always so regardless of the digit you selected. So… Add tis digit to the other number and you get back the age! Q.E.D Example: I am 76 years old and here is what happens when I do the steps 76 x 10 = 760 760 – 18 = 742 made of 74 and 2. My age is 74 + 2 760 – 81 = 679 made of 67 and 9. My age is 67 + 9 A note to the socially aware mathemagician – it is safer to do it with a man. The chances of a veracious answer are much, much higher! The trick may be accomplished on any 2 or 3 digit number, not just one’s age, but if you want to know your date’s age, it’s a good way to elicit it. That’s All Folks PS for more Ageless “Age” mathemagics go to www.mgsltns.com/games.htm and also here: http://geekswithblogs.net/PointsToShare/archive/2011/11/15/mathemagics---guess-my-age---method-2.aspx

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• algorithm for project euler problem no 18

  - by Valentino Ru

  Problem number 18 from Project Euler's site is as follows: By starting at the top of the triangle below and moving to adjacent numbers on the row below, the maximum total from top to bottom is 23. 3 7 4 2 4 6 8 5 9 3 That is, 3 + 7 + 4 + 9 = 23. Find the maximum total from top to bottom of the triangle below: 75 95 64 17 47 82 18 35 87 10 20 04 82 47 65 19 01 23 75 03 34 88 02 77 73 07 63 67 99 65 04 28 06 16 70 92 41 41 26 56 83 40 80 70 33 41 48 72 33 47 32 37 16 94 29 53 71 44 65 25 43 91 52 97 51 14 70 11 33 28 77 73 17 78 39 68 17 57 91 71 52 38 17 14 91 43 58 50 27 29 48 63 66 04 68 89 53 67 30 73 16 69 87 40 31 04 62 98 27 23 09 70 98 73 93 38 53 60 04 23 NOTE: As there are only 16384 routes, it is possible to solve this problem by trying every route. However, Problem 67, is the same challenge with a triangle containing one-hundred rows; it cannot be solved by brute force, and requires a clever method! ;o) The formulation of this problems does not make clear if the "Traversor" is greedy, meaning that he always choosed the child with be higher value the maximum of every single walkthrough is asked The NOTE says, that it is possible to solve this problem by trying every route. This means to me, that is is also possible without! This leads to my actual question: Assumed that not the greedy one is the max, is there any algorithm that finds the max walkthrough value without trying every route and that doesn't act like the greedy algorithm? I implemented an algorithm in Java, putting the values first in a node structure, then applying the greedy algorithm. The result, however, is cosidered as wrong by Project Euler. sum = 0; void findWay(Node node){ sum += node.value; if(node.nodeLeft != null && node.nodeRight != null){ if(node.nodeLeft.value > node.nodeRight.value){ findWay(node.nodeLeft); }else{ findWay(node.nodeRight); } } }

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• Announcing Key Functional White Papers for SIM and ReIM

  - by Oracle Retail Documentation Team

  Oracle Retail has published two new documents on My Oracle Support (https://support.oracle.com)  that provide partners and retailers with deeper functional information about two products: Oracle Retail Store Inventory Management (SIM) and Oracle Retail Invoice Matching. Oracle Retail Store Inventory Management Item Configuration White Paper (Doc ID 1507221.1) There is functionality within the Store Inventory Management system related to item configuration that spans across multiple concepts that apply to the application as a whole rather than to a specific area. This white paper covers numerous topics around item configuration including: Item Transaction Levels Item Long Description Pack Size Standard Unit of Measure Standard Unit of Measure Conversion Pack Items Simple Pack Conversion Items (Notional Packs) Ranging Items Item Status Non-Sellable Items Type-2 Item Recognition UPC-E Barcodes Non-Inventory Items Consignment and Concession Items Quick Response Codes Oracle Retail Invoice Matching Financial Transactions (Doc ID 1500209.1) This document explains the financial transactions that are posted by Oracle Retail Invoice Matching (ReIM). The scope of the document is limited to ReIM transactions only, and does not explain Retail Merchandising System (RMS), Finance, or Account Receivable transactions. ReIM follows the double-entry accounting standard, which works by recording the debit and credit of each financial transaction belonging to each party involved. Each transaction means a profit to one account (debit) and a loss to another account (credit). Full invoice match processing is completed in ReIM with payment recommendations communicated to Oracle Accounts Payable. ReIM matches merchandise orders and receipts against merchandise invoices, performing automated and manual matching, as well as discrepancy-resolution processing. Matched invoices are posted to interface staging tables specifying the amount and date to pay, vendor, site ID, General Ledger Chart of Accounts (GL CoA) information, and payment terms. Other payables documents, including debit memos, credit memos and credit notes are also interfaced to Accounts Payable through the ReIM staging tables (IM_AP_STAGE_HEAD and IM_AP_STAGE_DETAIL). For information about how ReIM engages in this processing, see the latest Oracle Retail Invoice Matching Operations Guide. Certain ReIM transactions are not interfaced to Oracle Payables, but instead are interfaced to Oracle General Ledger through the IM_FINANCIAL_STAGE table. When analyzing transactions posted through the staging tables, retailers should note the transaction type, Standard/Credit, as well as the sign in the amount field. Technically, a negative sign on a credit transaction changes the transaction to a debit entry, and vice versa. This document is concerned about the financial meaning of the transactions, and will avoid a discussion of negative numbers in T-charts.

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• Will Online Learning Save Higher Education (and does it need saving)?

  - by user739873

  A lot (an awful lot) of education industry rag real estate has been devoted to the topics of online learning, MOOC’s, Udacity, edX, etc., etc. and to the uninitiated you’d think that the education equivalent of the cure for cancer had been discovered. There are certainly skeptics (whose voice is usually swiftly trampled upon by the masses) who feel we could over steer and damage or destroy something vital to teaching and learning (i.e. the classroom experience and direct interaction with human beings known as instructors), but for the most part prevailing opinion seems to be that online learning will take over the world and that higher education will never be the same. Now I’m sure that since you all know I work for a technology company you think I’m going to come down hard on the side of online learning proselytizers. Yes, I do believe that this revolution can and will provide access to massive numbers of individuals that either couldn’t afford (from a fiscal or time perspective) a traditional education, and that in some cases the online modality will actually be an improvement over certain traditional forms (such as courses taught by an adjunct or teaching assistant that has no business being a teacher). But I think several things need immediate attention or we’re likely to get so caught up in the delivery that we miss some of the real issues (and opportunities) around online learning. First and foremost, we’ve got to give some thought to how traditional information systems are going to accommodate thousands (possibly hundreds of thousands) of individual students each taking courses from many, many different “deliverers” with an expectation that successful completion of these courses will result in credit at many or most institutions. There’s also a huge opportunity to refine the delivery platform (no, LMS is not a commodity when you are talking about online delivery being your sole mode of operation) as well as the course itself by mining all kinds of data from the interactions that the students have with the material each time they take it. Social data analytics tools will be key in achieving this goal. What about accreditation (badging or competencies vs. traditional degrees)? And again, will the information systems in place today adapt to changes in this area fast enough? The type of scale that this shift in learning could drive has the potential to abruptly overwhelm just about every system in place today in higher education. I would like to (with a not so gentle reminder) refer you back to a blog entry I wrote when I first stepped into my current role at Oracle in which I talked about how higher ed needs an “Oracle” more than at any other time in it’s evolution (despite the somewhat mercantilist reputation it has in some circles). There just aren’t that many organizations that can deliver the kinds of solutions “at scale” that this brave new world of online education will demand. The future may be closer than we think. Cole

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• Oracle GoldenGate 11gR2 Event Marker System

  - by Doug Reid

  0 false 18 pt 18 pt 0 0 false false false /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:12.0pt; font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-ascii-font-family:Cambria; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-fareast; mso-hansi-font-family:Cambria; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin;} Oracle GoldenGate 11gR2 includes a number of refinements to the Event Marker system. Using event markers enables GoldenGate processes to take a defined action based on an event in the data stream. This feature within Oracle GoldenGate simplifies methods to embed specific custom processing in the areas of error handling, alerts, and notification. The event marker system effectively allows for DML driven workflows to be created within GoldenGate and enables customers to craft non-standard processing based on special events. There are a number of supported event actions including: trace, log, checkpoint before, suspend, abort, and several others. With 11gR1 events can now be triggered by DDL operations, plus variables can be passed in and out of the system to shell scripts. Some good use cases for this feature are Automatic switchover to the secondary system during planned outages Better monitoring over source systems’ performance and automated switchover to the standby system in case of an outage with the primary system Automatic switchover from initial load to changed data movement Automatic synchronization of any type of batch processing taking place on both the source and target databases for database consistency Automatic stoppage of the Delivery module to allow end-of-day reporting Finding, tracking, and reporting on transactions that are of interest including the ones that do not have primary keys or transaction record numbers If you would like to see a demo, please visit our youtube channel (http://youtube.com/oraclegoldengate)  To learn more about the new features of Oracle GoldenGate 11gR2 and to ask questions to the PM team, please join us on September 12th  8am or 10am PST for our live webcast. Click here to register.

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• Cone of Uncertainty in classic and agile projects

  - by DigiMortal

  David Starr from Scrum.org made interesting session in TechEd Europe 2012 - Implementing Scrum Using Team Foundation Server 2012. One of interesting things for me was how Cone of Uncertainty looks like in agile projects (or how agile methodologies distort the cone we know from waterfall projects). This posting illustrates two cones – one for waterfall and one for agile world. Cone of Uncertainty Cone of Uncertainty was introduced to software development community by Steve McConnell and it visualizes how accurate are our estimates over project timeline. Here is the Cone of Uncertainty when we deal with waterfall and Big Design Up-Front (BDUF). Cone of Uncertainty. Taken from MSDN Library page Estimating. The closer we are to project end the more accurate are our estimates. When project ends we know exactly how much every task took time. As we can see then cone is wide when we usually have to give our estimates – it happens somewhere between Initial Project Concept and Requirements Complete. Don’t ask me why Initial Project Concept is the stage where some companies give their best estimates – they just do it every time and doesn’t learn a thing later. This cone is inevitable for software development and agile methodologies that try to make software world better are also able to change the cone. Cone of Uncertainty in agile projects Agile methodologies usually try to avoid BDUF, waterfalls and other things that make all our mistakes highly expensive. Of course, we are not the only ones who make mistakes – don’t also forget our dear customers. Agile methodologies take development as creational work and focus on making it better. One main trick is to focus on small and short iterations. What it means? We are estimating functionalities that are easier for us to understand and implement. Therefore our estimates are more accurate. As we move from few big iterations to many small iterations we also distort and slice Cone of Uncertainty. This is how cone looks when agile methodologies are used. Cone of Uncertainty in agile projects. We have more cones to live with but they are way smaller. I don’t have any numbers to put here because I found any but still this “chart” should give you the point: more smaller iterations cause more but way smaller cones of uncertainty. We can handle these small uncertainties because steps we take to complete small tasks are more predictable and doesn’t grow very often above our heads. One more note. Consider that both of charts given in this posting describe exactly the same phase of same project – just uncertainties are different.

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