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  • How to create a legally valid timestamp of unpublished game artwork

    - by mm24
    Before publishing promotional material of my first indie game I wanted to mark all my artwork with a legally valid timestamp. There are two ways I know to do this: 1 go to a sollecitor/lawyer and pay for them to certify the document 2 use an online webservice to mark any given file/folder readable to the service Anyone has already done this and if yes how (e.g. which website have you used? which type of solecitor have you contacted? etc..)? Kind Regards PS: I know that there is always the good old "send yourself a mail with a stamp and a date" but is not very strong as proof.

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  • What Did You Do? is a Bad Question

    - by Ajarn Mark Caldwell
    Brian Moran (blog | Twitter) did a great presentation today for the PASS Professional Development Virtual Chapter on The Art of Questions.  One of the points that Brian made was that there are good questions and bad (or at least not-as-good) questions.  Good questions tend to open-up the conversation and engender positive reactions (perhaps even trust and respect) between the participants; and bad questions tend to close-down a conversation either through the narrow list of possible responses (e.g. strictly Yes/No) or through the negative reactions they can produce.  And this explains why I so frequently had problems troubleshooting real-time problems with users in the past.  I’ll explain that in more detail below, but before we go on, let me recommend that you watch the recording of Brian’s presentation to learn why the question Why is often problematic in the U.S. and yet we so often resort to it. For a short portion (3 years) of my career, I taught basic computer skills and Office applications in an adult vocational school, and this gave me ample opportunity to do live troubleshooting of user challenges with computers.  And like many people who ended up in computer related jobs, I also have had numerous times where I was called upon by less computer-savvy individuals to help them with some challenge they were having, whether it was part of my job or not.  One of the things that I noticed, especially during my time as a teacher, was that when I was helping somebody, typically the first question I would ask them was, “What did you do?”  This seemed to me like a good way to start my detective work trying to figure out what happened, what went wrong, how to fix it, and how to help the person avoid it again in the future.  I always asked it in a polite tone of voice as I was just trying to gather the facts before diving in deeper.  However; 99.999% of the time, I always got the same answer, “Nothing!”  For a long time this frustrated me because (remember I’m in detective mode at that point) I knew it could not possibly be true.  They HAD to have done SOMETHING…just tell me what were the last actions you took before this problem presented itself.  But no, they always stuck with “Nothing”.  At which point, with frustration growing, and not a little bit of disdain for their lack of helpfulness, I would usually ask them to move aside while I took over their machine and got them out of whatever they had gotten themselves into.  After a while I just grew used to the fact that this was the answer I would usually receive, but I always kept asking because for the .001% of the people who would actually tell me, I could then help them understand what went wrong and how to avoid it in the future. Now, after hearing Brian’s talk, I understand what the problem was.  Even though I meant to just be in an information gathering mode, the words I was using, “What did YOU do?” have such a strong negative connotation that people would instinctively go into defense-mode and stop sharing information that might make them look bad.  Many of them probably were not even consciously aware that they had gone on the defensive, but the self-preservation instinct, especially self-preservation of the ego, is so strong that people would end up there without even realizing it. So, if “What did you do” is a bad question, what would have been better?  Well, one suggestion that Brian makes in his talk is something along the lines of, “Can you tell me what led up to this?” or “what was happening on the computer right before this came up?”  It’s subtle, but the point is to take the focus off of the person and their behavior; instead depersonalizing it and talk about events from more of a 3rd-party observer point of view.  With this approach, people will be more likely to talk about what the computer did and what they did in response to it without feeling the interrogation spotlight is on them.  They are also more likely to mention other events that occurred around the same time that may or may not be related, but which could certainly help you troubleshoot a larger problem if it is not just user actions.  And that is the ultimate goal of your asking the questions.  So yes, it does matter how you ask the question; and there are such things as good questions and bad questions.  Excellent topic Brian!  Thanks for getting the thinking gears churning! (Cross-posted to the Professional Development Virtual Chapter blog.)

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  • Autostart app with proper icon in unity launcher

    - by kyleN
    One can autostart an application such that it launches on session start with an xdg desktop file in ~/.config/autostart (or /etc/xdg/autostart). But my application (a python/gtk/webkit/html5 app) when autostarted has a unity (and a unity-2d) launcher icon that is a gray question mark, even though: when I find it in dash, the dash shows the icon I specify in my main desktop file (in /usr/share/applications) when I launch it from dash, the launcher shows the icon I specify in my main desktop file when I add it as a favorite, the launcher shows the proper icon There are two cases where I get the gray question mark icon: autostart launch from terminal (this use case is not essential though and doesn't involve the desktop file anyway: but should/does ubuntu have an xdg desktop file interpreter à la #!/usr/bin/desktop or something) So: what is needed such unity (3d/2d) launcher panel shows the icon specified in an autostart desktop file?

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  • Java EE Summit December 3rd-5th Cologne, Germany

    - by JuergenKress
    16 Java EE Workshops in 3 days: Track: Java EE Core Technologies · Core – JPA 2.x - Arne Limburg · Core – EJB 3.1 und 3.2 - Jens Schumann · Core – CDI 1.0 & 1.1 - Mark Struberg · Core – JSF 2.x - Lars Röwekamp Track: Best Practices · Pitfalls in Java EE - Mark Struberg · Java EE UI - Adam Bien · Modeling meets Code - Arne Limburg · Java EE Security - Adam Bien Track: Java EE Kickstart · Kickstart – Java-EE-Architekturen - Jens Schumann · Kickstart – Java Web Profile - Lars Röwekamp · Kickstart – Events und Messaging - Thilo Frotscher · Kickstart – Services: REST und WS-* Thilo Frotscher “Do it yourself” – Workshop Day · Java EE Core – Putting together - Jens Schumann, Lars Röwekamp · Java EE Core – Putting together: Extended Edition · Java EE 6/7 – Productivity with Joy: Development - Adam Bien · Java EE 6/7 – Productivity with Joy: Testing - Adam Bien >> Night Session mit Matthias Weßendorf: · Future: New School Web Apps For more information and registration please visit www.java-ee-summit.de/zeitplaner. WebLogic Partner Community For regular information become a member in the WebLogic Partner Community please visit: http://www.oracle.com/partners/goto/wls-emea ( OPN account required). If you need support with your account please contact the Oracle Partner Business Center. BlogTwitterLinkedInMixForumWiki Technorati Tags: Java EE,Adam Bien,Java EE Summit,WebLogic Community,Oracle,OPN,Jürgen Kress

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  • Deploying Data Mining Models using Model Export and Import

    - by [email protected]
    In this post, we'll take a look at how Oracle Data Mining facilitates model deployment. After building and testing models, a next step is often putting your data mining model into a production system -- referred to as model deployment. The ability to move data mining model(s) easily into a production system can greatly speed model deployment, and reduce the overall cost. Since Oracle Data Mining provides models as first class database objects, models can be manipulated using familiar database techniques and technology. For example, one or more models can be exported to a flat file, similar to a database table dump file (.dmp). This file can be moved to a different instance of Oracle Database EE, and then imported. All methods for exporting and importing models are based on Oracle Data Pump technology and found in the DBMS_DATA_MINING package. Before performing the actual export or import, a directory object must be created. A directory object is a logical name in the database for a physical directory on the host computer. Read/write access to a directory object is necessary to access the host computer file system from within Oracle Database. For our example, we'll work in the DMUSER schema. First, DMUSER requires the privilege to create any directory. This is often granted through the sysdba account. grant create any directory to dmuser; Now, DMUSER can create the directory object specifying the path where the exported model file (.dmp) should be placed. In this case, on a linux machine, we have the directory /scratch/oracle. CREATE OR REPLACE DIRECTORY dmdir AS '/scratch/oracle'; If you aren't sure of the exact name of the model or models to export, you can find the list of models using the following query: select model_name from user_mining_models; There are several options when exporting models. We can export a single model, multiple models, or all models in a schema using the following procedure calls: BEGIN   DBMS_DATA_MINING.EXPORT_MODEL ('MY_MODEL.dmp','dmdir','name =''MY_DT_MODEL'''); END; BEGIN   DBMS_DATA_MINING.EXPORT_MODEL ('MY_MODELS.dmp','dmdir',              'name IN (''MY_DT_MODEL'',''MY_KM_MODEL'')'); END; BEGIN   DBMS_DATA_MINING.EXPORT_MODEL ('ALL_DMUSER_MODELS.dmp','dmdir'); END; A .dmp file can be imported into another schema or database using the following procedure call, for example: BEGIN   DBMS_DATA_MINING.IMPORT_MODEL('MY_MODELS.dmp', 'dmdir'); END; As with models from any data mining tool, when moving a model from one environment to another, care needs to be taken to ensure the transformations that prepare the data for model building are matched (with appropriate parameters and statistics) in the system where the model is deployed. Oracle Data Mining provides automatic data preparation (ADP) and embedded data preparation (EDP) to reduce, or possibly eliminate, the need to explicitly transport transformations with the model. In the case of ADP, ODM automatically prepares the data and includes the necessary transformations in the model itself. In the case of EDP, users can associate their own transformations with attributes of a model. These transformations are automatically applied when applying the model to data, i.e., scoring. Exporting and importing a model with ADP or EDP results in these transformations being immediately available with the model in the production system.

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  • Using SQL Source Control and Vault Professional Part 4

    - by Ajarn Mark Caldwell
    Two weeks ago I upgraded our installation of Fortress to the latest version, which is now named Vault Professional.  This is the version of Vault (i.e. Vault Standard 5.1 / Vault Professional 5.1) that will be officially supported with Red-Gate SQL Source Control 2.1.  While the folks at Red-Gate did a fantastic job of working with me to get SQL Source Control to work with the older Fortress version, we weren’t going to just sit on that.  There are a couple of things that Vault Professional cleaned up for us, such as improved integration with Visual Studio 2010, so it was a win all around. Shortly after that upgrade, I received notice from Red-Gate that they had a new Early Access version of SQL Source Control available that included the ability to source control static data.  The idea here is that you probably have a few fairly static lookup tables in your system, and those data values are similar in concept to source code, and should be versioned in your source control management system also.  I agree with this, but please be wise…somebody out there is bound to try to use this feature as their disaster recovery for their entire database, and that is NOT the purpose.  First off, you should never have your PROD (or LIVE, whatever you call it) system attached to source control.  Source Control is for development, not for PROD systems.  Second, use the features that are intended for this purpose, such as BACKUP and RESTORE. Laying that tangent aside, it is great that now you can include these critical values in your repository and make them part of a deployment process.  As you would guess, SQL Source Control uses SQL Data Compare to create the data change scripts just like it uses SQL Compare to create the schema change scripts.  Once again, they did a very good job with the integration to their other products.  At this point we are really starting to see some good payback on our investment in the full SQL Developer Bundle.  Those products were worth the investment back when we only used them sporadically for troubleshooting and DBA analysis, but now with SQL Source Control, they are becoming everyday-use products for the development team. I like this software (SQL Source Control) so much that I am about to break my own rules and distribute it to my team to use even though it is still in beta.  This is the first time that I have approved the use of any beta software in a production scenario (actively building our next versions of internal software) but I predict that the usability and productivity gain of using SQL Source Control over manual scripting is worth the risk.  Of course, I have also put this beta software through its paces pretty well to be comfortable with it, and Red-Gate has proven their responsiveness to issues that came up in my early beta testing, and so I am willing to bet on their continued support.  Likewise, SourceGear, the maker of Vault Professional, has proven itself to me as well, and so the combination of SQL Source Control with Vault Professional is the new standard for my development team.

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  • Microsoft SDET position

    - by Mark
    I was curious about MS's SDET position. I've heard a lot of people speak negatively and positively about this position. I was wondering if any current or previous SDETs could comment on a couple of issues. 1) Is career development in any way hurt by this position within and outside of MS? 1.5) Is it harder to get hired as a developer at another company after being an SDET? 2) Within MS culture, how is the SDET position viewed with respect to PM or SDE? Is it respected or looked down upon? 3) If you worked as an SDET, did you like it?

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  • How to Automatically Backup Your Gmail Attachments With IFTTT

    - by Mark Wilson
    When it comes to getting things done quickly, automation is the name of the game. We’ve looked at IFTTT before, and a new batch of updates has introduced a number of options that can be used to automatically do things with files that are sent to your Gmail address. What could this be used for? Well the most obvious starting point is to simply create a backup of any files that you receive via email. This is useful if you find that you often reach the size limit for your inbox as it enables you to delete emails without having to worry about losing the associated files. Start by paying a visit to the IFTTT website and then either sign into an existing account or create a new one.     

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  • Deluge bit torrent. No incoming connections?

    - by mark kirby
    Hi I keep getting a no incoming connections on my Deluge. I know this is a pretty common problem from Google, but I have posted here to see if any one knows why this happens. I have port forwarded my router and set Deluge to the correct port range. Is this just a bug ? It does not seem to affect the speed so I obviously do have incoming connections and Transmission says the ports are open. So I guess my question is why is this happening ?

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  • Le monde sur le point de se « noyer dans les données » selon le président d'Oracle qui prédit une crise du stockage et du traitement

    Le monde sur le point de se « noyer dans les données » Selon le président d'Oracle qui prédit une crise du stockage et de traitement Dans une déclaration au Times de Londres, le coprésident d'Oracle Mark Hurd a évoqué le sujet de « la croissance exponentielle » des données. Il prédit que celle-ci soit sur le point de déclencher un problème majeur dans les opérations de stockage, de traitement et d'analyse en temps réel. [IMG]http://idelways.developpez.com/news/images/oracle-marc-hurd.jpg[/IMG] Mark Hurd Selon Hurd, le nombre de dispositifs connectés à internet et fournissant des données pour les entreprises va croître po...

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  • How to add locale aware CSS to an individual component in ADF Faces.

    - by [email protected]
    When creating a skin in ADF Faces, it's (relatively) easy to add locale aware CSS using the :rtl psuedo-class on the end of a skinning key.  Example:af|inputListOfValues::content {  padding-left: 3px;}af|inputListOfValues::content:rtl {  padding-left: 0px;  padding-right: 3px;}In this example, we want some padding before the start of the text in the content element of the component.  In right to left locales, the start of the text is on the right side by default, so we need to change the padding from the left to the right.Let's say, however, that you want to specify a locale aware CSS style on an individual component using the contentStyle attribute.  There is a handy ADF Faces EL function to help you out here: isRTL.  For our example, let's say we want an inputText component whose text content is 'end' aligned.  If you weren't considering RTL locales, you could code this as:<af:inputText id="idInputTextRight" label="right aligned" value="Test"                    contentStyle="text-align: right;"/>This, however, will be right aligned regardless of locale. This is where isRTL() comes to the rescue.  This is how we would code this to be locale aware:<af:inputText id="idInputTextEnd" label="end aligned" value="Test"                     contentStyle="text-align: #{af:isRTL()?'left':'right'};"/> The af:isRTL() EL function returns true if we are rendering in RTL, so we can use it to pick the appropriate text alignment.

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  • Fun with Declarative Components

    - by [email protected]
    Use case background I have been asked on a number of occasions if our selectOneChoice component could allow random text to be entered, as well as having a list of selections available. Unfortunately, the selectOneChoice component only allows entry via the dropdown selection list and doesn't allow text entry. I was thinking of possible solutions and thought that this might make a good example for using a declarative component.My initial idea My first thought was to use an af:inputText to allow the text entry, and an af:selectOneChoice with mode="compact" for the selections. To get it to layout horizontally, we would want to use an af:panelGroupLayout with layout="horizontal". To get the label for this to line up correctly, we'll need to wrap the af:panelGroupLayout with an af:panelLabelAndMessage. This is the basic structure: <af:panelLabelAndMessage> <af:panelGroupLayout layout="horizontal"> <af:inputText/> <af:selectOneChoice mode="compact"/> </af:panelgroupLayout></af:panelLabelAndMessage> Make it into a declarative component One of the steps to making a declarative component is deciding what attributes we want to be able to specify. To keep this example simple, let's just have: 'label' (the label of our declarative component)'value' (what we want to bind to the value of the input text)'items' (the select items in our dropdown) Here is the initial declarative component code (saved as file "inputTextWithChoice.jsff"): <?xml version='1.0' encoding='UTF-8'?><!-- Copyright (c) 2008, Oracle and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved. --><jsp:root xmlns:jsp="http://java.sun.com/JSP/Page" version="2.1" xmlns:f="http://java.sun.com/jsf/core" xmlns:af="http://xmlns.oracle.com/adf/faces/rich"> <jsp:directive.page contentType="text/html;charset=utf-8"/> <af:componentDef var="attrs" componentVar="comp"> <af:xmlContent> <component xmlns="http://xmlns.oracle.com/adf/faces/rich/component"> <description>Input text with choice component.</description> <attribute> <description>Label</description> <attribute-name>label</attribute-name> <attribute-class>java.lang.String</attribute-class> </attribute> <attribute> <description>Value</description> <attribute-name>value</attribute-name> <attribute-class>java.lang.Object</attribute-class> </attribute> <attribute> <description>Choice Select Items Value</description> <attribute-name>items</attribute-name> <attribute-class>[[Ljavax.faces.model.SelectItem;</attribute-class> </attribute> </component> </af:xmlContent> <af:panelLabelAndMessage id="myPlm" label="#{attrs.label}" for="myIt"> <af:panelGroupLayout id="myPgl" layout="horizontal"> <af:inputText id="myIt" value="#{attrs.value}" partialTriggers="mySoc" label="myIt" simple="true" /> <af:selectOneChoice id="mySoc" label="mySoc" simple="true" mode="compact" value="#{attrs.value}" autoSubmit="true"> <f:selectItems id="mySIs" value="#{attrs.items}" /> </af:selectOneChoice> </af:panelGroupLayout> </af:panelLabelAndMessage> </af:componentDef></jsp:root> By having af:inputText and af:selectOneChoice both have the same value, then (assuming that this passed in as an EL expression) selecting something in the selectOneChoice will update the value in the af:inputText. To use this declarative component in a jspx page: <af:declarativeComponent id="myItwc" viewId="inputTextWithChoice.jsff" label="InputText with Choice" value="#{demoInput.choiceValue}" items="#{demoInput.selectItems}" /> Some problems arise At first glace, this seems to be functioning like we want it to. However, there is a side effect to having the af:inputText and af:selectOneChoice share a value, if one changes, so does the other. The problem here is that when we update the af:inputText to something that doesn't match one of the selections in the af:selectOneChoice, the af:selectOneChoice will set itself to null (since the value doesn't match one of the selections) and the next time the page is submitted, it will submit the null value and the af:inputText will be empty. Oops, we don't want that. Hmm, what to do. Okay, how about if we make sure that the current value is always available in the selection list. But, lets not render it if the value is empty. We also need to add a partialTriggers attribute so that this gets updated when the af:inputText is changed. Plus, we really don't want to select this item so let's disable it. <af:selectOneChoice id="mySoc" partialTriggers="myIt" label="mySoc" simple="true" mode="compact" value="#{attrs.value}" autoSubmit="true"> <af:selectItem id="mySI" label="Selected:#{attrs.value}" value="#{attrs.value}" disabled="true" rendered="#{!empty attrs.value}"/> <af:separator id="mySp" /> <f:selectItems id="mySIs" value="#{attrs.items}" /></af:selectOneChoice> That seems to be working pretty good. One minor issue that we probably can't do anything about is that when you enter something in the inputText and then click on the selectOneChoice, the popup is displayed, but then goes away because it has been replaced via PPR because we told it to with the partialTriggers="myIt". This is not that big a deal, since if you are entering something manually, you probably don't want to select something from the list right afterwards. Making it look like a single component. Now, let's play around a bit with the contentStyle of the af:inputText and the af:selectOneChoice so that the compact icon will layout inside the af:inputText, making it look more like an af:selectManyChoice. We need to add some padding-right to the af;inputText so there is space for the icon. These adjustments were for the Fusion FX skin. <af:inputText id="myIt" partialTriggers="mySoc" autoSubmit="true" contentStyle="padding-right: 15px;" value="#{attrs.value}" label="myIt" simple="true" /><af:selectOneChoice id="mySoc" partialTriggers="myIt" contentStyle="position: relative; top: -2px; left: -19px;" label="mySoc" simple="true" mode="compact" value="#{attrs.value}" autoSubmit="true"> <af:selectItem id="mySI" label="Selected:#{attrs.value}" value="#{attrs.value}" disabled="true" rendered="#{!empty attrs.value}"/> <af:separator id="mySp" /> <f:selectItems id="mySIs" value="#{attrs.items}" /></af:selectOneChoice> There you have it, a declarative component that allows for suggested selections, but also allows arbitrary text to be entered. This could be used for search field, where the 'items' attribute could be populated with popular searches. Lines of java code written: 0

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  • Ubuntu / FileZilla FTP Set Up

    - by Dean Mark Anthony
    I have successfully installed VSFTPD and I have configured it to allow FTP connection from my Windows laptop running FileZilla. FileZilla is pointing at the directory srv/ftp on my server; the files that are stored in srv/ftp are showing in the Remote Site section of FileZilla. This indicates that it is connecting to my FTP server. What I need to do is point FileZilla toward the directory var/www so that all files that I transfer are visible on my self-hosted website. I cannot find out how to do this. Do I need to perform some updates to the vsftpd.conf file, and if so what do I change? Do I need to perform updates to my FileZilla console? I am comfortable in terms of changing .conf files, port forwarding and setting permissions etc. I just need to know what precisely needs to be changed. Much love...

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  • how to follow python polymorphism standards with math functions

    - by krishnab
    So I am reading up on python in Mark Lutz's wonderful LEARNING PYTHON book. Mark makes a big deal about how part of the python development philosophy is polymorphism and that functions and code should rely on polymorphism and not do much type checking. However, I do a lot of math type programming and so the idea of polymorphism does not really seem to apply--I don't want to try and run a regression on a string or something. So I was wondering if there is something I am missing here. What are the applications of polymorphism when I am writing functions for math--or is type checking philosophically okay in this case.

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  • Go Big or Go Special

    - by Ajarn Mark Caldwell
    Watching Shark Tank tonight and the first presentation was by Mango Mango Preserves and it highlighted an interesting contrast in business trends today and how to capitalize on opportunities.  <Spoiler Alert> Even though every one of the sharks was raving about the product samples they tried, with two of them going for second and third servings, none of them made a deal to invest in the company.</Spoiler>  In fact, one of the sharks, Kevin O’Leary, kept ripping into the owners with statements to the effect that he thinks they are headed over a financial cliff because he felt their costs were way out of line and would be their downfall if they didn’t take action to radically cut costs. He said that he had previously owned a jams and jellies business and knew the cost ratios that you had to have to make it work.  I don’t doubt he knows exactly what he’s talking about and is 100% accurate…for doing business his way, which I’ll call “Go Big”.  But there’s a whole other way to do business today that would be ideal for these ladies to pursue. As I understand it, based on his level of success in various businesses and the fact that he is even in a position to be investing in other companies, Kevin’s approach is to go mass market (Go Big) and make hundreds of millions of dollars in sales (or something along that scale) while squeezing out every ounce of cost that you can to produce an acceptable margin.  But there is a very different way of making a very successful business these days, which is all about building a passionate and loyal community of customers that are rooting for your success and even actively trying to help you succeed by promoting your product or company (Go Special).  This capitalizes on the power of social media, niche marketing, and The Long Tail.  One of the most prolific writers about capitalizing on this trend is Seth Godin, and I hope that the founders of Mango Mango pick up a couple of his books (probably Purple Cow and Tribes would be good starts) or at least read his blog.  I think the adoration expressed by all of the sharks for the product is the biggest hint that they have a remarkable product and that they are perfect for this type of business approach. Both are completely valid business models, and it may certainly be that the scale at which Kevin O’Leary wants to conduct business where he invests his money is well beyond the long tail, but that doesn’t mean that there is not still a lot of money to be made there.  I wish them the best of luck with their endeavors!

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  • Details on Oracle's Primavera P6 Reporting Database R2

    - by mark.kromer
    Below is a graphic screenshot of our detailed announcement for the new Oracle data warehouse product for Primavera P6 called P6 Reporting Database R2. This DW product includes the ETL, data warehouse star schemas and ODS that you'll need to build an enterprise reporting solution for your projects & portfolios. This product is included on a restricted license basis with the new Primavera P6 Analytics R1 product from Oracle because those Analytics are built in OBIEE based on this data warehouse product.

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  • I Choose iNada

    - by Mark Treadwell
    As a laptop and Kindle user, I have been looking at the usual cyclical Apple frenzy in the press with the same kind of amused tolerance I give my three-year-old son.  They never seem to learn, and they keep repeating the same things.  However when I ready articles like this, I am reminded that that is not always the case. I am a happy user of a monster-sized HP HDX laptop, HP touch screen all-in-one system, and multi-screen Dell desktops at home as well as a HP business laptop at work.  I have no iPod, iMac, iTouch or any other relationship with the company who wants to trademark the prefix “i”. I have not missed them. That is not to say that I have no technological gadgets.  I do.  They just do not dominate Every company wants to preserve their customer base, but Apple just does it too rigidly.  The buy-in necessary rubs me wrong.  When the fanboys scream about the next great iApple thing which will kill off another market segment (this time, the iPad will kill off laptops), the amused tolerance returns. From what I have seen, the iPad virtual keyboard is a poor substitute for an actual keyboard.  It was intended to let you get some kind of text into a device that is not really intended for keyboard input, but rather for touch manipulation of a designed interface.  I like the virtual keyboard on my LG Dare cell phone, but you will not catch me writing my next novel with it.  But, you hear, you can connect a real keyboard and get info from another computer.  That is when you realize that the iPad is not a true standalone device like a laptop.  You have to make more hardware purchases to get what you truly want.  It is an expensive accommodation to get you a different form of freedom. So if Apple made a product with me in mind, you can have it.  Everyone gets to make their own choice.  My choice is the iNada.

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  • Before the Summit of 2012

    - by Ajarn Mark Caldwell
    Today, Monday, was the first day of the PASS Summit Preconference training events, but instead I spent the day at the free SQL in the City event put on by Red Gate. For me this was not a financial decision (pre-con sessions cost extra above the general Summit registration) but rather a matter of interest.  I had already included money for pre-cons in this year’s training budget, but none of them really stood out to me, so even if the Red-Gate event were not going on at the same time, I probably would not have gone to any pre-cons this year.  However, the topics being presented at the SQL in the City event were of great interest to me.  There promised to be good information on Continuous Integration and automated deployment of database changes, which lately has been a real hot topic at my work.  And indeed, Red-Gate announced the release of a new tool (still in Early Access Program…a.k.a. Beta) which is called the Deployment Manager.  Since we are in the middle of a TFS implementation project, it will be interesting to see how this plays out and compares to what we put together with the automated builds in TFS.  But, as I understand it, the primary focus of Deployment Manager is not to be the Build process (Red Gate uses JetBrains’ Team City for that in their shop) but rather to aid in the deployment of those build packages, as well as providing easy rollback and a good visualization of which versions of software are in which environments.  It looks promising and I’ve already downloaded the installer package to play with it later. Overall, I was quite impressed with the SQL in the City event.  Having heard many current and past members of the PASS Board of Directors describe the challenges of putting on a large conference, and the growing pains that the PASS Summit has gone through, I am even more impressed that the Red Gate event ran as smoothly as it did.  And it is quite impressive the amount of money that Red Gate must have spent given that this was a no-charge event to attend, they had a very nice hot lunch, and the after-event drinks celebration.  Well done, folks! Of course it was great to hear from a variety of speakers.  Today I listened to some folks from Red Gate like Grant Fritchey (blog | @GFritchey) and David Atkinson (Product Manager for SQL Source Control and now the Deployment Manager tool set); and also Brent Ozar (blog | @BrentO) and Buck Woody (blog | @BuckWoody).  By the way, if you have never seen either Brent or Buck speak, you really should.  Different styles, but both are very entertaining and educational at the same time.  I love Buck’s sense of humor (here’s a tip…don’t be late to Buck’s session or you’ll become part of the presentation) and I praise Brent’s slides.  Brent’s style very much reminds me of that espoused by Garr Reynolds on his Presentation Zen blog (and book) and I am impressed that he can make a technical presentation so engaging. It was a great day, a great way to kick off the week, and I am excited to get into the full Summit!

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  • Methods of learning / teaching programming

    - by Mark Avenius
    When I was in school, I had a difficult time getting into programming because of a catch-22 in the learning process: I didn't know how to write anything because I didn't know what keywords and commands meant. For example (as a student, I would think), "what does this using namespace std; thing do anyway? I didn't know what keywords and commands meant because I hadn't written anything. This basically led me to spending countless long night cursing the compiler as I made minor tweaks to my assignments until they would compile (and hopefully perform whatever operation they were supposed to). Is there a teaching/learning method that anyone uses that gets around this catch-22? I am trying to make this non-argumentative, which is why I don't want to know the 'best' method, but rather which methods exist.

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  • How to ensure images all loaded before I reference in my HTML canvas [closed]

    - by mark stephens
    I want to draw some images in on a HTML canvas with context.drawImage(Im1 ,205,18,184,38); In order to make sure it loads I need to put in code like this but then I cannot draw things with it var Im1 = new Image(); Im1.src="rechnung11014page1/img/1/Im1.png"; Im1.onload = function() { context.drawImage(Im1 ,205,18,184,38); } Is there a way to load all the images and then execute a block of code using several images?

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  • How to Skip the Start Screen and Boot to the Desktop in Windows 8.1

    - by Mark Wilson
    For almost everyone who made the upgrade, Windows 8 proved to be something of a disappointment for one reason or another. Windows 8.1 (or Windows Blue) was released to address many of the issues users had complained about including reintroducing the ability to boot straight to the desktop. Being able to boot to the desktop rather than the Start screen is something that people have been clammering for ever since the first preview versions of Windows 8 were unveiled. There have been various third-party tools released as numerous workarounds used to get around the problem, but now it is an option that is built directly into the operating system. You’ll need to have downloaded and installed the update in order to proceed, but once you have done this, things are very simple. When you have Windows up and running after the upgrade, right click an empty section of the taskbar and select properties to bring up the newly named “Taskbar and Navigation properties” dialog.  Move to the Navigation tab and look in the “Start screen” section in the lower half of the dialog. Check the box labelled ‘Go to the desktop instead of Start when I sign in” and click OK.    

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  • Convert ddply {plyr} to Oracle R Enterprise, or use with Embedded R Execution

    - by Mark Hornick
    The plyr package contains a set of tools for partitioning a problem into smaller sub-problems that can be more easily processed. One function within {plyr} is ddply, which allows you to specify subsets of a data.frame and then apply a function to each subset. The result is gathered into a single data.frame. Such a capability is very convenient. The function ddply also has a parallel option that if TRUE, will apply the function in parallel, using the backend provided by foreach. This type of functionality is available through Oracle R Enterprise using the ore.groupApply function. In this blog post, we show a few examples from Sean Anderson's "A quick introduction to plyr" to illustrate the correpsonding functionality using ore.groupApply. To get started, we'll create a demo data set and load the plyr package. set.seed(1) d <- data.frame(year = rep(2000:2014, each = 3),         count = round(runif(45, 0, 20))) dim(d) library(plyr) This first example takes the data frame, partitions it by year, and calculates the coefficient of variation of the count, returning a data frame. # Example 1 res <- ddply(d, "year", function(x) {   mean.count <- mean(x$count)   sd.count <- sd(x$count)   cv <- sd.count/mean.count   data.frame(cv.count = cv)   }) To illustrate the equivalent functionality in Oracle R Enterprise, using embedded R execution, we use the ore.groupApply function on the same data, but pushed to the database, creating an ore.frame. The function ore.push creates a temporary table in the database, returning a proxy object, the ore.frame. D <- ore.push(d) res <- ore.groupApply (D, D$year, function(x) {   mean.count <- mean(x$count)   sd.count <- sd(x$count)   cv <- sd.count/mean.count   data.frame(year=x$year[1], cv.count = cv)   }, FUN.VALUE=data.frame(year=1, cv.count=1)) You'll notice the similarities in the first three arguments. With ore.groupApply, we augment the function to return the specific data.frame we want. We also specify the argument FUN.VALUE, which describes the resulting data.frame. From our previous blog posts, you may recall that by default, ore.groupApply returns an ore.list containing the results of each function invocation. To get a data.frame, we specify the structure of the result. The results in both cases are the same, however the ore.groupApply result is an ore.frame. In this case the data stays in the database until it's actually required. This can result in significant memory and time savings whe data is large. R> class(res) [1] "ore.frame" attr(,"package") [1] "OREbase" R> head(res)    year cv.count 1 2000 0.3984848 2 2001 0.6062178 3 2002 0.2309401 4 2003 0.5773503 5 2004 0.3069680 6 2005 0.3431743 To make the ore.groupApply execute in parallel, you can specify the argument parallel with either TRUE, to use default database parallelism, or to a specific number, which serves as a hint to the database as to how many parallel R engines should be used. The next ddply example uses the summarise function, which creates a new data.frame. In ore.groupApply, the year column is passed in with the data. Since no automatic creation of columns takes place, we explicitly set the year column in the data.frame result to the value of the first row, since all rows received by the function have the same year. # Example 2 ddply(d, "year", summarise, mean.count = mean(count)) res <- ore.groupApply (D, D$year, function(x) {   mean.count <- mean(x$count)   data.frame(year=x$year[1], mean.count = mean.count)   }, FUN.VALUE=data.frame(year=1, mean.count=1)) R> head(res)    year mean.count 1 2000 7.666667 2 2001 13.333333 3 2002 15.000000 4 2003 3.000000 5 2004 12.333333 6 2005 14.666667 Example 3 uses the transform function with ddply, which modifies the existing data.frame. With ore.groupApply, we again construct the data.frame explicilty, which is returned as an ore.frame. # Example 3 ddply(d, "year", transform, total.count = sum(count)) res <- ore.groupApply (D, D$year, function(x) {   total.count <- sum(x$count)   data.frame(year=x$year[1], count=x$count, total.count = total.count)   }, FUN.VALUE=data.frame(year=1, count=1, total.count=1)) > head(res)    year count total.count 1 2000 5 23 2 2000 7 23 3 2000 11 23 4 2001 18 40 5 2001 4 40 6 2001 18 40 In Example 4, the mutate function with ddply enables you to define new columns that build on columns just defined. Since the construction of the data.frame using ore.groupApply is explicit, you always have complete control over when and how to use columns. # Example 4 ddply(d, "year", mutate, mu = mean(count), sigma = sd(count),       cv = sigma/mu) res <- ore.groupApply (D, D$year, function(x) {   mu <- mean(x$count)   sigma <- sd(x$count)   cv <- sigma/mu   data.frame(year=x$year[1], count=x$count, mu=mu, sigma=sigma, cv=cv)   }, FUN.VALUE=data.frame(year=1, count=1, mu=1,sigma=1,cv=1)) R> head(res)    year count mu sigma cv 1 2000 5 7.666667 3.055050 0.3984848 2 2000 7 7.666667 3.055050 0.3984848 3 2000 11 7.666667 3.055050 0.3984848 4 2001 18 13.333333 8.082904 0.6062178 5 2001 4 13.333333 8.082904 0.6062178 6 2001 18 13.333333 8.082904 0.6062178 In Example 5, ddply is used to partition data on multiple columns before constructing the result. Realizing this with ore.groupApply involves creating an index column out of the concatenation of the columns used for partitioning. This example also allows us to illustrate using the ORE transparency layer to subset the data. # Example 5 baseball.dat <- subset(baseball, year > 2000) # data from the plyr package x <- ddply(baseball.dat, c("year", "team"), summarize,            homeruns = sum(hr)) We first push the data set to the database to get an ore.frame. We then add the composite column and perform the subset, using the transparency layer. Since the results from database execution are unordered, we will explicitly sort these results and view the first 6 rows. BB.DAT <- ore.push(baseball) BB.DAT$index <- with(BB.DAT, paste(year, team, sep="+")) BB.DAT2 <- subset(BB.DAT, year > 2000) X <- ore.groupApply (BB.DAT2, BB.DAT2$index, function(x) {   data.frame(year=x$year[1], team=x$team[1], homeruns=sum(x$hr))   }, FUN.VALUE=data.frame(year=1, team="A", homeruns=1), parallel=FALSE) res <- ore.sort(X, by=c("year","team")) R> head(res)    year team homeruns 1 2001 ANA 4 2 2001 ARI 155 3 2001 ATL 63 4 2001 BAL 58 5 2001 BOS 77 6 2001 CHA 63 Our next example is derived from the ggplot function documentation. This illustrates the use of ddply within using the ggplot2 package. We first create a data.frame with demo data and use ddply to create some statistics for each group (gp). We then use ggplot to produce the graph. We can take this same code, push the data.frame df to the database and invoke this on the database server. The graph will be returned to the client window, as depicted below. # Example 6 with ggplot2 library(ggplot2) df <- data.frame(gp = factor(rep(letters[1:3], each = 10)),                  y = rnorm(30)) # Compute sample mean and standard deviation in each group library(plyr) ds <- ddply(df, .(gp), summarise, mean = mean(y), sd = sd(y)) # Set up a skeleton ggplot object and add layers: ggplot() +   geom_point(data = df, aes(x = gp, y = y)) +   geom_point(data = ds, aes(x = gp, y = mean),              colour = 'red', size = 3) +   geom_errorbar(data = ds, aes(x = gp, y = mean,                                ymin = mean - sd, ymax = mean + sd),              colour = 'red', width = 0.4) DF <- ore.push(df) ore.tableApply(DF, function(df) {   library(ggplot2)   library(plyr)   ds <- ddply(df, .(gp), summarise, mean = mean(y), sd = sd(y))   ggplot() +     geom_point(data = df, aes(x = gp, y = y)) +     geom_point(data = ds, aes(x = gp, y = mean),                colour = 'red', size = 3) +     geom_errorbar(data = ds, aes(x = gp, y = mean,                                  ymin = mean - sd, ymax = mean + sd),                   colour = 'red', width = 0.4) }) But let's take this one step further. Suppose we wanted to produce multiple graphs, partitioned on some index column. We replicate the data three times and add some noise to the y values, just to make the graphs a little different. We also create an index column to form our three partitions. Note that we've also specified that this should be executed in parallel, allowing Oracle Database to control and manage the server-side R engines. The result of ore.groupApply is an ore.list that contains the three graphs. Each graph can be viewed by printing the list element. df2 <- rbind(df,df,df) df2$y <- df2$y + rnorm(nrow(df2)) df2$index <- c(rep(1,300), rep(2,300), rep(3,300)) DF2 <- ore.push(df2) res <- ore.groupApply(DF2, DF2$index, function(df) {   df <- df[,1:2]   library(ggplot2)   library(plyr)   ds <- ddply(df, .(gp), summarise, mean = mean(y), sd = sd(y))   ggplot() +     geom_point(data = df, aes(x = gp, y = y)) +     geom_point(data = ds, aes(x = gp, y = mean),                colour = 'red', size = 3) +     geom_errorbar(data = ds, aes(x = gp, y = mean,                                  ymin = mean - sd, ymax = mean + sd),                   colour = 'red', width = 0.4)   }, parallel=TRUE) res[[1]] res[[2]] res[[3]] To recap, we've illustrated how various uses of ddply from the plyr package can be realized in ore.groupApply, which affords the user explicit control over the contents of the data.frame result in a straightforward manner. We've also highlighted how ddply can be used within an ore.groupApply call.

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