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• Update table instantly or “Bulk” Update in database later? And is it advisable?

  - by Mestika

  Hi, I have a question regarding a semi-constant update in a database. In short it is regarding a checkout function on a web page, which each time the checkout function is evoked it do five steps. I want to try to optimize this function and have my eye on a step where I update a table each time the checkout is performed. I take the information retrieved from the shopping cart and then update the table in question. I do have some indexes on the table, the gain from those are greater than leaving them so this is a cost I’m willing to take. Now, my question is. Could it in some way regarding to performance be better to not update the table instantly but collect every checkout items and save them in some way (maybe in a file) and then at a specific time (or several times) at day take this file and then update the table with the new information. Then I started thinking about if there was a possibility to use some sort of Bulk Update to take a file, hashmap, array (or?) and then update it. And I’m using IBM DB2 version 9.7 Mestika

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• Cryptography for P2P card game

  - by zephyr

  I'm considering writing a computer adaptation of a semi-popular card game. I'd like to make it function without a central server, and I'm trying to come up with a scheme that will make cheating impossible without having to trust the client. The basic problem as I see it is that each player has a several piles of cards (draw deck, current hand and discard deck). It must be impossible for either player to alter the composition of these piles except when allowed by the game rules (ie drawing or discarding cards), nor should players be able to know what is in their or their oppponent's piles. I feel like there should be some way to use something like public-key cryptography to accomplish this, but I keep finding holes in my schemes. Can anyone suggest a protocol or point me to some resources on this topic? [Edit] Ok, so I've been thinking about this a bit more, and here's an idea I've come up with. If you can poke any holes in it please let me know. At shuffle time, a player has a stack of cards whose value is known to them. They take these values, concatenate a random salt to each, then hash them. They record the salts, and pass the hashes to their opponent. The opponent concatenates a salt of their own, hashes again, then shuffles the hashes and passes the deck back to the original player. I believe at this point, the deck has been randomized and neither player can have any knowledge of the values. However, when a card is drawn, the opponent can reveal their salt, allowing the first player to determine what the original value is, and when the card is played the player reveals their own salt, allowing the opponent to verify the card value.

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• Is there any way to output the actual array in c++

  - by user2511129

  So, I'm beginning C++, with a semi-adequate background of python. In python, you make a list/array like this: x = [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9] Then, to print the list, with the square brackets included, all you do is: print x That would display this: [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9] How would I do the exact same thing in c++, print the brackets and the elements, in an elegant/clean fashion? NOTE I don't want just the elements of the array, I want the whole array, like this: {1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9} When I use this code to try to print the array, this happens: input: #include <iostream> using namespace std; int main() { int anArray[9] = {1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9}; cout << anArray << endl; } The output is where in memory the array is stored in (I think this is so, correct me if I'm wrong): 0x28fedc As a sidenote, I don't know how to create an array with many different data types, such as integers, strings, and so on, so if someone can enlighten me, that'd be great! Thanks for answering my painstakingly obvious/noobish questions!

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• How do I size a second div to be 100% height underneath a fixed image?

  - by mk

  I'm using semi-transparent PNGs (due to the designer's overlapping of elements) and trying to achieve a layout that represents the design while still working well on the web. Thus I have simple HTML: <div id="right"> <div id="welcome"></div> <div id="welcomeRepeatingBottom"></div> </div> And I'm trying to use CSS as follows: #right { height: 100%; position: absolute; right: 0px; top: 0px; width: 430px; } #welcome { background-image: url("welcome.png"); height: 614px; width: 430px; position: absolute; top: 0px; left: 0px; } #welcomeRepeatingBottom { background: url("welcomeBottom.png") repeat-y; height: 100%; left: 0px; position: absolute; top: 614px; width: 430px; } The problem is...the #welcomeRepeatingBottom div can't overlap the #welcome div because of the transparency. What I really want is the #welcomeRepeatingBottom div to be height: 100% - 614px, but of course you can't do that. Am I missing something here or do I need to manipulate these values with JavaScript/JQuery?

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• Amazon Product Advertising API SOAP Namespace Changes

  - by Rick Strahl

  About two months ago (twowards the end of February 2012 I think) Amazon decided to change the namespace of the Product Advertising API. The error that would come up was: <ItemSearchResponse > was not expected. If you've used the Amazon Product Advertising API you probably know that Amazon has made it a habit to break the services every few years or so and I guess last month was about the time for another one. Basically the service namespace of the document has been changed and responses from the service just failed outright even though the rest of the schema looks fine. Now I looked around for a while trying to find a recent update to the Product Advertising API - something semi-official looking but everything is dated around 2009. Really??? And it's not just .NET - the newest thing on the sample/APIs is dated early 2011 and a handful of 2010 samples. There are newer full APIs for the 'cloud' offerings, but the Product Advertising API apparently isn't part of that. After searching for quite a bit trying to trace this down myself and trying some of the newer samples (which also failed) I found an obscure forum post that describes the solution of getting past the namespace issue. FWIW, I've been using an old version of the Product Advertising API using the old Microsoft WSE3 services (pre-WCF), which provides some of the WS* security features required by the Amazon service. The fix for this code is to explicitly override the namespace declaration on each of the imported service method signatures. The old service namespace (at least on my build) was: http://webservices.amazon.com/AWSECommerceService/2009-03-31 and it should be changed to: http://webservices.amazon.com/AWSECommerceService/2011-08-01 Change it on the class header:[Microsoft.Web.Services3.Messaging.SoapService("http://webservices.amazon.com/AWSECommerceService/2011-08-01")] [System.Xml.Serialization.XmlIncludeAttribute(typeof(Property[]))] [System.Xml.Serialization.XmlIncludeAttribute(typeof(BrowseNode[]))] [System.Xml.Serialization.XmlIncludeAttribute(typeof(TransactionItem[]))] public partial class AWSECommerceService : Microsoft.Web.Services3.Messaging.SoapClient { and on all method signatures:[Microsoft.Web.Services3.Messaging.SoapMethodAttribute("http://soap.amazon.com/ItemSearch")] [return: System.Xml.Serialization.XmlElementAttribute("ItemSearchResponse", Namespace="http://webservices.amazon.com/AWSECommerceService/2011-08-01")] public ItemSearchResponse ItemSearch(ItemSearch ItemSearch1) { Microsoft.Web.Services3.SoapEnvelope results = base.SendRequestResponse("ItemSearch", ItemSearch1); return ((ItemSearchResponse)(results.GetBodyObject(typeof(ItemSearchResponse), this.SoapServiceAttribute.TargetNamespace))); } It's easy to do with a Search and Replace on the above strings. Amazon Services <rant> FWIW, I've not been impressed by Amazon's service offerings. While the services work well, their documentation and tool support is absolutely horrendous. I was recently working with a customer on an old AWS application and their old API had been completely removed with a new API that wasn't even a close match. One old API call resulted in requiring three different APIs to perform the same functionality. We had to re-write the entire piece from scratch essentially. The documentation was downright wrong, and incomplete and so scattered it was next to impossible to follow. The examples weren't examples at all - they're mockups of real service calls with fake data that didn't even provide everything that was required to make same service calls work. Additionally there appears to be just about no public support from Amazon, only peer support which is sparse at best - and getting a hold of somebody at Amazon, even for pay seems to be mythical task. It's a terrible business model they have going. I can't see why anybody would put themselves through this sort of customer and development experience. Sad really, but an experience we see more and more these days. Nobody puts in the time to document anything anymore, leaving it to devs to figure this stuff out over and over again… </rant>© Rick Strahl, West Wind Technologies, 2005-2012Posted in CSharp  Web Services   Tweet !function(d,s,id){var js,fjs=d.getElementsByTagName(s)[0];if(!d.getElementById(id)){js=d.createElement(s);js.id=id;js.src="//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js";fjs.parentNode.insertBefore(js,fjs);}}(document,"script","twitter-wjs"); (function() { var po = document.createElement('script'); po.type = 'text/javascript'; po.async = true; po.src = 'https://apis.google.com/js/plusone.js'; var s = document.getElementsByTagName('script')[0]; s.parentNode.insertBefore(po, s); })();

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• Fast Data: Go Big. Go Fast.

  - by Dain C. Hansen

  Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 For those of you who may have missed it, today’s second full day of Oracle OpenWorld 2012 started with a rumpus. Joe Tucci, from EMC outlined the human face of big data with real examples of how big data is transforming our world. And no not the usual tried-and-true weblog examples, but real stories about taxi cab drivers in Singapore using big data to better optimize their routes as well as folks just trying to get a better hair cut. Next we heard from Thomas Kurian who talked at length about the important platform characteristics of Oracle’s Cloud and more specifically Oracle’s expanded Cloud Services portfolio. Especially interesting to our integration customers are the messaging support for Oracle’s Cloud applications. What this means is that now Oracle’s Cloud applications have a lightweight integration fabric that on-premise applications can communicate to it via REST-APIs using Oracle SOA Suite. It’s an important element to our strategy at Oracle that supports this idea that whether your requirements are for private or public, Oracle has a solution in the Cloud for all of your applications and we give you more deployment choice than any vendor. If this wasn’t enough to get the juices flowing, later that morning we heard from Hasan Rizvi who outlined in his Fusion Middleware session the four most important enterprise imperatives: Social, Mobile, Cloud, and a brand new one: Fast Data. Today, Rizvi made an important step in the definition of this term to explain that he believes it’s a convergence of four essential technology elements: Event Processing for event filtering, business rules – with Oracle Event Processing Data Transformation and Loading - with Oracle Data Integrator Real-time replication and integration – with Oracle GoldenGate Analytics and data discovery – with Oracle Business Intelligence Each of these four elements can be considered (and architect-ed) together on a single integrated platform that can help customers integrate any type of data (structured, semi-structured) leveraging new styles of big data technologies (MapReduce, HDFS, Hive, NoSQL) to process more volume and variety of data at a faster velocity with greater results.  Fast data processing (and especially real-time) has always been our credo at Oracle with each one of these products in Fusion Middleware. For example, Oracle GoldenGate continues to be made even faster with the recent 11g R2 Release of Oracle GoldenGate which gives us some even greater optimization to Oracle Database with Integrated Capture, as well as some new heterogeneity capabilities. With Oracle Data Integrator with Big Data Connectors, we’re seeing much improved performance by running MapReduce transformations natively on Hadoop systems. And with Oracle Event Processing we’re seeing some remarkable performance with customers like NTT Docomo. Check out their upcoming session at Oracle OpenWorld on Wednesday to hear more how this customer is using Event processing and Big Data together. If you missed any of these sessions and keynotes, not to worry. There's on-demand versions available on the Oracle OpenWorld website. You can also checkout our upcoming webcast where we will outline some of these new breakthroughs in Data Integration technologies for Big Data, Cloud, and Real-time in more details. /* 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-priority:99; mso-style-qformat: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:10.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman";}

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• How to Set Up Your Enterprise Social Organization

  - by Mike Stiles

  The rush for business organizations to establish, grow, and adopt social was driven out of necessity and inevitability. The result, however, was a sudden, booming social presence creating touch points with customers, partners and influencers, but without any corporate social organization or structure in place to effectively manage it. Even today, many business leaders remain uncertain as to how to corral this social media thing so that it makes sense for their enterprise. Imagine their panic when they hear one of the most beneficial approaches to corporate use of social involves giving up at least some hierarchical control and empowering employees to publicly engage customers. And beyond that, they should also be empowered, regardless of their corporate status, to engage and collaborate internally, spurring “off the grid” innovation. An HBR blog points out that traditionally, enterprise organizations function from the top down, and employees work end-to-end, structured around business processes. But the social enterprise opens up structures that up to now have not exactly been embraced by turf-protecting executives and managers. The blog asks, “What if leaders could create a future where customers, associates and suppliers are no longer seen as objects in the system but as valued sources of innovation, ideas and energy?” What if indeed? The social enterprise activates internal resources without the usual obsession with position. It is the dawn of mass collaboration. That does not, however, mean this mass collaboration has to lead to uncontrolled chaos. In an extended interview with Oracle, Altimeter Group analyst Jeremiah Owyang and Oracle SVP Reggie Bradford paint a complete picture of today’s social enterprise, including internal organizational structures Altimeter Group has seen emerge. One sign of a mature social enterprise is the establishing of a social Center of Excellence (CoE), which serves as a hub for high-level social strategy, training and education, research, measurement and accountability, and vendor selection. This CoE is led by a corporate Social Strategist, most likely from a Marketing or Corporate Communications background. Reporting to them are the Community Managers, the front lines of customer interaction and engagement; business unit liaisons that coordinate the enterprise; and social media campaign/product managers, social analysts, and developers. With content rising as the defining factor for social success, Altimeter also sees a Content Strategist position emerging. Across the enterprise, Altimeter has seen 5 organizational patterns. Watching the video will give you the pros and cons of each. Decentralized - Anyone can do anything at any time on any social channel. Centralized – One central groups controls all social communication for the company. Hub and Spoke – A centralized group, but business units can operate their own social under the hub’s guidance and execution. Most enterprises are using this model. Dandelion – Each business unit develops their own social strategy & staff, has its own ability to deploy, and its own ability to engage under the central policies of the CoE. Honeycomb – Every employee can do social, but as opposed to the decentralized model, it’s coordinated and monitored on one platform. The average enterprise has a whopping 178 social accounts, nearly ¼ of which are usually semi-idle and need to be scrapped. The last thing any C-suite needs is to cope with fragmented technologies, solutions and platforms. It’s neither scalable nor strategic. The prepared, effective social enterprise has a technology partner that can quickly and holistically integrate emerging platforms and technologies, such that whatever internal social command structure you’ve set up can continue efficiently executing strategy without skipping a beat. @mikestiles

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• Help trying to get two-finger scrolling to work on Asus UL80VT

  - by Dan2k3k4

  Multi-touch works fine on Windows 7 with: two-fingers scroll vertical and horizontally, two-finger tap for middle click, and three-finger tap for right click. However with Ubuntu, I've never been able to get multi-touch to "save" and work, I was able to get it to work a few times but after restarting - it would just reset back. I have the settings for two-finger scrolling on: Mouse and Touchpad Touchpad Two-finger scrolling (selected) Enable horizontal scrolling (ticked) The cursor stops moving when I try to scroll with two fingers, but it doesn't actually scroll the page. When I perform xinput list, I get: Virtual core pointer id=2 [master pointer (3)] ? Virtual core XTEST pointer id=4 [slave pointer (2)] ? ETPS/2 Elantech ETF0401 id=13 [slave pointer (2)] I've tried to install some 'synaptics-dkms' bug-fix (from a few years back) but that didn't work, so I removed that. I've tried installing 'uTouch' but that didn't seem to do anything so removed it. Here's what I have installed now: dpkg --get-selections installed-software grep 'touch\|mouse\|track\|synapt' installed-software libsoundtouch0 --- install libutouch-evemu1 --- install libutouch-frame1 --- install libutouch-geis1 --- install libutouch-grail1 --- install printer-driver-ptouch --- install ptouch-driver --- install xserver-xorg-input-multitouch --- install xserver-xorg-input-mouse --- install xserver-xorg-input-vmmouse --- install libnetfilter-conntrack3 --- install libxatracker1 --- install xserver-xorg-input-synaptics --- install So, I'll start again, what should I do now to get two-finger scrolling to work and ensure it works after restarting? Also doing: synclient TapButton1=1 TapButton2=2 TapButton3=3 ...works but doesn't save after restarting. However doing: synclient VertTwoFingerScroll=1 HorizTwoFingerScroll=1 Does NOT work to fix the two-finger scrolling. Output of: cat /var/log/Xorg.0.log | grep -i synaptics [ 4.576] (II) LoadModule: "synaptics" [ 4.577] (II) Loading /usr/lib/xorg/modules/input/synaptics_drv.so [ 4.577] (II) Module synaptics: vendor="X.Org Foundation" [ 4.577] (II) Using input driver 'synaptics' for 'ETPS/2 Elantech ETF0401' [ 4.577] (II) Loading /usr/lib/xorg/modules/input/synaptics_drv.so [ 4.584] (--) synaptics: ETPS/2 Elantech ETF0401: x-axis range 0 - 1088 [ 4.584] (--) synaptics: ETPS/2 Elantech ETF0401: y-axis range 0 - 704 [ 4.584] (--) synaptics: ETPS/2 Elantech ETF0401: pressure range 0 - 255 [ 4.584] (--) synaptics: ETPS/2 Elantech ETF0401: finger width range 0 - 16 [ 4.584] (--) synaptics: ETPS/2 Elantech ETF0401: buttons: left right middle double triple scroll-buttons [ 4.584] (--) synaptics: ETPS/2 Elantech ETF0401: Vendor 0x2 Product 0xe [ 4.584] (--) synaptics: ETPS/2 Elantech ETF0401: touchpad found [ 4.588] (**) synaptics: ETPS/2 Elantech ETF0401: (accel) MinSpeed is now constant deceleration 2.5 [ 4.588] (**) synaptics: ETPS/2 Elantech ETF0401: MaxSpeed is now 1.75 [ 4.588] (**) synaptics: ETPS/2 Elantech ETF0401: AccelFactor is now 0.154 [ 4.589] (--) synaptics: ETPS/2 Elantech ETF0401: touchpad found Tried installing synaptiks but that didn't seem to work either, so removed it. Temporary Fix (works until I restart) Doing the following commands: modprobe -r psmouse modprobe psmouse proto=imps Works but now xinput list shows up as: Virtual core pointer id=2 [master pointer (3)] ? Virtual core XTEST pointer id=4 [slave pointer (2)] ? ImPS/2 Generic Wheel Mouse id=13 [slave pointer (2)] Instead of Elantech, and it gets reset when I reboot. Solution (not ideal for most people) So, I ended up reinstalling a fresh 12.04 after indirectly playing around with burg and plymouth then removing plymouth which removed 50+ packages (I saw the warnings but was way too tired and assumed I could just 'reinstall' them all after (except that didn't work). Right now xinput list shows up as: ? Virtual core pointer --- id=2 [master pointer (3)] ? ? Virtual core XTEST pointer --- id=4 [slave pointer (2)] ? ? ETPS/2 Elantech Touchpad --- id=13 [slave pointer (2)] grep 'touch\|mouse\|track\|synapt' installed-software libnetfilter-conntrack3 --- install libsoundtouch0 --- install libutouch-evemu1 --- install libutouch-frame1 --- install libutouch-geis1 --- install libutouch-grail1 --- install libxatracker1 --- install mousetweaks --- install printer-driver-ptouch --- install xserver-xorg-input-mouse --- install xserver-xorg-input-synaptics --- install xserver-xorg-input-vmmouse --- install cat /var/log/Xorg.0.log | grep -i synaptics [ 4.890] (II) LoadModule: "synaptics" [ 4.891] (II) Loading /usr/lib/xorg/modules/input/synaptics_drv.so [ 4.892] (II) Module synaptics: vendor="X.Org Foundation" [ 4.892] (II) Using input driver 'synaptics' for 'ETPS/2 Elantech Touchpad' [ 4.892] (II) Loading /usr/lib/xorg/modules/input/synaptics_drv.so [ 4.956] (II) synaptics: ETPS/2 Elantech Touchpad: ignoring touch events for semi-multitouch device [ 4.956] (--) synaptics: ETPS/2 Elantech Touchpad: x-axis range 0 - 1088 [ 4.956] (--) synaptics: ETPS/2 Elantech Touchpad: y-axis range 0 - 704 [ 4.956] (--) synaptics: ETPS/2 Elantech Touchpad: pressure range 0 - 255 [ 4.956] (--) synaptics: ETPS/2 Elantech Touchpad: finger width range 0 - 15 [ 4.956] (--) synaptics: ETPS/2 Elantech Touchpad: buttons: left right double triple [ 4.956] (--) synaptics: ETPS/2 Elantech Touchpad: Vendor 0x2 Product 0xe [ 4.956] (--) synaptics: ETPS/2 Elantech Touchpad: touchpad found [ 4.980] () synaptics: ETPS/2 Elantech Touchpad: (accel) MinSpeed is now constant deceleration 2.5 [ 4.980] () synaptics: ETPS/2 Elantech Touchpad: MaxSpeed is now 1.75 [ 4.980] (**) synaptics: ETPS/2 Elantech Touchpad: AccelFactor is now 0.154 [ 4.980] (--) synaptics: ETPS/2 Elantech Touchpad: touchpad found So, if all else fails, reinstall Linux :/

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• BizTalk 2009 - Architecture Decisions

  - by StuartBrierley

  In the first step towards implementing a BizTalk 2009 environment, from development through to live, I put forward a proposal that detailed the options available, as well as the costs and benefits associated with these options, to allow an informed discusion to take place with the business drivers and budget holders of the project.  This ultimately lead to a decision being made to implement an initial BizTalk Server 2009 environment using the Standard Edition of the product. It is my hope that in the long term, as projects require it and allow, we will be looking to implement my ideal recommendation of a multi-server enterprise level environment, but given the differences in cost and the likely initial work load for the environment this was not something that I could fully recommend at this time.  However, it must be noted that this decision was made in full awareness of the limits of the standard edition, and the business drivers of this project were made fully aware of the risks associated with running without the failover capabilities of the enterprise edition. When considering the creation of this new BizTalk Server 2009 environment, I have also recommended the creation of the following pre-production environments:   Usage Environment Development Development of solutions; Unit testing against technical specifications; Initial load testing; Testing of deployment packages;  Visual Studio; BizTalk; SQL; Client PCs/Laptops; Server environment similar to Live implementation; Test Testing of Solutions against business and technical requirements;  BizTalk; SQL; Server environment similar to Live implementation; Pseudo-Live As Live environment to allow testing against Live implementation; Acts as back-up hardware in case of failure of Live environment; BizTalk; SQL; Server environment identical to Live implementation; The creation of these differing environments allows for the separation of the various stages of the development cycle.  The development environment is for use when actively developing a solution, it is a potentially volatile environment whose state at any given time can not be guaranteed.  It allows developers to carry out initial tests in an environment that is similar to the live environment and also provides an area for the testing of deployment packages prior to any release to the test environment. The test environment is intended to be a semi-volatile environment that is similar to the live environment.  It will change periodically through the development of a solution (or solutions) but should be otherwise stable.  It allows for the continued testing of a solution against requirements without the worry that the environment is being actively changed by any ongoing development.  This separation of development and test is crucial in ensuring the quality and control of the tested solution. The pseudo-live environment should be considered to be an almost static environment.  It should mimic the live environment and can act as back up hardware in the case of live failure.  This environment acts as an area to allow for “as live” testing, where the performance and behaviour of the live solutions can be replicated.  There should be relatively few changes to this environment, with software releases limited to “release candidate” level releases prior to going live. Whereas the pseudo-live environment should always mimic the live environment, to save on costs the development and test servers could be implemented on lower specification hardware.  Consideration can also be given to the use of a virtual server environment to further reduce hardware costs in the development and test environments, indeed this virtual approach can also be extended to pseudo-live and live assuming the underlying technology is in place. Although there is no requirement for the development and test server environments to be identical to live, the overriding architecture implemented should be the same as in live and an understanding must be gained of the performance differences to be expected across the different environments.

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• How to Set Up Your Enterprise Social Organization?

  - by Richard Lefebvre

  By Mike Stiles on Dec 04, 2012 The rush for business organizations to establish, grow, and adopt social was driven out of necessity and inevitability. The result, however, was a sudden, booming social presence creating touch points with customers, partners and influencers, but without any corporate social organization or structure in place to effectively manage it. Even today, many business leaders remain uncertain as to how to corral this social media thing so that it makes sense for their enterprise. Imagine their panic when they hear one of the most beneficial approaches to corporate use of social involves giving up at least some hierarchical control and empowering employees to publicly engage customers. And beyond that, they should also be empowered, regardless of their corporate status, to engage and collaborate internally, spurring “off the grid” innovation. An HBR blog points out that traditionally, enterprise organizations function from the top down, and employees work end-to-end, structured around business processes. But the social enterprise opens up structures that up to now have not exactly been embraced by turf-protecting executives and managers. The blog asks, “What if leaders could create a future where customers, associates and suppliers are no longer seen as objects in the system but as valued sources of innovation, ideas and energy?” What if indeed? The social enterprise activates internal resources without the usual obsession with position. It is the dawn of mass collaboration. That does not, however, mean this mass collaboration has to lead to uncontrolled chaos. In an extended interview with Oracle, Altimeter Group analyst Jeremiah Owyang and Oracle SVP Reggie Bradford paint a complete picture of today’s social enterprise, including internal organizational structures Altimeter Group has seen emerge. One sign of a mature social enterprise is the establishing of a social Center of Excellence (CoE), which serves as a hub for high-level social strategy, training and education, research, measurement and accountability, and vendor selection. This CoE is led by a corporate Social Strategist, most likely from a Marketing or Corporate Communications background. Reporting to them are the Community Managers, the front lines of customer interaction and engagement; business unit liaisons that coordinate the enterprise; and social media campaign/product managers, social analysts, and developers. With content rising as the defining factor for social success, Altimeter also sees a Content Strategist position emerging. Across the enterprise, Altimeter has seen 5 organizational patterns. Watching the video will give you the pros and cons of each. Decentralized - Anyone can do anything at any time on any social channel. Centralized – One central groups controls all social communication for the company. Hub and Spoke – A centralized group, but business units can operate their own social under the hub’s guidance and execution. Most enterprises are using this model. Dandelion – Each business unit develops their own social strategy & staff, has its own ability to deploy, and its own ability to engage under the central policies of the CoE. Honeycomb – Every employee can do social, but as opposed to the decentralized model, it’s coordinated and monitored on one platform. The average enterprise has a whopping 178 social accounts, nearly ¼ of which are usually semi-idle and need to be scrapped. The last thing any C-suite needs is to cope with fragmented technologies, solutions and platforms. It’s neither scalable nor strategic. The prepared, effective social enterprise has a technology partner that can quickly and holistically integrate emerging platforms and technologies, such that whatever internal social command structure you’ve set up can continue efficiently executing strategy without skipping a beat. @mikestiles

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• Windows Azure Recipe: Mobile Computing

  - by Clint Edmonson

  A while back, mashups were all the rage. The idea was to compose solutions that provided aggregation and integration across applications and services to make information more available, useful, and personal. Mashups ushered in the era of Web 2.0 in all it’s socially connected goodness. They taught us that to be successful, we needed to add web service APIs to our web applications. Web and client based mashups met with great success and have evolved even further with the introduction of the internet connected smartphone. Nothing is more available, useful, or personal than our smartphones. The current generation of cloud connected mobile computing mashups allow our mobilized workforces to receive, process, and react to information from disparate sources faster than ever before. Drivers Integration Reach Time to market Solution Here’s a sketch of a prototypical mobile computing solution using Windows Azure: Ingredients Web Role – with the phone running a dedicated client application, the web role is responsible for serving up backend web services that implement the solution’s core connected functionality. Database – used to store core operational and workflow data for the solution’s web services. Access Control – this service is used to authenticate and manage users identity, roles, and groups, possibly in conjunction with 3rd identity providers such as Windows LiveID, Google, Yahoo!, and Facebook. Worker Role – this role is used to handle the orchestration of long-running, complex, asynchronous operations. While much of the integration and interaction with other services can be handled directly by the mobile client application, it’s possible that the backend may need to integrate with 3rd party services as well. Offloading this work to a worker role better distributes computing resources and keeps the web roles focused on direct client interaction. Queues – these provide reliable, persistent messaging between applications and processes. They are an absolute necessity once asynchronous processing is involved. Queues facilitate the flow of distributed events and allow a solution to send push notifications back to mobile devices at appropriate times. Training & Resources These links point to online Windows Azure training labs and resources where you can learn more about the individual ingredients described above. (Note: The entire Windows Azure Training Kit can also be downloaded for offline use.) Windows Azure (16 labs) Windows Azure is an internet-scale cloud computing and services platform hosted in Microsoft data centers, which provides an operating system and a set of developer services which can be used individually or together. It gives developers the choice to build web applications; applications running on connected devices, PCs, or servers; or hybrid solutions offering the best of both worlds. New or enhanced applications can be built using existing skills with the Visual Studio development environment and the .NET Framework. With its standards-based and interoperable approach, the services platform supports multiple internet protocols, including HTTP, REST, SOAP, and plain XML SQL Azure (7 labs) Microsoft SQL Azure delivers on the Microsoft Data Platform vision of extending the SQL Server capabilities to the cloud as web-based services, enabling you to store structured, semi-structured, and unstructured data. Windows Azure Services (9 labs) As applications collaborate across organizational boundaries, ensuring secure transactions across disparate security domains is crucial but difficult to implement. Windows Azure Services provides hosted authentication and access control using powerful, secure, standards-based infrastructure. Windows Azure Toolkit for Windows Phone The Windows Azure Toolkit for Windows Phone is designed to make it easier for you to build mobile applications that leverage cloud services running in Windows Azure. The toolkit includes Visual Studio project templates for Windows Phone and Windows Azure, class libraries optimized for use on the phone, sample applications, and documentation Windows Azure Toolkit for iOS The Windows Azure Toolkit for iOS is a toolkit for developers to make it easy to access Windows Azure storage services from native iOS applications. The toolkit can be used for both iPhone and iPad applications, developed using Objective-C and XCode. Windows Azure Toolkit for Android The Windows Azure Toolkit for Android is a toolkit for developers to make it easy to work with Windows Azure from native Android applications. The toolkit can be used for native Android applications developed using Eclipse and the Android SDK. See my Windows Azure Resource Guide for more guidance on how to get started, including links web portals, training kits, samples, and blogs related to Windows Azure.

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• Big Data – Basics of Big Data Architecture – Day 4 of 21

  - by Pinal Dave

  In yesterday’s blog post we understood how Big Data evolution happened. Today we will understand basics of the Big Data Architecture. Big Data Cycle Just like every other database related applications, bit data project have its development cycle. Though three Vs (link) for sure plays an important role in deciding the architecture of the Big Data projects. Just like every other project Big Data project also goes to similar phases of the data capturing, transforming, integrating, analyzing and building actionable reporting on the top of  the data. While the process looks almost same but due to the nature of the data the architecture is often totally different. Here are few of the question which everyone should ask before going ahead with Big Data architecture. Questions to Ask How big is your total database? What is your requirement of the reporting in terms of time – real time, semi real time or at frequent interval? How important is the data availability and what is the plan for disaster recovery? What are the plans for network and physical security of the data? What platform will be the driving force behind data and what are different service level agreements for the infrastructure? This are just basic questions but based on your application and business need you should come up with the custom list of the question to ask. As I mentioned earlier this question may look quite simple but the answer will not be simple. When we are talking about Big Data implementation there are many other important aspects which we have to consider when we decide to go for the architecture. Building Blocks of Big Data Architecture It is absolutely impossible to discuss and nail down the most optimal architecture for any Big Data Solution in a single blog post, however, we can discuss the basic building blocks of big data architecture. Here is the image which I have built to explain how the building blocks of the Big Data architecture works. Above image gives good overview of how in Big Data Architecture various components are associated with each other. In Big Data various different data sources are part of the architecture hence extract, transform and integration are one of the most essential layers of the architecture. Most of the data is stored in relational as well as non relational data marts and data warehousing solutions. As per the business need various data are processed as well converted to proper reports and visualizations for end users. Just like software the hardware is almost the most important part of the Big Data Architecture. In the big data architecture hardware infrastructure is extremely important and failure over instances as well as redundant physical infrastructure is usually implemented. NoSQL in Data Management NoSQL is a very famous buzz word and it really means Not Relational SQL or Not Only SQL. This is because in Big Data Architecture the data is in any format. It can be unstructured, relational or in any other format or from any other data source. To bring all the data together relational technology is not enough, hence new tools, architecture and other algorithms are invented which takes care of all the kind of data. This is collectively called NoSQL. Tomorrow Next four days we will answer the Buzz Words – Hadoop. Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.sqlauthority.com) Filed under: Big Data, PostADay, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL Query, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, T SQL

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• How to get bearable 2D and 3D performance on AMD Radeon HD 6950?

  - by l0b0

  I have had an AMD Radeon HD 6950 (i.e., Cayman series) for a couple years now, and I have tried a lot of combinations of drivers and settings with terrible results. I'm completely at a loss as to how to proceed. The open source driver has much better 2D performance, but it offloads all OpenGL rendering to the CPU. What I've tried so far: All the latest stable Ubuntu releases in the period, plus one Linux Mint release. All the latest stable AMD Catalyst Proprietary Display Drivers, and currently 13.1. The unofficial wiki installation instructions for every Ubuntu version and the semi-official Ubuntu instructions. All the tips and tweaks I could find for Minecraft (Optifine, reducing settings to minimum), VLC (postprocessing at minimum, rendering at native video size), Catalyst Control Center (flipped every lever in there) and X11 (some binary toggles I can no longer remember). Results: Typically 13-15 FPS in Minecraft, 30 max (100+ in Windows with the same driver version). Around 10 FPS in Team Fortress 2 using the official Steam client. Choppy video playback, in Flash and with VLC. CPU use goes through the roof when rendering video (150% for 1080p on YouTube in Chromium, 100% for 1080p H264 in VLC). glxgears shows 12.5 FPS when maximized. fgl_glxgears shows 10 FPS when maximized. Hardware details from lshw: Motherboard ASUS P6X58D-E CPU Intel Core i7 CPU 950 @ 3.07GHz (never overclocked; 64 bit) 6 GB RAM Video card product "Cayman PRO [Radeon HD 6950]", vendor "Hynix Semiconductor (Hyundai Electronics)" 2 x 1920x1200 monitors, both connected with HDMI. I feel I must be missing something absolutely fundamental here. Is there no accelerated support for anything on 64-bit architectures? Does a dual monitor completely mess up the driver? $ fglrxinfo display: :0 screen: 0 OpenGL vendor string: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. OpenGL renderer string: AMD Radeon HD 6900 Series OpenGL version string: 4.2.11995 Compatibility Profile Context $ glxinfo | grep 'direct rendering' direct rendering: Yes I am currently using the open source driver, with the following results: Full frame rate and low CPU load when playing 1080p video. Black screen (but music in the background) in Team Fortress 2. Similar performance in Minecraft as the Catalyst driver. In hindsight obvious, since both end up offloading the rendering to the CPU. My /var/log/Xorg.0.log after upgrading to AMD Catalyst 13.1. Some possibly important lines: (WW) Falling back to old probe method for fglrx (WW) fglrx: No matching Device section for instance (BusID PCI:0@3:0:1) found The generated xorg.conf. The disabled "monitor" 0-DFP9 is actually an A/V receiver, which sometimes confuses the monitor drivers when turned on/off (but not in Windows). All three "monitor" devices are connected with HDMI. Edit: Chris Carter's suggestion to use the xorg-edgers PPA (Catalyst 13.1) resulted in some improvement, but still pretty bad performance overall: Minecraft stabilizes at 13-17 FPS, but at least the CPU load is "only" at 45-60%. Still 150% CPU use for 1080p video rendering on YouTube in Chromium. Massive improvement for 1080p H264 in VLC: 40-50% CPU use and no visible jitter glxgears performance about doubled to 25-30 FPS when maximized. fgl_glxgears still at ~10 FPS when maximized.

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• Does your analytic solution tell you what questions to ask?

  - by Manan Goel

  Analytic solutions exist to answer business questions. Conventional wisdom holds that if you can answer business questions quickly and accurately, you can take better business decisions and therefore achieve better business results and outperform the competition. Most business questions are well understood (read structured) so they are relatively easy to ask and answer. Questions like what were the revenues, cost of goods sold, margins, which regions and products outperformed/underperformed are relatively well understood and as a result most analytics solutions are well equipped to answer such questions. Things get really interesting when you are looking for answers but you don’t know what questions to ask in the first place? That’s like an explorer looking to make new discoveries by exploration. An example of this scenario is the Center of Disease Control (CDC) in United States trying to find the vaccine for the latest strand of the swine flu virus. The researchers at CDC may try hundreds of options before finally discovering the vaccine. The exploration process is inherently messy and complex. The process is fraught with false starts, one question or a hunch leading to another and the final result may look entirely different from what was envisioned in the beginning. Speed and flexibility is the key; speed so the hundreds of possible options can be explored quickly and flexibility because almost everything about the problem, solutions and the process is unknown.  Come to think of it, most organizations operate in an increasingly unknown or uncertain environment. Business Leaders have to take decisions based on a largely unknown view of the future. And since the value proposition of analytic solutions is to help the business leaders take better business decisions, for best results, consider adding information exploration and discovery capabilities to your analytic solution. Such exploratory analysis capabilities will help the business leaders perform even better by empowering them to refine their hunches, ask better questions and take better decisions. That’s your analytic system not only answering the questions but also suggesting what questions to ask in the first place. Today, most leading analytic software vendors offer exploratory analysis products as part of their analytic solutions offerings. So, what characteristics should be top of mind while evaluating the various solutions? The answer is quite simply the same characteristics that are essential for exploration and analysis – speed & flexibility. Speed is required because the system inherently has to be agile to handle hundreds of different scenarios with large volumes of data across large user populations. Exploration happens at the speed of thought so make sure that you system is capable of operating at speed of thought. Flexibility is required because the exploration process from start to finish is full of unknowns; unknown questions, answers and hunches. So, make sure that the system is capable of managing and exploring all relevant data – structured or unstructured like databases, enterprise applications, tweets, social media updates, documents, texts, emails etc. and provides flexible Google like user interface to quickly explore all relevant data. Getting Started You can help business leaders become “Decision Masters” by augmenting your analytic solution with information discovery capabilities. For best results make sure that the solution you choose is enterprise class and allows advanced, yet intuitive, exploration and analysis of complex and varied data including structured, semi-structured and unstructured data.  You can learn more about Oracle’s exploratory analysis solutions by clicking here.

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• Windows Azure Recipe: Consumer Portal

  - by Clint Edmonson

  Nearly every company on the internet has a web presence. Many are merely using theirs for informational purposes. More sophisticated portals allow customers to register their contact information and provide some level of interaction or customer support. But as our understanding of how consumers use the web increases, the more progressive companies are taking advantage of social web and rich media delivery to connect at a deeper level with the consumers of their goods and services. Drivers Cost reduction Scalability Global distribution Time to market Solution Here’s a sketch of how a Windows Azure Consumer Portal might be built out: Ingredients Web Role – this will host the core of the solution. Each web role is a virtual machine hosting an application written in ASP.NET (or optionally php, or node.js). The number of web roles can be scaled up or down as needed to handle peak and non-peak traffic loads. Database – every modern web application needs to store data. SQL Azure databases look and act exactly like their on-premise siblings but are fault tolerant and have data redundancy built in. Access Control (optional) – if identity needs to be tracked within the solution, the access control service combined with the Windows Identity Foundation framework provides out-of-the-box support for several social media platforms including Windows LiveID, Google, Yahoo!, Facebook. It also has a provider model to allow integration with other platforms as well. Caching (optional) – for sites with high traffic with lots of read-only data and lists, the distributed in-memory caching service can be used to cache and serve up static data at higher scale and speed than direct database requests. It can also be used to manage user session state. Blob Storage (optional) – for sites that serve up unstructured data such as documents, video, audio, device drivers, and more. The data is highly available and stored redundantly across data centers. Each entry in blob storage is provided with it’s own unique URL for direct access by the browser. Content Delivery Network (CDN) (optional) – for sites that service users around the globe, the CDN is an extension to blob storage that, when enabled, will automatically cache frequently accessed blobs and static site content at edge data centers around the world. The data can be delivered statically or streamed in the case of rich media content. Training Labs These links point to online Windows Azure training labs where you can learn more about the individual ingredients described above. (Note: The entire Windows Azure Training Kit can also be downloaded for offline use.) Windows Azure (16 labs) Windows Azure is an internet-scale cloud computing and services platform hosted in Microsoft data centers, which provides an operating system and a set of developer services which can be used individually or together. It gives developers the choice to build web applications; applications running on connected devices, PCs, or servers; or hybrid solutions offering the best of both worlds. New or enhanced applications can be built using existing skills with the Visual Studio development environment and the .NET Framework. With its standards-based and interoperable approach, the services platform supports multiple internet protocols, including HTTP, REST, SOAP, and plain XML SQL Azure (7 labs) Microsoft SQL Azure delivers on the Microsoft Data Platform vision of extending the SQL Server capabilities to the cloud as web-based services, enabling you to store structured, semi-structured, and unstructured data. Windows Azure Services (9 labs) As applications collaborate across organizational boundaries, ensuring secure transactions across disparate security domains is crucial but difficult to implement. Windows Azure Services provides hosted authentication and access control using powerful, secure, standards-based infrastructure. See my Windows Azure Resource Guide for more guidance on how to get started, including links web portals, training kits, samples, and blogs related to Windows Azure.

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• Process Is The New App by Leon Smiers

  - by JuergenKress

  Process-on-the-Fly #2 - Process is the New App The next generation of business process management and business rules management tools is so powerful that it actually can be seen as the successor to custom-built applications. Being able to define detailed process, flows, decision trees and business helps on both the business and IT side to create powerful, differentiating solutions that would have required extensive custom coding in the past. Now much of the definition can be done ‘on the fly,’ using visual models and (semi) natural language in the nearest proximity to the business. Over the years, ERP systems have been customized to enter organization-specific functionality into the ERP application. This leads to better support for the business, but at the same time involves higher costs for maintenance, high dependency on the personnel involved in this customization, long timelines to deliver change to the system and increased risk involved in upgrading the ERP system. However, the best of both worlds can be created by bringing back the functionality to out-of-the-box usage of the ERP system and at the same time introducing change and flexibility by means of externalized 'Process Apps' in direct connection with the ERP system. The ERP system (or legacy bespoke system, for that matter) is used as originally intended and designed, resulting in more predictable behavior of the system related to usage and performance, and clearly can be maintained in a more standardized and cost-effective way. The Prrocess App externalizes the needed functionality into a highly customizable application outside the ERP for which it is supported by rules engines, task inboxes and can be delivered to different channels. The reasons for needing Process Apps may include the following: The ERP system just doesn't deliver this functionality in a specific industry; the volatility of changing certain functionality is high; or an umbrella type of functionality across (ERP) silos is needed. An example of bringing all this together is around the hiring process for a new employee at a university. Oracle PeopleSoft HCM could be used as the HR system to store all employee details. In the hiring process, an authorization scheme is involved for getting the approval to create a contract for the employee-to-be. In the university world, this authorization scheme is complex and involves faculties/colleges (with different organizational structures) and cross-faculty organizational structures. Including such an authorization scheme into PeopleSoft would require a lot of customization. By adding a handle inside PeopleSoft towards an externalized authorization Process App, the execution of the authorization of the employee is done outside the ERP: in a tool that is aimed to deliver approval schemes via a worklist-type of application. The Process App here works as an add-on to the PeopleSoft system, but can also be extended to support the full lifecycle of the end-to-end hiring process with the possibility to involve multiple applications. The actual core functionality is kept in the supporting ERP systems, while at the same time the Process App acts as an umbrella function to control the end-to-end flow and give insight into the efficiency of the end-to-end process. How to get there? Read the complete article here. SOA & BPM Partner Community For regular information on Oracle SOA Suite become a member in the SOA & BPM Partner Community for registration please visit www.oracle.com/goto/emea/soa (OPN account required) If you need support with your account please contact the Oracle Partner Business Center. Blog Twitter LinkedIn Facebook Wiki Technorati Tags: Capgemini,Leon Smiers,SOA Community,Oracle SOA,Oracle BPM,Community,OPN,Jürgen Kress

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• Is there an easy way to type in common math symbols?

  - by srcspider

  Disclaimer: I'm sure someone is going to moan about easy-of-use, for the purpose of this question consider readability to be the only factor that matters So I found this site that converts to easting northing, it's not really important what that even means but here's how the piece of javascript looks. /** * Convert Ordnance Survey grid reference easting/northing coordinate to (OSGB36) latitude/longitude * * @param {OsGridRef} gridref - easting/northing to be converted to latitude/longitude * @returns {LatLonE} latitude/longitude (in OSGB36) of supplied grid reference */ OsGridRef.osGridToLatLong = function(gridref) { var E = gridref.easting; var N = gridref.northing; var a = 6377563.396, b = 6356256.909; // Airy 1830 major & minor semi-axes var F0 = 0.9996012717; // NatGrid scale factor on central meridian var f0 = 49*Math.PI/180, ?0 = -2*Math.PI/180; // NatGrid true origin var N0 = -100000, E0 = 400000; // northing & easting of true origin, metres var e2 = 1 - (b*b)/(a*a); // eccentricity squared var n = (a-b)/(a+b), n2 = n*n, n3 = n*n*n; // n, n², n³ var f=f0, M=0; do { f = (N-N0-M)/(a*F0) + f; var Ma = (1 + n + (5/4)*n2 + (5/4)*n3) * (f-f0); var Mb = (3*n + 3*n*n + (21/8)*n3) * Math.sin(f-f0) * Math.cos(f+f0); var Mc = ((15/8)*n2 + (15/8)*n3) * Math.sin(2*(f-f0)) * Math.cos(2*(f+f0)); var Md = (35/24)*n3 * Math.sin(3*(f-f0)) * Math.cos(3*(f+f0)); M = b * F0 * (Ma - Mb + Mc - Md); // meridional arc } while (N-N0-M >= 0.00001); // ie until < 0.01mm var cosf = Math.cos(f), sinf = Math.sin(f); var ? = a*F0/Math.sqrt(1-e2*sinf*sinf); // nu = transverse radius of curvature var ? = a*F0*(1-e2)/Math.pow(1-e2*sinf*sinf, 1.5); // rho = meridional radius of curvature var ?2 = ?/?-1; // eta = ? var tanf = Math.tan(f); var tan2f = tanf*tanf, tan4f = tan2f*tan2f, tan6f = tan4f*tan2f; var secf = 1/cosf; var ?3 = ?*?*?, ?5 = ?3*?*?, ?7 = ?5*?*?; var VII = tanf/(2*?*?); var VIII = tanf/(24*?*?3)*(5+3*tan2f+?2-9*tan2f*?2); var IX = tanf/(720*?*?5)*(61+90*tan2f+45*tan4f); var X = secf/?; var XI = secf/(6*?3)*(?/?+2*tan2f); var XII = secf/(120*?5)*(5+28*tan2f+24*tan4f); var XIIA = secf/(5040*?7)*(61+662*tan2f+1320*tan4f+720*tan6f); var dE = (E-E0), dE2 = dE*dE, dE3 = dE2*dE, dE4 = dE2*dE2, dE5 = dE3*dE2, dE6 = dE4*dE2, dE7 = dE5*dE2; f = f - VII*dE2 + VIII*dE4 - IX*dE6; var ? = ?0 + X*dE - XI*dE3 + XII*dE5 - XIIA*dE7; return new LatLonE(f.toDegrees(), ?.toDegrees(), GeoParams.datum.OSGB36); } I found that to be a really nice way of writing an algorythm, at least as far as redability is concerned. Is there any way to easily write the special symbols. And by easily write I mean NOT copy/paste them.

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• Enabling Google Webmaster Tools With Your GWB Blog

  - by ToStringTheory

  I’ll be honest and save you some time, if you don’t have your own domain for your GWB blog, this won’t help, you may just want to move on…  I don’t want to waste your time……… Still here?  Good.  How great are Google’s website tools?  I don’t just mean Analytics which rocks, but also their Webmaster Tools (https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/) which gives you a glimpse into the queries that provide you your website traffic, search engine behavior on your site, and important keywords, just to name a few.   Pictured Above: Cool statistics. Problem Thanks to svickn over at wtfnext.com (another GeeksWithBlogs blog), we already have the knowledge on how to setup Google Analytics (wtfnext.com - How to: Set up Google Analytics on your GeeksWithBlogs blog).  However, one of the questions raised in the post, and even semi-answered in the questions, was how to setup Google Webmaster Tools with your blog as well. At first glance, it seems like it can’t be done.  Google graciously gives you several different options on how to authorize that you own a site.  The authentication options are: 1. (Recommended) – Upload an HTML file to your server 2. Add a meta tag to your site’s home page 3. Use your Google Analytics account 4. Add a DNS record to your domain’s configuration Since you don’t have access to the base path, you can’t do #1.  Same goes for #2 since you can’t edit the master/index page.  As for #3, they REQUIRE the Analytics code to be in the <head> section of your page, so even though we can use the workaround of hosting it in the news section, it won’t allow it since it isn’t in the correct place. Solution Last I checked, I didn’t see the DNS record option for Webmaster Tools.  Maybe this was recently added, or maybe I don’t remember it since I was always able to use some other method to authorize it.  In this case though, this is the option that we need.  My registrar wasn’t in their list, but they provide detailed enough instructions for the ‘Other’ option: Simply create a TXT record with your domain hoster (mine is DynDns), fill in the tag information, and then click verify.  My entry was able to be resolved immediately, but since you are working with DNS, it may take longer.  If after 24 hours you still aren’t able to verify, you can use a site such as mxtoolbox.com, and in the searchbox type “txt: {domain-name-here}”, to see if your TXT record was entered successfully. It is pretty simple to setup the TXT entry in DynDns, but if you have questions/comments, feel free to post them. Conclusion With this simple workaround (not really a workaround, but feature since they offer it..), you are now able to see loads of information regarding your standings in the world of the Google Search Engine.  No critical issues?  Did I do something wrong?! As an aside, you can do the same thing with the Bing Webmaster Tools by adding a CNAME record to bing.verify.com…  Instructions can be found on the ‘Add Site’ popup when adding your site. If you don’t have your own domain, but continued, to read to this point – thank you!

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• Sitting Pretty

  - by Phil Factor

  Guest Editorial for Simple-Talk IT Pro newsletter'DBAs and SysAdmins generally prefer an expression of calmness under adversity. It is a subtle trick, and requires practice in front of a mirror to get it just right. Too much adversity and they think you're not coping; too much calmness and they think you're under-employed' I dislike the term 'avatar', when used to describe a portrait photograph. An avatar, in the sense of a picture, is merely the depiction of one's role-play alter-ego, often a ridiculous bronze-age deity. However, professional image is important. The choice and creation of online photos has an effect on the way your message is received and it is important to get that right. It is fine to use that photo of you after ten lagers on holiday in an Ibiza nightclub, but what works on Facebook looks hilarious on LinkedIn. My splendid photograph that I use online was done by a professional photographer at great expense and I've never had the slightest twinge of regret when I remember how much I paid for it. It is me, but a more pensive and dignified edition, oozing trust and wisdom. One gasps at the magical skill that a professional photographer can conjure up, without digital manipulation, to make the best of a derisory noggin (ed: slang for a head). Even if he had offered to depict me as a semi-naked, muscle-bound, sword-wielding hero, I'd have demurred. No, any professional person needs a carefully cultivated image that looks right. I'd never thought of using that profile shot, though I couldn't help noticing the photographer flinch slightly when he first caught sight of my face. There is a problem with using an avatar. The use of a single image doesn't express the appropriate emotion. At the moment, it is weird to see someone with a laughing portrait writing something solemn. A neutral cast to the face, somewhat like a passport photo, is probably the best compromise. Actually, the same is true of a working life in IT. One of the first skills I learned was not to laugh at managers, but, instead, to develop a facial expression that promoted a sense of keenness, energy and respect. Every profession has its own preferred facial cast. A neighbour of mine has the natural gift of a face that displays barely repressed grief. Though he is characteristically cheerful, he earns a remarkable income as a pallbearer. DBAs and SysAdmins generally prefer an expression of calmness under adversity. It is a subtle trick, and requires practice in front of a mirror to get it just right. Too much adversity and they think you're not coping; too much calmness and they think you're under-employed. With an appropriate avatar, you could do away with a lot of the need for 'smilies' to give clues as to the meaning of what you've written on forums and blogs. If you had a set of avatars, showing the full gamut of human emotions expressible in writing: Rage, fear, reproach, joy, ebullience, apprehension, exasperation, dissembly, irony, pathos, euphoria, remorse and so on. It would be quite a drop-down list on forums, but given the vast prairies of space on the average hard drive, who cares? It would cut down on the number of spats in Forums just as long as one picks the right avatar. As an unreconstructed geek, I find it hard to admit to the value of image in the workplace, but it is true. Just as we use professionals to tidy up and order our CVs and job applications, we should employ experts to enhance our professional image. After all you don't perform surgery or dentistry on yourself do you?

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• The gestures of Windows 8 (Consumer preview): part 2, More about Search

  - by Laurent Bugnion

  This is part 2 of a multipart blog post about the gestures and shortcuts in Windows 8 consumer preview. Part 1 can be found here! More about the Search charm In the first installment of this series, we talked about the charms and mentioned a few gestures to display the Search charm. Search is a very central and powerful feature in Windows 8, and allows you to search in Apps, Settings, Files and within Metro applications that support the Search contract. There are a few cool features around the Search, and especially the applications associated to it. I already mentioned the keyboard shortcuts you can use: Win-C shows the Charms bar (same as swiping from the right bevel towards the center of the screen). Win-Q open the Search fly out with Apps preselected. Win-W open the Search fly out with Settings preselected. Win-F open the Search fly out with Files preselected. Searching in Metro apps In addition to these three search domains, you can also search a Metro app, as long as it supports the Search contract (check this Build video to learn more about the Search contract). These apps show up in the Search flyout as shown here: Notice the list of apps below the Files button? That’s what we are talking about. First of all, the list order changes when you search in some applications. For instance, in the image above, I had used the Store with the Search charm. This is why the store shows up as the first app. I am not 100% what algorithm is used here (sorting according to number of searches is my guess), but try it out and try to figure it out Applications that have never been searched are sorted alphabetically. Does it mean we will see cool app names like ___AAA_MyCoolApp? I certainly hope not!! Pinning You can also pin often used apps to the Search flyout. To pin an app with the mouse, right click on it in the Search flyout and select Pin from the context menu. With the keyboard, use the arrow keys to go down to the selected app, and then open the context menu. With the finger, simply tap and hold until you see a semi transparent rectangle indicating that the context menu will be shown, then release. The context menu opens up and you can select Pin. Pin context menu Pinned apps Unpinning, Hiding Using the same technique as for pinning here above, you can also unpin a pinned application. Finally, you can also choose to hide an app from the Search flyout altogether. This is a convenient way to clean up and make it easy to find stuff. Note: At this point, I am not sure how to re-add a hidden app to the Search flyout. If anyone knows, please mention it in the comments, thanks! Reordering You can also reorder pinned apps. To do this, with the finger, tap, hold and pull the app to the side, then pull it vertically to reorder it. You can also reorder with the mouse, simply by clicking on an app and pulling it vertically to the place you want to put it. I don’t think there is a way to do that with the keyboard though. That’s it for now More gestures will follow in a next installment! Have fun with Windows 8   Laurent Bugnion (GalaSoft) Subscribe | Twitter | Facebook | Flickr | LinkedIn

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• Is there a way to install i386 packages w/ it's i386 dependencies?

  - by foh1981

  I'm using Ubuntu 11.10 64-bit and I wish to install the CAD application DraftSight, which as of now only come in a 32-bit .deb file. I have installed this with some success before, but since 11.10 supports multiarch I would like to install the i386 versions of DraftSights dependencies. Ubuntu Software Center cannot handle the file, nor gdebi-gtk ('wrong architecture'). I can use dpkg with --force-architecture but there's A LOT of dependencies which I need to manually install afterward. Is there a way to automatically install these? Or semi-automatically with a script of some sort? (I'm thinking something along the lines of extracting the dependencies and adding :i386 and then feed that to apt-get or something...) Below is the output of dpkg-deb --info of the package in question. Package: dassault-systemes-draftsight Version: 2011.7.1198 Section: applications Priority: extra Architecture: i386 Pre-Depends: libexpat1 (>=2.0.1-4), libglib2.0-0 (>=2.22.3-0), libpcre3 (>=7.8-3), libselinux1 (>=2.0.85-2), zlib1g (>=1:1.2.3.3.dfsg-13), libc6 (>=2.10.1-0), libx11-6 (>=2:1.2.2-1), libxau6 (>=1:1.0.4-2), libxcomposite1 (>=1:0.4.0-4), libxcursor1 (>=1:1.1.9-1build1), libxdamage1 (>=1:1.1.1-4), libxdmcp6 (>=1:1.0.2-3), libxext6 (>=2:1.0.99.1-0), libxfixes3 (>=1:4.0.3-2build1), libxi6 (>=2:1.2.1-2), libxinerama1 (>=2:1.0.3-2), libxrandr2 (>=2:1.3.0-2), libxrender1 (>=1:0.9.4-2), libatk1.0-0 (>=1.28.0-0), libcairo2 (>=1.8.8-2), libdirectfb-extra (>=1.2.7-2), libfontconfig1 (>=2.6.0-1), libfreetype6 (>=2.3.9-5), libgtk2.0-0 (>=2.18.3-1), libpango1.0-0 (>=1.26.0-1), libpixman-1-0 (>=0.14.0-1), libpng12-0 (>=1.2.37-1), libxcb-render-util0 (>=0.3.6-1), libxcb-render0 (>=1.4-1), libxcb1 (>=1.4-1), debconf (>= 1.1) | debconf-2.0 Depends: libcomerr2 (>=1.41.9-1), libdbus-1-3 (>=1.2.16-0), libexpat1 (>=2.0.1-4), libgcc1 (>=1:4.4.1-4), libgcrypt11 (>=1.4.4-2), libglib2.0-0 (>=2.22.3-0), libgpg-error0 (>=1.6-1), libkeyutils1 (>=1.2-10), libpcre3 (>=7.8-3), libuuid1 (>=2.16-1), zlib1g (>=1:1.2.3.3.dfsg-13), libc6 (>=2.10.1-0), libgl1-mesa-glx (>=7.6.0-1), libglu1-mesa (>=7.6.0-1), libice6 (>=2:1.0.5-1), libsm6 (>=2:1.1.0-2), libx11-6 (>=2:1.2.2-1), libxau6 (>=1:1.0.4-2), libxdamage1 (>=1:1.1.1-4), libxdmcp6 (>=1:1.0.2-3), libxext6 (>=2:1.0.99.1-0), libxfixes3 (>=1:4.0.3-2build1), libxrender1 (>=1:0.9.4-2), libxt6 (>=1:1.0.5-3), libxxf86vm1 (>=1:1.0.2-1), libaudio2 (>=1.9.2-1), libavahi-client3 (>=0.6.25-1), libavahi-common3 (>=0.6.25-1), libcups2 (>=1.4.1-5), libdrm2 (>=2.4.14-1), libfontconfig1 (>=2.6.0-1), libgnutls26 (>=2.8.3-2), libgssapi-krb5-2 (>=1.7dfsg~beta3-1), libk5crypto3 (>=1.7dfsg~beta3-1), libkrb5-3 (>=1.7dfsg~beta3-1), libkrb5support0 (>=1.7dfsg~beta3-1), libstdc++6 (>=4.4.1-4), libtasn1-3 (>=2.2-1), libxcb1 (>=1.4-1), sendmail Installed-Size: 284948 Maintainer: Dassault Systemes <[email protected]> Homepage: www.3ds.com Description: With DraftSight, you can easily create professional CAD drawings. Supported file formats are DWT, DXF and DWG.

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• Would this be a good web application architecture?

  - by Gustav Bertram

  My problem Our MVC based framework does not allow us to cache only part of our output. Ideally we want to cahce static and semi-static bits, and run dynamic bits. In addition, we need to consider data caching that reacts to database changes. My idea The concept I came up with was to represent a page as a tree of XML fragment objects. (I say XML, but I mean XHTML). Some of the fragments are dynamic, and can pull their data directly from models or other sources, but most of the fragments are static scaffolding. If a subtree of fragments is completely static, then I imagine that they could unfold into pure XML that would then be cached as the text representation of their parent element. This process would ideally continue until we are left with a root element that contains all of the static XML, and has a couple of dynamic XML fragments that are resolved and attached to the relevant nodes of the XML tree just before the page is displayed. In addition to separating content into dynamic and static fragments, some fragments could be dynamic and cached. A simple expiry time which propagates up through the XML fragment tree would indicate that a specific fragment should periodically be refreshed. A newspaper section or front page does not need to be updated each second. Minutes or sometimes even longer is sufficient. Other fragments would be dynamic and uncached. Typically too many articles are viewed for them to be cached - the cache would overflow. Some individual articles may be cached if they are extremely popular. Functional notes The folding mechanism could be to be smart enough to judge when it would be more profitable to fold a dynamic cached fragment and propagate the expiry date to the parent fragment, or to keep it separate and simple attach to the XML tree when resolving the page. If some dynamic cached fragments are associated to database objects through mechanisms like a globally unique content id, then changes to the database could trigger changes to the output cache. If fragments store the identifiers of parent fragments, then they could trigger a refolding process that would then include the updated data. A set of pure XML with an ordered array of fragment objects (that each store the identifying information of the node to which they should be attached), can be resolved in a fairly simple way by walking the XML tree, and merging the data from the fragments. Because it is not necessary to parse and construct the entire tree in memory before attaching nodes, processing should be fairly fast. The identifiers of each fragment would be a combination of relevant identity data and the type of fragment object. Cached parent fragments would contain references to these identifiers, in order to then either pull them from the fragment cache, or to run their code. The controller's responsibility is reduced to making changes to the database, and telling the root XML fragment object to render itself. The Question My question has two parts: Is this a good design? Are there any obvious flaws I'm missing? Has somebody else thought of this before? References? Is there an existing alternative that I should consider? A cool templating engine maybe?

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• Free hosting solution for a very low-traffic website [duplicate]

  - by user966939

  This question already has an answer here: How to find web hosting that meets my requirements? 4 answers I run a very low-traffic website (about 40 users, basically all of which are daily active on the site). I don't see it changing anytime soon either, as there is no way to sign up on the site right now. Until now I have just been using a sub-directory on a friend's host (shared), to host the web site. But in only a few weeks from now, his subscription will end, and he has no plans on renewing it. So of course this means I'll have to move on to something else. But I don't think I'll find someone who'd be willing to share a... shared host with me again. And besides, the software used on that server is ancient (PHP 4.4.9 + MySQL 4.1.22). There's one obvious solution that comes to mind, I guess: choose a better host and pay for it myself. The problem here is that I have no real fixed income, as I'm only a student. So even if the pricing is dirt cheap, I just can't be certain I will be able to afford it, every single month, for... at least 2 years maybe? So I've looked at free hosting solutions instead. The least requirement I had was that it was completely free of ads. But no matter where I look, I always find something in a corner or two ("what can you expect from a free host?" - yeah I know, but I guess it was worth a shot). For example, on Byethost (one of the free hosts I tried), if you trigger a PHP error while error reporting is set to E_ALL, you will spawn some hidden ad... Besides Byethost, I've tried 000Webhost, x10Hosting, 2Freehosting/1Freehosting, Wink.ws, and they are only worse. Okay, I'm running low on ideas. But! What if I just hosted the site myself, on my own computer? That could work. I actually do have my computer on practically 24/7. But not really. Sometimes I need to reboot it, and sometimes we even have power outages. And what if the hardware needs an upgrade? It's not such a big deal for me if the site went down, because I know what's going on; but what about the users? If I do decide to host it myself, is there some way to show users an alternate page instead of them just seeing a generic "server not found" page in the browser when the site is not accessible? Or is there something I have been missing out on? Is there a different kind of "web hosting" solution out there that I haven't heard of? Here is what I'm really looking for: Free (as in, no costs) NO ads Bandwidth enough for a low-traffic forum with roughly 40 users (Semi-)Up-to-date PHP and MySQL (at least not older than a year) No standard (non-extension) PHP functions turned off - such as sleep() The mbstring extension is enabled Disk space: at least 5 MB At least one MySQL database Some bonus points would be: Max execution time of PHP scripts can be set Remote access to MySQL database What would be the best solution for me? Is there one?

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• Resolving collisions between dynamic game objects

  - by TheBroodian

  I've been building a 2D platformer for some time now, I'm getting to the point where I am adding dynamic objects to the stage for testing. This has prompted me to consider how I would like my character and other objects to behave when they collide. A typical staple in many 2D platformer type games is that the player takes damage upon touching an enemy, and then essentially becomes able to pass through enemies during a period of invulnerability, and at the same time, enemies are able to pass through eachother freely. I personally don't want to take this approach, it feels strange to me that the player should receive arbitrary damage for harmless contact to an enemy, despite whether the enemy is attacking or not, and I would like my enemies' interactions between each other (and my player) to be a little more organic, so to speak. In my head I sort of have this idea where a game object (player, or non player) would be able to push other game objects around by manner of 'pushing' each other out of one anothers' bounding boxes if there is an intersection, and maybe correlate the repelling force to how much their bounding boxes are intersecting. The problem I'm experiencing is I have no idea what the math might look like for something like this? I'll show what work I've done so far, it sort of works, but it's jittery, and generally not quite what I would pass in a functional game: //Clears the anti-duplicate buffer collisionRecord.Clear(); //pick a thing foreach (GameObject entity in entities) { //pick another thing foreach (GameObject subject in entities) { //check to make sure both things aren't the same thing if (!ReferenceEquals(entity, subject)) { //check to see if thing2 is in semi-near proximity to thing1 if (entity.WideProximityArea.Intersects(subject.CollisionRectangle) || entity.WideProximityArea.Contains(subject.CollisionRectangle)) { //check to see if thing2 and thing1 are colliding. if (entity.CollisionRectangle.Intersects(subject.CollisionRectangle) || entity.CollisionRectangle.Contains(subject.CollisionRectangle) || subject.CollisionRectangle.Contains(entity.CollisionRectangle)) { //check if we've already resolved their collision or not. if (!collisionRecord.ContainsKey(entity.GetHashCode())) { //more duplicate resolution checking. if (!collisionRecord.ContainsKey(subject.GetHashCode())) { //if thing1 is traveling right... if (entity.Velocity.X > 0) { //if it isn't too far to the right... if (subject.CollisionRectangle.Contains(new Microsoft.Xna.Framework.Rectangle(entity.CollisionRectangle.Right, entity.CollisionRectangle.Y, 1, entity.CollisionRectangle.Height)) || subject.CollisionRectangle.Intersects(new Microsoft.Xna.Framework.Rectangle(entity.CollisionRectangle.Right, entity.CollisionRectangle.Y, 1, entity.CollisionRectangle.Height))) { //Find how deep thing1 is intersecting thing2's collision box; float offset = entity.CollisionRectangle.Right - subject.CollisionRectangle.Left; //Move both things in opposite directions half the length of the intersection, pushing thing1 to the left, and thing2 to the right. entity.Velocities.Add(new Vector2(-(((offset * 4) * (float)gameTime.ElapsedGameTime.TotalMilliseconds)), 0)); subject.Velocities.Add(new Vector2((((offset * 4) * (float)gameTime.ElapsedGameTime.TotalMilliseconds)), 0)); } } //if thing1 is traveling left... if (entity.Velocity.X < 0) { //if thing1 isn't too far left... if (entity.CollisionRectangle.Contains(new Microsoft.Xna.Framework.Rectangle(subject.CollisionRectangle.Right, subject.CollisionRectangle.Y, 1, subject.CollisionRectangle.Height)) || entity.CollisionRectangle.Intersects(new Microsoft.Xna.Framework.Rectangle(subject.CollisionRectangle.Right, subject.CollisionRectangle.Y, 1, subject.CollisionRectangle.Height))) { //Find how deep thing1 is intersecting thing2's collision box; float offset = subject.CollisionRectangle.Right - entity.CollisionRectangle.Left; //Move both things in opposite directions half the length of the intersection, pushing thing1 to the right, and thing2 to the left. entity.Velocities.Add(new Vector2((((offset * 4) * (float)gameTime.ElapsedGameTime.TotalMilliseconds)), 0)); subject.Velocities.Add(new Vector2(-(((offset * 4) * (float)gameTime.ElapsedGameTime.TotalMilliseconds)), 0)); } } //Make record that thing1 and thing2 have interacted and the collision has been solved, so that if thing2 is picked next in the foreach loop, it isn't checked against thing1 a second time before the next update. collisionRecord.Add(entity.GetHashCode(), subject.GetHashCode()); } } } } } } } } One of the biggest issues with my code aside from the jitteriness is that if one character were to land on top of another character, it very suddenly and abruptly resolves the collision, whereas I would like a more subtle and gradual resolution. Any thoughts or ideas are incredibly welcome and helpful.

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• Dynamically Changing the Display Names of Menus and Popups

  - by Geertjan

  Very interesting thing and handy to know when needed is the fact that "menuText" and "popupText" (from org.openide.awt.ActionRegistration) can be changed dynamically, via "putValue" as shown below for "popupText". The Action class, in this case, needs to be eager, hence you won't receive the object of interest via the constructor, but you can easily use the global Lookup for that purpose instead, as also shown below. import java.awt.event.ActionEvent; import java.text.DateFormat; import java.text.SimpleDateFormat; import javax.swing.AbstractAction; import org.netbeans.api.project.Project; import org.netbeans.api.project.ProjectInformation; import org.netbeans.api.project.ProjectUtils; import org.openide.awt.ActionID; import org.openide.awt.ActionReference; import org.openide.awt.ActionRegistration; import org.openide.util.Utilities; @ActionID( category = "Project", id = "org.ptt.DemoProjectAction") @ActionRegistration( lazy = false, displayName = "NOT-USED") @ActionReference(path = "Projects/Actions", position = 0) public final class DemoProjectAction extends AbstractAction{ private final ProjectInformation context; public DemoProjectAction() { putValue("popupText", "Select Me To See Current Time!"); context = ProjectUtils.getInformation( Utilities.actionsGlobalContext().lookup(Project.class)); } @Override public void actionPerformed(ActionEvent e) { refresh(); } protected void refresh() { DateFormat formatter = new SimpleDateFormat("HH:mm:ss"); String formatted = formatter.format(System.currentTimeMillis()); putValue("popupText", "Time: " + formatted + " (" + context.getDisplayName() +")"); } } Now, let's do something semi useful and display, in the popup, which is available when you right-click a project, the time since the last change was made anywhere in the project, i.e., we can listen recursively to any changes done within a project and then update the popup with the newly acquired information, dynamically: import java.awt.event.ActionEvent; import java.text.DateFormat; import java.text.SimpleDateFormat; import javax.swing.AbstractAction; import org.netbeans.api.project.Project; import org.netbeans.api.project.ProjectUtils; import org.openide.awt.ActionID; import org.openide.awt.ActionReference; import org.openide.awt.ActionRegistration; import org.openide.filesystems.FileAttributeEvent; import org.openide.filesystems.FileChangeListener; import org.openide.filesystems.FileEvent; import org.openide.filesystems.FileRenameEvent; import org.openide.util.Utilities; @ActionID( category = "Project", id = "org.ptt.TrackProjectTimerAction") @ActionRegistration( lazy = false, displayName = "NOT-USED") @ActionReference( path = "Projects/Actions", position = 0) public final class TrackProjectTimerAction extends AbstractAction implements FileChangeListener { private final Project context; private Long startTime; private Long changedTime; private DateFormat formatter; public TrackProjectTimerAction() { putValue("popupText", "Enable project time tracker"); this.formatter = new SimpleDateFormat("HH:mm:ss"); context = Utilities.actionsGlobalContext().lookup(Project.class); context.getProjectDirectory().addRecursiveListener(this); } @Override public void actionPerformed(ActionEvent e) { startTimer(); } protected void startTimer() { startTime = System.currentTimeMillis(); String formattedStartTime = formatter.format(startTime); putValue("popupText", "Timer started: " + formattedStartTime + " (" + ProjectUtils.getInformation(context).getDisplayName() + ")"); } @Override public void fileChanged(FileEvent fe) { changedTime = System.currentTimeMillis(); formatter = new SimpleDateFormat("mm:ss"); String formattedLapse = formatter.format(changedTime - startTime); putValue("popupText", "Time since last change: " + formattedLapse + " (" + ProjectUtils.getInformation(context).getDisplayName() + ")"); startTime = changedTime; } @Override public void fileFolderCreated(FileEvent fe) {} @Override public void fileDataCreated(FileEvent fe) {} @Override public void fileDeleted(FileEvent fe) {} @Override public void fileRenamed(FileRenameEvent fre) {} @Override public void fileAttributeChanged(FileAttributeEvent fae) {} }

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