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• Many Different Things Rolled into a Ball

  - by MOSSLover

  Yeah I know I don’t blog much anymore, because life has taken me places that don’t involve the interwebs unfortunately.  I am in the midst of planning two events, starting a non for profit, creating more sessions for various conferences, submitting to various conferences, working a 40 hour a week job, attempting to hang out with boyfriend/friends/family.  So you can see that list does not include this blog sadly that’s how it goes sometimes.  The bottom piece very important over any of the top pieces.  I haven’t seen St. Louis in a while and I get to go back.  I was gone from home for MVP Summit and Best Practices Conference, so the boyfriend and cat didn’t get to see me either for a bit.  Then you have to add in the whole toilet being broken fiasco this week.  Maintenance really thought it would be cool to turn off the ability to flush.  I mean who does that?  Then when we call the owner he comes by turns it on and we figure it was an accident, because well the next day no one came by to tell us there was a leak.  It was all kinds of strangeness and involved me running to other people’s toilets.  As Dan Usher would say, I was a sad panda for a few days.  So I guess I wanted to post a few thoughts here just because I can.  I do not like multiple content editor webparts embedded with html files in numerous pages doing the same thing.  I will tell you why I don’t like these particular webparts and the way they are being used.  First off if you have a bunch of pages with script includes it’s about time you should just dump them into the masterpage.  Why bother finding all 20 pages and changing those pages when you can just use a single masterpage that already exists? The other thing that is bothering me days is screen scraping.  Just don’t do it, because in 2010 you will find the UI is substantially slower.  I understand you are new and you have no idea what to do.  You are also using 2007 am I right?  So then you need to go to codeplex.com and type in a search for SPServices.  Download it, use it, love it and then have it’s babies (well maybe don’t go so far this is not the GRID in Tron). If you have a ton of constants in your code why did you not go in and create a webpart with a bunch of properties and/or link to a configuration list hidden in the browser?  This type of property and list could help you out in the long run.  The power users and administrators can now change the control without you having to compile it over and over again.  It’s good stuff.  Also, you can change the control without compiling it, especially in 2007 where you have to do a farm solution.  In 2010 you can do a sandbox solution I guess, but shouldn’t you make it as easy and supportable as possible for other users? In conclusion I’m an angry person when it comes to viewing something repeatedly and analyzing it in a system.  Now we will move on to the next topic…MVP Summit…So yeah I can’t really talk about particulars, but I can talk about my experience as a person.  Don’t build something up to be cooler than it is only to be dropped from your 10,000 foot perch.  My experience was great, but the content overall was something to be desired.  It’s ok I got to meet a lot of people I would not have met if I had not gone.  Some of it was surreal, such as product group members showing up and talking to us.  It was pretty neat.  Plus I never had the chance to get to that mythical MS Office in Redmond.  Prior to Summit it was like Rainbow Brites unicorn trying taunting me on television when I was a kid.  So I guess with all that said I give it a B.  It was awesome in some way, but lacking in other ways.  The cool part is that I got to go.  Would I have lived without going? Yes, but it was still cool. I could prattle on about other things and make this post massive, but I’m going to pass and give myself a piece of Sunday to play Rockband and do 800 other things.  I hope the two of you who read this blog are well.  I’ll catch you all at another juncture.  Have a good weekend and varying holidays in between. Technorati Tags: SharePoint,MVP Summit,JQuery,Javascript

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• Platformer Starter Kit - Collision Issues

  - by Cyral

  I'm having trouble with my game that is based off the XNA Platformer starter kit. My game uses smaller tiles (16x16) then the original (32x40) which I'm thinking may be having an effect on collision (Being it needs to be more precise). Standing on the edge of a tile and jumping causes the player to move off the the tile when he lands. And 80% of the time, when the player lands, he goes flying though SOLID tiles in a diagonal fashion. This is very annoying as it is almost impossible to test other features, when spawning and jumping will result in the player landing in another part of the level or falling off the edge completely. The code is as follows: /// <summary> /// Updates the player's velocity and position based on input, gravity, etc. /// </summary> public void ApplyPhysics(GameTime gameTime) { float elapsed = (float)gameTime.ElapsedGameTime.TotalSeconds; Vector2 previousPosition = Position; // Base velocity is a combination of horizontal movement control and // acceleration downward due to gravity. velocity.X += movement * MoveAcceleration * elapsed; velocity.Y = MathHelper.Clamp(velocity.Y + GravityAcceleration * elapsed, -MaxFallSpeed, MaxFallSpeed); velocity.Y = DoJump(velocity.Y, gameTime); // Apply pseudo-drag horizontally. if (IsOnGround) velocity.X *= GroundDragFactor; else velocity.X *= AirDragFactor; // Prevent the player from running faster than his top speed. velocity.X = MathHelper.Clamp(velocity.X, -MaxMoveSpeed, MaxMoveSpeed); // Apply velocity. Position += velocity * elapsed; Position = new Vector2((float)Math.Round(Position.X), (float)Math.Round(Position.Y)); // If the player is now colliding with the level, separate them. HandleCollisions(); // If the collision stopped us from moving, reset the velocity to zero. if (Position.X == previousPosition.X) velocity.X = 0; if (Position.Y == previousPosition.Y) velocity.Y = 0; } /// <summary> /// Detects and resolves all collisions between the player and his neighboring /// tiles. When a collision is detected, the player is pushed away along one /// axis to prevent overlapping. There is some special logic for the Y axis to /// handle platforms which behave differently depending on direction of movement. /// </summary> private void HandleCollisions() { // Get the player's bounding rectangle and find neighboring tiles. Rectangle bounds = BoundingRectangle; int leftTile = (int)Math.Floor((float)bounds.Left / Tile.Width); int rightTile = (int)Math.Ceiling(((float)bounds.Right / Tile.Width)) - 1; int topTile = (int)Math.Floor((float)bounds.Top / Tile.Height); int bottomTile = (int)Math.Ceiling(((float)bounds.Bottom / Tile.Height)) - 1; // Reset flag to search for ground collision. isOnGround = false; // For each potentially colliding tile, for (int y = topTile; y <= bottomTile; ++y) { for (int x = leftTile; x <= rightTile; ++x) { // If this tile is collidable, ItemCollision collision = Level.GetCollision(x, y); if (collision != ItemCollision.Passable) { // Determine collision depth (with direction) and magnitude. Rectangle tileBounds = Level.GetBounds(x, y); Vector2 depth = RectangleExtensions.GetIntersectionDepth(bounds, tileBounds); if (depth != Vector2.Zero) { float absDepthX = Math.Abs(depth.X); float absDepthY = Math.Abs(depth.Y); // Resolve the collision along the shallow axis. if (absDepthY < absDepthX || collision == ItemCollision.Platform) { // If we crossed the top of a tile, we are on the ground. if (previousBottom <= tileBounds.Top) isOnGround = true; // Ignore platforms, unless we are on the ground. if (collision == ItemCollision.Impassable || IsOnGround) { // Resolve the collision along the Y axis. Position = new Vector2(Position.X, Position.Y + depth.Y); // Perform further collisions with the new bounds. bounds = BoundingRectangle; } } else if (collision == ItemCollision.Impassable) // Ignore platforms. { // Resolve the collision along the X axis. Position = new Vector2(Position.X + depth.X, Position.Y); // Perform further collisions with the new bounds. bounds = BoundingRectangle; } } } } } // Save the new bounds bottom. previousBottom = bounds.Bottom; } It also tends to jitter a little bit sometimes, I'm solved some of this with some fixes I found here on stackexchange, But Ive only seen one other case of the flying though blocks problem. This question seems to have a similar problem in the video, but mine is more crazy. Again this is a very annoying bug! Any help would be greatly appreciated! EDIT: Speed stuff // Constants for controling horizontal movement private const float MoveAcceleration = 13000.0f; private const float MaxMoveSpeed = 1750.0f; private const float GroundDragFactor = 0.48f; private const float AirDragFactor = 0.58f; // Constants for controlling vertical movement private const float MaxJumpTime = 0.35f; private const float JumpLaunchVelocity = -3500.0f; private const float GravityAcceleration = 3400.0f; private const float MaxFallSpeed = 550.0f; private const float JumpControlPower = 0.14f;

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• Your Next IT Job

  - by BuckWoody

  Some data professionals have worked (and plan to work) in the same place for a long time. In organizations large and small, the turnover rate just isn’t that high. This has not been my experience. About every 3-5 years I’ve changed either roles or companies. That might be due to the IT environment or my personality (or a mix of the two), but the point is that I’ve had many roles and worked for many companies large and small throughout my 27+ years in IT. At one point this might have been a detriment – a prospective employer looks at the resume and says “it seems you’ve moved around quite a bit.” But I haven’t found that to be the case all the time –in fact, in some cases the variety of jobs I’ve held has been an asset because I’ve seen what works (and doesn’t) in other environments, which can save time and money. So if you’re in the first camp – great! Stay where you are, and continue doing the work you love. but if you’re in the second, then this post might be useful. If you are planning on making a change, or perhaps you’ve hit a wall at your current location, you might start looking around for a better paying job – and there’s nothing wrong with that. We all try to make our lives better, and for some that involves more money. Money, however, isn’t always the primary motivator. I’ve gone to another job that doesn’t have as many benefits or has the same salary as the current job I’m working to gain more experience, get a better work/life balance and so on. It’s a mix of factors that only you know about. So I thought I would lay out a few advantages and disadvantages in the shops I’ve worked at. This post isn’t aimed at a single employer, but represents a mix of what I’ve experienced, and of course the opinions here are my own. You will most certainly have a different take – if so, please post a response! I also won’t mention a specific industry – I’ve worked everywhere from medical firms, legal offices, retail, billing centers, manufacturing, government, even to NASA. I’m focusing here mostly on size and composition. And I’m making some very broad generalizations here – I am fully aware that a small company might have great benefits and a large company might allow a lot of role flexibility.  your mileage may vary – and again, post those comments! Small Company To me a “small company” means around 100 people or less – sometimes a lot less. These can be really fun, frustrating places to to work. Advantages: a great deal of flexibility, a wide range of roles (often at the same time), a large degree of responsibility, immediate feedback, close relationships with co-workers, work directly with your customer. Disadvantages: Too much responsibility, little work/life balance, immature political structure, few (if any) benefits. If the business is family-owned, they can easily violate work/life boundaries. Medium Size company In my experience the next size company I would work for involves from a few hundred people to around five thousand. Advantages: Good mobility – fairly easy to get promoted, acceptable benefits, more defined responsibilities, better work/life balance, balanced load for expertise, but still the organizational structure is fairly simple to understand. Disadvantages: Pay is not always highest, rapid changes in structure as the organization grows, transient workforce. You may not be given the opportunity to work with another technology if someone already “owns” it. Politics are painful at this level as people try to learn how to do it. Large Company When you get into the tens of thousands of folks employed around the world, you’re in a large company. Advantages: Lots of room to move around – sometimes you can work (as I have) multiple jobs through the years and yet stay at the same company, building time for benefits, very defined roles, trained managers (yes, I know some of them are still awful – trust me – I DO know that), higher-end benefits, long careers possible, discounts at retailers and other “soft” benefits, prestige. For some, a higher level of politics (done professionally) is a good thing. Disadvantages: You could become another faceless name in the crowd, might not allow a great deal of flexibility,  large organizational changes might take away any control you have of your career. I’ve also seen large layoffs happen, and good people get let go while “dead weight” is retained. For some, a higher level of politics is distasteful. So what are your experiences? Share with the group! Share this post: email it! | bookmark it! | digg it! | reddit! | kick it! | live it!

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• How to Apply a Business Card Template to a Contact and Customize it in Outlook 2013

  - by Lori Kaufman

  If you want to add a business card template to an existing contact in Outlook, you can do so without having to enter all of the information again. We will also show you how to customize the layout and format of the text on the card. Microsoft provides a couple of business card templates you can use. We will use their Blue Sky template as an example. To open the archive file for the template you downloaded, double-click on the .cab file. NOTE: You can also use a tool like 7-Zip to open the archive. A new Extract tab becomes available under Compressed Folder Tools and the files in the archive are listed. Select the .vcf file in the list of files. This automatically activates the Extract tab. Click Extract To and select a location or select Choose location if the desired location is not on the drop-down menu. Select a folder in which you want to save the .vcf file on the Copy Items dialog box and click Copy. NOTE: Use the Make New Folder button to create a new folder for the location, if desired. Double-click on the .vcf file that you copied out of the .cab archive file. By default, .vcf files are associated with Outlook so, when you double-click on a .vcf file, it automatically opens in a Contact window in Outlook. Change the Full Name to match the existing contact to which you want to apply this template. Delete the other contact info from the template. If you want to add any additional information not in the existing contact, enter it. Click Save & Close to save the contact with the new template. The Duplicate Contact Detected dialog box displays. To update the existing contact, select the Update information of selected Contact option. Click Update. NOTE: If you want to create a new contact from this template, select the Add new contact option. With the Contacts folder open (the People link on the Navigation Bar), click Business Card in the Current View section of the Home tab. You may notice that not all the fields from your contact display on the business card you just updated. Double-click on the contact to update the contact and the business card. On the Contact window, right-click on the image of the business card and select Edit Business Card from the popup menu. The Edit Business Card dialog box displays. You can change the design of the card, including changing he background color or image. The Fields box allows you to specify which fields display on the business card and in what order. Notice, in our example, that Company is listed below the Full Name, but no text displays on the business card below the name. That’s because we did not enter any information for Company in the Contact. We have information in Job Title. So, we select Company and click Remove to remove that field. Now, we want to add Job Title. First, select the field below which you want to add the new field. We select Full Name to add the Job Title below that. Then, we click Add and select Organization | Job Title from the popup menu to insert the Job Title. To make the Job Title white like the name, we select Job Title in the list of Fields and click the Font Color button in the Edit section. On the Color dialog box, select the color you want to use for the text in the selected field. Click OK. You can also make text bold, italic, or underlined. We chose to make the Job Title bold and the Full Name bold and italic. We also need to remove the Business Phone because this contact only has a mobile phone number. So, we add a Mobile Phone from the Phone submenu. Then, we need to remove enough blank lines so the Mobile Phone is visible on the card. We also added a website and email address and removed more blank lines so they are visible. You can also move text to the right side of the card or make it centered on the card. We also changed the color of the bottom three lines to blue. Click OK to accept your changes and close the dialog box. Your new business card design displays on the Contact window. Click Save & Close to save the changes you made to the business card for this contact and close the Contact window. The final design of the business card displays in the Business Card view on the People screen. If you have a signature that contains the business card for the contact you just updated, you will also need to update the signature by removing the business card and adding it again using the Business Card button in the Signature editor. You can also add the updated Business Card to a signature without the image or without the vCard (.vcf) file.     

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• 2D metaball liquid effect - how to feed output of one rendering pass as input to another shader

  - by Guye Incognito

  I'm attempting to make a shader for unity3d web project. I want to implement something like in the great answer by DMGregory in this question. in order to achieve a final look something like this.. Its metaballs with specular and shading. The steps to make this shader are. 1. Convert the feathered blobs into a heightmap. 2. Generate a normalmap from the heightmap 3. Feed the normal map and height map into a standard unity shader, for instance transparent parallax specular. I pretty much have all the pieces I need assembled but I am new to shaders and need help putting them together I can generate a heightmap from the blobs using some fragment shader code I wrote (I'm just using the red channel here cus i dont know if you can access the brightness) half4 frag (v2f i) : COLOR{ half4 texcol,finalColor; texcol = tex2D (_MainTex, i.uv); finalColor=_MyColor; if(texcol.r<_botmcut) { finalColor.r= 0; } else if((texcol.r>_topcut)) { finalColor.r= 0; } else { float r = _topcut-_botmcut; float xpos = _topcut - texcol.r; finalColor.r= (_botmcut + sqrt((xpos*xpos)-(r*r)))/_constant; } return finalColor; } turns these blobs.. into this heightmap Also I've found some CG code that generates a normal map from a height map. The bit of code that makes the normal map from finite differences is here void surf (Input IN, inout SurfaceOutput o) { o.Albedo = fixed3(0.5); float3 normal = UnpackNormal(tex2D(_BumpMap, IN.uv_MainTex)); float me = tex2D(_HeightMap,IN.uv_MainTex).x; float n = tex2D(_HeightMap,float2(IN.uv_MainTex.x,IN.uv_MainTex.y+1.0/_HeightmapDimY)).x; float s = tex2D(_HeightMap,float2(IN.uv_MainTex.x,IN.uv_MainTex.y-1.0/_HeightmapDimY)).x; float e = tex2D(_HeightMap,float2(IN.uv_MainTex.x-1.0/_HeightmapDimX,IN.uv_MainTex.y)).x; float w = tex2D(_HeightMap,float2(IN.uv_MainTex.x+1.0/_HeightmapDimX,IN.uv_MainTex.y)).x; float3 norm = normal; float3 temp = norm; //a temporary vector that is not parallel to norm if(norm.x==1) temp.y+=0.5; else temp.x+=0.5; //form a basis with norm being one of the axes: float3 perp1 = normalize(cross(norm,temp)); float3 perp2 = normalize(cross(norm,perp1)); //use the basis to move the normal in its own space by the offset float3 normalOffset = -_HeightmapStrength * ( ( (n-me) - (s-me) ) * perp1 + ( ( e - me ) - ( w - me ) ) * perp2 ); norm += normalOffset; norm = normalize(norm); o.Normal = norm; } Also here is the built-in transparent parallax specular shader for unity. Shader "Transparent/Parallax Specular" { Properties { _Color ("Main Color", Color) = (1,1,1,1) _SpecColor ("Specular Color", Color) = (0.5, 0.5, 0.5, 0) _Shininess ("Shininess", Range (0.01, 1)) = 0.078125 _Parallax ("Height", Range (0.005, 0.08)) = 0.02 _MainTex ("Base (RGB) TransGloss (A)", 2D) = "white" {} _BumpMap ("Normalmap", 2D) = "bump" {} _ParallaxMap ("Heightmap (A)", 2D) = "black" {} } SubShader { Tags {"Queue"="Transparent" "IgnoreProjector"="True" "RenderType"="Transparent"} LOD 600 CGPROGRAM #pragma surface surf BlinnPhong alpha #pragma exclude_renderers flash sampler2D _MainTex; sampler2D _BumpMap; sampler2D _ParallaxMap; fixed4 _Color; half _Shininess; float _Parallax; struct Input { float2 uv_MainTex; float2 uv_BumpMap; float3 viewDir; }; void surf (Input IN, inout SurfaceOutput o) { half h = tex2D (_ParallaxMap, IN.uv_BumpMap).w; float2 offset = ParallaxOffset (h, _Parallax, IN.viewDir); IN.uv_MainTex += offset; IN.uv_BumpMap += offset; fixed4 tex = tex2D(_MainTex, IN.uv_MainTex); o.Albedo = tex.rgb * _Color.rgb; o.Gloss = tex.a; o.Alpha = tex.a * _Color.a; o.Specular = _Shininess; o.Normal = UnpackNormal(tex2D(_BumpMap, IN.uv_BumpMap)); } ENDCG } FallBack "Transparent/Bumped Specular" }

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• Phones, Nokia, Microsoft and More

  - by Bill Evjen

  The phone revolution that is under way at the moment is insanely interesting and continuously full of buzz about directions, failures, and promises. The movement started with Apple completely reinventing what a smart phone was all about and now we have the followers. Though – don’t dismiss the followers, they are usually the ones that come out with the leap frog products when most of the world is thinking about jumping on. Remember the often used analogy – the USA invented the TV – but it was Japan that took it to the next level and now all TVs are from somewhere else other than the USA. Really there are two camps for the phones – the Cool Kids and other kids that no one wants to hang out with anymore. When it comes to cool – for some reason, the phone is an important part of that factor. Everyone wants to show their phone and its configuration (apps installed, etc) to their friends as a sign of (1) “I have money” and (2) I have smarts/tastes/style/etc when it comes to my applications that are on my phone. For those that don’t know – the Cool Kids include: Apple – this is quite obvious as everything Apple produces is in the cool camp. Just having an Apple product on your person means you can dance. Google – this is one of the more interesting releases as they have created something called Android (which in it’s own right is a major brand in itself). Microsoft – you might be saying “Really, Microsoft is cool?”. I would argue that they are indeed cool as it is now associated with XBOX 360, Kinect, and Windows 7. Gone are the days of Bob and that silly paperclip. Well – that’s it. There is nobody else I would stick in that camp. The other kids that weren’t picked for that dodgeball team include: Nokia Motorola Palm Blackberry and many many more The sad part of all this is that no matter what this second camp does now, it won’t be able to get out of this bucket easily. They will always be associated as yesterday’s technology and that association will drive the sales of the phone purchasers of the world. For those in that group, the only possible way out is to get invited to the cool club by one of the cool club members in the hope that their coolness somehow rubs off. To me, this is the move that Nokia is making. They are at this point where they have realized that they don’t have the full scope of the required end to end solution to make this all work. They have the plants to build the phones and the reach of the retailers that sell what they have. What they are missing is the proper operating system for the new world of multi-touch form factor phones. Even the companies that come up with some sort of new operating system for this type of new device, they are still associated with the yesterday and lack the developer community behind them to be the real wave of adoption that this market needs. Think about that – this is a major different between Nokia/Blackberry when you compare it to the likes of Apple, Google, and Microsoft. These three powerhouses having a very large and strong development community that will eagerly take on new initiatives using the skillsets that they have already cultivated over the years of already working with the company. This then results in a plethora of applications that are then placed on an app store of some kind. The developer gets a cut and then Apple/Google/Microsoft then get their cut. It is definitely a win-win. None of the other phone companies and wannabies can provide the same results. What Microsoft was missing was the major phone manufactures coming on board to create and push forward with the phones that are required to start the wave. This is where Nokia can come in and help Microsoft. They have the ability to promote the Windows Phone operating system on a new wave of phones. This does mean that Nokia will sell phones, but they lose out on the application store that they might have been thinking about making some money on as well as controlling the end to end solution. What is interesting is in questioning to oneself if Microsoft will purchase Nokia. It really depends upon how they want to compete and with whom Microsoft views as the major competitor. For instance, they can purchase Nokia and have their own hardware company and distribution network for phones – thereby taking on a model that is quite similar to Apple. On the other hand, they could just leave it up to the phone hardware companies such as Nokia and others to build and promote phones in a model that is similar to Google. Both ways have pluses and minuses. If they own the phone manufacturer, they really can put some thought into the design and technical specifications of the phone that is really designed to exactly how they want it. Microsoft has shown that they have this ability – especially with the XBOX initiative they have done over the years. Think about how good and powerful they have moved forward with XBOX – and I am not talking about just copying what others are doing, but coming up with leapfrog products that are steps ahead of everyone else. Though, if they didn’t do it themselves, they could then leave it up to the phone manufacturers to drive each other to build better and better phones that run the Microsoft OS – competition drives better products. We have seen this with the Android line of phones that are out there on the market. I have read a lot about Nokia investors really upset about the new Microsoft relationship – but really, this is a great thing. I for one am a fan of this relationship (I am also a Nokia stock holder btw). This will mean better days for Nokia.

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• Day 1 - Finding Like Minds

  - by dapostolov

  So, is being a Game Developer any different from being an IT Developer? I picture a poorly lit environment where I get to purchase my own desk lamp; I'm thinking one of those huge lava lamps that pump out so much heat you could fry an egg on it. To my right: a "great wall" of empty coke cans dwarf me. Eating my last slice of pizza I look across my desk to see a fellow developer with a smug look on his face;  he's just coded his latest module for the game and it looks like he's in nirvana. My duty, of course, is to remind him to keep focused on the job at hand. So, picking up my trusty elastic and aerodynamically crafted paper bullet I begin a 10 minute war of welts and laughter which is promptly abrupted by our Project Manager demanding more details from our morning Scrum meeting. After providing about 5 minutes of geek speak and several words of comfort to make his eyes glaze over...it hits me, the idea for the module...beckoning my developer friend over, we quickly shoo the Project Manager away and begin our brainstorming frenzy ... now, where'd I put that full can of coke? OK. OK. This isn't probably the most ideal game developer environment, but it definitely sounds fun to me...and from what I gather is nothing like most game development companies. But I'm not doing this blog series to "go pro"; like I stated in my first post I want to make a 2D game from an idea my best friend and I drummed up long, long ago. I'm in this for the passion AND I want to see how easy it is for us .Net Developers to create a game. So where do I start? Where can I find like minded individuals? What technologies are there? What do I need to make a video game? The questions are endless....AND...since I already have an idea ... lets start with ... Technology (yes, I'm a geek, live with it...) Technology OK. Predominantly, games are still made in C++ or even C. I'm not sure how much assembly code is floating around lately, however, that is not my concern. I do know C / C++ from my past, enough to even get me by, but I'm mainly interested in a recent, not-so-new, technology called XNA. What is XNA? XNA allows us .Net Developers to make 2D / 3D games for windows, Xbox*, and Windows Mobile 7*. * = for a nominal fee *cough* The following link is your one stop shop to XNA game development: http://creators.xna.com/en-US/education/gettingstarted The above site hosts information such as: - getting started - a sample/instructional shooter game in 2D / 3D with code (if I'm taking too long for you in this blog series) - downloads - starter kits... http://creators.xna.com/en-US/education/starterkits/ And of course...forums. You can also subscribe and pay for their premium membership which gets you some pretty awesome tutorials, resources, downloads, and premium community support. Some general Wiki information about XNA: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XNA_%28Microsoft%29 Community Support OK. Let's move on to industry and community support. Apart from XNA, there are some really cool sites out there, I just haven't found all of them yet. However, I found a really cool Game Development website called Gamastura. You can click on the following link to get you there: http://www.gamasutra.com/ The site is 100% dedicated to "The Art & Business of Making Games". Armed with blogs, twitter, jobs/resumes and most importantly industry news; one could subscribe to the feed and got lost in the wealth of information it provides. On a side note: I remember Gamasutra being around when my best friend and I wanted to make a video game...meaning, they've been around for a while now. I think the most beneficial aspect of this site is to understand the industry you want to get into. Otherwise, it's just a cool site to keep up to date with the industry in general. Another Community Support option is LinkedIn. Amongst the land of extremely bloated achievements and responsibilities lay 3 groups (that I have found) that deal with game development.: http://www.linkedin.com/groups?gid=59205 - Game Developers http://www.linkedin.com/groups?gid=824817 - DirectX Game Developer Network http://www.linkedin.com/groups?gid=756587 - DirectX Developers The Game Developers group in LinkedIn is by far the most active of the three and could possibly provide a wealth of support. What I've done thus far: - I lightly researched the XNA technology - I looked around for some community sites to assist me - I downloaded the XNA Game Studio 3.1 on my PC and installed it on my IDE - I even tried both tutorials! http://creators.xna.com/en-US/education/gettingstarted/bgintro/chapter1   Best Regards D.

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• Content Query Web Part and the Yes/No Field

  - by Bil Simser

  The Content Query Web Part (CQWP) is a pretty powerful beast. It allows you to do multiple site queries and aggregate the results. This is great for rolling up content and doing some summary type reporting. Here’s a trick to remember about Yes/No fields and using the CQWP. If you’re building a news style site and want to aggregate say all the announcements that people tag a certain way, up onto the home page this might be a solution. First we need to allow a way for users of all our sites to mark an announcement for inclusion on our Intranet Home Page. We’ll do this by just modifying the Announcement Content type and adding a Yes/No field to it. There are alternate ways of doing this like building a new Announcement type or stapling a feature to all sites to add our column but this is pretty low impact and only affects our current site collection so let’s go with it for now, okay? You can berate me in the comments about the proper way I should have done this part. Go to the Site Settings for the Site Collection and click on Site Content Types under the Galleries. This takes you to the gallery for this site and all subsites. Scroll down until you see the List Content Types and click on Announcements. Now we’re modifying the Announcement content type which affects all those announcement lists that are created by default if you’re building sites using the Team Site template (or creating a new Announcements list on any site for that matter). Click on Add from new site column under the Column list. This will allow us to create a new Yes/No field that users will see in Announcement items. This field will allow the user to flag the announcement for inclusion on the home page. Feel free to modify the fields as you see fit for your environment, this is just an example. Now that we’ve added the column to our Announcements Content type we can go into any site that has an announcement list, modify that announcement and flag it to be included on our home page. See the new Featured column? That was the result of modifying our Announcements Content Type on this site collection. Now we can move onto the dirty part, displaying it in a CQWP on the home page. And here is where the fun begins (and the head scratching should end). On our home page we want to drop a Content Query Web Part and aggregate any Announcement that’s been flagged as Featured by the users (we could also add the filter to handle Expires so we don’t show old content so go ahead and do that if you want). First add a CQWP to the page then modify the settings for the web part. In the first section, Query, we want the List Type to be set to Announcements and the Content type to be Announcement so set your options like this: Click Apply and you’ll see the results display all Announcements from any site in the site collection. I have five team sites created each with a unique announcement added to them. Now comes the filtering. We don’t want to include every announcement, only ones users flag using that Featured column we added. At first blush you might scroll down to the Additional Filters part of the Query options and set the Featured column to be equal to Yes: This seems correct doesn’t it? After all, the column is a Yes/No column and looking at an announcement in the site, it displays the field as Yes or No: However after applying the filter you get this result: (I have the announcements from Team Site 1 and Team Site 4 flagged as Featured) Huh? It’s BACKWARDS! Let’s confirm that. Go back in and change the Additional Filters section from Yes to No and hit Apply and you get this: Wait a minute? Shouldn’t I see Team Site 1 and 4 if the logic is backwards? Why am I seeing the same thing as before. What gives… For whatever reason, unknown to me, a Yes/No field (even though it displays as such) really uses 1 and 0 behind the scenes. Yeah, someone was stuck on using integer values for booleans when they wrote SharePoint (probably after a long night of white boarding ways to mess with developers heads) and came up with this. The solution is pretty simple but not very discoverable. Set the filter to include your flagged items like so: And it will filter the items marked as Featured correctly giving you this result: This kind of solution could also be extended and enhanced. Here are a few suggestions and ideas: Modify the ItemStyle.xsl file to add a new style for this aggregation which would include the first few paragraphs of the body (or perhaps add another field to the Content type called Excerpt or Summary and display that instead) Add an Image column to the Announcement Content type to include a Picture field and display it in the summary Add a Category choice field (Employee News, Current Events, Headlines, etc.) and add multiple CQWPs to the home page filtering each one on a different category I know some may find this topic old and dusty but I didn’t see a lot out there specifically on filtering the Yes/No fields and the whole 1/0 trick was a little wonky, so I figured a few pictures would help walk through overcoming yet another SharePoint weirdness. With a little work and some creative juices you can easily us the power of aggregation and the CQWP to build a news site from content on your team sites.

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• About Solaris 11 and UltraSPARC II/III/IV/IV+

  - by nospam(at)example.com (Joerg Moellenkamp)

  I know that I will get the usual amount of comments like "Oh, Jörg ? you can't be negative about Oracle" for this article. However as usual I want to explain the logic behind my reasoning. Yes ? I know that there is a lot of UltraSPARC III, IV and IV+ gear out there. But there are some very basic questions: Does your application you are currently running on this gear stops running just because you can't run Solaris 11 on it? What is the need to upgrade a system already in production to Solaris 11? I have the impression, that some people think that the systems get useless in the moment Oracle releases Solaris 11. I know that Sun sold UltraSPARC IV+ systems until 2009. The Sun SF490 introduced 2004 for example, that was a Sun SF480 with UltraSPARC IV and later with UltraSPARC IV+. And yes, Sun made some speedbumps. At that time the systems of the UltraSPARC III to IV+ generations were supported on Solaris 8, on Solaris 9 and on Solaris 10. However from my perspective we sold them to customers, which weren't able to migrate to Solaris 10 because they used applications not supported on Solaris 9 or who just didn't wanted to migrate to Solaris 10. Believe it or not ? I personally know two customers that migrated core systems to Solaris 10 in ? well 2008/9. This was especially true when the M3000 was announced in 2008 when it closed the darned single socket gap. It may be different at you site, however that's what I remember about that time when talking with customers. At first: Just because there is no Solaris 11 for UltraSPARC III, IV and IV+, it doesn't mean that Solaris 10 will go away anytime soon. I just want to point you to "Expect Lifetime Support - Hardware and Operating Systems". It states about Premier Support:Maintenance and software upgrades are included for Oracle operating systems and Oracle VM for a minimum of eight years from the general availability date.GA for Solaris 10 was in 2005. Plus 8 years ? 2013 ? at minimum. Then you can still opt for 3 years of "Extended Support" ? 2016 ? at minimum. 2016 your systems purchased in 2009 are 7 years old. Even on systems purchased at the very end of the lifetime of that system generation. That are the rules as written in the linked document. I said minimum The actual dates are even further in the future: Premier Support for Solaris 10 ends in 2015, Extended support ends 2018. Sustaining support ? indefinite. You will find this in the document "Oracle Lifetime Support Policy: Oracle Hardware and Operating Systems".So I don't understand when some people write, that Oracle is less protective about hardware investments than Sun. And for hardware it's the same as with Sun: Service 5 years after EOL as part of Premier Support. I would like to write about a different perspective as well: I have to be a little cautious here, because this is going in the roadmap area, so I will mention the public sources here: John Fowler told last year that we have to expect at at least 3x the single thread performance of T3 for T4. We have 8 cores in T4, as stated by Rick Hetherington. Let's assume for a moment that a T4 core will have the performance of a UltraSPARC core (just to simplify math and not to disclosing anything about the performance, all existing SPARC cores are considered equal). So given this pieces of information, you could consolidate 8 V215, 4 or 8 V245, 2 full blown V445,2 full blown 490, 2 full blown M3000 on a single T4 SPARC processor. The Fowler roadmap prezo talked about 4-socket systems with T4. So 32 V215, 16 to 8 V245, 8 fullblown V445, 8 full blown V490, 8 full blown M3000 in a system image. I think you get the idea. That said, most of the systems we are talking about have already amortized and perhaps it's just time to invest in new systems to yield other advantages like reduced space consumptions, like reduced power consumption, like some of the neat features sun4v gives you, and yes ? reduced number of processor licenses for Oracle and less money for Oracle HW/SW support. As much as I dislike it myself that my own UltraSPARC III and UltraSPARC II based systems won't run on Solaris 11 (and I have quite a few of them in my personal lab), I really think that the impact on production environments will be much less than most people think now. By the way: The reason for this move is a quite significant new feature. I will tell you that it was this feature, when it's out. I assume, telling just a word more could lead to much more time to blog.

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• Sending Outlook Invites

  - by Daniel Moth

  Sending an Outlook invite for a meeting (also referred to as S+ in Microsoft) is a simple thing to get right if you just run the quick mental check below, which is driven by visual cues in the Outlook UI. I know that some folks don’t do this often or are new to Outlook, so if you know one of those folks share this blog post with them and if they read nothing else ask them to read step 7. Add on the To line the folks that you want to be at the meeting. Indicate optional invitees. Click on the “To” button to bring up the dialog that lets you move folks to be Optional (you can also do this from the Scheduling Assistant). Set the Reminder according to the attendee that has to travel the most. 5 minutes is the minimum. Use the Response Options and uncheck the "Request Response" if your event is going ahead regardless of who can make it or not, i.e. if everyone is optional. Don’t force every recipient to make an extra click, instead make the extra click yourself - you are the organizer. Add a good subject Make the subject such that just by reading it folks know what the meeting is about. Examples, e.g. "Review…", "Finalize…", "XYZ sync up" If this is only between two people and what is commonly referred to as a one to one, the subject would be something like "MyName/YourName 1:1" Write the subject in such a way that when the recipient sees this on their calendar among all the other items, they know what this meeting is about without having to see location, recipients, or any other information about the invite. Add a location, typically a meeting room. If recipients are from different buildings, schedule it where the folks that are doing the other folks a favor live. Otherwise schedule it wherever the least amount of people will have to travel. If you send me an invite to come to your building, and there is more of us than you, you are silently sending me the message that you are doing me a favor so if you don’t want to do that, include a note of why this is in your building, e.g. "Sorry we are slammed with back to back meetings today so hope you can come over to our building". If this is in someone's office, the location would be something like "Moth's office (7/666)" where in parenthesis you see the office location. If some folks are remote in another building/country, or if you know you picked a time which wasn't free for everyone, add an Online option (click the Lync Meeting button). Add a date and time. This MUST be at a time that is showing on the recipients’ calendar as FREE or at worst TENTATIVE. You can check that on the Scheduling Assistant. The reality is that this is not always possible, so in that case you MUST say something about it in the Invite Body, e.g. "Sorry I can see X has a conflict, but I cannot find a better slot", or "With so many of us there are some conflicts and I cannot find a better slot so hope this works", or "Apologies but due to Y we must have this meeting at this time and I know there are some conflicts, hope you can make it anyway". When you do that, I better not be able to find a better slot myself for all of us, and of course when you do that you have implicitly designated the Busy folks as optional. Finally, the body of the invite. This has the agenda of the meeting and if applicable the courtesy apologies due to messing up steps 6 & 7. This should not be the introduction to the meeting, in other words the recipients should not be surprised when they see the invite and go to the body to read it. Notifying them of the meeting takes place via separate email where you explain the purpose and give them a heads up that you'll be sending an invite. That separate email is also your chance to attach documents, don’t do that as part of the invite. TIP: If you have sent mail about the meeting, you can then go to your sent folder to select the message and click the "Meeting" button (Ctrl+Alt+R). This will populate the body with the necessary background, auto select the mandatory and optional attendees as per the TO/CC line, and have a subject that may be good enough already (or you can tweak it). Long to write, but very quick to remember and enforce since most of it is common sense and the checklist is driven of the visual cues in the UI you use to send the invite. Comments about this post by Daniel Moth welcome at the original blog.

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• Easy Made Easier

  - by dragonfly

      How easy is it to deploy a 2 node, fully redundant Oracle RAC cluster? Not very. Unless you use an Oracle Database Appliance. The focus of this member of Oracle's Engineered Systems family is to simplify the configuration, management and maintenance throughout the life of the system, while offering pay-as-you-grow scaling. Getting a 2-node RAC cluster up and running in under 2 hours has been made possible by the Oracle Database Appliance. Don't take my word for it, just check out these blog posts from partners and end users. The Oracle Database Appliance Experience - Zip Zoom Zoom http://www.fuadarshad.com/2012/02/oracle-database-appliance-experience.html Off-the-shelf Oracle database servers http://normanweaver.wordpress.com/2011/10/10/off-the-shelf-oracle-database-servers/ Oracle Database Appliance – Deployment Steps http://marcel.vandewaters.nl/oracle/database-appliance/oracle-database-appliance-deployment-steps     See how easy it is to deploy an Oracle Database Appliance for high availability with RAC? Now for the meat of this post, which is the first in a series of posts describing tips for making the deployment of an ODA even easier. The key to the easy deployment of an Oracle Database Appliance is the Appliance Manager software, which does the actual software deployment and configuration, based on best practices. But in order for it to do that, it needs some basic information first, including system name, IP addresses, etc. That's where the Appliance Manager GUI comes in to play, taking a wizard approach to specifying the information needed.     Using the Appliance Manager GUI is pretty straight forward, stepping through several screens of information to enter data in typical wizard style. Like most configuration tasks, it helps to gather the required information before hand. But before you rush out to a committee meeting on what to use for host names, and rely on whatever IP addresses might be hanging around, make sure you are familiar with some of the auto-fill defaults for the Appliance Manager. I'll step through the key screens below to highlight the results of the auto-fill capability of the Appliance Manager GUI.     Depending on which of the 2 Configuration Types (Config Type screen) you choose, you will get a slightly different set of screens. The Typical configuration assumes certain default configuration choices and has the fewest screens, where as the Custom configuration gives you the most flexibility in what you configure from the start. In the examples below, I have used the Custom config type.     One of the first items you are asked for is the System Name (System Info screen). This is used to identify the system, but also as the base for the default hostnames on following screens. In this screen shot, the System Name is "oda".     When you get to the next screen (Generic Network screen), you enter your domain name, DNS IP address(es), and NTP IP address(es). Next up is the Public Network screen, seen below, where you will see the host name fields are automatically filled in with default host names based on the System Name, in this case "oda". The System Name is also the basis for default host names for the extra ethernet ports available for configuration as part of a Custom configuration, as seen in the 2nd screen shot below (Other Network). There is no requirement to use these host names, as you can easily edit any of the host names. This does make filling in the configuration details easier and less prone to "fat fingers" if you are OK with these host names. Here is a full list of the automatically filled in host names. 1 2 1-vip 2-vip -scan 1-ilom 2-ilom 1-net1 2-net1 1-net2 2-net2 1-net3 2-net3     Another auto-fill feature of the Appliance Manager GUI follows a common practice of deploying IP Addresses for a RAC cluster in sequential order. In the screen shot below, I entered the first IP address (Node1-IP), then hit Tab to move to the next field. As a result, the next 5 IP address fields were automatically filled in with the next 5 IP addresses sequentially from the first one I entered. As with the host names, these are not required, and can be changed to whatever your IP address values are. One note of caution though, if the first IP Address field (Node1-IP) is filled out and you click in that field and back out, the following 5 IP addresses will be set to the sequential default. If you don't use the sequential IP addresses, pay attention to where you click that mouse. :-)     In the screen shot below, by entering the netmask value in the Netmask field, in this case 255.255.255.0, the gateway value was auto-filled into the Gateway field, based on the IP addresses and netmask previously entered. As always, you can change this value.     My last 2 screen shots illustrate that the same sequential IP address autofill and netmask to gateway autofill works when entering the IP configuration details for the Integrated Lights Out Manager (ILOM) for both nodes. The time these auto-fill capabilities save in entering data is nice, but from my perspective not as important as the opportunity to avoid data entry errors. In my next post in this series, I will touch on the benefit of using the network validation capability of the Appliance Manager GUI prior to deploying an Oracle Database Appliance.

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• Career guidance/advice for Junior-level Software Engineer [closed]

  - by John Do

  I have quite a few questions on my mind, so please bare with me. Please don't feel obligated to answer all of them, any as you choose will do. I'd appreciate if you could share some insight on any of these. Before I begin, some context: I currently have almost two years of professional experience as a Software Engineer, mainly developing software in Java. At this point, I feel that I have reached the peak in my career growth at the current company I am at and therefore I am looking for a new job, ideally again, as a Software Engineer. I have been interviewing for the past few months casually but have not had luck with companies I have a passion for. So, in no particular order - 1) In general, what are your thoughts on having graduate degrees in CS / Software Engineering. How much does it influence a salary increase, and do you think it's beneficial when working on real-world problems? I get the sense that a graduate degree in the field is trivial unless you really have a passion for research. 2) In general, in professional practice, how often had you have to write your own data structures and "complex" algorithms from scratch? In my own work, I have found myself relying mainly on third-party frameworks and the Java standard library to implement solutions as per business requirements. What are your thoughts on this? 3) In terms of resume, I feel the most ambivalent here. I want to be able to "blemish" my resume to a certain extent so that it stands out from others', but at the same time I do not want to over-exagerate my abilities. How do you strike a balance here? For example: I say that I am proficient in Java with data structures and algorithms. This is obviously a subjective and relative statement. I've taken the classes in my undergrad, and I've applied it in my work experience. What I feel as "prociency" can be seen as junior-level to others. How do you know what to say? Most of the time, recruiters (with no technical background) will be looking for keywords that stand out. This leads me to my next question (4). 4) Just from interviewing for the past few months (and getting plenty of rejections), I've come to realize that I may not be as proficient in data structures and algorithms as I thought I was. Do you think it's a good idea to remove the "proficient in java/data structure and algorithms"? I feel that being too hoenst on the resume will impede me from scoring opportunities to even have an interview with top-notch companies. What are your thoughts? 5) What is the absolute "must-have" knowledge going into a technical interview? I've been practicing several algorithmic and data sturcture problems now, and I feel that my abilities to solve arbitrary problems efficiently has not gotten significantly better. Do you think these abilities are something innate - it's either you have in you, or you don't? How can you teach yourself to learn, if you will? 6) How easy is it to go from industry/function to the next? I work mainly with backend technologies and I'm now interested in working with the frontend, i.e javascript,jquery,php or even mobile development. In your own experience, how did you not get pidgeon holed in your career? I feel that the choices you make now ultimately decide your future. As cliche as it sounds, I think it may be true. Here's what I mean: you've worked mainly as a backend engineer, people are interested in you doing the same thing since you've already accumulated experience in that function. How do get experience in a new function if people won't accept you because you don't already have it? It's a catch 22, you see... Are side projects the only real way to help you move from one function to another that you're truly interested in? For example: I could start writing my own mobile applications, even though I've worked mainly on the backend. Thanks so much for the long read. As a relatively new engineer to the real world, I am very humble and would like those who are experienced to shed some light. Thank you so much.

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• Which of these algorithms is best for my goal?

  - by JonathonG

  I have created a program that restricts the mouse to a certain region based on a black/white bitmap. The program is 100% functional as-is, but uses an inaccurate, albeit fast, algorithm for repositioning the mouse when it strays outside the area. Currently, when the mouse moves outside the area, basically what happens is this: A line is drawn between a pre-defined static point inside the region and the mouse's new position. The point where that line intersects the edge of the allowed area is found. The mouse is moved to that point. This works, but only works perfectly for a perfect circle with the pre-defined point set in the exact center. Unfortunately, this will never be the case. The application will be used with a variety of rectangles and irregular, amorphous shapes. On such shapes, the point where the line drawn intersects the edge will usually not be the closest point on the shape to the mouse. I need to create a new algorithm that finds the closest point to the mouse's new position on the edge of the allowed area. I have several ideas about this, but I am not sure of their validity, in that they may have far too much overhead. While I am not asking for code, it might help to know that I am using Objective C / Cocoa, developing for OS X, as I feel the language being used might affect the efficiency of potential methods. My ideas are: Using a bit of trigonometry to project lines would work, but that would require some kind of intense algorithm to test every point on every line until it found the edge of the region... That seems too resource intensive since there could be something like 200 lines that would have each have to have as many as 200 pixels checked for black/white.... Using something like an A* pathing algorithm to find the shortest path to a black pixel; however, A* seems resource intensive, even though I could probably restrict it to only checking roughly in one direction. It also seems like it will take more time and effort than I have available to spend on this small portion of the much larger project I am working on, correct me if I am wrong and it would not be a significant amount of code (100 lines or around there). Mapping the border of the region before the application begins running the event tap loop. I think I could accomplish this by using my current line-based algorithm to find an edge point and then initiating an algorithm that checks all 8 pixels around that pixel, finds the next border pixel in one direction, and continues to do this until it comes back to the starting pixel. I could then store that data in an array to be used for the entire duration of the program, and have the mouse re-positioning method check the array for the closest pixel on the border to the mouse target position. That last method would presumably execute it's initial border mapping fairly quickly. (It would only have to map between 2,000 and 8,000 pixels, which means 8,000 to 64,000 checked, and I could even permanently store the data to make launching faster.) However, I am uncertain as to how much overhead it would take to scan through that array for the shortest distance for every single mouse move event... I suppose there could be a shortcut to restrict the number of elements in the array that will be checked to a variable number starting with the intersecting point on the line (from my original algorithm), and raise/lower that number to experiment with the overhead/accuracy tradeoff. Please let me know if I am over thinking this and there is an easier way that will work just fine, or which of these methods would be able to execute something like 30 times per second to keep mouse movement smooth, or if you have a better/faster method. I've posted relevant parts of my code below for reference, and included an example of what the area might look like. (I check for color value against a loaded bitmap that is black/white.) // // This part of my code runs every single time the mouse moves. // CGPoint point = CGEventGetLocation(event); float tX = point.x; float tY = point.y; if( is_in_area(tX,tY, mouse_mask)){ // target is inside O.K. area, do nothing }else{ CGPoint target; //point inside restricted region: float iX = 600; // inside x float iY = 500; // inside y // delta to midpoint between iX,iY and tX,tY float dX; float dY; float accuracy = .5; //accuracy to loop until reached do { dX = (tX-iX)/2; dY = (tY-iY)/2; if(is_in_area((tX-dX),(tY-dY),mouse_mask)){ iX += dX; iY += dY; } else { tX -= dX; tY -= dY; } } while (abs(dX)>accuracy || abs(dY)>accuracy); target = CGPointMake(roundf(tX), roundf(tY)); CGDisplayMoveCursorToPoint(CGMainDisplayID(),target); } Here is "is_in_area(int x, int y)" : bool is_in_area(NSInteger x, NSInteger y, NSBitmapImageRep *mouse_mask){ NSAutoreleasePool * pool = [[NSAutoreleasePool alloc] init]; NSUInteger pixel[4]; [mouse_mask getPixel:pixel atX:x y:y]; if(pixel[0]!= 0){ [pool release]; return false; } [pool release]; return true; }

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• CodePlex Daily Summary for Thursday, September 06, 2012

  CodePlex Daily Summary for Thursday, September 06, 2012Popular Releasesmenu4web: menu4web 0.4.1 - javascript menu for web sites: This release is for those who believe that global variables are evil. menu4web has been wrapped into m4w singleton object. Added "Vertical Tabs" example which illustrates object notation.WinRT XAML Toolkit: WinRT XAML Toolkit - 1.2.1: WinRT XAML Toolkit based on the Windows 8 RTM SDK. Download the latest source from the SOURCE CODE page. For compiled version use NuGet. You can add it to your project in Visual Studio by going to View/Other Windows/Package Manager Console and entering: PM> Install-Package winrtxamltoolkit Features AsyncUI extensions Controls and control extensions Converters Debugging helpers Imaging IO helpers VisualTree helpers Samples Recent changes NOTE: Namespace changes DebugConsol...iPDC - Free Phasor Data Concentrator: iPDC-v1.3.1: iPDC suite version-1.3.1, Modifications and Bug Fixed (from v 1.3.0) New User Manual for iPDC-v1.3.1 available on websites. Bug resolved : PMU Simulator TCP connection error and hang connection for client (PDC). Now PMU Simulator (server) can communicate more than one PDCs (clients) over TCP and UDP parallely. PMU Simulator is now sending the exact data frames as mentioned in data rate by user. PMU Simulator data rate has been verified by iPDC database entries and PMU Connection Tes...Microsoft SQL Server Product Samples: Database: AdventureWorks OData Feed: The AdventureWorks OData service exposes resources based on specific SQL views. The SQL views are a limited subset of the AdventureWorks database that results in several consuming scenarios: CompanySales Documents ManufacturingInstructions ProductCatalog TerritorySalesDrilldown WorkOrderRouting How to install the sample You can consume the AdventureWorks OData feed from http://services.odata.org/AdventureWorksV3/AdventureWorks.svc. You can also consume the AdventureWorks OData fe...Desktop Google Reader: 1.4.6: Sorting feeds alphabetical is now optional (see preferences window)DotNetNuke® Community Edition CMS: 06.02.03: Major Highlights Fixed issue where mailto: links were not working when sending bulk email Fixed issue where uses did not see friendship relationships Problem is in 6.2, which does not show in the Versions Affected list above. Fixed the issue with cascade deletes in comments in CoreMessaging_Notification Fixed UI issue when using a date fields as a required profile property during user registration Fixed error when running the product in debug mode Fixed visibility issue when...Microsoft Ajax Minifier: Microsoft Ajax Minifier 4.65: Fixed null-reference error in the build task constructor.Active Forums for DotNetNuke CMS: Active Forums 5.0.0 RC: RC release of Active Forums 5.0.Droid Explorer: Droid Explorer 0.8.8.7 Beta: Bug in the display icon for apk's, will fix with next release Added fallback icon if unable to get the image/icon from the Cloud Service Removed some stale plugins that were either out dated or incomplete. Added handler for *.ab files for restoring backups Added plugin to create device backups Backups stored in %USERPROFILE%\Android Backups\%DEVICE_ID%\ Added custom folder icon for the android backups directory better error handling for installing an apk bug fixes for the Runn...BI System Monitor: v2.1: Data Audits report and supporting SQL, and SSIS package Environment Overview report enhancements, improving the appearance, addition of data audit finding indicators Note: SQL 2012 version coming soon.Hidden Capture (HC): Hidden Capture 1.1: Hidden Capture 1.1 by Mohsen E.Dawatgar http://Hidden-Capture.blogfa.comExt Spec: Ext Spec 0.2.1: Refined examples and improved distribution options.The Visual Guide for Building Team Foundation Server 2012 Environments: Version 1: --Nearforums - ASP.NET MVC forum engine: Nearforums v8.5: Version 8.5 of Nearforums, the ASP.NET MVC Forum Engine. New features include: Built-in search engine using Lucene.NET Flood control improvements Notifications improvements: sync option and mail body View Roadmap for more details webdeploy package sha1 checksum: 961aff884a9187b6e8a86d68913cdd31f8deaf83WiX Toolset: WiX Toolset v3.6: WiX Toolset v3.6 introduces the Burn bootstrapper/chaining engine and support for Visual Studio 2012 and .NET Framework 4.5. Other minor functionality includes: WixDependencyExtension supports dependency checking among MSI packages. WixFirewallExtension supports more features of Windows Firewall. WixTagExtension supports Software Id Tagging. WixUtilExtension now supports recursive directory deletion. Melt simplifies pure-WiX patching by extracting .msi package content and updating .w...Iveely Search Engine: Iveely Search Engine （0.2.0）: ????ISE?0.1.0??，?????，ISE?0.2.0?????????，???????，????????20???follow?ISE，????，??ISE??????????，??????????，?????????，?????????0.2.0??????，??????????。 Iveely Search Engine ?0.2.0?????????“??????????”，??????，?????????，???????，???????????????????，????、????????????。???0.1.0????????????： 1. ??“????” ??。??????????，?????????，???????????????????。??：????????，????????????，??????????????????。??????。 2. ??“????”??。?0.1.0??????，???????，???????????????，?????????????，????????，?0.2.0?，???????...GmailDefaultMaker: GmailDefaultMaker 3.0.0.2: Add QQ Mail BugfixSmart Data Access layer: Smart Data access Layer Ver 3: In this version support executing inline query is added. Check Documentation section for detail.DotNetNuke® Form and List: 06.00.04: DotNetNuke Form and List 06.00.04 Don't forget to backup your installation before upgrade. Changes in 06.00.04 Fix: Sql Scripts for 6.003 missed object qualifiers within stored procedures Fix: added missing resource "cmdCancel.Text" in form.ascx.resx Changes in 06.00.03 Fix: MakeThumbnail was broken if the application pool was configured to .Net 4 Change: Data is now stored in nvarchar(max) instead of ntext Changes in 06.00.02 The scripts are now compatible with SQL Azure, tested in a ne...Coevery - Free CRM: Coevery 1.0.0.24: Add a sample database, and installation instructions.New ProjectsAny-Service: AnyService is a .net 4.0 Windows service shell. It hosts any windows application in non-gui mode to run as a service.BabyCloudDrives - the multi cloud drive desktop's application: wpf ????BLACK ORANGE: Download The HPAD TEXT EDITOR and use it Wisely.. CodePlex New Release Checker: CodePlex New Release Checker is a small library that makes it easy to add, "New Version Available!" functionality to your CodePlex project.Collect: ????????！CSVManager: CSV??CSV?????，????CSV??，??????Exam Project: My Exam Project. Computer Vision, C and OpenCV-FTP: Hey guys thanks for checking out my ftp!Haushaltsbuch: 1ModMaker.Lua: ModMaker.Lua is an open source .NET library that parses and executes Lua code.MyJabbr: MyJabbr netduinoscope: Design shield and software to use netduino as oscilloscopeNetSurveillance Web Application: Net Surveillance Web ApplicationNiconicoApiHelper: ????API?????????OStega: A simple library for encrypt text into an bmp or png image.OURORM: ormTFS Cloud Deployment Toolkit: The TFS Cloud Deployment Toolkit is a set of tools that integrate with TFS 2010 to help manage configuration and deployment to various remote environments.The Visual Guide for Building Team Foundation Server 2012 Environments: A step-by-step guide for building Team Foundation Server 2012 environments that include SharePoint Server 2010, SQL Server 2012, Windows Server 2012 and more!WinRT LineChart: An attempt at creating an usable LineChart for everyone to use in his/her own Windows 8 Apps

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• Real Time BI in the Real World

  - by tobin.gilman(at)oracle.com

  Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 /* 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:"Times New Roman","serif";} Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 /* 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:"Times New Roman","serif"; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman";} One of my favorite BI offerings from Oracle is a solution called Oracle Real Time Decisions.  Whenever I mention this product in customer meetings, eyes light up.  There are some fascinating examples of customers using it to up-sell, cross-sell, increase customer retention, and reduce risk in real time, with off the charts return on investment. I plan to share some of those stories in a future blog.  In this post however, I want to share some far more common real time analytics use case scenarios that are being addressed with widely deployed Oracle BI and data integration technologies Not all real time BI applications require continuous learning, predictive modeling, and data mining.  Many simply require the ability to integrate, aggregate, and access information that is current (typically within in few minutes or a few seconds).  The use cases are infinite.  A few I've seen: ·         Purchasing agents need to match demand against available inventory ·         Manufacturing planners need to monitor current parts and material against scheduled build plans ·         Airline agents need to match ticket demand against flight schedules, ·         Human resources managers need to track the status of global hiring requisitions against current headcount authorizations...you get the idea. One way of doing this is to run reports or federated queries directly against transactional systems.  That approach can be viable if you only need to access simple data sets on rare occasions.  High volume and complex queries can quickly bog down performance of mission critical transactional systems.  There is an architecturally simple way of solving the problem, and it's being applied by real companies around the world to solve real needs in real time.    Cbeyond is an Atlanta, GA based  provider of voice, data and mobile business applications delivers.  They deliver real time information to its call center agents  as they are interacting with their customers. The data they need resides in production CRM and other transactional systems, but  instead or reporting directly off the those systems, data is first moved to an operational data store (ODS).  Rather than running data intensive, time consuming, and performance degrading batch ETL routines to populate the ODS, Cbeyond uses Oracle Golden Gate software to incrementally capture and move only the changed records from log files of the transactional systems every few minutes.  There is no impact on transactional system performance, and the information needed by call center representatives is up to date.  Oracle Business Intelligence software presents the information to services reps in a rich, visual, and highly interactive format. Avea is similar to Cbeyond.  They are a telecommunications company who integrates billing and customer information in an ODS that is accessed by their call center agents in real time using Oracle Golden Gate and Oracle Business Intelligence.  They've taken it a step further by using the ODS to feed a data warehouse.  The operational data store provides the current information needed by call center agents during "in flight" customer interactions.  The data warehouse is used for more sophisticated analysis of historical data.  For maximum performance, both the ODS and data warehouse run on the Oracle Exadata Database Machine. These are practical illustrations of companies addressing real time reporting and analysis needs using established business intelligence/data warehousing methodologies and tools common to many IT departments.  If real time BI could benefit your organization, you may be already be closer than you thought to having the pieces in place to solving the problem.    Give us a shout if you are interested in learning more or if you have an interesting use or approach to real-time BI.

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• Keep a programming language backwards compatible vs. fixing its flaws

  - by Radu Murzea

  First, some context (stuff that most of you know anyway): Every popular programming language has a clear evolution, most of the time marked by its version: you have Java 5, 6, 7 etc., PHP 5.1, 5.2, 5.3 etc. Releasing a new version makes new APIs available, fixes bugs, adds new features, new frameworks etc. So all in all: it's good. But what about the language's (or platform's) problems? If and when there's something wrong in a language, developers either avoid it (if they can) or they learn to live with it. Now, the developers of those languages get a lot of feedback from the programmers that use them. So it kind of makes sense that, as time (and version numbers) goes by, the problems in those languages will slowly but surely go away. Well, not really. Why? Backwards compatibility, that's why. But why is this so? Read below for a more concrete situation. The best way I can explain my question is to use PHP as an example: PHP is loved thousands of people and hated by just as many thousands. All languages have flaws, but apparently PHP is special. Check out this blog post. It has a very long list of so called flaws in PHP. Now, I'm not a PHP developer (not yet), but I read through all of it and I'm sure that a big chunk of that list are indeed real issues. (Not all of it, since it's potentially subjective). Now, if I was one of the guys who actively develops PHP, I would surely want to fix those problems, one by one. However, if I do that, then code that relies on a particular behaviour of the language will break if it runs on the new version. Summing it up in 2 words: backwards compatibility. What I don't understand is: why should I keep PHP backwards compatible? If I release PHP version 8 with all those problems fixed, can't I just put a big warning on it saying: "Don't run old code on this version !"? There is a thing called deprecation. We had it for years and it works. In the context of PHP: look at how these days people actively discourage the use of the mysql_* functions (and instead recommend mysqli_* and PDO). Deprecation works. We can use it. We should use it. If it works for functions, why shouldn't it work for entire languages? Let's say I (the developer of PHP) do this: Launch a new version of PHP (let's say 8) with all of those flaws fixed New projects will start using that version, since it's much better, clearer, more secure etc. However, in order not to abandon older versions of PHP, I keep releasing updates to it, fixing security issues, bugs etc. This makes sense for reasons that I'm not listing here. It's common practice: look for example at how Oracle kept updating version 5.1.x of MySQL, even though it mostly focused on version 5.5.x. After about 3 or 4 years, I stop updating old versions of PHP and leave them to die. This is fine, since in those 3 or 4 years, most projects will have switched to PHP 8 anyway. My question is: Do all these steps make sense? Would it be so hard to do? If it can be done, then why isn't it done? Yes, the downside is that you break backwards compatibility. But isn't that a price worth paying ? As an upside, in 3 or 4 years you'll have a language that has 90 % of its problems fixed.... a language much more pleasant to work with. Its name will ensure its popularity. EDIT: OK, so I didn't expressed myself correctly when I said that in 3 or 4 years people will move to the hypothetical PHP 8. What I meant was: in 3 or 4 years, people will use PHP 8 if they start a new project.

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• Pace Layering Comes Alive

  - by Tanu Sood

  v\:* {behavior:url(#default#VML);} o\:* {behavior:url(#default#VML);} w\:* {behavior:url(#default#VML);} .shape {behavior:url(#default#VML);} Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 /* 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";} Rick Beers is Senior Director of Product Management for Oracle Fusion Middleware. Prior to joining Oracle, Rick held a variety of executive operational positions at Corning, Inc. and Bausch & Lomb. With a professional background that includes senior management positions in manufacturing, supply chain and information technology, Rick brings a unique set of experiences to cover the impact that technology can have on business models, processes and organizations. Rick hosts the IT Leaders Editorial on a monthly basis. By now, readers of this column are quite familiar with Oracle AppAdvantage, a unified framework of middleware technologies, infrastructure and applications utilizing a pace layered approach to enterprise systems platforms. 1. Standardize and Consolidate core Enterprise Applications by removing invasive customizations, costly workarounds and the complexity that multiple instances creates. 2. Move business specific processes and applications to the Differentiate Layer, thus creating greater business agility with process extensions and best of breed applications managed by cross- application process orchestration. 3. The Innovate Layer contains all the business capabilities required for engagement, collaboration and intuitive decision making. This is the layer where innovation will occur, as people engage one another in a secure yet open and informed way. 4. Simplify IT by minimizing complexity, improving performance and lowering cost with secure, reliable and managed systems across the entire Enterprise. But what hasn’t been discussed is the pace layered architecture that Oracle AppAdvantage adopts. What is it, what are its origins and why is it relevant to enterprise scale applications and technologies? It’s actually a fascinating tale that spans the past 20 years and a basic understanding of it provides a wonderful context to what is evolving as the future of enterprise systems platforms. It all begins in 1994 with a book by noted architect Stewart Brand, of ’Whole Earth Catalog’ fame. In his 1994 book How Buildings Learn, Brand popularized the term ‘Shearing Layers’, arguing that any building is actually a hierarchy of pieces, each of which inherently changes at different rates. In 1997 he produced a 6 part BBC Series adapted from the book, in which Part 6 focuses on Shearing Layers. In this segment Brand begins to introduce the concept of ‘pace’. Brand further refined this idea in his subsequent book, The Clock of the Long Now, which began to link the concept of Shearing Layers to computing and introduced the term ‘pace layering’, where he proposes that: “An imperative emerges: an adaptive [system] has to allow slippage between the differently-paced systems … otherwise the slow systems block the flow of the quick ones and the quick ones tear up the slow ones with their constant change. Embedding the systems together may look efficient at first but over time it is the opposite and destructive as well.” In 2000, IBM architects Ian Simmonds and David Ing published a paper entitled A Shearing Layers Approach to Information Systems Development, which applied the concept of Shearing Layers to systems design and development. It argued that at the time systems were still too rigid; that they constrained organizations by their inability to adapt to changes. The findings in the Conclusions section are particularly striking: “Our starting motivation was that enterprises need to become more adaptive, and that an aspect of doing that is having adaptable computer systems. The challenge is then to optimize information systems development for change (high maintenance) rather than stability (low maintenance). Our response is to make it explicit within software engineering the notion of shearing layers, and explore it as the principle that systems should be built to be adaptable in response to the qualitatively different rates of change to which they will be subjected. This allows us to separate functions that should legitimately change relatively slowly and at significant cost from that which should be changeable often, quickly and cheaply.” The problem at the time of course was that this vision of adaptable systems was simply not possible within the confines of 1st generation ERP, which were conceived, designed and developed for standardization and compliance. It wasn’t until the maturity of open, standards based integration, and the middleware innovation that followed, that pace layering became an achievable goal. And Oracle is leading the way. Oracle’s AppAdvantage framework makes pace layering come alive by taking a strategic vision 20 years in the making and transforming it to a reality. It allows enterprises to retain and even optimize their existing ERP systems, while wrapping around those ERP systems three layers of capabilities that inherently adapt as needed, at a pace that’s optimal for the enterprise.

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• Mark Hurd on the Customer Revolution: Oracle's Top 10 Insights

  - by Richard Lefebvre

  Reprint of an article from Forbes Businesses that fail to focus on customer experience will hear a giant sucking sound from their vanishing profitability. Because in today’s dynamic global marketplace, consumers now hold the power in the buyer-seller equation, and sellers need to revamp their strategy for this new world order. The ability to relentlessly deliver connected, personalized and rewarding customer experiences is rapidly becoming one of the primary sources of competitive advantage in today’s dynamic global marketplace. And the inability or unwillingness to realize that the customer is a company’s most important asset will lead, inevitably, to decline and failure. Welcome to the lifecycle of customer experience, in which consumers explore, engage, shop, buy, ask, compare, complain, socialize, exchange, and more across multiple channels with the unconditional expectation that each of those interactions will be completed in an efficient and personalized manner however, wherever, and whenever the customer wants. While many niche companies are offering point solutions within that sprawling and complex spectrum of needs and requirements, businesses looking to deliver superb customer experiences are still left having to do multiple product evaluations, multiple contract negotiations, multiple test projects, multiple deployments, and–perhaps most annoying of all–multiple and never-ending integration projects to string together all those niche products from all those niche vendors. With its new suite of customer-experience solutions, Oracle believes it can help companies unravel these challenges and move at the speed of their customers, anticipating their needs and desires and creating enduring and profitable relationships. Those solutions span the full range of marketing, selling, commerce, service, listening/insights, and social and collaboration tools for employees. When Oracle launched its suite of Customer Experience solutions at a recent event in New York City, president Mark Hurd analyzed the customer experience revolution taking place and presented Oracle’s strategy for empowering companies to capitalize on this important market shift. From Hurd’s presentation and related materials, I’ve extracted a list of Hurd’s Top 10 Insights into the Customer Revolution. 1. Please Don’t Feed the Competitor’s Pipeline!After enduring a poor experience, 89% of consumers say they would immediately take their business to your competitor. (Except where noted, the source for these findings is the 2011 Customer Experience Impact (CEI) Report including a survey commissioned by RightNow (acquired by Oracle in March 2012) and conducted by Harris Interactive.) 2. The Addressable Market Is Massive. Only 1% of consumers say their expectations were always met by their actual experiences. 3. They’re Willing to Pay More! In return for a great experience, 86% of consumers say they’ll pay up to 25% more. 4. The Social Media Microphone Is Always Live. After suffering through a poor experience, more than 25% of consumers said they posted a negative comment on Twitter or Facebook or other social media sites. Conversely, of those consumers who got a response after complaining, 22% posted positive comments about the company. 5.  The New Deal Is Never Done: Embrace the Entire Customer Lifecycle. An appropriately active and engaged relationship, says Hurd, extends across every step of the entire processs: need, research, select, purchase, receive, use, maintain, and recommend. 6. The 360-Degree Commitment. Customers want to do business with companies that actively and openly demonstrate the desire to establish strong and seamless connections across employees, the company, and the customer, says research firm Temkin Group in its report called “The CX Competencies.” 7. Understand the Emotional Drivers Behind Brand Love. What makes consumers fall in love with a brand? Among the top factors are friendly employees and customer reps (73%), easy access to information and support (55%), and personalized experiences, such as when companies know precisely what products or services customers have purchased in the past and what issues those customers have raised (36%). 8.  The Importance of Immediate Action. You’ve got one week to respond–and then the opportunity’s lost. If your company needs more than a week to answer a prospect’s question or request, most of those prospects will terminate the relationship. 9.  Want More Revenue, Less Churn, and More Referrals? Then improve the overall customer experience: Forrester’s research says that approach put an extra $900 million in the pockets of wireless service providers, $800 million for hotels, and $400 million for airlines. 10. The Formula for CX Success.  Hurd says it includes three elegantly interlaced factors: Connected Engagement, to personalize the experience; Actionable Insight, to maximize the engagement; and Optimized Execution, to deliver on the promise of value. RECOMMENDED READING: The Top 10 Strategic CIO Issues For 2013 Wal-Mart, Amazon, eBay: Who’s the Speed King of Retail? Career Suicide and the CIO: 4 Deadly New Threats Memo to Marc Benioff: Social Is a Tool, Not an App

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• Recursion in the form of a Recursive Func&lt;T, T&gt;

  - by ToStringTheory

  I gotta admit, I am kind of surprised that I didn’t realize I could do this sooner.  I recently had a problem which required a recursive function call to come up with the answer.  After some time messing around with a recursive method, and creating an API that I was not happy with, I was able to create an API that I enjoy, and seems intuitive. Introduction To bring it to a simple example, consider the summation to n: A mathematically identical formula is: In a .NET function, this can be represented by a function: Func<int, int> summation = x => x*(x+1)/2 Calling summation with an input integer will yield the summation to that number: var sum10 = summation(4); //sum10 would be equal to 10 But what if I wanted to get a second level summation…  First some to n, and then use that argument as the input to the same function, to find the second level summation: So as an easy example, calculate the summation to 3, which yields 6.  Then calculate the summation to 6 which yields 21. Represented as a mathematical formula - So what if I wanted to represent this as .NET functions.  I can always do: //using the summation formula from above var sum3 = summation(3); //sets sum3 to 6 var sum3_2 = summation(sum3); //sets sum3 to 21 I could always create a while loop to perform the calculations too: Func<int, int> summation = x => x*(x+1)/2; //for the interests of a smaller example, using shorthand int sumResultTo = 3; int level = 2; while(level-- > 0) { sumResultTo = summation(sumResultTo); } //sumResultTo is equal to 21 now. Or express it as a for-loop, method calls, etc…  I really didn’t like any of the options that I tried.  Then it dawned on me – since I was using a Func<T, T> anyways, why not use the Func’s output from one call as the input as another directly. Some Code So, I decided that I wanted a recursion class.  Something that I would be generic and reusable in case I ever wanted to do something like this again. It is limited to only the Func<T1, T2> level of Func, and T1 must be the same as T2. The first thing in this class is a private field for the function: private readonly Func<T, T> _functionToRecurse; So, I since I want the function to be unchangeable, I have defined it as readonly.  Therefore my constructor looks like: public Recursion(Func<T, T> functionToRecurse) { if (functionToRecurse == null) { throw new ArgumentNullException("functionToRecurse", "The function to recurse can not be null"); } _functionToRecurse = functionToRecurse; } Simple enough.  If you have any questions, feel free to post them in the comments, and I will be sure to answer them. Next, I want enough. If be able to get the result of a function dependent on how many levels of recursion: private Func<T, T> GetXLevel(int level) { if (level < 1) { throw new ArgumentOutOfRangeException("level", level, "The level of recursion must be greater than 0"); } if (level == 1) return _functionToRecurse; return _GetXLevel(level - 1, _functionToRecurse); } So, if you pass in 1 for the level, you get just the Func<T,T> back.  If you say that you want to go deeper down the rabbit hole, it calls a method which accepts the level it is at, and the function which it needs to use to recurse further: private Func<T, T> _GetXLevel(int level, Func<T, T> prevFunc) { if (level == 1) return y => prevFunc(_functionToRecurse(y)); return _GetXLevel(level - 1, y => prevFunc(_functionToRecurse(y))); } That is really all that is needed for this class. If I exposed the GetXLevel function publicly, I could use that to get the function for a level, and pass in the argument..  But I wanted something better.  So, I used the ‘this’ array operator for the class: public Func<T,T> this[int level] { get { if (level < 1) { throw new ArgumentOutOfRangeException("level", level, "The level of recursion must be greater than 0"); } return this.GetXLevel(level); } } So, using the same example above of finding the second recursion of the summation of 3: var summator = new Recursion<int>(x => (x * (x + 1)) / 2); var sum_3_level2 = summator[2](3); //yields 21 You can even find just store the delegate to the second level summation, and use it multiple times: var summator = new Recursion<int>(x => (x * (x + 1)) / 2); var sum_level2 = summator[2]; var sum_3_level2 = sum_level2(3); //yields 21 var sum_4_level2 = sum_level2(4); //yields 55 var sum_5_level2 = sum_level2(5); //yields 120 Full Code Don’t think I was just going to hold off on the full file together and make you do the hard work…  Copy this into a new class file: public class Recursion<T> { private readonly Func<T, T> _functionToRecurse; public Recursion(Func<T, T> functionToRecurse) { if (functionToRecurse == null) { throw new ArgumentNullException("functionToRecurse", "The function to recurse can not be null"); } _functionToRecurse = functionToRecurse; } public Func<T,T> this[int level] { get { if (level < 1) { throw new ArgumentOutOfRangeException("level", level, "The level of recursion must be greater than 0"); } return this.GetXLevel(level); } } private Func<T, T> GetXLevel(int level) { if (level < 1) { throw new ArgumentOutOfRangeException("level", level, "The level of recursion must be greater than 0"); } if (level == 1) return _functionToRecurse; return _GetXLevel(level - 1, _functionToRecurse); } private Func<T, T> _GetXLevel(int level, Func<T, T> prevFunc) { if (level == 1) return y => prevFunc(_functionToRecurse(y)); return _GetXLevel(level - 1, y => prevFunc(_functionToRecurse(y))); } } Conclusion The great thing about this class, is that it can be used with any function with same input/output parameters.  I strived to find an implementation that I found clean and useful, and I finally settled on this.  If you have feedback – good or bad, I would love to hear it!

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• What Can We Learn About Software Security by Going to the Gym

  - by Nick Harrison

  There was a recent rash of car break-ins at the gym. Not an epidemic by any stretch, probably 4 or 5, but still... My gym used to allow you to hang your keys from a peg board at the front desk. This way you could come to the gym dressed to work out, lock your valuables in your car, and not have anything to worry about. Ignorance is bliss. The problem was that anyone who wanted to could go pick up your car keys, click the unlock button and find your car. Once there, they could rummage through your stuff and then walk back in and finish their workout as if nothing had happened. The people doing this were a little smatter then the average thief and would swipe some but not all of your cash leaving everything else in place. Most thieves would steal the whole car and be busted more quickly. The victims were unaware that anything had happened for several days. Fortunately, once the victims realized what had happened, the gym was still able to pull security tapes and find out who was misbehaving. All of the bad guys were busted, and everyone can now breathe a sigh of relieve. It is once again safe to go to the gym. Except there was still a fundamental problem. Putting your keys on a peg board by the front door is just asking for bad things to happen. One person got busted exploiting this security flaw. Others can still be exploiting it. In fact, others may well have been exploiting it and simply never got caught. How long would it take you to realize that $10 was missing from your wallet, if everything else was there? How would you even know when it went missing? Would you go to the front desk and even bother to ask them to review security tapes if you were only missing a small amount. Once highlighted, it is easy to see how commonly such vulnerability may have been exploited. So the gym did the very reasonable precaution of removing the peg board. To me the most shocking part of this story is the resulting uproar from gym members losing the convenient key peg. How dare they remove the trusted peg board? How can I work out now, I have to carry my keys from machine to machine? How can I enjoy my workout with this added inconvenience? This all happened a couple of weeks ago, and some people are still complaining. In light of the recent high profile hacking, there are a couple of parallels that can be drawn. Many web sites are riddled with vulnerabilities are crazy and easily exploitable as leaving your car keys by the front door while you work out. No one ever considered thanking the people who were swiping these keys for pointing out the vulnerability. Without a hesitation, they had their gym memberships revoked and are awaiting prosecution. The gym did recognize the vulnerability for what it is, and closed up that attack vector. What can we learn from this? Monitoring and logging will not prevent a crime but they will allow us to identify that a crime took place and may help track down who did it. Once we find a security weakness, we need to eliminate it. We may never identify and eliminate all security weaknesses, but we cannot allow well known vulnerabilities to persist in our system. In our case, we are not likely to meet resistance from end users. We are more likely to meet resistance from stake holders, product owners, keeper of schedules and budgets. We may meet resistance from integration partners, co workers, and third party vendors. Regardless of the source, we will see resistance, but the weakness needs to be dealt with. There is no need to glorify a cracker for bringing to light a security weakness. Regardless of their claimed motives, they are not heroes. There is also no point in wasting time defending weaknesses once they are identified. Deal with the weakness and move on. In may be embarrassing to find security weaknesses in our systems, but it is even more embarrassing to continue ignoring them. Even if it is unpopular, we need to seek out security weaknesses and eliminate them when we find them. http://www.sans.org has put together the Common Weakness Enumeration http://cwe.mitre.org/ which lists out common weaknesses. The site navigation takes a little getting used to, but there is a treasure trove here. Here is the detail page for SQL Injection. It clearly states how this can be exploited, in case anyone doubts that the weakness should be taken seriously, and more importantly how to mitigate the risk.

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• 24 Hours of PASS – first reflections

  - by Rob Farley

  A few days after the end of 24HOP, I find myself reflecting on it. I’m still waiting on most of the information. I want to be able to discover things like where the countries represented on each of the sessions, and things like that. So far, I have the feedback scores and the numbers of attendees. The data was provided in a PDF, so while I wait for it to appear in a more flexible format, I’ve pushed the 24 attendee numbers into Excel. This chart shows the numbers by time. Remember that we started at midnight GMT, which was 10:30am in my part of the world and 8pm in New York. It’s probably no surprise that numbers drooped a bit at the start, stayed comparatively low, and then grew as the larger populations of the English-speaking world woke up. I remember last time 24HOP ran for 24 hours straight, there were quite a few sessions with less than 100 attendees. None this time though. We got close, but even when it was 4am in New York, 8am in London and 7pm in Sydney (which would have to be the worst slot for attracting people), we still had over 100 people tuning in. As expected numbers grew as the UK woke up, and even more so as the US did, with numbers peaking at 755 for the “3pm in New York” session on SQL Server Data Tools. Kendra Little almost reached those numbers too, and certainly contributed the biggest ‘spike’ on the chart with her session five hours earlier. Of all the sessions, Kendra had the highest proportion of ‘Excellent’s for the “Overall Evaluation of the session” question, and those of you who saw her probably won’t be surprised by that. Kendra had one of the best ranked sessions from the 24HOP event this time last year (narrowly missing out on being top 3), and she has produced a lot of good video content since then. The reports indicate that there were nearly 8.5 thousand attendees across the 24 sessions, averaging over 350 at each one. I’m looking forward to seeing how many different people that was, although I do know that Wil Sisney managed to attend every single one (if you did too, please let me know). Wil even moderated one of the sessions, which made his feat even greater. Thanks Wil. I also want to send massive thanks to Dave Dustin. Dave probably would have attended all of the sessions, if it weren’t for a power outage that forced him to take a break. He was also a moderator, and it was during this session that he earned special praise. Part way into the session he was moderating, the speaker lost connectivity and couldn’t get back for about fifteen minutes. That’s an incredibly long time when you’re in a live presentation. There were over 200 people tuned in at the time, and I’m sure Dave was as stressed as I was to have a speaker disappear. I started chasing down a phone number for the speaker, while Dave spoke to the audience. And he did brilliantly. He started answering questions, and kept doing that until the speaker came back. Bear in mind that Dave hadn’t expected to give a presentation on that topic (or any other), and was simply drawing on his SQL expertise to get him through. Also consider that this was between midnight at 1am in Dave’s part of the world (Auckland, NZ). I would’ve been expecting just to welcome people, monitor questions, probably read some out, and in general, help make things run smoothly. He went far beyond the call of duty, and if I had a medal to give him, he’d definitely be getting one. On the whole, I think this 24HOP was a success. We tried a different platform, and I think for the most part it was a popular move. We didn’t ask the question “Was this better than LiveMeeting?”, but we did get a number of people telling us that they thought the platform was very good. Some people have told me I get a chance to put my feet up now that this is over. As I’m also co-ordinating a tour of SQLSaturday events across the Australia/New Zealand region, I don’t quite get to take that much of a break (plus, there’s the little thing of squeezing in seven SQL 2012 exams over the next 2.5 weeks). But I am pleased to be reflecting on this event rather than anticipating it. There were a number of factors that could have gone badly, but on the whole I’m pleased about how it went. A massive thanks to everyone involved. If you’re reading this and thinking you wish you could’ve tuned in more, don’t worry – they were all recorded and you’ll be able to watch them on demand very soon. But as well as that, PASS has a stream of content produced by the Virtual Chapters, so you can keep learning from the comfort of your desk all year round. More info on them at sqlpass.org, of course.

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• GLSL compiler messages from different vendors [on hold]

  - by revers

  I'm writing a GLSL shader editor and I want to parse GLSL compiler messages to make hyperlinks to invalid lines in a shader code. I know that these messages are vendor specific but currently I have access only to AMD's video cards. I want to handle at least NVidia's and Intel's hardware, apart from AMD's. If you have video card from different vendor than AMD, could you please give me the output of following C++ program: #include <GL/glew.h> #include <GL/freeglut.h> #include <iostream> using namespace std; #define STRINGIFY(X) #X static const char* fs = STRINGIFY( out vec4 out_Color; mat4 m; void main() { vec3 v3 = vec3(1.0); vec2 v2 = v3; out_Color = vec4(5.0 * v2.x, 1.0); vec3 k = 3.0; float = 5; } ); static const char* vs = STRINGIFY( in vec3 in_Position; void main() { vec3 v(5); gl_Position = vec4(in_Position, 1.0); } ); void printShaderInfoLog(GLint shader) { int infoLogLen = 0; int charsWritten = 0; GLchar *infoLog; glGetShaderiv(shader, GL_INFO_LOG_LENGTH, &infoLogLen); if (infoLogLen > 0) { infoLog = new GLchar[infoLogLen]; glGetShaderInfoLog(shader, infoLogLen, &charsWritten, infoLog); cout << "Log:\n" << infoLog << endl; delete [] infoLog; } } void printProgramInfoLog(GLint program) { int infoLogLen = 0; int charsWritten = 0; GLchar *infoLog; glGetProgramiv(program, GL_INFO_LOG_LENGTH, &infoLogLen); if (infoLogLen > 0) { infoLog = new GLchar[infoLogLen]; glGetProgramInfoLog(program, infoLogLen, &charsWritten, infoLog); cout << "Program log:\n" << infoLog << endl; delete [] infoLog; } } void initShaders() { GLuint v = glCreateShader(GL_VERTEX_SHADER); GLuint f = glCreateShader(GL_FRAGMENT_SHADER); GLint vlen = strlen(vs); GLint flen = strlen(fs); glShaderSource(v, 1, &vs, &vlen); glShaderSource(f, 1, &fs, &flen); GLint compiled; glCompileShader(v); bool succ = true; glGetShaderiv(v, GL_COMPILE_STATUS, &compiled); if (!compiled) { cout << "Vertex shader not compiled." << endl; succ = false; } printShaderInfoLog(v); glCompileShader(f); glGetShaderiv(f, GL_COMPILE_STATUS, &compiled); if (!compiled) { cout << "Fragment shader not compiled." << endl; succ = false; } printShaderInfoLog(f); GLuint p = glCreateProgram(); glAttachShader(p, v); glAttachShader(p, f); glLinkProgram(p); glUseProgram(p); printProgramInfoLog(p); if (!succ) { exit(-1); } delete [] vs; delete [] fs; } int main(int argc, char* argv[]) { glutInit(&argc, argv); glutInitDisplayMode(GLUT_DOUBLE | GLUT_RGBA); glutInitWindowSize(600, 600); glutCreateWindow("Triangle Test"); glewInit(); GLenum err = glewInit(); if (GLEW_OK != err) { cout << "glewInit failed, aborting." << endl; exit(1); } cout << "Using GLEW " << glewGetString(GLEW_VERSION) << endl; const GLubyte* renderer = glGetString(GL_RENDERER); const GLubyte* vendor = glGetString(GL_VENDOR); const GLubyte* version = glGetString(GL_VERSION); const GLubyte* glslVersion = glGetString(GL_SHADING_LANGUAGE_VERSION); GLint major, minor; glGetIntegerv(GL_MAJOR_VERSION, &major); glGetIntegerv(GL_MINOR_VERSION, &minor); cout << "GL Vendor : " << vendor << endl; cout << "GL Renderer : " << renderer << endl; cout << "GL Version : " << version << endl; cout << "GL Version : " << major << "." << minor << endl; cout << "GLSL Version : " << glslVersion << endl; initShaders(); return 0; } On my video card it gives: Status: Using GLEW 1.7.0 GL Vendor : ATI Technologies Inc. GL Renderer : ATI Radeon HD 4250 GL Version : 3.3.11631 Compatibility Profile Context GL Version : 3.3 GLSL Version : 3.30 Vertex shader not compiled. Log: Vertex shader failed to compile with the following errors: ERROR: 0:1: error(#132) Syntax error: '5' parse error ERROR: error(#273) 1 compilation errors. No code generated Fragment shader not compiled. Log: Fragment shader failed to compile with the following errors: WARNING: 0:1: warning(#402) Implicit truncation of vector from size 3 to size 2. ERROR: 0:1: error(#174) Not enough data provided for construction constructor WARNING: 0:1: warning(#402) Implicit truncation of vector from size 1 to size 3. ERROR: 0:1: error(#132) Syntax error: '=' parse error ERROR: error(#273) 2 compilation errors. No code generated Program log: Vertex and Fragment shader(s) were not successfully compiled before glLinkProgram() was called. Link failed. Or if you like, you could give me other compiler messages than proposed by me. To summarize, the question is: What are GLSL compiler messages formats (INFOs, WARNINGs, ERRORs) for different vendors? Please give me examples or pattern explanation. EDIT: Ok, it seems that this question is too broad, then shortly: How does NVidia's and Intel's GLSL compilers present ERROR and WARNING messages? AMD/ATI uses patterns like this: ERROR: <position>:<line_number>: <message> WARNING: <position>:<line_number>: <message> (examples are above).

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• Relative cam movement and momentum on arbitrary surface

  - by user29244

  I have been working on a game for quite long, think sonic classic physics in 3D or tony hawk psx, with unity3D. However I'm stuck at the most fundamental aspect of movement. The requirement is that I need to move the character in mario 64 fashion (or sonic adventure) aka relative cam input: the camera's forward direction always point input forward the screen, left or right input point toward left or right of the screen. when input are resting, the camera direction is independent from the character direction and the camera can orbit the character when input are pressed the character rotate itself until his direction align with the direction the input is pointing at. It's super easy to do as long your movement are parallel to the global horizontal (or any world axis). However when you try to do this on arbitrary surface (think moving along complex curved surface) with the character sticking to the surface normal (basically moving on wall and ceiling freely), it seems harder. What I want is to achieve the same finesse of movement than in mario but on arbitrary angled surfaces. There is more problem (jumping and transitioning back to the real world alignment and then back on a surface while keeping momentum) but so far I didn't even take off the basics. So far I have accomplish moving along the curved surface and the relative cam input, but for some reason direction fail all the time (point number 3, the character align slowly to the input direction). Do you have an idea how to achieve that? Here is the code and some demo so far: The demo: https://dl.dropbox.com/u/24530447/flash%20build/litesonicengine/LiteSonicEngine5.html Camera code: using UnityEngine; using System.Collections; public class CameraDrive : MonoBehaviour { public GameObject targetObject; public Transform camPivot, camTarget, camRoot, relcamdirDebug; float rot = 0; //---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- void Start() { this.transform.position = targetObject.transform.position; this.transform.rotation = targetObject.transform.rotation; } void FixedUpdate() { //the pivot system camRoot.position = targetObject.transform.position; //input on pivot orientation rot = 0; float mouse_x = Input.GetAxisRaw( "camera_analog_X" ); // rot = rot + ( 0.1f * Time.deltaTime * mouse_x ); // wrapAngle( rot ); // //when the target object rotate, it rotate too, this should not happen UpdateOrientation(this.transform.forward,targetObject.transform.up); camRoot.transform.RotateAround(camRoot.transform.up,rot); //debug the relcam dir RelativeCamDirection() ; //this camera this.transform.position = camPivot.position; //set the camera to the pivot this.transform.LookAt( camTarget.position ); // } //---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- public float wrapAngle ( float Degree ) { while (Degree < 0.0f) { Degree = Degree + 360.0f; } while (Degree >= 360.0f) { Degree = Degree - 360.0f; } return Degree; } private void UpdateOrientation( Vector3 forward_vector, Vector3 ground_normal ) { Vector3 projected_forward_to_normal_surface = forward_vector - ( Vector3.Dot( forward_vector, ground_normal ) ) * ground_normal; camRoot.transform.rotation = Quaternion.LookRotation( projected_forward_to_normal_surface, ground_normal ); } float GetOffsetAngle( float targetAngle, float DestAngle ) { return ((targetAngle - DestAngle + 180)% 360) - 180; } //---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- void OnDrawGizmos() { Gizmos.DrawCube( camPivot.transform.position, new Vector3(1,1,1) ); Gizmos.DrawCube( camTarget.transform.position, new Vector3(1,5,1) ); Gizmos.DrawCube( camRoot.transform.position, new Vector3(1,1,1) ); } void OnGUI() { GUI.Label(new Rect(0,80,1000,20*10), "targetObject.transform.up : " + targetObject.transform.up.ToString()); GUI.Label(new Rect(0,100,1000,20*10), "target euler : " + targetObject.transform.eulerAngles.y.ToString()); GUI.Label(new Rect(0,100,1000,20*10), "rot : " + rot.ToString()); } //---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- void RelativeCamDirection() { float input_vertical_movement = Input.GetAxisRaw( "Vertical" ), input_horizontal_movement = Input.GetAxisRaw( "Horizontal" ); Vector3 relative_forward = Vector3.forward, relative_right = Vector3.right, relative_direction = ( relative_forward * input_vertical_movement ) + ( relative_right * input_horizontal_movement ) ; MovementController MC = targetObject.GetComponent<MovementController>(); MC.motion = relative_direction.normalized * MC.acceleration * Time.fixedDeltaTime; MC.motion = this.transform.TransformDirection( MC.motion ); //MC.transform.Rotate(Vector3.up, input_horizontal_movement * 10f * Time.fixedDeltaTime); } } Mouvement code: using UnityEngine; using System.Collections; public class MovementController : MonoBehaviour { public float deadZoneValue = 0.1f, angle, acceleration = 50.0f; public Vector3 motion ; //-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- void OnGUI() { GUILayout.Label( "transform.rotation : " + transform.rotation ); GUILayout.Label( "transform.position : " + transform.position ); GUILayout.Label( "angle : " + angle ); } void FixedUpdate () { Ray ground_check_ray = new Ray( gameObject.transform.position, -gameObject.transform.up ); RaycastHit raycast_result; Rigidbody rigid_body = gameObject.rigidbody; if ( Physics.Raycast( ground_check_ray, out raycast_result ) ) { Vector3 next_position; //UpdateOrientation( gameObject.transform.forward, raycast_result.normal ); UpdateOrientation( gameObject.transform.forward, raycast_result.normal ); next_position = GetNextPosition( raycast_result.point ); rigid_body.MovePosition( next_position ); } } //-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- private void UpdateOrientation( Vector3 forward_vector, Vector3 ground_normal ) { Vector3 projected_forward_to_normal_surface = forward_vector - ( Vector3.Dot( forward_vector, ground_normal ) ) * ground_normal; transform.rotation = Quaternion.LookRotation( projected_forward_to_normal_surface, ground_normal ); } private Vector3 GetNextPosition( Vector3 current_ground_position ) { Vector3 next_position; // //-------------------------------------------------------------------- // angle = 0; // Vector3 dir = this.transform.InverseTransformDirection(motion); // angle = Vector3.Angle(Vector3.forward, dir);// * 1f * Time.fixedDeltaTime; // // if(angle > 0) this.transform.Rotate(0,angle,0); // //-------------------------------------------------------------------- next_position = current_ground_position + gameObject.transform.up * 0.5f + motion ; return next_position; } } Some observation: I have the correct input, I have the correct translation in the camera direction ... but whenever I attempt to slowly lerp the direction of the character in direction of the input, all I get is wild spin! Sad Also discovered that strafing to the right (immediately at the beginning without moving forward) has major singularity trapping on the equator!! I'm totally lost and crush (I have already done a much more featured version which fail at the same aspect)

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• Computer Networks UNISA - Chap 8 &ndash; Wireless Networking

  - by MarkPearl

  After reading this section you should be able to Explain how nodes exchange wireless signals Identify potential obstacles to successful transmission and their repercussions, such as interference and reflection Understand WLAN architecture Specify the characteristics of popular WLAN transmission methods including 802.11 a/b/g/n Install and configure wireless access points and their clients Describe wireless MAN and WAN technologies, including 802.16 and satellite communications The Wireless Spectrum All wireless signals are carried through the air by electromagnetic waves. The wireless spectrum is a continuum of the electromagnetic waves used for data and voice communication. The wireless spectrum falls between 9KHZ and 300 GHZ. Characteristics of Wireless Transmission Antennas Each type of wireless service requires an antenna specifically designed for that service. The service’s specification determine the antenna’s power output, frequency, and radiation pattern. A directional antenna issues wireless signals along a single direction. An omnidirectional antenna issues and receives wireless signals with equal strength and clarity in all directions The geographical area that an antenna or wireless system can reach is known as its range Signal Propagation LOS (line of sight) uses the least amount of energy and results in the reception of the clearest possible signal. When there is an obstacle in the way, the signal may… pass through the object or be obsrobed by the object or may be subject to reflection, diffraction or scattering. Reflection – waves encounter an object and bounces off it. Diffraction – signal splits into secondary waves when it encounters an obstruction Scattering – is the diffusion or the reflection in multiple different directions of a signal Signal Degradation Fading occurs as a signal hits various objects. Because of fading, the strength of the signal that reaches the receiver is lower than the transmitted signal strength. The further a signal moves from its source, the weaker it gets (this is called attenuation) Signals are also affected by noise – the electromagnetic interference) Interference can distort and weaken a wireless signal in the same way that noise distorts and weakens a wired signal. Frequency Ranges Older wireless devices used the 2.4 GHZ band to send and receive signals. This had 11 communication channels that are unlicensed. Newer wireless devices can also use the 5 GHZ band which has 24 unlicensed bands Narrowband, Broadband, and Spread Spectrum Signals Narrowband – a transmitter concentrates the signal energy at a single frequency or in a very small range of frequencies Broadband – uses a relatively wide band of the wireless spectrum and offers higher throughputs than narrowband technologies The use of multiple frequencies to transmit a signal is known as spread-spectrum technology. In other words a signal never stays continuously within one frequency range during its transmission. One specific implementation of spread spectrum is FHSS (frequency hoping spread spectrum). Another type is known as DSS (direct sequence spread spectrum) Fixed vs. Mobile Each type of wireless communication falls into one of two categories Fixed – the location of the transmitted and receiver do not move (results in energy saved because weaker signal strength is possible with directional antennas) Mobile – the location can change WLAN (Wireless LAN) Architecture There are two main types of arrangements Adhoc – data is sent directly between devices – good for small local devices Infrastructure mode – a wireless access point is placed centrally, that all devices connect with 802.11 WLANs The most popular wireless standards used on contemporary LANs are those developed by IEEE’s 802.11 committee. Over the years several distinct standards related to wireless networking have been released. Four of the best known standards are also referred to as Wi-Fi. They are…. 802.11b 802.11a 802.11g 802.11n These four standards share many characteristics. i.e. All 4 use half duplex signalling Follow the same access method Access Method 802.11 standards specify the use of CSMA/CA (Carrier Sense Multiple Access with Collision Avoidance) to access a shared medium. Using CSMA/CA before a station begins to send data on an 802.11 network, it checks for existing wireless transmissions. If the source node detects no transmission activity on the network, it waits a brief period of time and then sends its transmission. If the source does detect activity, it waits a brief period of time before checking again. The destination node receives the transmission and, after verifying its accuracy, issues an acknowledgement (ACT) packet to the source. If the source receives the ACK it assumes the transmission was successful, – if it does not receive an ACK it assumes the transmission failed and sends it again. Association Two types of scanning… Active – station transmits a special frame, known as a prove, on all available channels within its frequency range. When an access point finds the probe frame, it issues a probe response. Passive – wireless station listens on all channels within its frequency range for a special signal, known as a beacon frame, issued from an access point – the beacon frame contains information necessary to connect to the point. Re-association occurs when a mobile user moves out of one access point’s range and into the range of another. Frames Read page 378 – 381 about frames and specific 802.11 protocols Bluetooth Networks Sony Ericson originally invented the Bluetooth technology in the early 1990s. In 1998 other manufacturers joined Ericsson in the Special Interest Group (SIG) whose aim was to refine and standardize the technology. Bluetooth was designed to be used on small networks composed of personal communications devices. It has become popular wireless technology for communicating among cellular telephones, phone headsets, etc. Wireless WANs and Internet Access Refer to pages 396 – 402 of the textbook for details.

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• CPU Usage in Very Large Coherence Clusters

  - by jpurdy

  When sizing Coherence installations, one of the complicating factors is that these installations (by their very nature) tend to be application-specific, with some being large, memory-intensive caches, with others acting as I/O-intensive transaction-processing platforms, and still others performing CPU-intensive calculations across the data grid. Regardless of the primary resource requirements, Coherence sizing calculations are inherently empirical, in that there are so many permutations that a simple spreadsheet approach to sizing is rarely optimal (though it can provide a good starting estimate). So we typically recommend measuring actual resource usage (primarily CPU cycles, network bandwidth and memory) at a given load, and then extrapolating from those measurements. Of course there may be multiple types of load, and these may have varying degrees of correlation -- for example, an increased request rate may drive up the number of objects "pinned" in memory at any point, but the increase may be less than linear if those objects are naturally shared by concurrent requests. But for most reasonably-designed applications, a linear resource model will be reasonably accurate for most levels of scale. However, at extreme scale, sizing becomes a bit more complicated as certain cluster management operations -- while very infrequent -- become increasingly critical. This is because certain operations do not naturally tend to scale out. In a small cluster, sizing is primarily driven by the request rate, required cache size, or other application-driven metrics. In larger clusters (e.g. those with hundreds of cluster members), certain infrastructure tasks become intensive, in particular those related to members joining and leaving the cluster, such as introducing new cluster members to the rest of the cluster, or publishing the location of partitions during rebalancing. These tasks have a strong tendency to require all updates to be routed via a single member for the sake of cluster stability and data integrity. Fortunately that member is dynamically assigned in Coherence, so it is not a single point of failure, but it may still become a single point of bottleneck (until the cluster finishes its reconfiguration, at which point this member will have a similar load to the rest of the members). The most common cause of scaling issues in large clusters is disabling multicast (by configuring well-known addresses, aka WKA). This obviously impacts network usage, but it also has a large impact on CPU usage, primarily since the senior member must directly communicate certain messages with every other cluster member, and this communication requires significant CPU time. In particular, the need to notify the rest of the cluster about membership changes and corresponding partition reassignments adds stress to the senior member. Given that portions of the network stack may tend to be single-threaded (both in Coherence and the underlying OS), this may be even more problematic on servers with poor single-threaded performance. As a result of this, some extremely large clusters may be configured with a smaller number of partitions than ideal. This results in the size of each partition being increased. When a cache server fails, the other servers will use their fractional backups to recover the state of that server (and take over responsibility for their backed-up portion of that state). The finest granularity of this recovery is a single partition, and the single service thread can not accept new requests during this recovery. Ordinarily, recovery is practically instantaneous (it is roughly equivalent to the time required to iterate over a set of backup backing map entries and move them to the primary backing map in the same JVM). But certain factors can increase this duration drastically (to several seconds): large partitions, sufficiently slow single-threaded CPU performance, many or expensive indexes to rebuild, etc. The solution of course is to mitigate each of those factors but in many cases this may be challenging. Larger clusters also lead to the temptation to place more load on the available hardware resources, spreading CPU resources thin. As an example, while we've long been aware of how garbage collection can cause significant pauses, it usually isn't viewed as a major consumer of CPU (in terms of overall system throughput). Typically, the use of a concurrent collector allows greater responsiveness by minimizing pause times, at the cost of reducing system throughput. However, at a recent engagement, we were forced to turn off the concurrent collector and use a traditional parallel "stop the world" collector to reduce CPU usage to an acceptable level. In summary, there are some less obvious factors that may result in excessive CPU consumption in a larger cluster, so it is even more critical to test at full scale, even though allocating sufficient hardware may often be much more difficult for these large clusters.

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