Search Results

Search found 20869 results on 835 pages for 'things i hate'.

Page 737/835 | < Previous Page | 733 734 735 736 737 738 739 740 741 742 743 744  | Next Page >

• Solaris 11.1: Encrypted Immutable Zones on (ZFS) Shared Storage

  - by darrenm

  Solaris 11 brought both ZFS encryption and the Immutable Zones feature and I've talked about the combination in the past.  Solaris 11.1 adds a fully supported method of storing zones in their own ZFS using shared storage so lets update things a little and put all three parts together. When using an iSCSI (or other supported shared storage target) for a Zone we can either let the Zones framework setup the ZFS pool or we can do it manually before hand and tell the Zones framework to use the one we made earlier.  To enable encryption we have to take the second path so that we can setup the pool with encryption before we start to install the zones on it. We start by configuring the zone and specifying an rootzpool resource: # zonecfg -z eizoss Use 'create' to begin configuring a new zone. zonecfg:eizoss> create create: Using system default template 'SYSdefault' zonecfg:eizoss> set zonepath=/zones/eizoss zonecfg:eizoss> set file-mac-profile=fixed-configuration zonecfg:eizoss> add rootzpool zonecfg:eizoss:rootzpool> add storage \ iscsi://zs7120-tvp540-c.uk.oracle.com/luname.naa.600144f09acaacd20000508e64a70001 zonecfg:eizoss:rootzpool> end zonecfg:eizoss> verify zonecfg:eizoss> commit zonecfg:eizoss> Now lets create the pool and specify encryption: # suriadm map \ iscsi://zs7120-tvp540-c.uk.oracle.com/luname.naa.600144f09acaacd20000508e64a70001 PROPERTY VALUE mapped-dev /dev/dsk/c10t600144F09ACAACD20000508E64A70001d0 # echo "zfscrypto" > /zones/p # zpool create -O encryption=on -O keysource=passphrase,file:///zones/p eizoss \ /dev/dsk/c10t600144F09ACAACD20000508E64A70001d0 # zpool export eizoss Note that the keysource example above is just for this example, realistically you should probably use an Oracle Key Manager or some other better keystorage, but that isn't the purpose of this example.  Note however that it does need to be one of file:// https:// pkcs11: and not prompt for the key location.  Also note that we exported the newly created pool.  The name we used here doesn't actually mater because it will get set properly on import anyway. So lets go ahead and do our install: zoneadm -z eizoss install -x force-zpool-import Configured zone storage resource(s) from: iscsi://zs7120-tvp540-c.uk.oracle.com/luname.naa.600144f09acaacd20000508e64a70001 Imported zone zpool: eizoss_rpool Progress being logged to /var/log/zones/zoneadm.20121029T115231Z.eizoss.install Image: Preparing at /zones/eizoss/root. AI Manifest: /tmp/manifest.xml.ujaq54 SC Profile: /usr/share/auto_install/sc_profiles/enable_sci.xml Zonename: eizoss Installation: Starting ... Creating IPS image Startup linked: 1/1 done Installing packages from: solaris origin: http://pkg.us.oracle.com/solaris/release/ Please review the licenses for the following packages post-install: consolidation/osnet/osnet-incorporation (automatically accepted, not displayed) Package licenses may be viewed using the command: pkg info --license <pkg_fmri> DOWNLOAD PKGS FILES XFER (MB) SPEED Completed 187/187 33575/33575 227.0/227.0 384k/s PHASE ITEMS Installing new actions 47449/47449 Updating package state database Done Updating image state Done Creating fast lookup database Done Installation: Succeeded Note: Man pages can be obtained by installing pkg:/system/manual done. Done: Installation completed in 929.606 seconds. Next Steps: Boot the zone, then log into the zone console (zlogin -C) to complete the configuration process. Log saved in non-global zone as /zones/eizoss/root/var/log/zones/zoneadm.20121029T115231Z.eizoss.install That was really all we had to do, when the install is done boot it up as normal. The zone administrator has no direct access to the ZFS wrapping keys used for the encrypted pool zone is stored on.  Due to how inheritance works in ZFS he can still create new encrypted datasets that use those wrapping keys (without them ever being inside a process in the zone) or he can create encrypted datasets inside the zone that use keys of his own choosing, the output below shows the two cases: rpool is inheriting the key material from the global zone (note we can see the value of the keysource property but we don't use it inside the zone nor does that path need to be (or is) accessible inside the zone). Whereas rpool/export/home/bob has set keysource locally. # zfs get encryption,keysource rpool rpool/export/home/bob NAME PROPERTY VALUE SOURCE rpool encryption on inherited from $globalzone rpool keysource passphrase,file:///zones/p inherited from $globalzone rpool/export/home/bob encryption on local rpool/export/home/bob keysource passphrase,prompt local  

  Read the article

• Feynman's inbox

  - by user12607414

  Here is Richard Feynman writing on the ease of criticizing theories, and the difficulty of forming them: The problem is not just to say something might be wrong, but to replace it by something — and that is not so easy. As soon as any really definite idea is substituted it becomes almost immediately apparent that it does not work. The second difficulty is that there is an infinite number of possibilities of these simple types. It is something like this. You are sitting working very hard, you have worked for a long time trying to open a safe. Then some Joe comes along who knows nothing about what you are doing, except that you are trying to open the safe. He says ‘Why don’t you try the combination 10:20:30?’ Because you are busy, you have tried a lot of things, maybe you have already tried 10:20:30. Maybe you know already that the middle number is 32 not 20. Maybe you know as a matter of fact that it is a five digit combination… So please do not send me any letters trying to tell me how the thing is going to work. I read them — I always read them to make sure that I have not already thought of what is suggested — but it takes too long to answer them, because they are usually in the class ‘try 10:20:30’. (“Seeking New Laws”, page 161 in The Character of Physical Law.) As a sometime designer (and longtime critic) of widely used computer systems, I have seen similar difficulties appear when anyone undertakes to publicly design a piece of software that may be used by many thousands of customers. (I have been on both sides of the fence, of course.) The design possibilities are endless, but the deep design problems are usually hidden beneath a mass of superfluous detail. The sheer numbers can be daunting. Even if only one customer out of a thousand feels a need to express a passionately held idea, it can take a long time to read all the mail. And it is a fact of life that many of those strong suggestions are only weakly supported by reason or evidence. Opinions are plentiful, but substantive research is time-consuming, and hence rare. A related phenomenon commonly seen with software is bike-shedding, where interlocutors focus on surface details like naming and syntax… or (come to think of it) like lock combinations. On the other hand, software is easier than quantum physics, and the population of people able to make substantial suggestions about software systems is several orders of magnitude bigger than Feynman’s circle of colleagues. My own work would be poorer without contributions — sometimes unsolicited, sometimes passionately urged on me — from the open source community. If a Nobel prize winner thought it was worthwhile to read his mail on the faint chance of learning a good idea, I am certainly not going to throw mine away. (In case anyone is still reading this, and is wondering what provoked a meditation on the quality of one’s inbox contents, I’ll simply point out that the volume has been very high, for many months, on the Lambda-Dev mailing list, where the next version of the Java language is being discussed. Bravo to those of my colleagues who are surfing that wave.) I started this note thinking there was an odd parallel between the life of the physicist and that of a software designer. On second thought, I’ll bet that is the story for anybody who works in public on something requiring special training. (And that would be pretty much anything worth doing.) In any case, Feynman saw it clearly and said it well.

  Read the article

• Seperation of project responsibilities in new project

  - by dreza

  We have very recently started a new project (MVC 3.0) and some of our early discussion has been around how the work and development will be split amongst the team members to ensure we get the least amount of overlap of work and so help make it a bit easier for each developer to get on and do their work. The project is expected to take about 6 months - 1 year (although not all developers are likely to be on and might filter off towards the end), Our team is going to be small so this will help out a bit I believe. The team will essentially consist of: 3 x developers (1 a slightly more experienced and will be the lead) 1 x project manager / product owner / tester An external company responsbile for doing our design work General project/development decisions so far have included: Develop in an Agile way using SCRUM techniques (We are still very much learning this approach as a company) Use MVVM archectecture Use Ninject and DI where possible Attempt to use as TDD as much as possible to drive development. Keep our controllers as skinny as possible Keep our views as simple as possible During our discussions two approaches have been broached as too how to seperate the workload given our objectives outlined above. OPTION 1: A framework seperation where each person is responsible for conceptual areas with overlap and discussion primarily in the integration areas. The integration areas would the responsibily of both developers as required. View prototypes (**Graphic designer**) | - Mockups | Views (Razor and view helpers etc) & Javascript (**Developer 1**) | - View models (Integration point) | Controllers and Application logic (**Developer 2**) | - Models (Integration point) | Domain model and persistence (**Developer 3**) PROS: Integration points are quite clear and so developers can work without dependencies on others fairly easily Code practices such as naming conventions and style is more easily managed in regards to consistancy as primarily only one developer will be handling an area CONS: Completion of an entire feature becomes a bit grey as no single person is responsible for an entire feature (story?) A person might not have a full appreciation for all areas of the project and so code overlap might be lacking if suddenly that person left. OPTION 2: A more task orientated approach where each person is responsible for the completion of the entire task from view - controller - model. PROS: A person is responsible for one entire feature so it's "complete" state can be clearly defined Code overlap into different areas will occur so each individual has good coverage over the entire application CONS: Overlap of development will occur in all the modules and developers can develop/extend without a true understanding of what the original code owner was intending. This could potentially lead more easily to code bloat? Following a convention might be harder as developers are adding to all areas of the project If a developer sets up a way of doing things would it be harder to enforce the other developers to follow that convention or even build on it (or even discuss it?). Dunno.. Bugs could more easily be introduced into areas not thought about by the developer It's easier to possibly to carry a team member in so far as one member just hacks code together to complete a task whilst another takes time to build a foundation that could be used by others and so help make future tasks easier i.e. starts building a framework? QUESTION: As it might appear I'm more in favor of option 1, however I'm interested to see how others might have approached this or what is the standard or best or preferred way of undertaking a project. Or indeed any different approach to handling this?

  Read the article

• Design Pattern for building a Budget

  - by Scott

  So I've looked at the Builder Pattern, Abstract Interfaces, other design patterns, etc. - and I think I'm over thinking the simplicity behind what I'm trying to do, so I'm asking you guys for some help with either recommending a design pattern I should use, or an architecture style I'm not familiar with that fits my task. So I have one model that represents a Budget in my code. At a high level, it looks like this: public class Budget { public int Id { get; set; } public List<MonthlySummary> Months { get; set; } public float SavingsPriority { get; set; } public float DebtPriority { get; set; } public List<Savings> SavingsCollection { get; set; } public UserProjectionParameters UserProjectionParameters { get; set; } public List<Debt> DebtCollection { get; set; } public string Name { get; set; } public List<Expense> Expenses { get; set; } public List<Income> IncomeCollection { get; set; } public bool AutoSave { get; set; } public decimal AutoSaveAmount { get; set; } public FundType AutoSaveType { get; set; } public decimal TotalExcess { get; set; } public decimal AccountMinimum { get; set; } } To go into more detail about some of the properties here shouldn't be necessary, but if you have any questions about those I will fill more out for you guys. Now, I'm trying to create code that builds one of these things based on a set of BudgetBuildParameters that the user will create and supply. There are going to be multiple types of these parameters. For example, on the sites homepage, there will be an example section where you can quickly see what your numbers look like, so they would be a much simpler set of SampleBudgetBuildParameters then say after a user registers and wants to create a fully filled out Budget using much more information in the DebtBudgetBuildParameters. Now a lot of these builds are going to be using similar code for certain tasks, but might want to also check the status of a users DebtCollection when formulating a monthly spending report, where as a Budget that only focuses on savings might not want to. I'd like to reduce code duplication (obviously) as much as possible, but in my head, every way I can think to do this would require using a base BudgetBuilderFactory to return the correct builder to the caller, and then creating say a SimpleBudgetBuilder that inherits from a BudgetBuilder, and put all duplicate code in the BudgetBuilder, and let the SimpleBudgetBuilder handle it's own cases. Problem is, a lot of the unique cases are unique to 2/4 builders, so there will be duplicate code somewhere in there obviously if I did that. Can anyone think of a better way to either explain a solution to this that may or may not be similar to mine, or a completely different pattern or way of thinking here? I really appreciate it.

  Read the article

• Know your Data Lineage

  - by Simon Elliston Ball

  An academic paper without the footnotes isn’t an academic paper. Journalists wouldn’t base a news article on facts that they can’t verify. So why would anyone publish reports without being able to say where the data has come from and be confident of its quality, in other words, without knowing its lineage. (sometimes referred to as ‘provenance’ or ‘pedigree’) The number and variety of data sources, both traditional and new, increases inexorably. Data comes clean or dirty, processed or raw, unimpeachable or entirely fabricated. On its journey to our report, from its source, the data can travel through a network of interconnected pipes, passing through numerous distinct systems, each managed by different people. At each point along the pipeline, it can be changed, filtered, aggregated and combined. When the data finally emerges, how can we be sure that it is right? How can we be certain that no part of the data collection was based on incorrect assumptions, that key data points haven’t been left out, or that the sources are good? Even when we’re using data science to give us an approximate or probable answer, we cannot have any confidence in the results without confidence in the data from which it came. You need to know what has been done to your data, where it came from, and who is responsible for each stage of the analysis. This information represents your data lineage; it is your stack-trace. If you’re an analyst, suspicious of a number, it tells you why the number is there and how it got there. If you’re a developer, working on a pipeline, it provides the context you need to track down the bug. If you’re a manager, or an auditor, it lets you know the right things are being done. Lineage tracking is part of good data governance. Most audit and lineage systems require you to buy into their whole structure. If you are using Hadoop for your data storage and processing, then tools like Falcon allow you to track lineage, as long as you are using Falcon to write and run the pipeline. It can mean learning a new way of running your jobs (or using some sort of proxy), and even a distinct way of writing your queries. Other Hadoop tools provide a lot of operational and audit information, spread throughout the many logs produced by Hive, Sqoop, MapReduce and all the various moving parts that make up the eco-system. To get a full picture of what’s going on in your Hadoop system you need to capture both Falcon lineage and the data-exhaust of other tools that Falcon can’t orchestrate. However, the problem is bigger even that that. Often, Hadoop is just one piece in a larger processing workflow. The next step of the challenge is how you bind together the lineage metadata describing what happened before and after Hadoop, where ‘after’ could be  a data analysis environment like R, an application, or even directly into an end-user tool such as Tableau or Excel. One possibility is to push as much as you can of your key analytics into Hadoop, but would you give up the power, and familiarity of your existing tools in return for a reliable way of tracking lineage? Lineage and auditing should work consistently, automatically and quietly, allowing users to access their data with any tool they require to use. The real solution, therefore, is to create a consistent method by which to bring lineage data from these data various disparate sources into the data analysis platform that you use, rather than being forced to use the tool that manages the pipeline for the lineage and a different tool for the data analysis. The key is to keep your logs, keep your audit data, from every source, bring them together and use the data analysis tools to trace the paths from raw data to the answer that data analysis provides.

  Read the article

• Documentation and Test Assertions in Databases

  - by Phil Factor

  When I first worked with Sybase/SQL Server, we thought our databases were impressively large but they were, by today’s standards, pathetically small. We had one script to build the whole database. Every script I ever read was richly annotated; it was more like reading a document. Every table had a comment block, and every line would be commented too. At the end of each routine (e.g. procedure) was a quick integration test, or series of test assertions, to check that nothing in the build was broken. We simply ran the build script, stored in the Version Control System, and it pulled everything together in a logical sequence that not only created the database objects but pulled in the static data. This worked fine at the scale we had. The advantage was that one could, by reading the source code, reach a rapid understanding of how the database worked and how one could interface with it. The problem was that it was a system that meant that only one developer at the time could work on the database. It was very easy for a developer to execute accidentally the entire build script rather than the selected section on which he or she was working, thereby cleansing the database of everyone else’s work-in-progress and data. It soon became the fashion to work at the object level, so that programmers could check out individual views, tables, functions, constraints and rules and work on them independently. It was then that I noticed the trend to generate the source for the VCS retrospectively from the development server. Tables were worst affected. You can, of course, add or delete a table’s columns and constraints retrospectively, which means that the existing source no longer represents the current object. If, after your development work, you generate the source from the live table, then you get no block or line comments, and the source script is sprinkled with silly square-brackets and other confetti, thereby rendering it visually indigestible. Routines, too, were affected. In our system, every routine had a directly attached string of unit-tests. A retro-generated routine has no unit-tests or test assertions. Yes, one can still commit our test code to the VCS but it’s a separate module and teams end up running the whole suite of tests for every individual change, rather than just the tests for that routine, which doesn’t scale for database testing. With Extended properties, one can get the best of both worlds, and even use them to put blame, praise or annotations into your VCS. It requires a lot of work, though, particularly the script to generate the table. The problem is that there are no conventional names beyond ‘MS_Description’ for the special use of extended properties. This makes it difficult to do splendid things such ensuring the integrity of the build by running a suite of tests that are actually stored in extended properties within the database and therefore the VCS. We have lost the readability of database source code over the years, and largely jettisoned the use of test assertions as part of the database build. This is not unexpected in view of the increasing complexity of the structure of databases and number of programmers working on them. There must, surely, be a way of getting them back, but I sometimes wonder if I’m one of very few who miss them.

  Read the article

• How do I get to work my Atheros AR9485 Wireless card in Ubuntu 14.04 LTS?

  - by Ivan Kreimer

  I've recently installed Ubuntu 14.04 LTS in my ASUS D550CA, and so far things have gone great. The only problem I've got is the Wi-Fi. It doesn't work. I've got an Qualcomm Atheros AR9485. I've tried installing the drivers, but the sytem says it doesn't find any. So I started looking around this forum for solutions. I've read every single post from this forum about my Wi-Fi network adapter, and I've found nothing that solves my problem. Let me give you some info about my configuration. Disclaimer: my configuration is in spanish, so if you don't understand something you can either use Google translate, or use your imagination. :D When I run $ sudo lshw -C network this is what I get: *-network DEACTIVATED descripción: Interfaz inalámbrica producto: AR9485 Wireless Network Adapter fabricante: Qualcomm Atheros id físico: 0 información del bus: pci@0000:02:00.0 nombre lógico: wlan0 versión: 01 serie: 28:e3:47:5c:5d:3f anchura: 64 bits reloj: 33MHz capacidades: pm msi pciexpress bus_master cap_list rom ethernet physical wireless configuración: broadcast=yes driver=ath9k driverversion=3.13.0-34-generic firmware=N/A latency=0 link=no multicast=yes wireless=IEEE 802.11bgn recursos: irq:17 memoria:f7d00000-f7d7ffff memoria:f7d80000-f7d8ffff *-network descripción: Ethernet interface producto: RTL8101E/RTL8102E PCI Express Fast Ethernet controller fabricante: Realtek Semiconductor Co., Ltd. id físico: 0.2 información del bus: pci@0000:03:00.2 nombre lógico: eth0 versión: 06 serie: e0:3f:49:ce:57:49 tamaño: 100Mbit/s capacidad: 100Mbit/s anchura: 64 bits reloj: 33MHz capacidades: pm msi pciexpress msix vpd bus_master cap_list ethernet physical tp mii 10bt 10bt-fd 100bt 100bt-fd autonegotiation configuración: autonegotiation=on broadcast=yes driver=r8169 driverversion=2.3LK-NAPI duplex=full firmware=rtl8402-1_0.0.1 10/26/11 ip=181.165.245.39 latency=0 link=yes multicast=yes port=MII speed=100Mbit/s recursos: irq:41 ioport:e000(size=256) memoria:f0004000-f0004fff memoria:f0000000-f0003fff At the beginning, you'll see that it says "*-network DEACTIVATED" (or at least that's what I translated), is that something bad? Then, when I run ipconfig this is what I get: eth0 Link encap:Ethernet direcciónHW e0:3f:49:ce:57:49 Direc. inet:181.165.245.39 Difus.:181.165.245.255 Másc:255.255.255.0 Dirección inet6: fe80::e23f:49ff:fece:5749/64 Alcance:Enlace ACTIVO DIFUSIÓN FUNCIONANDO MULTICAST MTU:1500 Métrica:1 Paquetes RX:221199 errores:0 perdidos:0 overruns:0 frame:0 Paquetes TX:62025 errores:0 perdidos:0 overruns:0 carrier:0 colisiones:0 long.colaTX:1000 Bytes RX:124409589 (124.4 MB) TX bytes:7471899 (7.4 MB) lo Link encap:Bucle local Direc. inet:127.0.0.1 Másc:255.0.0.0 Dirección inet6: ::1/128 Alcance:Anfitrión ACTIVO BUCLE FUNCIONANDO MTU:65536 Métrica:1 Paquetes RX:2977 errores:0 perdidos:0 overruns:0 frame:0 Paquetes TX:2977 errores:0 perdidos:0 overruns:0 carrier:0 colisiones:0 long.colaTX:0 Bytes RX:397158 (397.1 KB) TX bytes:397158 (397.1 KB) When I put iwconfig: eth0 no wireless extensions. lo no wireless extensions. wlan0 IEEE 802.11bgn ESSID:off/any Mode:Managed Access Point: Not-Associated Tx-Power=off Retry long limit:7 RTS thr:off Fragment thr:off Power Management:off Finally, when I put sudo rfkill list all, I got: 0: phy0: Wireless LAN Soft blocked: no Hard blocked: yes 1: asus-wlan: Wireless LAN Soft blocked: no Hard blocked: no 2: asus-bluetooth: Bluetooth Soft blocked: no Hard blocked: no I hope anyone can help me solve this, I've searched a lot and found no solution. Thanks a lot.

  Read the article

• It happens only at Devoxx ...

  - by arungupta

  After attending several Java conferences world wide, this was my very first time at Devoxx. Here are some items I found that happens only at Devoxx ... Pioneers of theater-style seating - This not only provides comfortable seating for each attendee but the screens are very clearly visible to everybody in the room. Intellectual level of attendees is very high - Read more explanation on the Java EE 6 lab blog. In short, a lab, 1/3 of the content delivered at Devoxx 2011, could not be completed at other developer days in more than 1/3 the time. Snack box for lunches - Even though this suits well to the healthy lifestyle of multiple-snacks-during-a-day style but leaves attendees hungry sooner in the day. The longer breaks before the next snack in the evening does not help at all. Fortunately, Azure cupcakes and Android ice creams turned out to be handy. I finally carried my own apple :-) Wrist band instead of lanyard - The good part about this is that once tied to your hand then you are less likely to forget in your room. But OTOH you are a pretty much a branded conference attendee all through out the city. It was cost effective as it costed 20c as opposed to 1 euro for the lanyard. Live streaming from theater #8 (the biggest room) on parleys.com All talks recorded and released on parleys.com over next year. This allows attendees to not to miss any session and watch replay at their own leisure. Stephan promised to start sharing the sessions by mid December this year. No need to pre-register for a session - This is true for most of the conferences but bigger rooms (+ overflow room for key sessions) provide sufficient space for all those who want to attend the session. And of course all sessions are available on parleys.com anyway! Community votes on whiteboard - Devoxx attendees gets a chance to vote on topics ranging from their favorite non-Java language, operating system, or love from Oracle. Captured pictures at the end of Day 2 are shown below. Movie on the last but one night - This year it was The Adventures of Tintin and was lots of fun. Fries with mayo - This is a typical Belgian thing. Guys going in ladies room to avoid the long queues ... wow! Tweet wall everywhere and I mean literally everywhere, in rooms, hallways, front desk, and other places. The tweet picking algorithm was not very clear as I never saw my tweet appear on the wall ;-) You can also watch it at wall.devoxx.com. Cozy speaker dinner with great food and wine List of parallel and upcoming sessions displayed on the screen - This makes the information more explicit with the attendees. REST API with multiple mobile clients - This API is also used by some other conferences as well. And there always is iphone.devoxx.com. Steering committee members were recognized multiple times. The committee members were clearly identifiable wearing red hoodies. The wireless SSID was intuitive "Devoxx" but hidden to avoid some crap from Microsoft Windows. All of 9000 addresses were used up most of the times with each attendee having multiple devices. A 1 GB fibre optic cable was stretched to Metropolis to support the required network bandwidth. Stephan is already planning to upgrade the equipment and have a better infrastructure next year. Free water, soda, juice in a cooler Kinect connected to TV screens so that attendees can use their hands to browse through the list of sesssions. #devoxxblog, #devoxxwomen, #devoxxfrance, #devoxxgreat, #devoxxsuggestions And Devoxx attendees are called Devoxxians ... how cool is that ? :-) What other things do you think happen only at Devoxx ? And now the pictures from the community whiteboard: And a more complete album (including bigger pics of community votes) is available below:

  Read the article

• Help Me Help You Fix That

  - by BuckWoody

  If you've been redirected here because you posted on a forum, or asked a question in an e-mail, the person wanted you to know how to get help quickly from a group of folks who are willing to do so - but whose time is valuable. You need to put a little effort into the question first to get others to assist. This is how to do that. It will only take you a moment to read... 1. State the problem succinctly in the title When an e-mail thread starts, or a forum post is the "head" of the conversation, you'll attract more helpers by using a descriptive headline than a vague one. This: "Driver for Epson Line Printer Not Installing on Operating System XYZ" Not this: "Can't print - PLEASE HELP" 2. Explain the Error Completely Make sure you include all pertinent information in the request. More information is better, there's almost no way to add too much data to the discussion. What you were doing, what happened, what you saw, the error message, visuals, screen shots, whatever you can include. This: "I'm getting error '5203 - Driver not compatible with Operating System since about 25 years ago' in a message box on the screen when I tried to run the SETUP.COM file from my older computer. It was a 1995 Compaq Proliant and worked correctly there.." Not this: "I get an error message in a box. It won't install." 3. Explain what you have done to research the problem If the first thing you do is ask a question without doing any research, you're lazy, and no one wants to help you. Using one of the many fine search engines you can most always find the answer to your problem. Sometimes you can't. Do yourself a favor - open a notepad app, and paste the URL's as you look them up. If you get your answer, don't save the note. If you don't get an answer, send the list along with the problem. It will show that you've tried, and also keep people from sending you links that you've already checked. This: "I read the fine manual, and it doesn't mention Operating System XYZ for some reason. Also, I checked the following links, but the instructions there didn't fix the problem: " Not this: <NULL> 4. Say "Please" and "Thank You" Remember, you're asking for help. No one owes you their valuable time. Ask politely, don't pester, endure the people who are rude to you, and when your question is answered, respond back to the thread or e-mail with a thank you to close it out. It helps others that have your same problem know that this is the correct answer. This: "I could really use some help here - if you have any pointers or things to try, I'd appreciate it." Not this: "I really need this done right now - why are there no responses?" This: "Thanks for those responses - that last one did the trick. Turns out I needed a new printer anyway, didn't realize they were so inexpensive now." Not this: <NULL> There are a lot of motivated people that will help you. Help them do that.

  Read the article

• Controlling soft errors and false alarms in SSIS

  - by Jim Giercyk

  If you are like me, you dread the 3AM wake-up call.  I would say that the majority of the pages I get are false alarms.  The alerts that require action often require me to open an SSIS package, see where the trouble is and try to identify the offending data.  That can be very time-consuming and can take quite a chunk out of my beauty sleep.  For those reasons, I have developed a simple error handling scenario for SSIS which allows me to rest a little easier.  Let me first say, this is a high level discussion; getting into the nuts and bolts of creating each shape is outside the scope of this document, but if you have an average understanding of SSIS, you should have no problem following along. In the Data Flow above you can see that there is a caution triangle.  For the purpose of this discussion I am creating a truncation error to demonstrate the process, so this is to be expected.  The first thing we need to do is to redirect the error output.  Double-clicking on the Query shape presents us with the properties window for the input.  Simply set the columns that you want to redirect to Redirect Row in the dropdown box and hit Apply. Without going into a dissertation on error handling, I will just note that you can decide which errors you want to redirect on Error and on Truncation.  Therefore, to override this process for a column or condition, simply do not redirect that column or condition. The next thing we want to do is to add some information about the error; specifically, the name of the package which encountered the error and which step in the package wrote the record to the error table.  REMEMBER: If you redirect the error output, your package will not fail, so you will not know where the error record was created without some additional information.    I added 3 columns to my error record; Severity, Package Name and Step Name.  Severity is just a free-form column that you can use to note whether an error is fatal, whether the package is part of a test job and should be ignored, etc.  Package Name and Step Name are system variables. In my package I have created a truncation situation, where the firstname column is 50 characters in the input, but only 4 characters in the output.  Some records will pass without truncation, others will be sent to the error output.  However, the package will not fail. We can see that of the 14 input rows, 8 were redirected to the error table. This information can be used by another step or another scheduled process or triggered to determine whether an error should be sent.  It can also be used as a historical record of the errors that are encountered over time.  There are other system variables that might make more sense in your infrastructure, so try different things.  Date and time seem like something you would want in your output for example.  In summary, we have redirected the error output from an input, added derived columns with information about the errors, and inserted the information and the offending data into an error table.  The error table information can be used by another step or process to determine, based on the error information, what level alert must be sent.  This will eliminate false alarms, and give you a head start when a genuine error occurs.

  Read the article

• Deploying Oracle ADF Essentials Applications to Glassfish

  - by Shay Shmeltzer

  With the new Oracle ADF Essentials offering you can now deploy applications that leverage Oracle ADF on the open source Glassfish 3.1 server. Deployment is documented in the official JDeveloper and ADF documentation (here) but below is a summary of the steps and a video of the steps you'll need to take to get a basic Oracle ADF Essentials application to work on GlassFish. Note - to make starting/stopping GlassFish easier for my demo I used my GlassFish extension that you can get here. First we'll install some ADF Runtime libraries on GlassFish Download and install Glassfish (Note - if you also have an Oracle DB on the same machine, you'll want to switch GlassFish's HTTP port to something else instead of 8080). Download the Oracle ADF Essentials packaging - this will get you an adf_essentials.zip file. Copy the adf_essentials.zip to the lib directory of your Glassfish domain - on a default windows install this would be: C:\glassfish3\glassfish\domains\domain1\lib Go the the above lib directory and issue a unzip -j adf_essentials.zip This will extract the ADF libraries to the directory. Now you can start the Glassfish server. Now let's configure Glassfish to handle applications of the ADF type: Invoke the admin console of glassfish (http://localhost:4848) and log into your admin account. Go to Configurations->Server-config->JVM Settings and choose the JVM Options tab Add the following entries: -XX:MaxPermSize=512m (note this entry should already exist so just make sure it has a big enough value) -Doracle.mds.cache=simple While we are in the admin console, we can also define JDBC connections that will be used by our application. Go into Resources->JDBC->JDBC Connection Pools and click to create a New one Give it a name and choose the resource type to be javax.sql.XADataSource and choose Oracle as the Database Driver vendor. Click Next Scroll down to the Additional Properties section and start filling in the information for your database. The values for an Oracle XE will be (user=hr, databaseName = XE, Password=hr, ServerName=localhost, DriverType=thin, PortNumber=1521) Click Finish Click Ping to check your connection works. Now define a new JDBC Resource that will use the pool you just defined. In my example I called the resource jdbc/HRDS You will need this name to match the name in your Application Module connection configuraiton.Now you can re-start the Glassfish server for the changes to take effect. Get an ADF application going (you can use the regular Fusion Application template for this) Go into the project properties of your viewController project, under the deployment section click to edit the deployment profile that is defined there. Go to Platform and choose Glassfish 3.1 from the drop down list. Click ok to go back to your project. Go to Application -> Application Properties-> Deployment Go to Platform and choose Glassfish 3.1 from the drop down list. Click ok to go back to your project. This step will make sure that JDeveloper will autoamtically add the necessary ADF libraries to the EAR file that is being generated for deployment on Glassfish  Go to your Application->Deploy and deploy either to an EAR file or directly to a Glassfish server connection that you created. Things should just work, but if they don't then look up the server.log in the log directory and check out what error is in there. Here is a video demo of the various steps: Note - right now the deployment of an ADF application takes about 2 minutes on my machine we are hoping to be able to improve this timing in the future. People who are more familiar with Glassfish might want to explore using exploded directory deployment and see if they can get it to work.

  Read the article

• Java EE 7 Roadmap

  - by Linda DeMichiel

  The Java EE 6 Platform, released in December 2009, has seen great uptake from the community with its POJO-based programming model, lightweight Web Profile, and extension points. There are now 13 Java EE 6 compliant appserver implementations today! When we announced the Java EE 7 JSR back in early 2011, our plans were that we would release it by Q4 2012. This target date was slightly over three years after the release of Java EE 6, but at the same time it meant that we had less than two years to complete a fairly comprehensive agenda — to continue to invest in significant enhancements in simplification, usability, and functionality in updated versions of the JSRs that are currently part of the platform; to introduce new JSRs that reflect emerging needs in the community; and to add support for use in cloud environments. We have since announced a minor adjustment in our dates (to the spring of 2013) in order to accommodate the inclusion of JSRs of importance to the community, such as Web Sockets and JSON-P. At this point, however, we have to make a choice. Despite our best intentions, our progress has been slow on the cloud side of our agenda. Partially this has been due to a lack of maturity in the space for provisioning, multi-tenancy, elasticity, and the deployment of applications in the cloud. And partially it is due to our conservative approach in trying to get things "right" in view of limited industry experience in the cloud area when we started this work. Because of this, we believe that providing solid support for standardized PaaS-based programming and multi-tenancy would delay the release of Java EE 7 until the spring of 2014 — that is, two years from now and over a year behind schedule. In our opinion, that is way too long. We have therefore proposed to the Java EE 7 Expert Group that we adjust our course of action — namely, stick to our current target release dates, and defer the remaining aspects of our agenda for PaaS enablement and multi-tenancy support to Java EE 8. Of course, we continue to believe that Java EE is well-suited for use in the cloud, although such use might not be quite ready for full standardization. Even today, without Java EE 7, Java EE vendors such as Oracle, Red Hat, IBM, and CloudBees have begun to offer the ability to run Java EE applications in the cloud. Deferring the remaining cloud-oriented aspects of our agenda has several important advantages: It allows Java EE Platform vendors to gain more experience with their implementations in this area and thus helps us avoid risks entailed by trying to standardize prematurely in an emerging area. It means that the community won't need to wait longer for those features that are ready at the cost of those features that need more time. Because we have already laid some of the infrastructure for cloud support in Java EE 7, including resource definition metadata, improved security configuration, JPA schema generation, etc., it will allow us to expedite a Java EE 8 release. We therefore plan to target the Java EE 8 Platform release for the spring of 2015. This shift in the scope of Java EE 7 allows us to better retain our focus on enhancements in simplification and usability and to deliver on schedule those features that have been most requested by developers. These include the support for HTML 5 in the form of Web Sockets and JSON-P; the simplified JMS 2.0 APIs; improved Managed Bean alignment, including transactional interceptors; the JAX-RS 2.0 client API; support for method-level validation; a much more comprehensive expression language; and more. We feel strongly that this is the right thing to do, and we hope that you will support us in this proposed direction.

  Read the article

• Type of computer for a developer on the road

  - by nabucosound

  Hi developers: I am planning to be traveling through eurasia and asia (russia, china, korea, japan, south east asia...) for a while and, although there are plenty of marvelous things to see and to do, I must keep on working :(. I am a python developer, dedicated mainly to web projects. I use django, sqlite3, browsers, and ocassionaly (only if I have no choice) I install postgres, mysql, apache or any other servers commonly used in the internets. I do my coding on vim, use ssh to connect, lftp to transfer files, IRC, grep/ack... So I spend most of my time in the terminal shells. But I also use IM or Skype to communicate with my clients and peers, as well as some other software (that after all is not mandatory for my day-to-day work). I currently work with a Macbook Pro (3 years old now) and so far I am very happy with the performance. But I don't want to carry it if I am going to be "on transit" for long time, it is simply huge and heavy for what I am planning to load in my rather small backpack (while traveling, less is more, you know). So here I am reading all kind of opinions about netbooks, because at first sight this is the kind of computer I thought I had to choose. I am going to use Linux for it, Microsoft is not my cup of tea and Mac is not available for them, unless I were to buy a Macbook air, something that I won't do because if I am robbed or rain/dust/truck loaders break it I would burst in tears. I am concerned about wifi performance and connectivity, I am going to use one of those linux distros/tools to hack/test on "open" networks (if you know what I mean) in case I am not in a place with real free wifi access and I find myself in an emergency. CPU speed should be acceptable, but since I don't plan to run Photoshop or expensive IDEs, I guess most of the time I won't be overloading the machine. Apart from this, maybe (surely) I am missing other features to consider. With that said (sorry about the length) here it comes my question, raised from a deep ignorance regarding the wars betweeb betbooks vs notebooks (I assume tablet PCs are not for programming yet): If I buy a netbook will I have to throw it away after 1 month on the road and buy a notebook? Or will I be OK? Thanks! Hector Update I have received great feedback so far! I would like to insist on the fact that I will be traveling through many different countries and scenarios. I am sure that while in Japan I will be more than fine with anything related to technology, connectivity, etc. But consider that I will be, for example, on a train through Russia (transsiberian) and will cross Mongolia as well. I will stay in friends' places sometimes, but most of the time I will have to work from hostel rooms, trains, buses, beaches (hey this last one doesn't sound too bad hehe!). I think some of your answers guys seem to focus on the geek part but loose the point of this "on the road" fact. I am very aware and agree that netbooks suck compared to notebooks, but what I am trying to do here is to find a balance and discover your experiences with netbooks to see first hand if a netbook will be a fail in the mid-long term of the trip for my purposes. So I have resumed the main concepts expressed here on this small list, in no particular order: keyboard/touchpad feel: I use vim so no need of moving mouse pointers that much, unless I am browsing the web, but intensive use of keyboard screen real state: again, terminal work for most of the time battery life: I think something very important weight/size: also very important looks not worth stealing it, don't give a shit if it is lost/stolen/broken: this may depend on kind of person, your economy, etc. Also to prevent losing work, I will upload EVERYTHING to the cloud whenever I'll have a chance. wifi: don't want to discover my wifi is one of those that cannot deal with half the routers on this planet or has poor connectivity. Thanks again for your answers and comments!

  Read the article

• Tetris Movement - Implementation

  - by James Brauman

  Hi gamedev, I'm developing a Tetris clone and working on the input at the moment. When I was prototyping, movement was triggered by releasing a directional key. However, in most Tetris games I've played the movement is a bit more complex. When a directional key is pressed, the shape moves one space in that direction. After a short interval, if the key is still held down, the shape starts moving in the direction continuously until the key is released. In the case of the down key being pressed, there is no pause between the initial movement and the subsequent continuous movement. I've come up with a solution, and it works well, but it's totally over-engineered. Hey, at least I can recognize when things are getting silly, right? :) public class TetrisMover { List registeredKeys; Dictionary continuousPressedTime; Dictionary totalPressedTime; Dictionary initialIntervals; Dictionary continousIntervals; Dictionary keyActions; Dictionary initialActionDone; KeyboardState currentKeyboardState; public TetrisMover() { *snip* } public void Update(GameTime gameTime) { currentKeyboardState = Keyboard.GetState(); foreach (Keys currentKey in registeredKeys) { if (currentKeyboardState.IsKeyUp(currentKey)) { continuousPressedTime[currentKey] = TimeSpan.Zero; totalPressedTime[currentKey] = TimeSpan.Zero; initialActionDone[currentKey] = false; } else { if (initialActionDone[currentKey] == false) { keyActions[currentKey](); initialActionDone[currentKey] = true; } totalPressedTime[currentKey] += gameTime.ElapsedGameTime; if (totalPressedTime[currentKey] = initialIntervals[currentKey]) { continuousPressedTime[currentKey] += gameTime.ElapsedGameTime; if (continuousPressedTime[currentKey] = continousIntervals[currentKey]) { keyActions[currentKey](); continuousPressedTime[currentKey] = TimeSpan.Zero; } } } } } public void RegisterKey(Keys key, TimeSpan initialInterval, TimeSpan continuousInterval, Action keyAction) { if (registeredKeys.Contains(key)) throw new InvalidOperationException( string.Format("The key %s is already registered.", key)); registeredKeys.Add(key); continuousPressedTime.Add(key, TimeSpan.Zero); totalPressedTime.Add(key, TimeSpan.Zero); initialIntervals.Add(key, initialInterval); continousIntervals.Add(key, continuousInterval); keyActions.Add(key, keyAction); initialActionDone.Add(key, false); } public void UnregisterKey(Keys key) { *snip* } } I'm updating it every frame, and this is how I'm registering keys for movement: tetrisMover.RegisterKey( Keys.Left, keyHoldStartSpecialInterval, keyHoldMovementInterval, () = { Move(Direction.Left); }); tetrisMover.RegisterKey( Keys.Right, keyHoldStartSpecialInterval, keyHoldMovementInterval, () = { Move(Direction.Right); }); tetrisMover.RegisterKey( Keys.Down, TimeSpan.Zero, keyHoldMovementInterval, () = { PerformGravity(); }); Issues that this doesn't address: If both left and right are held down, the shape moves back and forth really quick. If a directional key is held down and the turn finishes and the shape is replaced by a new one, the new one will move quickly in that direction instead of the little pause it is supposed to have. I could fix the issues, but I think it will make the solution even worse. How would you implement this?

  Read the article

• Antenna Aligner Part 4: Role'ing in the deep

  - by Chris George

  Since last time I've been trying to sort out the general workflow of the app. It's fundamentally not hard, there is a list of transmitters, you select a transmitter and it shows the compass view. Having done quite a bit of ajax/asp.net/html in the past, I immediately started off by creating two divs within my 'page', one for the list, one for the compass. Then using the onClick event in the list, this will switch the display attribute on the divs. This seemed to work, but did lead to some dodgy transitional redrawing artefacts which I was not happy with. So after some Googling I realised I was doing it all wrong! JQuery mobile has the concept of giving an object in html a data-role. By giving a div the attribute data-role="page" it is then treated as a separate page on the mobile device. Within the code, this is referenced like a html anchor in the form #mypage. Using this system, page transitions such as fade or slide are automatically applied which adds to the whole authenticity of the app! Here is a simple example: . <a href="#'compasspage">compass</a> . <div data-role="page" id="compasspage" data-add-back-btn="true"> But I don't want just a static link, I want to dynamically create my list, and get each list elements to switch to the compass page with the right information. So here is the jquery that I used to dynamically inject new <li> rows into the <ul> block. $('ul').append($('<li/>', {    //here appendin `<li>`     'data-role': "list-divider" }).append($('<a/>', {    //here appending `<a>` into `<li>`     'href': '#compasspage',     'data-transition': 'none',     'onclick': 'selectTx(' + i + ')',     'html': buttonHtml }))); $('ul').listview('refresh'); This is called within a for loop so the first 5 appropriate transmitters are used. There are several things of interest to note here. Firstly, I could not find a more elegant way to tell the target page which transmitter I've clicked on, so I have used the onclick event as well as the href attribute. The onclick event fires 'selectTx' which simply sets a global member variable to the specific index number I've clicked on. Yes it's not nice, but it works. Secondly, the data-transition attribute is set to 'none'. I wanted the transition between the pages to be a whooshy slidey effect. However this worked going to the compass page, but returning to the list page gave some undesirable visual artefacts (flickering, redrawing etc.). So I decided to remove the transitions all together, which was a shame. Thirdly, rather than embedding loads of html into the append command, I removed this out into a variable 'buttonHtml'. Doing this really tidied up my code. Until next time!

  Read the article

• Library order is important

  - by Darryl Gove

  I've written quite extensively about link ordering issues, but I've not discussed the interaction between archive libraries and shared libraries. So let's take a simple program that calls a maths library function: #include <math.h int main() { for (int i=0; i<10000000; i++) { sin(i); } } We compile and run it to get the following performance: bash-3.2$ cc -g -O fp.c -lm bash-3.2$ timex ./a.out real 6.06 user 6.04 sys 0.01 Now most people will have heard of the optimised maths library which is added by the flag -xlibmopt. This contains optimised versions of key mathematical functions, in this instance, using the library doubles performance: bash-3.2$ cc -g -O -xlibmopt fp.c -lm bash-3.2$ timex ./a.out real 2.70 user 2.69 sys 0.00 The optimised maths library is provided as an archive library (libmopt.a), and the driver adds it to the link line just before the maths library - this causes the linker to pick the definitions provided by the static library in preference to those provided by libm. We can see the processing by asking the compiler to print out the link line: bash-3.2$ cc -### -g -O -xlibmopt fp.c -lm /usr/ccs/bin/ld ... fp.o -lmopt -lm -o a.out... The flag to the linker is -lmopt, and this is placed before the -lm flag. So what happens when the -lm flag is in the wrong place on the command line: bash-3.2$ cc -g -O -xlibmopt -lm fp.c bash-3.2$ timex ./a.out real 6.02 user 6.01 sys 0.01 If the -lm flag is before the source file (or object file for that matter), we get the slower performance from the system maths library. Why's that? If we look at the link line we can see the following ordering: /usr/ccs/bin/ld ... -lmopt -lm fp.o -o a.out So the optimised maths library is still placed before the system maths library, but the object file is placed afterwards. This would be ok if the optimised maths library were a shared library, but it is not - instead it's an archive library, and archive library processing is different - as described in the linker and library guide: "The link-editor searches an archive only to resolve undefined or tentative external references that have previously been encountered." An archive library can only be used resolve symbols that are outstanding at that point in the link processing. When fp.o is placed before the libmopt.a archive library, then the linker has an unresolved symbol defined in fp.o, and it will search the archive library to resolve that symbol. If the archive library is placed before fp.o then there are no unresolved symbols at that point, and so the linker doesn't need to use the archive library. This is why libmopt needs to be placed after the object files on the link line. On the other hand if the linker has observed any shared libraries, then at any point these are checked for any unresolved symbols. The consequence of this is that once the linker "sees" libm it will resolve any symbols it can to that library, and it will not check the archive library to resolve them. This is why libmopt needs to be placed before libm on the link line. This leads to the following order for placing files on the link line: Object files Archive libraries Shared libraries If you use this order, then things will consistently get resolved to the archive libraries rather than to the shared libaries.

  Read the article

• RemoveHandler Issues with Custom Events

  - by Jeff Certain

  This is a case of things being more complicated that I thought they should be. Since it took a while to figure this one out, I thought it was worth explaining and putting all of the pieces to the answer in one spot. Let me set the stage. Architecturally, I have the notion of generic producers and consumers. These put items onto, and remove items from, a queue. This provides a generic, thread-safe mechanism to load balance the creation and processing of work items in our application. Part of the IProducer(Of T) interface is: 1: Public Interface IProducer(Of T) 2: Event ItemProduced(ByVal sender As IProducer(Of T), ByVal item As T) 3: Event ProductionComplete(ByVal sender As IProducer(Of T)) 4: End Interface Nothing sinister there, is there? In order to simplify our developers’ lives, I wrapped the queue with some functionality to manage the produces and consumers. Since the developer can specify the number of producers and consumers that are spun up, the queue code manages adding event handlers as the producers and consumers are instantiated. Now, we’ve been having some memory leaks and, in order to eliminate the possibility that this was caused by weak references to event handles, I wanted to remove them. This is where it got dicey. My first attempt looked like this: 1: For Each producer As P In Producers 2: RemoveHandler producer.ItemProduced, AddressOf ItemProducedHandler 3: RemoveHandler producer.ProductionComplete, AddressOf ProductionCompleteHandler 4: producer.Dispose() 5: Next What you can’t see in my posted code are the warnings this caused. The 'AddressOf' expression has no effect in this context because the method argument to 'AddressOf' requires a relaxed conversion to the delegate type of the event. Assign the 'AddressOf' expression to a variable, and use the variable to add or remove the method as the handler.  Now, what on earth does that mean? Well, a quick Bing search uncovered a whole bunch of talk about delegates. The first solution I found just changed all parameters in the event handler to Object. Sorry, but no. I used generics precisely because I wanted type safety, not because I wanted to use Object. More searching. Eventually, I found this forum post, where Jeff Shan revealed a missing piece of the puzzle. The other revelation came from Lian_ZA in this post. However, these two only hinted at the solution. Trying some of what they suggested led to finally getting an invalid cast exception that revealed the existence of ItemProducedEventHandler. Hold on a minute! I didn’t create that delegate. There’s nothing even close to that name in my code… except the ItemProduced event in the interface. Could it be? Naaaaah. Hmmm…. Well, as it turns out, there is a delegate created by the compiler for each event. By explicitly creating a delegate that refers to the method in question, implicitly cast to the generated delegate type, I was able to remove the handlers: 1: For Each producer As P In Producers 2: Dim _itemProducedHandler As IProducer(Of T).ItemProducedEventHandler = AddressOf ItemProducedHandler 3: RemoveHandler producer.ItemProduced, _itemProducedHandler 4:  5: Dim _productionCompleteHandler As IProducer(Of T).ProductionCompleteEventHandler = AddressOf ProductionCompleteHandler 6: RemoveHandler producer.ProductionComplete, _productionCompleteHandler 7: producer.Dispose() 8: Next That’s “all” it took to finally be able to remove the event handlers and maintain type-safe code. Hopefully, this will save you the same challenges I had in trying to figure out how to fix this issue!

  Read the article

• Deliberate Practice

  - by Jeff Foster

  It’s easy to assume, as software engineers, that there is little need to “practice” writing code. After all, we write code all day long! Just by writing a little each day, we’re constantly learning and getting better, right? Unfortunately, that’s just not true. Of course, developers do improve with experience. Each time we encounter a problem we’re more likely to avoid it next time. If we’re in a team that deploys software early and often, we hone and improve the deployment process each time we practice it. However, not all practice makes perfect. To develop true expertise requires a particular type of practice, deliberate practice, the only goal of which is to make us better programmers. Everyday software development has other constraints and goals, not least the pressure to deliver. We rarely get the chance in the course of a “sprint” to experiment with potential solutions that are outside our current comfort zone. However, if we believe that software is a craft then it’s our duty to strive continuously to raise the standard of software development. This requires specific and sustained efforts to get better at something we currently can’t do well (from Harvard Business Review July/August 2007). One interesting way to introduce deliberate practice, in a sustainable way, is the code kata. The term kata derives from martial arts and refers to a set of movements practiced either solo or in pairs. One of the better-known examples is the Bowling Game kata by Bob Martin, the goal of which is simply to write some code to do the scoring for 10-pin bowling. It sounds too easy, right? What could we possibly learn from such a simple example? Trust me, though, that it’s not as simple as five minutes of typing and a solution. Of course, we can reach a solution in a short time, but the important thing about code katas is that we explore each technique fully and in a controlled way. We tackle the same problem multiple times, using different techniques and making different decisions, understanding the ramifications of each one, and exploring edge cases. The short feedback loop optimizes opportunities to learn. Another good example is Conway’s Game of Life. It’s a simple problem to solve, but try solving it in a functional style. If you’re used to mutability, solving the problem without mutating state will push you outside of your comfort zone. Similarly, if you try to solve it with the focus of “tell-don’t-ask“, how will the responsibilities of each object change? As software engineers, we don’t get enough opportunities to explore new ideas. In the middle of a development cycle, we can’t suddenly start experimenting on the team’s code base. Code katas offer an opportunity to explore new techniques in a safe environment. If you’re still skeptical, my challenge to you is simply to try it out. Convince a willing colleague to pair with you and work through a kata or two. It only takes an hour and I’m willing to bet you learn a few new things each time. The next step is to make it a sustainable team practice. Start with an hour every Friday afternoon (after all who wants to commit code to production just before they leave for the weekend?) for month and see how that works out. Finally, consider signing up for the Global Day of Code Retreat. It’s like a daylong code kata, it’s on December 8th and there’s probably an event in your area!

  Read the article

• Need help partitioning when reinstalling Ubuntu 14.04

  - by Chris M.

  I upgraded to 14.04 about a month ago on my HP Mini netbook (about 16 GB hard disk). A few days ago the system crashed (I don't know why but I was using internet at the time). When I restarted the computer, Ubuntu would not load. Instead, I got a message from the BIOS saying Reboot and Select proper Boot device or Insert Boot Media in selected Boot device and press a key I took this to mean that I needed to reinstall 14.04. When I try to reinstall Ubuntu from the USB stick, I choose "Erase disk and install Ubuntu" but then I get a message: Some of the partitions you created are too small. Please make the following partitions at least this large: / 3.3 GB If you do not go back to the partitioner and increase the size of these partitions, the installation may fail. At first I hit Continue to see if it would install anyway, and it gave the message: The attempt to mount a file system with type ext4 in SCSI1 (0,0,0), partition # 1 (sda) at / failed. You may resume partitioning from the partitioning menu. The second time I hit Go Back, and it took me to the following partitioning table: Device Type Mount Point Format Size Used System /dev/sda /dev/sda1 ext4 (checked) 3228 MB Unknown /dev/sda5 swap (not checked) 1063 MB Unknown + - Change New Partition Table... Revert Device for boot loader installation: /dev/sda ATA JM Loader 001 (4.3 GB) At this point I'm not sure what to do. I've never partitioned my hard drive before and I don't want to screw things up. (I'm not particularly tech savvy.) Can you instruct me what I should do. (P.S. I'm afraid the table might not appear as I typed it in.) Results from fdisk: ubuntu@ubuntu:~$ sudo fdisk -l Disk /dev/sda: 4294 MB, 4294967296 bytes 255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 522 cylinders, total 8388608 sectors Units = sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes Disk identifier: 0x00000000 Disk /dev/sda doesn't contain a valid partition table Disk /dev/sdb: 7860 MB, 7860125696 bytes 155 heads, 31 sectors/track, 3194 cylinders, total 15351808 sectors Units = sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes Disk identifier: 0x0009a565 Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System /dev/sdb1 * 2768 15351807 7674520 b W95 FAT32 ubuntu@ubuntu:~$ Here is what it displays when I open the Disks utility (I tried the screenshot terminal command you suggested but it didn't seem to do anything): 4.3 GB Hard Disk /dev/sda Model: JM Loader 001 (01000001) Size: 4.3 GB (4,294,967,296 bytes) Serial Number: 01234123412341234 Assessment: SMART is not supported Volumes Size: 4.3 GB (4,294,967,296 bytes) Device: /dev/sda Contents: Unknown (There is a button in the utility that when you click it gives the following options: Format... Create Disk Image... Restore Disk Image... Benchmark but SMART Data & Self-Tests... is dimmed out) When I hit F9 Change Boot Device Order, it shows the hard drive as: SATA:PM-JM Loader 001 When I hit F10 to get me into the BIOS Setup Utility, under Diagnostic it shows: Primary Hard Disk Self Test Not Support NetworkManager Tool State: disconnected Device: eth0 Type: Wired Driver: atl1c State: unavailable Default: no HW Address: 00:26:55:B0:7F:0C Capabilities: Carrier Detect: yes Wired Properties Carrier: off When I run command lshw -C network, I get: WARNING: you should run this program as super-user. *-network description: Network controller product: BCM4312 802.11b/g LP-PHY vendor: Broadcom Corporation physical id: 0 bus info: pci@0000:01:00.0 version: 01 width: 64 bits clock: 33MHz capabilities: bus_master cap_list configuration: driver=b43-pci-bridge latency=0 resources: irq:16 memory:feafc000-feafffff *-network description: Ethernet interface product: AR8132 Fast Ethernet vendor: Qualcomm Atheros physical id: 0 bus info: pci@0000:02:00.0 logical name: eth0 version: c0 serial: 00:26:55:b0:7f:0c capacity: 100Mbit/s width: 64 bits clock: 33MHz capabilities: bus_master cap_list ethernet physical tp 10bt 10bt-fd 100bt 100bt-fd autonegotiation configuration: autonegotiation=on broadcast=yes driver=atl1c driverversion=1.0.1.1-NAPI latency=0 link=no multicast=yes port=twisted pair resources: irq:43 memory:febc0000-febfffff ioport:ec80(size=128) WARNING: output may be incomplete or inaccurate, you should run this program as super-user.

  Read the article

• Guaranteed Restore Points as Fallback Method

  - by Mike Dietrich

  Thanks to the great audience yesterday in the Upgrade & Migration Workshop in Utrecht. That was really fun and I was amazed by our new facilities (and the  "wellness" lights surrounding the plenum room's walls). And another reason why I like to do these workshops is that often I learn new things from you So credits here to Rick van  Ek who has highlighted the following topic to me. Yesterday (and in some previous workshops) I did mention during the discussion about Fallback Strategies that you'll have to switch on Flashback Database beforehand to create a guaranteed restore point in case you'll encounter an issue during the database upgrade. I knew that we've made it possible since Oracle Database 11.2 to switch Flashback Database on without taking the database into MOUNT status (you could switch it off anyway while the database is open before in all releases). But before Oracle Database 11.2 that did require MOUNT status. SQL> create restore point rp1 guarantee flashback database ; create restore point rp1 guarantee flashback database * ERROR at line 1: ORA-38784: Cannot create restore point 'RP1'. ORA-38787: Creating the first guaranteed restore point requires mount mode when flashback database is off. But Rick did mention that I won't need to switch Flashback Database On to create a guaranteed restore point. And he's right - in older releases I would have had to go into MOUNT state to define the restore point which meant to restart the database. But in 11.2 that's no necessary anymore. And the same will apply when you upgrade your pre-11.2 database (e.g. an Oracle Database 10.2.0.4) to Oracle Database 11.2. As soon as you start your "old" not-yet-upgraded database in your 11.2 environment with STARTUP UPGRADE you can define a guaranteed restore point. If you tail the alert.log you'll see that the database will start the RVWR (Recovery Writer) background process - you'll just have to make sure that you'd define the values for db_recovery_file_dest_size and db_recovery_file_dest. SQL> startup upgrade ORACLE instance started. Total System Global Area  417546240 bytes Fixed Size                  2228944 bytes Variable Size             134221104 bytes Database Buffers          272629760 bytes Redo Buffers                8466432 bytes Database mounted. Database opened. SQL> create restore point grpt guarantee flashback database; Restore point created.SQL> drop restore point grpt; And don't forget to drop that restore point the sooner or later as it is guaranteed - and will fill up your Fast Recovery Area pretty quickly Just on the side: in any case archivelog mode is required if you'd like to work with restore points. - Mike

  Read the article

• Social Search: Looking for Love

  - by Mike Stiles

  For marketers and enterprise executives who have placed a higher priority on and allocated bigger budgets to search over social, it might be time to notice yet another shift that’s well underway. Social is search. Search marketing was always more of an internal slam-dunk than other digital initiatives. Even a C-suite that understood little about the new technology world knew it’s a good thing when people are able to find you. Google was the new Yellow Pages. Only with Google, you could get your listing first without naming yourself “AAAA Plumbing.” There were wizards out there who could give your business prominence in front of people who were specifically looking for what you offered. Other search giants like Bing also came along to offer such ideal matchmaking possibilities. But what if the consumer isn’t using a search engine to find what they’re looking for? And what if the search engines started altering their algorithms so that search placement manipulation was more difficult? Both of those things have started to happen. Experian Hitwise’s numbers show that visits to the major search engines in the UK dropped 100 million through August. Search engines are far from dead, or even challenged. But more and more, the public is discovering the sites and brands they need through advice they get via social, not search. You’ll find the worlds of social and search increasingly co-mingling as well. Search behemoths Google and Bing are including Facebook and Google+ into their engines. Meanwhile, Facebook and Twitter have done some integration of global web search into their platforms. So what makes social such a worthwhile search entity for brands? First and foremost, the consumer has demonstrated a behavior of acting on recommendations from social connections. A cry in the wilderness like, “Anybody know any good catering companies?” will usually yield a link (and an endorsement) from a friend such as “Yeah, check out Just-Cheese-Balls Catering.” There’s no such human-driven force/influence behind the big search engines. Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg and others call it “Friend Mining.” It is, in essence, searching for answers from friends’ experiences as opposed to faceless code. And Facebook has all of those friends’ experiences already stored as data. eMarketer says search in an $18 billion business, and investors are really into it. So no shock Facebook’s ready to leverage their social graph into relevant search. What do you do about all this as a brand? For one thing, it’s going to lead to some interesting paid marketing opportunities around the corner, including Sponsored Stories bought against certain queries, inserting deals into search results, capitalizing on social search results on mobile, etc. Apart from that, it might be time to stop mentally separating social and search in your strategic planning and budgeting. Courting your fans on social will cumulatively add up to more valuable, personally endorsed recommendations for your company when a consumer conducts a search on social. Fail to foster those relationships, fail to engage, fail to provide knock-em-dead customer service, fail to wow them with your actual products and services…and you’ll wind up with the visibility you deserve in social search results.

  Read the article

• Call For Papers Tips and Tricks

  - by speakjava

  This year's JavaOne session review has just been completed and by now everyone who submitted papers should know whether they were successful or not.  I had the pleasure again this year of leading the review of the 'JavaFX and Rich User Experiences' track.  I thought it would be useful to write up a few comments to help people in future when submitting session proposals, not just for JavaOne, but for any of the many developer conferences that run around the world throughout the year.  This also draws on conversations I recently had with various Java User Group leaders at the Oracle User Group summit in Riga.  Many of these leaders run some of the biggest and most successful Java conferences in Europe. Try to think of a title which will sound interesting.  For example, "Experiences of performance tuning embedded Java for an ARM architecture based single board computer" probably isn't going to get as much attention as "Do you like coffee with your dessert? Java on the Raspberry Pi".  When thinking of the subject and title for your talk try to steer clear of sessions that might be too generic (and so get lost in a group of similar sessions).  Introductory talks are great when the audience is new to a subject, but beware of providing sessions that are too basic when the technology has been around for a while and there are lots of tutorials already available on the web. JavaOne, like many other conferences has a number of fields that need to be filled in when submitting a paper.  Many of these are selected from pull-down lists (like which track the session is applicable to).  Check these lists carefully.  A number of sessions we had needed to be shuffled between tracks when it was thought that the one selected was not appropriate.  We didn't count this against any sessions, but it's always a good idea to try and get the right one from the start, just in case. JavaOne, again like many other conferences, has two fields that describe the session being submitted: abstract and summary.  These are the most critical to a successful submission.  The two fields have different names and that is significant; a frequent mistake people make is to write an abstract for a session and then duplicate it for the summary.  The abstract (at least in the case of JavaOne) is what gets printed in the show guide and is typically what will be used by attendees when deciding what sessions to attend.  This is where you need to sell your session, not just to the reviewers, but also the people who you want in your audience.  Submitting a one line abstract (unless it's a really good one line) is not usually enough to decide whether this is worth investing an hour of conference time.  The abstract typically has a limit of a few hundred characters.  Try to use as many of them as possible to get as much information about your session across.  The summary should be different from the abstract (and don't leave it blank as some people do).  This field is where you can give the reviewers more detail about things like the structure of the talk, possible demonstrations and so on.  As a reviewer I look to this section to help me decide whether the hard-sell of the title and abstract will actually be reflected in the final content.  Try to make this comprehensive, but don't make it excessively long.  When you have to review possibly hundreds of sessions a certain level of conciseness can make life easier for reviewers and help the cause of your session. If you've not made many submissions for talks in the past, or if this is your first, try to give reviewers places to find background on you as a presenter.  Having an active blog and Twitter handle can also help reviewers if they're not sure what your level of expertise is.  Many call-for-papers have places for you to include this type of information.  It's always good to have new and original presenters and presentations for conferences.  Hopefully these tips will help you be successful when you answer the next call-for-papers.

  Read the article

• Fast Data - Big Data's achilles heel

  - by thegreeneman

  At OOW 2013 in Mark Hurd and Thomas Kurian's keynote, they discussed Oracle's Fast Data software solution stack and discussed a number of customers deploying Oracle's Big Data / Fast Data solutions and in particular Oracle's NoSQL Database.  Since that time, there have been a large number of request seeking clarification on how the Fast Data software stack works together to deliver on the promise of real-time Big Data solutions.   Fast Data is a software solution stack that deals with one aspect of Big Data, high velocity.   The software in the Fast Data solution stack involves 3 key pieces and their integration:  Oracle Event Processing, Oracle Coherence, Oracle NoSQL Database.   All three of these technologies address a high throughput, low latency data management requirement.   Oracle Event Processing enables continuous query to filter the Big Data fire hose, enable intelligent chained events to real-time service invocation and augments the data stream to provide Big Data enrichment. Extended SQL syntax allows the definition of sliding windows of time to allow SQL statements to look for triggers on events like breach of weighted moving average on a real-time data stream.    Oracle Coherence is a distributed, grid caching solution which is used to provide very low latency access to cached data when the data is too big to fit into a single process, so it is spread around in a grid architecture to provide memory latency speed access.  It also has some special capabilities to deploy remote behavioral execution for "near data" processing.   The Oracle NoSQL Database is designed to ingest simple key-value data at a controlled throughput rate while providing data redundancy in a cluster to facilitate highly concurrent low latency reads.  For example, when large sensor networks are generating data that need to be captured while analysts are simultaneously extracting the data using range based queries for upstream analytics.  Another example might be storing cookies from user web sessions for ultra low latency user profile management, also leveraging that data using holistic MapReduce operations with your Hadoop cluster to do segmented site analysis.  Understand how NoSQL plays a critical role in Big Data capture and enrichment while simultaneously providing a low latency and scalable data management infrastructure thru clustered, always on, parallel processing in a shared nothing architecture. Learn how easily a NoSQL cluster can be deployed to provide essential services in industry specific Fast Data solutions. See these technologies work together in a demonstration highlighting the salient features of these Fast Data enabling technologies in a location based personalization service. The question then becomes how do these things work together to deliver an end to end Fast Data solution.  The answer is that while different applications will exhibit unique requirements that may drive the need for one or the other of these technologies, often when it comes to Big Data you may need to use them together.   You may have the need for the memory latencies of the Coherence cache, but just have too much data to cache, so you use a combination of Coherence and Oracle NoSQL to handle extreme speed cache overflow and retrieval.   Here is a great reference to how these two technologies are integrated and work together.  Coherence & Oracle NoSQL Database.   On the stream processing side, it is similar as with the Coherence case.  As your sliding windows get larger, holding all the data in the stream can become difficult and out of band data may need to be offloaded into persistent storage.  OEP needs an extreme speed database like Oracle NoSQL Database to help it continue to perform for the real time loop while dealing with persistent spill in the data stream.  Here is a great resource to learn more about how OEP and Oracle NoSQL Database are integrated and work together.  OEP & Oracle NoSQL Database.

  Read the article

• Access denied error while mounting a shared folder?

  - by SSH

  I am a linux newbie and I have a very basic question. I have three machines - machineA 10.108.24.132 machineB 10.108.24.133 machineC 10.108.24.134 and all those machines have Ubuntu 12.04 installed in it and I have root access to all those three machines. Now I am supposed to do below things in my above machines - Create mount point /opt/exhibitor/conf Mount the directory in all servers. sudo mount <NFS-SERVER>:/opt/exhibitor/conf /opt/exhibitor/conf/ I have already created /opt/exhibitor/conf directory in all those three machines as mentioned above. Now I am trying to create a Mount Point on all those three machines. So I followed the below process - Install NFS support files and NFS kernel server in all the above three machines $ sudo apt-get install nfs-common nfs-kernel-server Create the shared directory in all the above three machines $ mkdir /opt/exhibitor/conf/ Edited the /etc/exports and added the entry like this in all the above three machines - # /etc/exports: the access control list for filesystems which may be exported # to NFS clients. See exports(5). # # Example for NFSv2 and NFSv3: # /srv/homes hostname1(rw,sync,no_subtree_check) hostname2(ro,sync,no_subtree_check) # # Example for NFSv4: # /srv/nfs4 gss/krb5i(rw,sync,fsid=0,crossmnt,no_subtree_check) # /srv/nfs4/homes gss/krb5i(rw,sync,no_subtree_check) # /opt/exhibitor/conf/ 10.108.24.*(rw) Run exportfs in all the above three machines root@machineA:/# exportfs -rv exportfs: /etc/exports [1]: Neither 'subtree_check' or 'no_subtree_check' specified for export "10.108.24.*:/opt/exhibitor/conf/". Assuming default behaviour ('no_subtree_check'). NOTE: this default has changed since nfs-utils version 1.0.x exporting 10.108.24.*:/opt/exhibitor/conf Now I did showmount on machineA root@machineA:/# showmount -e 10.108.24.132 Export list for 10.108.24.132: /opt/exhibitor/conf 10.108.24.* And also I have started the NFS server like this in all the above three machines - sudo /etc/init.d/nfs-kernel-server start And now when I did this, I am getting an error - root@machineA:/# sudo mount -t nfs 10.108.24.132:/opt/exhibitor/conf /opt/exhibitor/conf/ mount.nfs: access denied by server while mounting 10.108.24.132:/opt/exhibitor/conf I have also tried doing the same thing from machineB and machineC as well and still I get the same error- root@machineB:/# sudo mount -t nfs 10.108.24.132:/opt/exhibitor/conf /opt/exhibitor/conf/ root@machineC:/# sudo mount -t nfs 10.108.24.132:/opt/exhibitor/conf /opt/exhibitor/conf/ Did my /etc/exports file looks good? As I have the same content in all the three machines. And also are there any logs related to NFS which I can see to find any clues? Any idea what wrong I am doing here? UPDATE:- So my etc/exports files would be like this in all the three machines - # /etc/exports: the access control list for filesystems which may be exported # to NFS clients. See exports(5). # # Example for NFSv2 and NFSv3: # /srv/homes hostname1(rw,sync,no_subtree_check) hostname2(ro,sync,no_subtree_check) # # Example for NFSv4: # /srv/nfs4 gss/krb5i(rw,sync,fsid=0,crossmnt,no_subtree_check) # /srv/nfs4/homes gss/krb5i(rw,sync,no_subtree_check) # /opt/exhibitor/conf/ 10.108.24.132(rw) /opt/exhibitor/conf/ 10.108.24.133(rw) /opt/exhibitor/conf/ 10.108.24.134(rw) Just a quick check - The IP Address that I am taking for each machine as mentioned above is like this - root@machineB:/# ifconfig eth0 Link encap:Ethernet HWaddr 00:50:56:ad:5b:a7 inet addr:10.108.24.133 Bcast:10.108.27.255 Mask:255.255.252.0 UP BROADCAST RUNNING MULTICAST MTU:1500 Metric:1 RX packets:5696812 errors:0 dropped:12462 overruns:0 frame:0 TX packets:5083427 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0 collisions:0 txqueuelen:1000 RX bytes:7904369145 (7.9 GB) TX bytes:601844910 (601.8 MB) lo Link encap:Local Loopback inet addr:127.0.0.1 Mask:255.0.0.0 UP LOOPBACK RUNNING MTU:16436 Metric:1 RX packets:187144 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0 TX packets:187144 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0 collisions:0 txqueuelen:0 RX bytes:24012302 (24.0 MB) TX bytes:24012302 (24.0 MB) Here the IP Address that I am taking for machineB is 10.108.24.133.

  Read the article

• Something about Property Management or &hellip; the understanding of SharePoint Admins/roles ?!?

  - by Enrique Lima

  When I talk about SharePoint, for some reason it comes to my mind as if it were property management and all the tasks associated with it. So, imagine you have a lot ( a piece of land of sorts), you then decide there is something you want to do with it.  So, you make the choice of having a building built.  Now, in order to go forward with your plan, you need to check what the rules/regulations are.  Has is it been zoned residential, commercial, industrial … you get the idea.  This to me sounds like Governance.  The what am I to do given a defined set of rules. We keep on moving forward based on those rules.  And with this we start the process of building, the building process takes us to survey the land, identify what our boundaries are.  And as we go along we start getting the idea in our head as to what we will do as far as the building goes.  We identify the essentials of the building, basic services and such.  All in all, we plan.  And as with many things we do, we like solid foundations.  What a solid foundation looks like will depend on where and what we build.  The way buildings are built depends in many ways in being able to foresee the potential for natural disasters or to try to leverage the lay of the land.  Sound familiar?  We have done our Requirements Gathering. We have the building in place, we have followed the zoning rules, we have implemented services.  But we need someone to manage the building, now we move on to the human side of the story.  We want to establish a means to normalcy in the building, someone that can be the monitoring agent as to the “what’s going on?” of it.  This person will be tasked with making sure all basic services are functional, that measures are taken if there is an issue and so on.  Enter the Farm Administrator. In a way, we establish an extension of the rules to make sure the building and the apartments/offices build follow a standard set of rules too. Now, in turn you will have people leasing or buying the apartments/offices, they will be the keepers of that space.  So, now we are building sites, we have moved from having the building (farm) ready, to leasing/selling offices/apartments (site collections).  There will be someone assuming responsibility for those offices, that person will authorize or be informed about activities and also who not only gets a code into the building, but perhaps a key to the office.  Enter Site Collection Administrator.  And then perhaps we move on to the person that would be responsible for specifics within the office, for example a Human Resources Manager or Coordinator.  They will have specific control and knowledge about people.  A facilities coordinator, and so on.  I would translate that into Site Administrators. With that said then, we identify the following: Role Name Responsibility (but not limited to) Farm Administrator Infrastructure Site Collection Admin Policies for Content, Hierarchy, Recycle Bin, Security and Access Site Owner (Site Admin) Security and Access, Training, Guidance, Manage Templates All in all there are different levels of responsibility to be handled, but it is very important to understand what they are and what they mean. Here is a link to very well laid out explanation on this … http://www.endusersharepoint.com/2009/08/11/site-managers-and-end-user-expectations-roles-and-responsibilities/

  Read the article

< Previous Page | 733 734 735 736 737 738 739 740 741 742 743 744  | Next Page >