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• S11 launched

  - by unixman

  Now that Oracle Solaris 11 is out, its time to do 2 things -- 1) Its time to see what's in it, what's new and why its important, and then assess why it might make sense to begin evaluating it for your needs and 2) Its time to acknowledge, give thanks to and congratulate all the R&D personnel, architects, engineers, designers and testers who've put in so much effort and energy into helping make Solaris 11 (and SunOS 5.11) what it has become -- starting way back circa 2004 and, more importantly, culminating in the recent years and months -- staying focused on the execution, unwavering in the face of various challenges. For #1 above, here are a few good things to get going with - Watch the product launch replay - Visit the Solaris 11 Spotlight section on oracle.com - Get comfortable through introductory videos and detailed "how-to" guides (ex: how to create and publish IPS packages), white papers on the new default root file system, ZFS, and reap the benefits brought on by the fundamental shift in easing the administration experience - Look at the next level of software lifecycle management that is enabled by technologies such as Automated Installer and Image Packaging System -- that dramatically address patch management-related challenges - Understand how we continue to innovate in areas of service intelligence, reliability and availability - Start to evaluate enhancements in virtualization capabilities -- whether influenced by the need to consolidate or motivated by the need to have increased service mobility across physical systems, leveraging hardware-level abstractions - Gain more control over your network-centric services through enhancements in network resource management, observability and I/O performance - Look beyond your existing infrastructure with confidence that you can re-host and transition to newer systems with the use of Solaris 10 zones running on top of Solaris 11 - Relish in the fact that you can do all this, get your data to be secure and encrypted and more, on both, SPARC and x86-based systems. - Stay informed by keeping an eye on relevant blogs, which we've begun turning up recently. - Go through a hands-on lab - Sign up to take a class or just opt to watch various videos to begin to raise your comfort level with these technologies For #2 above -- There are many ways to do that. One way is to just say "thanks" with an email, a post, or a simple card,  similar to this one seen at a Barnes and Noble store recently.  The front of the card is followed by what's inside... and as the saying goes, now more then ever "it's what's inside that counts" And here's the inside of the card: So, what are you waiting for ? Go download and try it out, and please let us know what you think of it!

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• Specifying and applying broad changes to a program

  - by Victor Nicollet

  How do you handle incomplete feature requests, when the ones asking for the feature cannot possibly write a complete request? Consider an imaginary situation. You are a tech lead working on a piece of software that revolves around managing profiles (maybe they're contacts in a CRM-type application, or employees in an HR application), with many operations being directly or indirectly performed on those profiles — edit fields, add comments, attach documents, send e-mail... The higher-ups decide that a lock functionality should be added whereby a profile can be locked to prevent anyone else from doing any operations on it until it's unlocked — this feature would be used by security agents to prevent anyone from touching a profile pending a security audit. Obviously, such a feature interacts with many other existing features related to profiles. For example: Can one add a comment to a locked profile? Can one see e-mails that were sent by the system to the owner of a locked profile? Can one see who recently edited a locked profile? If an e-mail was in the process of being sent when the lock happened, is the e-mail sending canceled, delayed or performed as if nothing happened? If I just changed a profile and click the "cancel" link on the confirmation, does the lock prevent the cancel or does it still go through? In all of these cases, how do I tell the user that a lock is in place? Depending on the software, there could be hundreds of such interactions, and each interaction requires a decision — is the lock going to apply and if it does, how will it be displayed to the user? And the higher-ups asking for the feature probably only see a small fraction of these, so you will probably have a lot of questions coming up while you are working on the feature. How would you and your team handle this? Would you expect the higher-ups to come up with a complete description of all cases where the lock should apply (and how), and treat all other cases as if the lock did not exist? Would you try to determine all potential interactions based on existing specifications and code, list them and ask the higher-ups to make a decision on all those where the decision is not obvious? Would you just start working and ask questions as they come up? Would you try to change their minds and settle on a more easily described feature with similar effects? The information about existing features is, as I understand it, in the code — how do you bridge the gap between the decision-makers and that information they cannot access?

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• Oracle Could Lead In Cloud Business Apps Within Year

  - by Richard Lefebvre

  Below is the reprint from an article, writen by By Pete Barlas, Investor's Business Daily, published on Investorscom: Oracle (ORCL) is all but destined to become the largest seller of cloud business-software applications, analysts say, and perhaps within a year. What that means in the long run is much debated, though, as analysts aren't sure whether pricing competition might cut into profit or what other issues might develop in the fast-emerging cloud software field. But the database leader, which is either No. 1 or 2 to SAP (SAP) in business apps overall, simply has the size and scope to overtake current cloud business-app leader, Salesforce.com (CRM), analysts say. Oracle rolled out its first full suite of cloud applications on June 6. Cloud computing lets companies store data and apps on the Internet "cloud" and access it quickly and easily. The applications run the gamut of customer relationship management software to social networking sites for employees, partners and customers. For longtime software giants like Oracle, the cloud is a big switch. They get the great bulk of revenue from companies and other enterprises buying or licensing software that the customers keep on their own computer systems. Vendors also get annual maintenance fees. Analysts estimate Oracle is taking in a mere $1 billion or so a year from cloud-based software sales and services now. But while that's just a sliver of the company's $37 billion in sales last year, it's already about a third of the total sales for Salesforce, which is expected to end this year with some $3 billion in revenue. Operates In 145 Countries Oracle operates in more than 145 countries vs. about 70 for Salesforce. And Oracle has far more apps than Salesforce. Revenue doesn't equate to profit, but it's inevitable that huge Oracle will become the largest seller of cloud applications, says Trip Chowdhry, an analyst for Global Equities Research. "What Oracle has is global presence," he said. "They have two things driving the revenue: breadth of the offering and breadth of the distribution. You put those applications in those sales reps' hands and you get deployments not in just one country but several countries." At the June 6 event, Oracle CEO Larry Ellison emphasized that his company could and would beat Salesforce.com in head-to-head battles for customers. Oracle makes software to help companies manage such tasks as customer relationships, recruiting, supply chains, projects, finances and more. That range gives it an edge over all rivals, says Michael Fauscette, an analyst for research firm IDC.

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• Homepage issue on Google [closed]

  - by nico

  We have recently updated our website www.blinds4uk.co.uk with a new homepage containing additional features and more on page content but since then we have lost primary keyword positions and the home page has disappeared completely. The only time it appears is for an exact search ‘blinds4uk’. Today I took snippets of 'unique content' from the homepage and put this into the 'google search' but our homepage was nowhere to be found. When I did the same in ‘Yahoo’ the homepage came up. Are we missing something? We ranked in the top 4 for primary kw terms 'blinds uk' & 'uk blinds' but now we don’t show anywhere for these terms. Our homepage has never ranked well for the primary kw 'blinds' yet our internal pages rank very well with many pages on page 1 of google uk. We employed an SEO firm for 9 months to help us establish issues with the homepage but they never could, so we got rid. We have been trying to get to the root cause of why the homepage ranks so poorly for a number of years and only yesterday we established that we had the meta tag directly below the tag and our title & meta description were further down the page; we have today corrected. Not sure what effect this would have on the way Google reads the homepage but we are trying everything to try and get the homepage ranking fro those primary kw's. Our current developers & ex SEO guys are all part of the same company and cannot pin-point anything other than saying carryon with their SEO team because it will take time but just comes across as a milking exercise. Another thing which I have found very strange is the data from our 'traffic audience'. We are a UK based website yet our traffic stats were showing as;- UK 36.6%, Denmark 35.8% and India 27.6%. – don’t make sense to me! Is there anybody out there that could simply point us in the right direction to the problem(s), so we can fix once and for all? Could there be anything within the code that is causing the home page not to display within google for our primary kw's terms such as blinds, window blinds etc. I would appreciate any advice at all that may help us in our quest to sort this homepage issue once and for all

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• Storing hierarchical template into a database

  - by pduersteler

  If this title is ambiguous, feel free to change it, I don't know how to put this in a one-liner. Example: Let's assume you have a html template which contains some custom tags, like <text_field />. We now create a page based on a template containing more of those custom tags. When a user wants to edit the page, he sees a text field. he can input things and save it. This looks fairly easy to set up. You either have something like a template_positions table which stores the content of those fields. Case: I now have a bit of a blockade keeping things as simple as possible. Assume you have the same tag given in your example, and additionally, <layout> and <repeat> tags. Here's an example how they should be used: <repeat> <layout name="image-left"> <image /> <text_field /> </layout> <layout name="image-right"> <text_field /> <image /> </layout> </repeat> We now have a block which can be repeated, obviously. This means: when creting/editing a page containing such a template block, I can choose between a layout image-left and image-right which then gets inserted as content element (where content for <image /> and <text_field /> gets stored). And because this is inside a <repeat>, content elements from the given layouts can be inserted multiple times. How do you store this? Simply said, this could be stored with the same setup I've wrote in the example above, I just need to add a parent_id or something similiar to maintain a hierarchy. but I think I am missing something. At least the relation between an inserted content element and the origin/insertion point is missing. And what happens when I update the template file? Do I have to give every custom tag that acts as editable part of a template an identifier that matches an identifier in the template to substitue them correctly? Or can you think of a clean solution that might be better?

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• EBusiness Maintenace Wizard

  - by cwarticki

  Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE /* 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-top:0in; mso-para-margin-right:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:10.0pt; mso-para-margin-left:0in; line-height:115%; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:11.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-ascii-font-family:Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-fareast; mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;} Seriously folks, you'd be amazed by the power and functionality of this tool.  If you're an EBus customer, you must use the Maintenance Wizard.  I know customers that have logged 2000+ SRs doing EBus upgrades the hard way and others that have use the Maintenance Wizard and have performed production upgrades on 7 global instances with only a handful of SRs.  You decide which is better. Oh, btw......it's part of your Premier Support investment. No additional cost necessary. -Chris Warticki The Maintenance Wizard is an E-Business Suite upgrade tool that can guide you through the code line upgrade process from 11.5.10.2 to 12.1.3 with an 11gR2 database. Additionally, it includes maintenance features for most releases of E-Business Suite applications. The Tool: * Presents step-by-step upgrade and maintenance processes * Enables validation of each step, tracks the completion of the steps, and maintains a log and status * Is a multi-user tool that enables the System Administrator to give different users assignments based on any combination of category, product family or task * Automatically installs many required patches * Provides project management utilities to record the time taken for each task, completion status and project reporting For More Information: * Review Note 215527.1 for additional information on the Maintenance Wizard * See Note 430732.1 to download the new Patch Sincerely, Oracle Proactive Support Center

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• RadioButtons and Lambda Expressions

  - by MightyZot

  Radio buttons operate in groups. They are used to present mutually exclusive lists of options. Since I started programming in Windows 20 years ago, I have always been frustrated about how they are implemented. To make them operate as a group, you put your radio buttons in a group box. Conversely, to group radio buttons in HTML, you simply give them all the same name. Radio buttons with the same name or ID in HTML operate as one mutually exclusive group of options. In C#, all your radio buttons must have unique names and you use group boxes to group them. I’m in the process of converting some old code to C# and I’m tasked with creating a user control with groups of radio buttons on it. I started out writing the traditional switch…case statements to check the appropriate radio button based upon value, loops to uncheck them all, etc. Then it occurred to me that I could stick the radio buttons in a Dictionary or List and use Lambda expressions to make my code a lot more maintainable. So, here is what I ended up with: Here is a dictionary that contains my list of radio buttons and their values. I used their values as the keys, so that I can select them by value. Now, instead of using loops and switch…case statements to control the radio buttons, I use the lambda syntax and extension methods. Selecting a Radio Button by Value This code is inside of a property accessor, so “value” represents the value passed into the property accessor. The “First” extension method uses the delegate represented by the lambda expression to select the radio button (actually KeyValuePair) that represents the passed in value. Finally, the resulting checkbox is checked. Since the radio buttons are in the same group, they function as a group, the appropriate radio button is selected while the others are unselected. Reading the Value This is the get accessor for the property that returns the value of the checked radio button. Now, if you’re using binding, this code is likely not necessary; however, I didn’t want to use binding in this case, so I think this is a good alternative to the traditional loops and switch…case statements.

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• Android - Force Close - Null Pointer on Canvas?

  - by user22241

  Please bear with me. I have a very odd problem. Basically, my app so far, has 3 activities (a main splash screen, an 'options/menu' screen and the main app). If I follow the very specific steps oulined below, I get a 'null pointer exception' in the 2nd activity) and the app force closes...... Here are the steps: Start the app (a game based on Surfaceview), tap through to the third activity so the game is running, then hit the home key so the game is paused and put to the background, the activity/app is ended through DDMS in the SDK then restarted on the device (all OK so far), now if I hit the back key on the device twice in quick succession, it happens. All other sequence of events is fine, even to the point of pressing the back key, waiting for the previous activity to show, then hitting back again - all OK. Only when the back key is pressed twice in quick succession following all the above steps does the problem occur. I'm assuming that the canvas isn't ready as it's showing as 'null' when this happens, but I'm not sure why this is happening as surely it's happening when I'm trying to go back to activity 1, but the logcat shows the error in activity 2. if I stop the activity running my 'doDraw' method (which referenced the canvas), then all is OK - so I can safely assume it is the canvas causing the problem. Also, if I skip my first activity (which is a very basic full-screen button which just displays a splashscreen and waits for the user to tap the screen), and make my 2nd activity the launch activity, again, it is OK. this is the part of the code that I think is probably relevant: @Override public void surfaceChanged(SurfaceHolder arg0, int arg1, int arg2, int arg3) { vheight = this.getHeight(); vwidth = this.getWidth(); } @Override public void surfaceCreated(SurfaceHolder holder) { vheight = this.getHeight(); vwidth = this.getWidth(); this.viewWidth = vwidth; this.viewHeight = vheight; if (runthread==false){ if (preThread.getState()==Thread.State.TERMINATED){ preThread = new OptionsThread(thisholder, thiscontext, thishandler); } preThread.setRunning(true); preThread.start();} } @Override public void surfaceDestroyed(SurfaceHolder holder) { preThread.setRunning(false); //Stop the loop boolean retry = true; //Stop the thread while (retry) { try { preThread.join(); retry = false; } catch (InterruptedException e) { } } Thank you all for any help you can offer

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• My 2011 Professional Development Goals

  - by kerry

  I thought it might be a good idea to post some professional goals for 2011.  Hopefully, I can look at this list at the end of the year and have accomplished most of them. Release an Android app to the marketplace – I figured I would put this first because I have one that I have been working on for a while and it is about ready.  Along with this, I would like to start another one and continue to develop my Android skills. Contribute free software to the community – Again, I have an SMF plugin that will fill this requirement nicely.  Just need to give it some polish and release it.  That’s not all, I would like to add a few more libraries on github, or possibly contribute to an open source project. Regularly attend a user group meetings outside of Java – A great way to meet people and learn new things. Obtain the Oracle Certified Web Developer Certification – I got the SCJP a few years ago and would like to obtain another one.  One step closer to Certified Enterprise Architect. Learn scala – As a language geek, I like to stick to the Pragmatic Programmer’s ‘learn a new language every year’ rule (last year was Ruby).  Scala presents some new concepts all wrapped in a JVM-based OOP language.  Time to dig in. Write an app using JSF – New JEE 6 features are pretty slick.  I want to really leverage them in an app. Present at a user group meeting – Last but not least, I would like to improve my public speaking and skills in presenting.  Also, is a great reason to dig in to some latest and greatest tech. Use git more, and more effectively – Trying to move all my personal projects from Subversion to Git. That’s it.  A little daunting, but I am confident I can at least touch on most of these and it’s a great roadmap to my professional development.

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• Partners - Steer Clear of the Unknown with Oracle Enterprise Manager12c and Plug-in Extensibility

  - by Get_Specialized!

  Imagine if you just purchased a new car and as you entered the vehicle to drive it home and you found there was no steering wheel. And upon asking the dealer you were told that it was an option and you had a choice now or later of a variety of aftermarket steering wheels that fit a wide variety of automobiles. If you expected the car to already have a steering wheel designed to manage your transportation solution, you might wonder why someone would offer an application solution where its management is not offered as an option or come as part of the solution... Using management designed to support the underlying technology and that can provide management and support  for your own Oracle technology based solution can benefit your business  a variety of ways: increased customer satisfaction, reduction of support calls, margin and revenue growth. Sometimes when something is not included or recommended , customers take their own path which may not be optimal when using your solution and has later impact on the customers satisfaction or worse a negative impact on their business. As an Oracle Partner, you can reduce your research, certification, and time to market by selecting and offering management designed, developed, and supported for Oracle product technology by Oracle with Oracle Enterprise Manager 12c. For partners with solution specific management needs or seeking to differentiate themselves in the market, Enterprise Manager 12c is extensible and provides partners the opportunity to create their own plug-ins as well as a validation program for them.  Today a number of examples by partners are available and 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-top:0in; mso-para-margin-right:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:10.0pt; mso-para-margin-left:0in; line-height:115%; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-ascii- mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-fareast; mso-hansi- mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;} more on the way from such partners as NetApp for NetApp storage and Blue Medora for VMware vSphere. To review and consider further for applicability to your solution, visit  the Oracle PartnerNetwork KnowledgeZone for Enterprise Manager under the Develop Tab http://www.oracle.com/partners/goto/enterprisemanager

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• Accessing Controls Within A Gridview

  - by Bunch

  Sometimes you need to access a control within a GridView, but it isn’t quite as straight forward as just using FindControl to grab the control like you can in a FormView. Since the GridView builds multiple rows the key is to specify the row. In this example there is a GridView with a control for a player’s errors. If the errors is greater than 9 the GridView should display the control (lblErrors) in red so it stands out. Here is the GridView: <asp:GridView ID="gvFielding" runat="server" DataSourceID="sqlFielding" DataKeyNames="PlayerID" AutoGenerateColumns="false" >     <Columns>         <asp:BoundField DataField="PlayerName" HeaderText="Player Name" />         <asp:BoundField DataField="PlayerNumber" HeaderText="Player Number" />         <asp:TemplateField HeaderText="Errors">             <ItemTemplate>                 <asp:Label ID="lblErrors" runat="server" Text='<%# EVAL("Errors") %>'  />             </ItemTemplate>         </asp:TemplateField>     </Columns> </asp:GridView> In the code behind you can add the code to change the label’s ForeColor property to red based on the amount of errors. In this case 10 or more errors triggers the color change. Protected Sub gvFielding_DataBound(ByVal sender As Object, ByVal e As System.EventArgs) Handles gvFielding.DataBound     Dim errorLabel As Label     Dim errors As Integer     Dim i As Integer = 0     For Each row As GridViewRow In gvFielding.Rows         errorLabel = gvFielding.Rows(i).FindControl("lblErrors")         If Not errorLabel.Text = Nothing Then             Integer.TryParse(errorLabel.Text, errors)             If errors > 9 Then                 errorLabel.ForeColor = Drawing.Color.Red             End If         End If         i += 1     Next End Sub The main points in the DataBound sub is use a For Each statement to loop through the rows and to increment the variable i so you loop through every row. That way you check each one and if the value is greater than 9 the label changes to red. The If Not errorLabel.Text = Nothing line is there as a check in case no data comes back at all for Errors. Technorati Tags: GridView,ASP.Net,VB.Net

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• Rending 2D Tile World (With Player In The Middle)

  - by Mick

  What I have at the moment is a series of data structures I'm using, and I would like to render the world onto the screen (just the visible parts). I've actually already done this several times (lots of rewrites), but it's a bit buggy (rounding seems to make the screen jump ever so slightly every x tiles the player walks past). Basically I've been confusing myself heavily on what I feel should be a pretty simple problem... so here I am asking for some help! OK! So I have a 50x50 array holding the tiles of the world. I have the player position as 2 floats, x ([0, 49]) and y ([0, 49]) in that array. I have the application size exactly in pixels (x and y). I have an arbitrary TILE_SIZE static int (based on screen pixels). What I think is heavily confusing me is using a 2d orthogonal projection in opengl which maps (0,0) to the top left of the screen and (SCREEN_SIZE_X, SCREEN_SIZE_Y) to the bottom right of the screen. gl.glMatrixMode(GL.GL_PROJECTION); gl.glLoadIdentity(); glu.gluOrtho2D(0, getActualWidth(), getActualHeight(), 0); gl.glMatrixMode(GL.GL_MODELVIEW); gl.glLoadIdentity(); The map tiles are set so that the (0,0) in the array is the bottom left. And the player has to be in the middle on the screen (SCREEN_SIZE_X/2, SCREEN_SIZE_Y/2). What I've been doing so far is trying to render 1-2 tiles more all around what would be displayed on the screen so that I don't have to worry about figuring out rendering half a tile from the top left, depending where the player is. It seems like such an easy problem but after spending about 40+hours on it rewriting it many times I think I'm at a point where I just can't think clearly anymore... Any help would be appreciated. It would be great if someone can provide some very basic pseudo code on keeping the player in the middle when your projection is mapped to screen coordinates and only rendering basically the tiles that you would be any be see. Thanks!

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• WCF Routing Service Filter Generator

  - by Michael Stephenson

  Recently I've been working with the WCF routing service and in our case we were simply routing based on the SOAP Action. This is a pretty good approach for a standard redirection of the message when all messages matching a SOAP Action will go to the same endpoint. Using the SOAP Action also lets you be specific about which methods you expose via the router. One of the things which was a pain was the number of routing rules I needed to create because we were routing for a lot of different methods. I could have explored the option of using a regular expression to match the message to its routing but I wanted to be very specific about what's routed and not risk exposing methods I shouldn't via the router. I decided to put together a little spreadsheet so that I can generate part of the configuration I would need to put in the configuration file rather than have to type this by hand. To show how this works download the spreadsheet from the following url: https://s3.amazonaws.com/CSCBlogSamples/WCF+Routing+Generator.xlsx In the spreadsheet you will see that the squares in green are the ones which you need to amend. In the below picture you can see that you specify a prefix and suffix for the filter name. The core namespace from the web service your generating routing rules for and the WCF endpoint name which you want to route to. In column A you will see the green cells where you add the list of method names which you want to include routing rules for. The spreadsheet will workout what the full SOAP Action would be then the name you will use for that filter in your WCF Routing filters. In column D the spreadsheet will have generated the XML snippet which you can add to the routing filters section in your configuration file. In column E the spreadsheet will have created the XML snippet which you can add to the routing table to send messages matching each filter to the appropriate WCF client endpoint to forward the message to the required destination. Hopefully you can see that with this spreadsheet it would be very easy to produce accurate XML for the WCF Routing configuration if you had a large number of routing rules. If you had additional methods in other services you can simply copy the worksheet and add multiple copies to the Excel workbook. One worksheet per service would work well.

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• What books would I recommend?

  - by user12277104

  One of my mentees (I have three right now) said he had some time on his hands this Summer and was looking for good UX books to read ... I sigh heavily, because there is no shortage of good UX books to read. My bookshelves have titles by well-read authors like Nielsen, Norman, Tufte, Dumas, Krug, Gladwell, Pink, Csikszentmihalyi, and Roam. I have titles buy lesser-known authors, many whom I call friends, and many others whom I'll likely never meet. I have books on Excel pivot tables, typography, mental models, culture, accessibility, surveys, checklists, prototyping, Agile, Java, sketching, project management, HTML, negotiation, statistics, user research methods, six sigma, usability guidelines, dashboards, the effects of aging on cognition, UI design, and learning styles, among others ... many others. So I feel the need to qualify any book recommendations with "it depends ...", because it depends on who I'm talking to, and what they are looking for.  It's probably best that I also mention that the views expressed in this blog are mine, and may not necessarily reflect the views of Oracle. There. I'm glad I got that off my chest. For that mentee, who will be graduating with his MS HFID + MBA from Bentley in the Fall, I'll recommend this book: Universal Principles of Design -- this is a great book, which in its first edition held "100  ways to enhance usability, influence perception, increase appeal, make better design decisions, and teach through design." Granted, the second edition expanded that number to 125, but when I first found this book, I felt like I'd discovered the Grail. Its research-based principles are all laid out in 2 pages each, with lots of pictures and good references. A must-have for the new grad. Do I have recommendations for a book that will teach you how to conduct a usability test? Yes, three of them. To communicate what we do to management? Yes. To create personas? Yep -- two or three. Help you with UX in an Agile environment? You bet, I've got two I'd recommend. Create an excellent presentation? Uh hunh. Get buy-in from your team? Of course. There are a plethora of excellent UX books out there. But which ones I recommend ... well ... it depends. 

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• How far should an entity take care of its properties values by itself?

  - by Kharlos Dominguez

  Let's consider the following example of a class, which is an entity that I'm using through Entity Framework. - InvoiceHeader - BilledAmount (property, decimal) - PaidAmount (property, decimal) - Balance (property, decimal) I'm trying to find the best approach to keep Balance updated, based on the values of the two other properties (BilledAmount and PaidAmount). I'm torn between two practices here: Updating the balance amount every time BilledAmount and PaidAmount are updated (through their setters) Having a UpdateBalance() method that the callers would run on the object when appropriate. I am aware that I can just calculate the Balance in its getter. However, it isn't really possible because this is an entity field that needs to be saved back to the database, where it has an actual column, and where the calculated amount should be persisted to. My other worry about the automatically updating approach is that the calculated values might be a little bit different from what was originally saved to the database, due to rounding values (an older version of the software, was using floats, but now decimals). So, loading, let's say 2000 entities from the database could change their status and make the ORM believe that they have changed and be persisted back to the database the next time the SaveChanges() method is called on the context. It would trigger a mass of updates that I am not really interested in, or could cause problems, if the calculation methods changed (the entities fetched would lose their old values to be replaced by freshly recalculated ones, simply by being loaded). Then, let's take the example even further. Each invoice has some related invoice details, which also have BilledAmount, PaidAmount and Balance (I'm simplifying my actual business case for the sake of the example, so let's assume the customer can pay each item of the invoice separately rather than as a whole). If we consider the entity should take care of itself, any change of the child details should cause the Invoice totals to change as well. In a fully automated approach, a simple implementation would be looping through each detail of the invoice to recalculate the header totals, every time one the property changes. It probably would be fine for just a record, but if a lot of entities were fetched at once, it could create a significant overhead, as it would perform this process every time a new invoice detail record is fetched. Possibly worse, if the details are not already loaded, it could cause the ORM to lazy-load them, just to recalculate the balances. So far, I went with the Update() method-way, mainly for the reasons I explained above, but I wonder if it was right. I'm noticing I have to keep calling these methods quite often and at different places in my code and it is potential source of bugs. It also has a detrimental effect on data-binding because when the properties of the detail or header changes, the other properties are left out of date and the method has no way to be called. What is the recommended approach in this case?

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• Sampling SQL server batch activity

  - by extended_events

  Recently I was troubleshooting a performance issue on an internal tracking workload and needed to collect some very low level events over a period of 3-4 hours.  During analysis of the data I found that a common pattern I was using was to find a batch with a duration that was longer than average and follow all the events it produced.  This pattern got me thinking that I was discarding a substantial amount of event data that had been collected, and that it would be great to be able to reduce the collection overhead on the server if I could still get all activity from some batches. In the past I’ve used a sampling technique based on the counter predicate to build a baseline of overall activity (see Mikes post here).  This isn’t exactly what I want though as there would certainly be events from a particular batch that wouldn’t pass the predicate.  What I need is a way to identify streams of work and select say one in ten of them to watch, and sql server provides just such a mechanism: session_id.  Session_id is a server assigned integer that is bound to a connection at login and lasts until logout.  So by combining the session_id predicate source and the divides_by_uint64 predicate comparator we can limit collection, and still get all the events in batches for investigation. CREATE EVENT SESSION session_10_percent ON SERVER ADD EVENT sqlserver.sql_statement_starting(     WHERE (package0.divides_by_uint64(sqlserver.session_id,10))), ADD EVENT sqlos.wait_info (        WHERE (package0.divides_by_uint64(sqlserver.session_id,10))), ADD EVENT sqlos.wait_info_external (        WHERE (package0.divides_by_uint64(sqlserver.session_id,10))), ADD EVENT sqlserver.sql_statement_completed(     WHERE (package0.divides_by_uint64(sqlserver.session_id,10))) ADD TARGET ring_buffer WITH (MAX_DISPATCH_LATENCY=30 SECONDS,TRACK_CAUSALITY=ON) GO   There we go; event collection is reduced while still providing enough information to find the root of the problem.  By the way the performance issue turned out to be an IO issue, and the session definition above was more than enough to show long waits on PAGEIOLATCH*.        

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• Are these non-standard applications of rendering practical in games?

  - by maul

  I've recently got into 3D and I came up with a few different "tricky" rendering techniques. Unfortunately I don't have the time to work on this myself, but I'd like to know if these are known methods and if they can be used in practice. Hybrid rendering Now I know that ray-tracing is still not fast enough for real-time rendering, at least on home computers. I also know that hybrid rendering (a combination of rasterization and ray-tracing) is a well known theory. However I had the following idea: one could separate a scene into "important" and "not important" objects. First you render the "not important" objects using traditional rasterization. In this pass you also render the "important" objects using a special shader that simply marks these parts on the image using a special color, or some stencil/depth buffer trickery. Then in the second pass you read back the results of the first pass and start ray tracing, but only from the pixels that were marked by the "important" object's shader. This would allow you to only ray-trace exactly what you need to. Could this be fast enough for real-time effects? Rendered physics I'm specifically talking about bullet physics - intersection of a very small object (point/bullet) that travels across a straight line with other, relatively slow-moving, fairly constant objects. More specifically: hit detection. My idea is that you could render the scene from the point of view of the gun (or the bullet). Every object in the scene would draw a different color. You only need to render a 1x1 pixel window - the center of the screen (again, from the gun's point of view). Then you simply check that central pixel and the color tells you what you hit. This is pixel-perfect hit detection based on the graphical representation of objects, which is not common in games. Afaik traditional OpenGL "picking" is a similar method. This could be extended in a few ways: For larger (non-bullet) objects you render a larger portion of the screen. If you put a special-colored plane in the middle of the scene (exactly where the bullet will be after the current frame) you get a method that works as the traditional slow-moving iterative physics test as well. You could simulate objects that the bullet can pass through (with decreased velocity) using alpha blending or some similar trick. So are these techniques in use anywhere, and/or are they practical at all?

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• "ODM" - One of the Support team's most valued acronyms

  - by graham.mckendry(at)oracle.com

  If you submit technical service requests (SRs) through the My Oracle Support portal, you may often see the term "ODM" used in updates from our Support team. ODM is an acronym for "Oracle Diagnostic Methodology", which defines a standard problem solving approach that all of Oracle Support uses for every technical SR. ODM provides a number of benefits to the SRs - both for the Support organization and for the customer - including a consistent approach, higher quality, justified solutions, and ultimately faster resolution. Screenshot: Example of an ODM "Issue Clarification" activity in a service request The Oracle Diagnostic Methodology applies to both categories of technical SRs: Consultative (question-answer topics) and Problem-Solution. There are a few KM Notes that describe the steps of ODM, however to keep things simple (and since those KM Notes appear to be a bit outdated), I'll summarize the ODM stages here as follows: Consultative ODM - Three mandatory stages: ODM Question: Clarification of the customer's exact question. ODM Answer: Thorough answer to the customer's question. ODM Knowledge Content: Reference to new or existing knowledge base content, or explanation why the particular SR does not necessarily require knowledge content. Problem-Solution ODM - Eight mandatory stages: ODM Issue Clarification: Clarification of the reported issue, including the symptoms, the steps to reproduce, and an outline of the business impact ODM Issue Verification: Confirmation of the issue being verified based on proof provided by the customer, such as screenshots, log files, or reproducing the issue during an Oracle Web Conference. ODM Cause Determination: Succinct outline of the root cause of the issue. ODM Cause Justification: Explanation as to why the root cause applies to this particular situation. ODM Proposed Solution(s): Succinct outline of the potential solution(s) to resolve the issue. ODM Proposed Solution(s) Justification: Explanation of why the proposed solution(s) will in fact resolve the issue. ODM Solution Action Plan: Detailed numbered instructions on how to execute the proposed solutions. ODM Knowledge Content: Reference to new or existing knowledge base content, or explanation why the particular SR does not necessarily require knowledge content. During these stages, you may see other optional ODM-related activities such as "ODM Data Collection", "ODM Action Plan", "ODM Research", and "ODM Test Case". Again, these structured tags help ensure a uniform methodology across your SRs. With this knowledge you should be able to develop better predictability of what's coming next in your SRs, as well as what you can do to help expedite the resolution process.

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• reference list for non-IT driven algorithmic patterns

  - by Quicker

  I am looking for a reference list for non-IT driven algorithmic patterns (which still can be helped with IT implementations of IT). An Example List would be: name; short desc; reference Travelling Salesman; find the shortest possible route on a multiple target path; http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Travelling_salesman_problem Ressource Disposition (aka Regulation); Distribute a limited/exceeding input on a given number output receivers based on distribution rules; http://database-programmer.blogspot.de/2010/12/critical-analysis-of-algorithm-sproc.html If there is no such list, but you instantly think of something specific, please 'put it on the desk'. Maybe I can compile something out of the input I get here (actually I am very frustrated as I did not find any such list via research by myself). Details on Scoping: I found it very hard to formulate what I want in a way everything is out that I do not need (which may be the issue why I did not find anything at google). There is a database centric definition for what I am looking for in the section 'Processes' of the second example link. That somehow fits, but the database focus sort of drifts away from the pattern thinking, which I have in mind. So here are my own thoughts around what's in and what's out: I am NOT looking for a foundational algo ref list, which is implemented as basis for any programming language. Eg. the php reference describes substr and strlen. That implements algos, but is not what I am looking for. the problem the algo does address would even exist, if there were no computers (or other IT components) the main focus of the algo is NOT to help other algo's chances are high, that there are implementions of the solution or any workaround without any IT support out there in the world however the algo could be benefitialy implemented/fully supported by a software application = means: the problem of the algo has to be addressed anyway, but running an algo implementation with software automates the process (that is why I posted it on stackoverflow and not somewhere else) typically such algo implementations have more than one input field value and more than one output field value - which implies it could not be implemented as simple function (which is fixed to produce not more than one output value) in a normalized data model often times such algo implementation outputs span accross multiple rows (sometimes multiple tables), whereby the number of output rows depends on the input paraters and rows in the table(s) at start time - which implies that any algo implementation/procedure must interact with a database (read and/or write) I am mainly looking for patterns, not for specific implementations. Example: The Travelling Salesman assumes any coordinates, however it does not say: You need a table targets with fields x and y. - however sometimes descriptions are focussed on examples with specific implementations very much - no worries, as long as the pattern gets clear

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• Summary of our Recent Pull Request Enhancements on CodePlex

  Over the past several weeks, we’ve been incrementally rolling out a bunch of enhancements around our pull request workflow for Git and Mercurial projects. Our goal is to make contributing to open source projects a simple and rewarding experience, and we’ll continue to invest in this area. Here’s a summary of the changes so far, in case you’ve missed them. As always, if you have any feedback, please let us know, whether on our ideas page or via Twitter. Support for branches You can now pick the source and destination branches for your pull request, whether you’re sending one from your fork, or using it within a project to collaborate with your other trusted contributors. A redesigned creation experience Our old pull request creation form was rather lacking. It asked for a title and comment in a small modal dialog, but that was about it. We knew we could do better, so we rethought the experience. Now, when you create a pull request, you’re taken to a new page that let’s you select the source and destination, and gives you information on the diffs and commits that you’re sending, so you can confirm that you’re sending the right set of changes. Inline code snippets in discussion If users comment on code in your pull request, we now display a preview of the snippet of relevant code inline with their comment on the discussion. Subsequent replies on that line are combined in a single thread to preserve your context. No more clicking and hunting to find where the comments are. And you can add another inline comment right from the discussion area. Comment notifications You can now elect receive an e-mail notification if a user comments on your pull request. If it’s on a line of code, we’ll display the relevant code snippet in the e-mail. Redesigned diff viewer Our old diff viewer hadn’t been touched in a while, and was in need of an update. We started with a visual facelift to use standard red/green colors for additions/deletions and remove the noisy “dots” that represented spaces and that littered the diff viewer. Based on feedback that the viewable region for diffs was too small, especially for smaller screen resolutions, we revamped the way the viewport for the code is sized, and now expand it to fill the majority of the browser height when scrolling down. The set of improvements we implemented here also apply anywhere diffs are viewed, not just for pull requests.

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• Keep coding the wrong way to remain consistent? [closed]

  - by bwalk2895

  Possible Duplicate: Code maintenance: keeping a bad pattern when extending new code for being consistent, or not? To keep things simple let's say I am responsible for maintaining two applications, AwesomeApp and BadApp (I am responsible for more and no that is not their actual names). AwesomeApp is a greenfield project I have been working on with other members on my team. It was coded using all the fancy buzzwords, Multilayer, SOA, SOLID, TDD, and so on. It represents the direction we want to go as a team. BadApp is a application that has been around for a long time. The architecture suffers from many sins, namely everything is tightly coupled together and it is not uncommon to get a circular dependency error from the compiler, it is almost impossible to unit test, large classes, duplicate code, and so on. We have a plan to rewrite the application following the standards established by AwesomeApp, but that won't happen for a while. I have to go into BadApp and fix a bug, but after spending months coding what I consider correctly, I really don't want do continue perpetuate bad coding practices. However, the way AwesomeApp is coded is vastly different from the way BadApp is coded. I fear implementing the "correct" way would cause confusion for other developers who have to maintain the application. Question: Is it better to keep coding the wrong way to remain consistent with the rest of the code in the application (knowing it will be replaced) or is it better to code the right way with an understanding it could cause confusion because it is so much different? To give you an example. There is a large class (1000+ lines) with several functions. One of the functions is to calculate a date based on an enumerated value. Currently the function handles all the various calculations. The function relies on no other functionality within the class. It is self contained. I want to break the function into smaller functions (at the very least) and put them into their own classes and hide those classes behind an interface (at the most) and use the factory pattern to instantiate the date classes. If I just broke it out into smaller functions within the class it would follow the existing coding standard. The extra steps are to start following some of the SOLID principles.

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• After startup, display reverts to one desktop duplicated on both screens

  - by Skilldrick

  I have a Samsung R530 laptop. I'm actually running Linux Mint, which is based on Ubuntu (which is why I thought it would be OK to post this here). I'm now getting exactly the same problem on Ubuntu 10.10. I've got it setup with a secondary LCD monitor, and I've changed the display settings so the laptop screen and monitor are at optimal resolution, with the desktop shared between them. After startup though (typically around 10-30 seconds) the display reverts to 1024 x 768 on both screens, and the display is duplicated (i.e. both screens show the same thing). I think this is something to do with my video card, as I had the same problem when I was running Arch Linux. Any ideas? Edit: 00:00.0 Host bridge: Intel Corporation Mobile 4 Series Chipset Memory Controller Hub (rev 09) 00:02.0 VGA compatible controller: Intel Corporation Mobile 4 Series Chipset Integrated Graphics Controller (rev 09) 00:02.1 Display controller: Intel Corporation Mobile 4 Series Chipset Integrated Graphics Controller (rev 09) 00:1a.0 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801I (ICH9 Family) USB UHCI Controller #4 (rev 03) 00:1a.1 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801I (ICH9 Family) USB UHCI Controller #5 (rev 03) 00:1a.2 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801I (ICH9 Family) USB UHCI Controller #6 (rev 03) 00:1a.7 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801I (ICH9 Family) USB2 EHCI Controller #2 (rev 03) 00:1b.0 Audio device: Intel Corporation 82801I (ICH9 Family) HD Audio Controller (rev 03) 00:1c.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801I (ICH9 Family) PCI Express Port 1 (rev 03) 00:1c.3 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801I (ICH9 Family) PCI Express Port 4 (rev 03) 00:1d.0 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801I (ICH9 Family) USB UHCI Controller #1 (rev 03) 00:1d.1 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801I (ICH9 Family) USB UHCI Controller #2 (rev 03) 00:1d.2 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801I (ICH9 Family) USB UHCI Controller #3 (rev 03) 00:1d.7 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801I (ICH9 Family) USB2 EHCI Controller #1 (rev 03) 00:1e.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801 Mobile PCI Bridge (rev 93) 00:1f.0 ISA bridge: Intel Corporation ICH9M LPC Interface Controller (rev 03) 00:1f.2 SATA controller: Intel Corporation ICH9M/M-E SATA AHCI Controller (rev 03) 00:1f.3 SMBus: Intel Corporation 82801I (ICH9 Family) SMBus Controller (rev 03) 02:00.0 Network controller: Atheros Communications Inc. AR9285 Wireless Network Adapter (PCI-Express) (rev 01) 04:00.0 Ethernet controller: Marvell Technology Group Ltd. 88E8040 PCI-E Fast Ethernet Controller It seems it's Intel, not Nvidia. I have a current work around, which is to have a launcher to a script containing xrandr --output LVDS1 --mode 1366x768 --output HDMI1 --mode 1280x1024 --left-of LVDS1 on my desktop, and to run it after the displays revert, but it's not ideal.

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• Android Array Lag?

  - by Mike

  I am making a platform game for Android. It is sort of a tile based game. I added bullets and enemies with AI and a bunch of tile types. I created a simple map with no Enemies. Everything was running well and smooth until I shot a bunch of bullets randomly everywhere. A couple of hundreds of bullets later, the FPS lowered. I made a test to find out if the bullets were the problem so I made another simple map with just a tile to stand on and left it for a while. Minutes later, I played around with it a bit to check if the FPS changed and it didnt. I reloaded the same map and shot a lot of bullets. Minutes later, the FPS was visibly lower even after the number of bullets were zero. Points to note: Programmed FPS is 30 Tested on a Samsung Galaxy Y and Samsung Galaxy W Any tile, enemy, bullet that is off screen is not drawn to prevent lag Bullets collide with Tiles (if they dont collide with in 450 frames, they are removed from the array) I used List bullets = new ListArray(); I used bullets.add(new Bullet(x, y, params...)); I used for(...){ if(...){ bullets.remove(i); } } Code for bullet: private void drawBullets(Canvas canvas) { for (int i = 0; i < bullets.size(); i++) { Bullet b = bullets.get(i); b.update(canvas); //updates physics if (b.t > blm) { //if the bullet is past its expiry bullets.remove(i); i--; } else { if (svx((b.x)) > 0 && svx(b.x) < width && svy((b.y)) > 0 && svy(b.y) < height) { // if bullet is not off screen b.draw(canvas); // draw the bullet } } } } I tried searching for solutions and references but I have no luck. I'm guessing that the lag has something to do with the Array and the Bullets or Classes that I've loaded? I'm not sure! Someone please help! Thanks in advance! :)

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• Is this an effective monetization method for an Android game? [on hold]

  - by Matthew Page

  The short version: I plan to make an Android puzzle game where the user tries to get 3-6 numbers to their predetermined goal numbers. The free version of the app will have three predetermined levels (easy, medium, hard). The full version ($0.99, probably) will have a level generator where there will be unlimited easy, medium, or hard levels, as well as a custom difficulty option where users can set specific vales to the number of numbers to equate to their goal, the number of buttons to use, etc. Users will also have the option to get a one-time "hint" for a fee of $0.49, or unlimited hints for a one-time fee of $2.99. The long version: Mechanics of Game and Victory The application is a number puzzle. When the user begins a new game, depending on the input by the user, between 3 and 6 numbers show up on the top of the screen, and between 3 and 6 buttons show up on the bottom of the screen. The buttons all have two options: to increase every number the same way, or decrease every number the same way. The buttons either use addition / subtraction, multiplication / division, or exponents / roots, all depending on the number displayed on the button. Addition buttons are green, multiplication buttons are blue, and exponential buttons are red. The user wins when all of the numbers displayed on the screen equate to their goal number, displayed below each number. Monetization If the user is playing the full (priced) version of the app, upon the start of the game, the user will be confronted with a dialogue asking for the number of buttons and the number of numbers to equate in the game. Then, based on the user input, a random puzzle will be generated. If the user is playing the free version of the app, the user will be asked to either play an “easy”, “hard”, or “expert” puzzle. A pre-determined puzzle from each category will be used in the game. If the user has played that puzzle before, a dialogue will show saying this to the user and advertising the full version of the app. The full version of the app will also be advertised upon the successful or in successful completion of a puzzle. Upon exiting this advertisement, another full screen advertisement will appear from a third party. Also, the solution to the puzzle should be stored by the program, and if the user pays a small fee, he/she can see a hint to the solution to the program. In the free version of the app, the user may use their first hint for free. Also, the user can use unlimited hints for a slightly larger fee. Is this an effective monetization method?

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• Security Alert for CVE-2012-4681 Released

  - by Eric P. Maurice

  Hi, this is Eric Maurice again! Oracle has just released Security Alert CVE-2012-4681 to address 3 distinct but related vulnerabilities and one security-in-depth issue affecting Java running in desktop browsers.  These vulnerabilities are: CVE-2012-4681, CVE-2012-1682, CVE-2012-3136, and CVE-2012-0547.  These vulnerabilities are not applicable to standalone Java desktop applications or Java running on servers, i.e. these vulnerabilities do not affect any Oracle server based software. Vulnerabilities CVE-2012-4681, CVE-2012-1682, and CVE-2012-3136 have each received a CVSS Base Score of 10.0.  This score assumes that the affected users have administrative privileges, as is typical in Windows XP.  Vulnerability CVE-20120-0547 has received a CVSS Base Score of 0.0 because this vulnerability is not directly exploitable in typical user deployments, but Oracle has issued a security-in-depth fix for this issue as it can be used in conjunction with other vulnerabilities to significantly increase the overall impact of a successful exploit. If successfully exploited, these vulnerabilities can provide a malicious attacker the ability to plant discretionary binaries onto the compromised system, e.g. the vulnerabilities can be exploited to install malware, including Trojans, onto the targeted system.  Note that this malware may in some instances be detected by current antivirus signatures upon its installation.  Due to the high severity of these vulnerabilities, Oracle recommends that customers apply this Security Alert as soon as possible.  Furthermore, note that the technical details of these vulnerabilities are widely available on the Internet and Oracle has received external reports that these vulnerabilities are being actively exploited in the wild.    Developers should download the latest release at http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/java/javase/downloads/index.html   Java users should download the latest release of JRE at http://java.com, and of course   Windows users can take advantage of the Java Automatic Update to get the latest release. For more information: The Advisory for Security Alert CVE-2012-4681 is located at http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/topics/security/alert-cve-2012-4681-1835715.html  Users can verify that they’re running the most recent version of Java by visiting: http://java.com/en/download/installed.jsp    Instructions on removing older (and less secure) versions of Java can be found at http://java.com/en/download/faq/remove_olderversions.xml   

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