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  • The Most Ridiculous Computer Cameos of All Time

    - by Jason Fitzpatrick
    For the last half century computers have played all sorts of major and minor roles in movies; check out this collection to see some of the more quirky and out-of-place appearances. Wired magazine rounds up some of the more oddball appearances of computers in film. Like, for example, the scene shown above from Soylent Green: Spoiler alert: Soylent Green is people! But that’s not the only thing we’re gonna spoil. Soylent Green is set in 2022, and at one point, you’ll notice that a government facility is still using a remote calculator that plugs into the CDC 6600, a machine that was state-of-the-art in 1971. Come to think of it, we should scratch this from the list. This is pretty close to completely accurate. Hit up the link below to check out the full gallery, including a really interesting bit about how the U.S. Government’s largest computer project–once decommissioned and sold as surplus–ended up on the sets of dozens of movies and television shows. The Most Wonderfully Ridiculous Movie Computers of All Time [Wired] Why Enabling “Do Not Track” Doesn’t Stop You From Being Tracked HTG Explains: What is the Windows Page File and Should You Disable It? How To Get a Better Wireless Signal and Reduce Wireless Network Interference

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  • How to improve my email communication

    - by SpashHit
    Paraphrase of an email I sent to a colleague I noticed a problem with System A. I have determined that it is not caused by X. I suspect that it is being caused by Y. (since you are in charge of Y) Can you please take a look at it? (The part in parentheses was not included in my email because this colleague knows full well he is in charge of Y... it should be understood that's why I was sending him the email) I run into the colleague half a day later, and say, "did you look at the problem with System A yet?" and he answers, "Oh, yeah, I got your email about System A being broken but I assumed it was probably caused by X, so I was waiting for you to check on that." Obviously my message did not get communicated. This is an all-too-common result of emails I send and is very discouraging... yet, I don't know how I could make my emails any clearer. They are always as brief, clear, and to the point as I can make them. Any suggestions? Maybe there is something inherent about the medium of email that is just not effective for these types of communications?

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  • HTG Explains: What Is RSS and How Can I Benefit From Using It?

    - by Jason Fitzpatrick
    If you’re trying to keep up with news and content on multiple web sites, you’re faced with the never ending task of visiting those sites to check for new content. Read on to learn about RSS and how it can deliver the content right to your digital doorstep. In many ways, content on the internet is beautifully linked together and accessible, but despite the interconnectivity of it all we still frequently find ourselves visiting this site, then that site, then another site, all in an effort to check for updates and get the content we want. That’s not particular efficient and there’s a much better way to go about it. Imagine if you will a simple hypothetical situation. You’re a fan of a web comic, a few tech sites, an infrequently updated but excellent blog about an obscure music genre you’re a fan of, and you like to keep an eye on announcements from your favorite video game vendor. If you rely on manually visiting all those sites—and, let’s be honest, our hypothetical example has a scant half-dozen sites while the average person would have many, many, more—then you’re either going to be wasting a lot of time checking the sites every day for new content or you’re going to be missing out on content as you either forget to visit the sites or find the content after it’s not as useful or relevant to you. RSS can break you free from that cycle of either over-checking or under-finding content by delivering the content to you as it is published. Let’s take a look at what RSS is how it can help. HTG Explains: What Is RSS and How Can I Benefit From Using It? HTG Explains: Why You Only Have to Wipe a Disk Once to Erase It HTG Explains: Learn How Websites Are Tracking You Online

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  • Java Champion Dick Wall Explores the Virtues of Scala (otn interview)

    - by Janice J. Heiss
    In a new interview up on otn/java, titled “Java Champion Dick Wall on the Virtues of Scala (Part 2),” Dick Wall explains why, after a long career in programming exploring Lisp, C, C++, Python, and Java, he has finally settled on Scala as his language of choice. From the interview: “I was always on the lookout for a language that would give me both Python-like productivity and simplicity for just writing something and quickly having it work and that also offers strong performance, toolability, and type safety (all of which I like in Java). Scala is simply the first language that offers all those features in a package that suits me. Programming in Scala feels like programming in Python (if you can think it, you can do it), but with the benefit of having a compiler looking over your shoulder and telling you that you have the wrong type here or the wrong method name there.The final ‘aha!’ moment came about a year and a half ago. I had a quick task to complete, and I started writing it in Python (as I have for many years) but then realized that I could probably write it just as fast in Scala. I tried, and indeed I managed to write it just about as fast.”Wall makes the remarkable claim that once Java developers have learned to work in Scala, when they work on large projects, they typically find themselves more productive than they are in Java. “Of course,” he points out, “people are always going to argue about these claims, but I can put my hand over my heart and say that I am much more productive in Scala than I was in Java, and I see no reason why the many people I know using Scala wouldn’t say the same without some reason.”Read the interview here.

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  • Sys Admins are kind of like gods, aren't they? [closed]

    - by user75798
    A systems administrator has root access to the entire system. There is nothing they cannot do. They are omnipotent. Their power is absolute. Nothing dan stand before them. Like Sauron, the Dark Lord, they do not share power. There can be but one root. Else contradiction at the most fundamental level is possible, and that can not be tolerated. The sys admin's power is unconditional and non-negotiable. To be a sys admin is like being a god. (And if they are a god, what is the religion?) There is an old saying that absolute power corrupts absolutely. I wonder whether being a sys admin has ended up warping an individual. Perhaps a sys admin has become crazed or even gone berserk? Surely sys admins must need to be very level headed people. For example, imagine being 'the' sys admin for the NSA. (What an awesome job that would be!) Think about the access to data, the encryption keys, the secrets... Perhaps one day a sys admin might go bonkers, turn up for work and 'uninstall the entire NSA'! :) But you would have the same sorts of responsibilities working at a bank or other organization. I wonder whether much emphasis is put on ensuring that sys admins are level headed in the first place and kept sweet in the second. Do they get paid well? I am sure they do not receive half of what they are worth, considering all the hard earned knowledge they have had to gain and the massive responsibility they have.

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  • Red Samurai Performance Audit Tool – OOW 2013 release (v 1.1)

    - by JuergenKress
    We are running our Red Samurai Performance Audit tool and monitoring ADF performance in various projects already for about one year and the half. It helps us a lot to understand ADF performance bottlenecks and tune slow ADF BC View Objects or optimise large ADF BC fetches from DB. There is special update implemented for OOW'13 - advanced ADF BC statistics are collected directly from your application ADF BC runtime and later displayed as graphical information in the dashboard. I will be attending OOW'13 in San Francisco, feel free to stop me and ask about this tool - I will be happy to give it away and explain how to use it in your project. Original audit screen with ADF BC performance issues, this is part of our Audit console application: Audit console v1.1 is improved with one more tab - Statistics. This tab displays all SQL Selects statements produced by ADF BC over time, logged users, AM access load distribution and number of AM activations along with user sessions. Available graphs: Daily Queries  - total number of SQL selects per day Hourly Queries - Last 48 Hours Logged Users - total number of user sessions per day SQL Selects per Application Module - workload per Application Module Number of Activations and User sessions - last 48 hours - displays stress load Read the complete article here. WebLogic Partner Community For regular information become a member in the WebLogic Partner Community please visit: http://www.oracle.com/partners/goto/wls-emea ( OPN account required). If you need support with your account please contact the Oracle Partner Business Center. Blog Twitter LinkedIn Mix Forum Wiki Technorati Tags: Red Samurai,ADF performance,WebLogic,WebLogic Community,Oracle,OPN,Jürgen Kress

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  • How can I make permanent death in a MUD seem acceptable and fair to players?

    - by Luke Laupheimer
    I have considered writing a MUD for years, and I have a lot of ideas my friends think are really cool (and that's how I'd hope to get anywhere -- word of mouth). Thing is, there's one thing I have always wanted, that my friends and strangers hated: permanent death. Now, the emotional response I get to this is visceral revulsion, every time. I'm pretty sure I am the only person that wants this, or if I'm not, I'm a tiny minority. Now, the reason I want it is because I want the actions of the players to matter. Unlike a lot of other MUDs, which have a set of static city-states and social institutions etc, I want the things my players do, should I get any, to actually change the situation. And that includes killing people. If you kill someone, you didn't send them to time out, you killed them. What happens when you kill people? They go away. They don't come back in half an hour to smack talk you some more. They're gone. Forever. By making death non-permanent, you make death not matter. It would be similar if a climax to a character's arc is getting a speeding ticket. It cheapens it. Non-permanent death cheapens death. How can I: 1) Convince my players (and random people!) that this is actually a good idea?, or 2) Find some other way to make death and violence matter as much as it does in real life (except within the game, of course) sans character deletion? What alternatives are there out there?

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  • Charging by the hour/project

    - by thesam18888
    This is related to a question I asked earlier - How to end a relationship with a client without pissing them off? What are your obligations when charging by the hour vs charging by project? If you agree to take on a project, give a rough estimate that it might take 10 days for you to work on and charge £X per hour - are you obligated to work for free after those 10 days are up and you have still not managed to complete your project due to unanticipated issues? What if you have delivered the project but bugs are found - should you fix these bugs for free if the 10 days are up or should you charge your client? Also, for the above project, what should be the result when you start on the project, but after the 10 days for whatever reason you have to give up and tell your client that you cannot do it anymore? I realise that this does nothing to build your reputation and relationship with the client but are you obligated to pay back the money paid to you or do you just deliver the half/nearly completed source code and help them find someone else to complete it? The reason I am asking the above questions is because I am very new to freelancing and would like to know how to deal with the above situations if they ever crop up. Thanks!

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  • Ubuntu 12.04 Freezes at Bootup

    - by Ryan Yu
    I have an Acer Aspire One Model AO722, that has a dual-boot configuration with Windows 7 Home Premium and Ubuntu 12.04. Processor: AMD C-50, 1.00GHz 2.00GB ram, 64-bit, AMD Radeon HD 6250 Graphics. I installed Ubuntu two days ago, and since then, loading it has been sporadic. Windows 7 still loads just fine, but Ubuntu will sometimes freeze. First time I booted Ubuntu up, it ran no problem. Worked with it for half an hour, then shut down the computer. The second time I booted it up, it froze after ten minutes when I was trying to set up Thunderbird. Third time, same thing. Fourth time, it froze about 5 minutes after bootup when I was trying to connect to my wifi. Fifth time, it ran no problems for about 5~ hours. Then, three consecutive times I've restarted (what is it, the 6th, 7th, and 8th times?) it has gotten to the login screen, I've entered my password, all the text on the page disappears as if its going to load my desktop, and it freezes. A minute ago when I booted Ubuntu up for the 9th time, it loaded the desktop fine. Who knows if it'll crash soon; probably, though. Any ideas?

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  • How to focus on one topic? [closed]

    - by Brian
    I have a huge problem while reading computer books. Every couple pages I'll end up googling something I want to learn more about, but then I'll find something on that page that I'll want to learn more about and google that (sometimes programming related, sometime hardware related). Normally after wasting around 3 hours going into different subjects I'll return to the original text only to repeat the process a few pages later. Any advice for sticking to one subject and learning that in-depth? I have tons of programming books I've read half-way through since I'll become interested in other languages/topics (not that I'm not interested in the books I've started). Also, what would be worth focusing on in depth? I've gone into Python in the most depth but for classes I'm learning Java and assembly (ARM and Motorola 68000). Also, I've taken a class on C++. Lately I've been spending most of my time learning about Linux instead of programming though. I'm not sure what would be worth focusing on the most to get a job. In other words, how can you focus on one topic and not let curiosity about everything else get in the way? Thanks in advance, Brian

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  • How do I separate model positions from view positions in MVC?

    - by tieTYT
    Using MVC in games (as opposed to web apps) always confuses me when it comes to the view. How am I supposed to keep the model agnostic of how the view is presenting things? I always end up giving the Model a position that holds x and y but invariably, these values end up being in units of pixels and that feels wrong. I can see the advantage* of avoiding that but how am I supposed to? This idea was suggested: Don't think of it in units of pixels, think of them in arbitrary distance units that just happen map to pixels at a 1:1 ratio. Oh, the resolution is half of what it was? We are now taking the x/y coordinates at 50% value for screen display, and your spells casting range is still 300 units long, which now is 150 pixels. But those numbers conveniently work out. What do I do if the numbers divide in such a way that I get decimal places? Floating points are unsafe. I think allowing decimal places would eventually cause really weird bugs in my game. *It'd let me write the model once and write different views depending on the device.

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  • How do I change pages registering as 404 to 200

    - by christian
    I have this problem. After relaunching my site: http://www.kgstiles.com, traffic dropped immensely(about 60%). After troubleshooting for a week and a half - losing thousands of dollars off of lost traffic in the process, I found that Google was getting a 404 error at the end of many of my 301 redirects(so it wouldn't index the new pages). Most of of the pages, though, would register in my browser. They registered as a 404 error in Google's index as well as a 404checker. So my first question is: could this be what's causing my loss of traffic? and second: how do I fix it? I'm desperate! Any help is appreciated! # BEGIN s2Member GZIP exclusions <IfModule mod_rewrite.c> RewriteEngine On RewriteBase / RewriteCond %{QUERY_STRING} (^|\?|&)s2member_file_download\=.+ RewriteRule .* - [E=no-gzip:1] </IfModule> # END s2Member GZIP exclusions # BEGIN WordPress <IfModule mod_rewrite.c> RewriteEngine On RewriteBase / RewriteRule ^index\.php$ - [L] RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d RewriteRule . /index.php [L] </IfModule> <IfModule mod_rewrite.c> RewriteEngine On RewriteRule ^moreinfo/(.*)$ http://www.kgstiles.com/moreinfo$1 [R=301] RewriteRule ^healthsolutions/(.*)$ http://www.kgstiles.com/healthsolutions$1 [R=301] RewriteRule ^(.*)\.html$ $1/ [R=301,L] RewriteRule ^(.*)\.htm$ $1/ [R=301,L] </IfModule> # END WordPress

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  • TraceTune: Larger Files and History

    - by Bill Graziano
    I updated TraceTune over the weekend.  I increased the trace file upload size to 20MB.  We’ve processed over half a million rows of trace data so far and I’m confident this won’t kill the server. I added average CPU and average disk reads to the screen that lists the SQL statements in a trace file. I only added these two.  I’m pretty sure average writes isn’t that import.  I’m still thinking about average duration.  I’m trying to balance showing you what you need with a clean, simple interface.  Plus I have a way to see the averages that I describe further down. TraceTune now keeps the last 10 files that you’ve uploaded and will give you some basic details about each file. I think the last change I made is the most interesting. For each SQL statement, I show the history of that statement. You’ll see each trace file where this statement was found.  It will list the averages for CPU, reads, writes and duration.  This will quickly show you if you’re improving the performance of that query.  In my screen shot above you can that even though the execution counts are very different the averages are consistent. If you want to see what queries are consuming the most resources on your server give TraceTune a try.

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  • Exalogic Elastic Cloud Software (EECS) version 2.0.1 available

    - by JuergenKress
    We are pleased to announce that as of today (May 14, 2012) the Exalogic Elastic Cloud Software (EECS) version 2.0.1 has been made Generally Available. This release is the culmination of over two and a half years of engineering effort from an extended team spanning 18 product development organizations on three continents, and is the most powerful, sophisticated and comprehensive Exalogic Elastic Cloud Software release to date. With this new EECS release, Exalogic customers now have an ideal platform for not only high-performance and mission critical applications, but for standardization and consolidation of virtually all Oracle Fusion Middleware, Fusion Applications, Application Unlimited and Oracle GBU Applications. With the release of EECS 2.0.1, Exalogic is now capable of hosting multiple concurrent tenants, business applications and middleware deployments with fine-grained resource management, enterprise-grade security, unmatched manageability and extreme performance in a fully virtualized environment. The Exalogic Elastic Cloud Software 2.0.1 release brings important new technologies to the Exalogic platform: Exalogic is now capable of hosting multiple concurrent tenants, business applications and middleware deployments with fine-grained resource management, enterprise-grade security, unmatched manageabi! lity and extreme performance in a fully virtualized environment. Support for extremely high-performance x86 server virtualization via a highly optimized version of Oracle VM 3.x. A rich, fully integrated Infrastructure-as-a-Service management system called Exalogic Control which provides graphical, command line and Java interfaces that allows Cloud Users, or external systems, to create and manage users, virtual servers, virtual storage and virtual network resources. Webcast Series: Rethink Your Business Application Deployment Strategy Redefining the CRM and E-Commerce Experience with Oracle Exalogic, 7-Jun@10am PT & On-Demand: ‘The Road to a Cloud-Enabled, Infinitely Elastic Application Infrastructure’ (featuring Gartner Analysts). WebLogic Partner Community For regular information become a member in the WebLogic Partner Community please visit: http://www.oracle.com/partners/goto/wls-emea ( OPN account required). If you need support with your account please contact the Oracle Partner Business Center. Blog Twitter LinkedIn Mix Forum Wiki Technorati Tags: ExaLogic Elastic Cloud,ExaLogic,WebLogic,WebLogic Community,Oracle,OPN,Jürgen Kress,ExaLogic 2.0.1

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  • Sangam 13: Hyderabad, India

    - by mvaughan
    by Teena Singh, Oracle Applications User Experience The AIOUG (All India Oracle User Group) will be hosting Sangam 13 November 8th and 9th in Hyderabad, India. The first Sangam conference was in 2009 and the AppsUX team has been involved with the conference and user group membership since 2011. We are excited to be returning to the conference and meeting Oracle end users there. For the first time at Sangam the AppsUX team will host an Onsite Usability Lab at the conference. If you or one of your team members is attending the conference and interested in attending a pre-scheduled one on one usability session, contact [email protected]. In addition to pre-scheduled sessions in the Onsite Usability Lab, our team will also be hosting Walk In studies.  Whether you have 5 minutes, 15 minutes, or half an hour, you can experience a one on one demo learn more about how user testing is conducted with a UX expert. Additionally, you can learn how you and your company can participate in future design and user research activities. The AppsUX team will also be available at the Oracle booth in the Demo area if you want to ask questions. Finally, you can learn how simplicity, consistency, and emerging trends are driving the applications user experience strategy at Oracle when you attend Thomas Wolfmaier's (Director of SCM User Experience, Oracle) presentation on: Applications User Experiences In the Cloud: Trends and Strategy,  November 8th, 2013. For further information on our team’s involvement in the conference, please refer to the events page on Usable Apps here.

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  • How do you track existing requirements over time?

    - by CaptainAwesomePants
    I'm a software engineer working on a complex, ongoing website. It has a lot of moving parts and a small team of UI designers and business folks adding new features and tweaking old ones. Over the last year or so, we've added hundreds of interesting little edge cases. Planning, implementing, and testing them is not a problem. The problem comes later, when we want to refactor or add another new feature. Nobody remembers half of the old features and edge cases from a year ago. When we want to add a new change, we notice that code does all sorts of things in there, and we're not entirely sure which things are intentional requirements and which are meaningless side effects. Did someone last year request that the login token was supposed to only be valid for 30 minutes, or did some programmers just pick a sensible default? Can we change it? Back when the product was first envisioned, we created some documentation describing how the site worked. Since then we created a few additional documents describing new features, but nobody ever goes back and updates those documents when new features are requested, so the only authoritative documentation is the code itself. But the code provides no justification, no reason for its actions: only the how, never the why. What do other long-running teams do to keep track of what the requirements were and why?

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  • Is realtime validation of username good or bad?

    - by iamserious
    I have a simple form for the user to sign up to my site; with email, username and password fields. We are now trying to implement an ajax validation so the user doesn't have to post the form to find out if the username is already taken. I can do this either on keyup event or on text blur event. My question is, which of these is really the best way to do? Keyup From the user POV, it would be good if the validation is done as and when they are typing, (on key up event) - of course, I am waiting for half a second to see if the user stops typing before firing off the request, and user can make any adjustments immediately. But this means I am sending way more requests than if I validated the username on Blur event. Blur The number of requests will be much lower when the validation is done on blur event, But this means the user has to actually go away from the textbox, look at the validation result, and if necessary go back to it to make any changes and repeat the whole process until he gets it right. I had a quick look at google, tumblr, twitter and no one actually does username validations on keyup events, (heck, tubmlr waits for the form to be posted) but I can swear I have seen keyup validations in a lot of places too. So, coming back to the question, will keyup validations be too many for server, is it an unnecessary overhead? or is it worth taking these hits to give user a better experience? ps: all my regex validations etc are already done on javascript and only when it passes all these other criteria does it send a request to server to check if a username already exists. (And the server is doing a select count(1) from user where username = '' - nothing substantial, but still enough to occupy some resource) pps: I'm on asp.net, MS SQL stack., if that matters.

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  • Finding maximum number of congruent numbers

    - by Stefan Czarnecki
    Let's say we have a multiset (set with possible duplicates) of integers. We would like to find the size of the largest subset of the multiset such that all numbers in the subset are congruent to each other modulo some m 1. For example: 1 4 7 7 8 10 for m = 2 the subsets are: (1, 7, 7) and (4, 8, 10), both having size 3. for m = 3 the subsets are: (1, 4, 7, 7, 10) and (8), the larger set of size 5. for m = 4 the subsets are: (1), (4, 8), (7, 7), (10), the largest set of size 2. At this moment it is evident that the best answer is 5 for m = 3. Given m we can find the size of the largest subset in linear time. Because the answer is always equal or larger than half of the size of the set, it is enough to check for values of m upto median of the set. Also I noticed it is necessary to check for only prime values of m. However if values in the set are large the algorithm is still rather slow. Does anyone have any ideas how to improve it?

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  • Valid reason for employer to breach freelance contract

    - by Costas
    Please don't close this as offtopic. According to the FAQ I can post programming related questions. I was working on a project and when it was half way completed (1 weeks work), the employer backs out and refuses to pay me. Shortly before this he was being very rude. He was having problems configuring the server and he told me it was my fault and that I had to fix it. After I spent several hours trying to figure out the problem, it turned out to be his fault. After this when I put the code on the server. He found 1 bug that I had missed. He freaked out, accused me of being a bad programmer and told me that the code was shit and that he couldn't use it. He said that if there is a bug in the code, that means the code is bad and he can't use it. He would have to throw the code away and hire someone else. His kept reiterating his argument: "why should I pay for code that I can't use". And I kept telling him the code was fine and urged him to have another programmer give him a second opinion. But he would have none of that. He said he would compensate me for my troubles by paying me 250$. Then he changes his mind and lowers that to 200$. Then a third time he changes his mind and says he doesn't want to compensate me at all. I'm left frustrated because besides being rude, he did not at any time tell me he was unhappy with the work that I was doing. So my question is; Is the above a valid reason to back out of a verbal contract in your opinion?

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  • SEO and external sites that serve responsive images (like Re-SRC)

    - by Baumr
    Re-SRC is a tool that allows you to automatically serve responsive images for your website from their cloud servers. It delivers a new image file each time the browser window (viewport) is resized. To use it in your HTML when linking to an image, you would do the following: <img src="http://app.resrc.it//www.your-domain.com/img/img001.jpg"/> Some more background for SEO considerations: As an example, looking at their demo page's code, the src of the Arc de Triomphe photo — when the browser window is resized to be at a tablet-width — shows this particular file at it's widest. It is found under the following URL: http://app4-uk.resrc.it/s=w560,pd1/ro=h//www.resrc.it/img/demo/demo-image-1.jpg If the viewport is increased to desktop-width, then a smaller image is served in line with the design; see this URL: http://app4-uk.resrc.it/s=w320,pd1/ro=h//www.resrc.it/img/demo/demo-image-1.jpg If I change the viewport to be about half-way between those two, then the image's URL is: http://app4-uk.resrc.it/s=w240,pd1/ro=h//www.resrc.it/img/demo/demo-image-1.jpg In other words, I found that there is a separate file for every 10-pixel increment of the image width. Very cool for saving bandwidth on mobile devices and service responsive/retina images on others, but... Here are two problems I see for SEO: The img on your site, part of your semantic markup, will not be hosted on your site at all, or even a server you control. Any links to these images will pass on "link juice" to Re-SRC's site instead. You are serving a vast array of different image files to different people — some may link to one, others to another size. Then there's the question of what different search engine crawlers will see. Also: There seems to be no fallback option if their servers are down. Do you see any other concerns? Or, perhaps, do you not see those as concerns?

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  • How to Reap Anticipated ROI in Large-Scale Capital Projects

    - by Sylvie MacKenzie, PMP
    Only a small fraction of companies in asset-intensive industries reliably achieve expected ROI for major capital projects 90 percent of the time, according to a new industry study. In addition, 12 percent of companies see expected ROIs in less than half of their capital projects. The problem: no matter how sophisticated and far-reaching the planning processes are, many organizations struggle to manage risks or reap the expected value from major capital investments. The data is part of the larger survey of companies in oil and gas, mining and metals, chemicals, and utilities industries. The results appear in Prepare for the Unexpected: Investment Planning in Asset-Intensive Industries, a comprehensive new report sponsored by Oracle and developed by the Economist Intelligence Unit. Analysts say the shortcomings in large-scale, long-duration capital-investments projects often stem from immature capital-planning processes. The poor decisions that result can lead to significant financial losses and disappointing project benefits, which are particularly harmful to organizations during economic downturns. The report highlights three other important findings. Teaming the right data and people doesn’t guarantee that ROI goals will be achieved. Despite involving cross-functional teams and looking at all the pertinent data, executives are still failing to identify risks and deliver bottom-line results on capital projects. Effective processes are the missing link. Project-planning processes are weakest when it comes to risk management and predicting costs and ROI. Organizations participating in the study said they fail to achieve expected ROI because they regularly experience unexpected events that derail schedules and inflate budgets. But executives believe that using more-robust risk management and project planning strategies will help avoid delays, improve ROI, and more accurately predict the long-term cost of initiatives. Planning for unexpected events is a key to success. External factors, such as changing market conditions and evolving government policies are difficult to forecast precisely, so organizations need to build flexibility into project plans to make it easier to adapt to the changes. The report outlines a series of steps executives can take to address these shortcomings and improve their capital-planning processes. Read the full report or take the benchmarking survey and find out how your organization compares.

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  • Move unity launcher to bottom of the screen

    - by argvar
    I have Ubuntu 13.04 DESKTOP version and for some odd reason I'm told that the Unity launcher cannot be moved to the bottom of the screen because of several reasons: 1. Canonical wants it there so it fits with their overall design goals, namely when it comes to touchscreen devices and netbooks. This in my mind totally ignores the fact that most Ubuntu users are DESKTOP users. No matter what Canonicals long term goal is, it surely mustn't be at the expense of needs of their core user base. 2. Most monitors are widescreen, the launcher is more compact where it is. This is not only taking away the users choice, but is also a wrong assessment. Widescreen monitors can sometimes be rotated on a pivot, giving it a portrait aspect. By displaying the Unity launcher on the left side it takes up a lot of space. Many desktop users have multiple monitors, and having the launcher on the left side of each monitor is very awkward. Also, many websites are catered to fit on a half 1920 display, so you can have two browser windows open side-by-side with all content visible. The placement of the Unity launcher takes away the horizontal space meaning there's less room for each browser window, and you'll see the right side of the web pages being occluded. Any suggestion to simply hide the Unity launcher, or "Canonical knows best" or "get used to it" are unwelcome and totally ignores the above points. Linux is about choice. Canonical's stubbornness with the Unity launcher placement is inconsistent with what Linux is about.

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  • Develop in trunk and then branch off, or in release branch and then merge back?

    - by Torben Gundtofte-Bruun
    Say that we've decided on following a "release-based" branching strategy, so we'll have a branch for each release, and we can add maintenance updates as sub-branches from those. Does it matter whether we: develop and stabilize a new release in the trunk and then "save" that state in a new release branch; or first create that release branch and only merge into the trunk when the branch is stable? I find the former to be easier to deal with (less merging necessary), especially when we don't develop on multiple upcoming releases at the same time. Under normal circumstances we would all be working on the trunk, and only work on released branches if there are bugs to fix. What is the trunk actually used for in the latter approach? It seems to be almost obsolete, because I could create a future release branch based on the most recent released branch rather than from the trunk. Details based on comment below: Our product consists of a base platform and a number of modules on top; each is developed and even distributed separately from each other. Most team members work on several of these areas, so there's partial overlap between people. We generally work only on 1 future release and not at all on existing releases. One or two might work on a bugfix for an existing release for short periods of time. Our work isn't compiled and it's a mix of Unix shell scripts, XML configuration files, SQL packages, and more -- so there's no way to have push-button builds that can be tested. That's done manually, which is a bit laborious. A release cycle is typically half a year or more for the base platform; often 1 month for the modules.

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  • Which things instantly ring alarm bells when looking at code? [closed]

    - by FinnNk
    I attended a software craftsmanship event a couple of weeks ago and one of the comments made was "I'm sure we all recognize bad code when we see it" and everyone nodded sagely without further discussion. This sort of thing always worries me as there's that truism that everyone thinks they're an above average driver. Although I think I can recognize bad code I'd love to learn more about what other people consider to be code smells as it's rarely discussed in detail on people's blogs and only in a handful of books. In particular I think it'd be interesting to hear about anything that's a code smell in one language but not another. I'll start off with an easy one: Code in source control that has a high proportion of commented out code - why is it there? was it meant to be deleted? is it a half finished piece of work? maybe it shouldn't have been commented out and was only done when someone was testing something out? Personally I find this sort of thing really annoying even if it's just the odd line here and there, but when you see large blocks interspersed with the rest of the code it's totally unacceptable. It's also usually an indication that the rest of the code is likely to be of dubious quality as well.

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  • What payment gateways do real customers really use when given the choice?

    - by ??????
    I would like to give customers the option of paying however they can whether that be through a proper gateway (e.g. SagePay) or through something else such as PayPal, Amazon Checkout or Google Checkout. Personally I have not bought anything through the Amazon Checkout except for on Amazon.co.uk and my PayPal buys have been limited. As for Google Checkout I have no idea what that is or how it works from a consumer perspective. I understand that people buying from smaller sites are happier to pay by PayPal as they have an account already and trust PayPal. As for Amazon Payments and Google Checkout, do people actually use them if given the choice? There are a lot of people on Kindles these days, happy to buy stuff via Amazon on their Kindle. Would Amazon Payments make sense to this growing crowd? With too many payment gateways on offer it might be confusing at the checkout. Does anyone know if this is a problem for genuine customers? I also have not seen many 'pay by Amazon Payments' icons on websites (you see PayPal all the time). Does advertising the fact that you can pay by Amazon Payments increase sales, e.g. to Kindle owners that have a nebulous book-buying account that 'their other half doesn't know about'?

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