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  • How can I block abusive bots from accessing my Heroku app?

    - by aem
    My Heroku (Bamboo) app has been getting a bunch of hits from a scraper identifying itself as GSLFBot. Googling for that name produces various results of people who've concluded that it doesn't respect robots.txt (eg, http://www.0sw.com/archives/96). I'm considering updating my app to have a list of banned user-agents, and serving all requests from those user-agents a 400 or similar and adding GSLFBot to that list. Is that an effective technique, and if not what should I do instead? (As a side note, it seems weird to have an abusive scraper with a distinctive user-agent.)

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  • Ubuntu Server 14.04 Apache 2.4 TLSv1.2/TLSv1.1 support

    - by Jan
    Recently I upgraded my server from Ubuntu Server 12.04 to Ubuntu Server 14.04 by means of a new installation from scratch. Only one problem remains. In 12.04 Apache 2.2 with mod_ssl supported TLS version 1, 1.1 and 1.2. After upgrading to 14.04 and Apache 2.4, Apache only supports TLS version 1, support for 1.1 and 1.2 is missing. I followed both the migration guide for 2.2 - 2.4 (no changes to the mod_ssl settings) as well as the documentation of mod_ssl regarding the SSLProtocol configuration option. Both SSLProtocol TLSv1.2 TLSv1.1 TLSv1 and SSLProtocol TLSv1.2 do not work. Is there any way to convince Apache to support the new TLS versions as well? Problem seems to be solved now without any change from my side. Apparently libssl was initially compiled without TLSv1.1/TLSv1.2 support.

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  • Am I allowed to display a small image on top of a Google Maps Static Api map?

    - by Fábio Santos
    I am the webmaster to my company's website. I was asked to make the Google Map on this page smaller, but the interactive map doesn't work well at all at 300x200. I was asked to place a screenshot there but since that seems to be a violation of Google's terms I decided to use the Static Maps API. As you can see, on the page, I have a custom pointer icon. I don't want to lose it, so I intend to use HTML and CSS to place the pointer over the map, thus replacing the original pointer on the client side. Am I allowed to do that?

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  • How often is software speed evident in the eyes of customers?

    - by rwong
    In theory, customers should be able to feel the software performance improvements from first-hand experience. In practice, sometimes the improvements are not noticible enough, such that in order to monetize from the improvements, it is necessary to use quotable performance figures in marketing in order to attract customers. We already know the difference between perceived performance (GUI latency, etc) and server-side performance (machines, networks, infrastructure, etc). How often is it that programmers need to go the extra length to "write up" performance analyses for which the audience is not fellow programmers, but managers and customers?

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  • Haskell vs Erlang for web services

    - by Zachary K
    I am looking to start an experimental project using a functional language and am trying to decide beween Erlang and Haskell, and both have some points that I really like. I like Haskell's strong type system and purity. I have a feeling it will make it easier to write really reliable code. And I think that the power of haskell will make some of what I want to do much easier. On the minus side I get the feeling that some of the Frameworks for doing web stuff on Haskell such as Yesod are not as advanced as their Erlang counter parts. I rather like the Erlang approach to threads and to fault tollerence. I have a feeling that the scalability of Erlang could be a major plus. Which leeds to to my question, what has people's exerience been in implementing web application backends in both Haskell and Erlang. Are there packages for Haskell to provide some of the lightweight threads and actors that one has in Erlang?

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  • Full text search with Sphider

    - by Ravi Gupta
    I am searching for a good, light weight, open source, full text search engine for php. I came across a number of options like Lucene, Zend Lucene, Solr etc but at the same time I also find out many people suggesting Sphider for small/medium side websites. I looked at shipder website a lot but unable to find out how to use it as a Full Text Search Engine.If anybody worked on it could help me to figure out whether it supports full text search or not. Edit: Please don't suggest any other alternatives for full text search.

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  • Selecting the (right?) technology and environment

    - by Tor
    We are two developers on the edge of starting new web product development. We are both fans of lean start-up approach and would like to practice continuous deployment. Here comes the dilemma - we are both coming from a C# / Windows background and we need to decide between: Stick to .NET and Windows, we will not waste time on learning new technologies and put all our effort in the development. Switch to Ruby on Rails and Linux which has a good reputation of fast ramp up and vast open source support. The negative side is that we will need to put a lot of effort in learning Ruby, Rails and Linux... What would you do? What other considerations should we take?

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  • New Year, New Position, New Opportunity and Adventures!

    - by D'Arcy Lussier
    2010 was an incredible year of change for me. On the personal side, we celebrated our youngest daughter’s first birthday and welcomed my oldest daughter into our family (both my girls are adopted). Professionally, I put on the first ever Prairie Developer Conference, the 3rd annual Winnipeg Code Camp, the Software Development and Evolution Conference, continued to build the technology community in Winnipeg, was awarded a Microsoft MVP award for the 4th year, created a certification program to help my employer, Protegra, attain Microsoft Partner status, and had great project work throughout the year. So now its 2011, and I’m looking ahead to new challenges and opportunities with a new employer. Starting in mid February I’ll be the Microsoft Practice Lead with Online Business Systems, a Microsoft partner here in Winnipeg! I’m very excited about working with such great people and helping continue delivering quality solutions and consulting that the organization has become known for. 2010 was great, but 2011 is shaping up to be a banner year both personally and professionally!

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  • Diagonal line of sight with two corners

    - by Ash Blue
    Right now I'm using Bresenham's line algorithm for line of sight. The problem is I've found an edge case where players can look through walls. Occurs when the player looks between two corners of a wall with a gap on the other side at specific angles. The result I want is for the tile between two walls to be marked invalid as so. What is the fastest way to modify Bresenham's line algorithm to solve this? If there isn't a good solution, is there a better suited algorithm? Any ideas are welcome. Please note the solution should also be capable of supporting 3d. Edit: For the working source code and an interactive demo of the completed product please see http://ashblue.github.io/javascript-pathfinding/

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  • Windows Workflow Foundation (WF) and things I wish were more intuitive

    - by pjohnson
    I've started using Windows Workflow Foundation, and so far ran into a few things that aren't incredibly obvious. Microsoft did a good job of providing a ton of samples, which is handy because you need them to get anywhere with WF. The docs are thin, so I've been bouncing between samples and downloadable labs to figure out how to implement various activities in a workflow. Code separation or not? You can create a workflow and activity in Visual Studio with or without code separation, i.e. just a .cs "Component" style object with a Designer.cs file, or a .xoml XML markup file with code behind (beside?) it. Absence any obvious advantage to one or the other, I used code separation for workflows and any complex custom activities, and without code separation for custom activities that just inherit from the Activity class and thus don't have anything special in the designer. So far, so good. Workflow Activity Library project type - What's the point of this separate project type? So far I don't see much advantage to keeping your custom activities in a separate project. I prefer to have as few projects as needed (and no fewer). The Designer's Toolbox window seems to find your custom activities just fine no matter where they are, and the debugging experience doesn't seem to be any different. Designer Properties - This is about the designer, and not specific to WF, but nevertheless something that's hindered me a lot more in WF than in Windows Forms or elsewhere. The Properties window does a good job of showing you property values when you hover the mouse over the values. But they don't do the same to find out what a control's type is. So maybe if I named all my activities "x1" and "x2" instead of helpful self-documenting names like "listenForStatusUpdate", then I could easily see enough of the type to determine what it is, but any names longer than those and all I get of the type is "System.Workflow.Act" or "System.Workflow.Compone". Even hitting the dropdown doesn't expand any wider, like the debugger quick watch "smart tag" popups do when you scroll through members. The only way I've found around this in VS 2008 is to widen the Properties dialog, losing precious designer real estate, then shrink it back down when you're done to see what you were doing. Really? WF Designer - This is about the designer, and I believe is specific to WF. I should be able to edit the XML in a .xoml file, or drag and drop using the designer. With WPF (at least in VS 2010 Ultimate), these are side by side, and changes to one instantly update the other. With WF, I have to right-click on the .xoml file, choose Open With, and pick XML Editor to edit the text. It looks like this is one way where WF didn't get the same attention WPF got during .NET Fx 3.0 development. Service - In the WF world, this is simply a class that talks to the workflow about things outside the workflow, not to be confused with how the term "service" is used in every other context I've seen in the Windows and .NET world, i.e. an executable that waits for events or requests from a client and services them (Windows service, web service, WCF service, etc.). ListenActivity - Such a great concept, yet so unintuitive. It seems you need at least two branches (EventDrivenActivity instances), one for your positive condition and one for a timeout. The positive condition has a HandleExternalEventActivity, and the timeout has a DelayActivity followed by however you want to handle the delay, e.g. a ThrowActivity. The timeout is simple enough; wiring up the HandleExternalEventActivity is where things get fun. You need to create a service (see above), and an interface for that service (this seems more complex than should be necessary--why not have activities just wire to a service directly?). And you need to create a custom EventArgs class that inherits from ExternalDataEventArgs--you can't create an ExternalDataEventArgs event handler directly, even if you don't need to add any more information to the event args, despite ExternalDataEventArgs not being marked as an abstract class, nor a compiler error nor warning nor any other indication that you're doing something wrong, until you run it and find that it always times out and get to check every place mentioned here to see why. Your interface and service need an event that consumes your custom EventArgs class, and a method to fire that event. You need to call that method from somewhere. Then you get to hope that you did everything just right, or that you can step through code in the debugger before your Delay timeout expires. Yes, it's as much fun as it sounds. TransactionScopeActivity - I had the bright idea of putting one in as a placeholder, then filling in the database updates later. That caused this error: The workflow hosting environment does not have a persistence service as required by an operation on the workflow instance "[GUID]". ...which is about as helpful as "Object reference not set to an instance of an object" and even more fun to debug. Google led me to this Microsoft Forums hit, and from there I figured out it didn't like that the activity had no children. Again, a Validator on TransactionScopeActivity would have pointed this out to me at design time, rather than handing me a nearly useless error at runtime. Easily enough, I disabled the activity and that fixed it. I still see huge potential in my work where WF could make things easier and more flexible, but there are some seriously rough edges at the moment. Maybe I'm just spoiled by how much easier and more intuitive development elsewhere in the .NET Framework is.

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  • BASH Scripting: Check If running with sudo/superuser, if not, dont run, return error

    - by EvilPhoenix
    This is something I've been curious about. I make a lot of small bash scripts (.sh files) to do tasks that I routinely do. Some of those tasks require everything to be ran as superuser. I've been curious: Is it possible to, within the BASH script prior to everything being run, check if the script is being run as superuser, and if not, print a message saying You must be superuser to use this script, then subsequently terminate the script itself. The other side of that is I'd like to have the script run when the user is superuser, and not generate the error. Any ideas on coding (if statements, etc.) on how to execute the aforementioned?

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  • Web development starting a career [closed]

    - by user985482
    Hi I am in the 3rd and last year at college of informatics and I am interested to follow a career in web development when I finish(2 more months). From what I understand this days to get hired you need to be able to know a variety of technologies at least that is the case in Romania.Most of the jobs I have seen even at entry level asks you to know the following: HTML/CSS Javascript , a framework preferable jQuery , Ajax a server side language in my case PHP and a framework SQL and an RDBMS in my case MySql a CMS in my case Wordpress My question is how well should me or anyone looking to get hired as a web developer for there first job should we know this technologies in order to get hired and what else should we aim to learn to have a better chance of getting hired. I don't know if the question is right for this forum but I believe that this could help many of the students and anyone who is taking an interest in web development to know what they should expect from there employers when they try to find work.

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  • How to rotate a set of points on z = 0 plane in 3-D, preserving pairwise distances?

    - by cagirici
    I have a set of points double n[] on the plane z = 0. And I have another set of points double[] m on the plane ax + by + cz + d = 0. Length of n is equal to length of m. Also, euclidean distance between n[i] and n[j] is equal to euclidean distance between m[i] and m[j]. I want to rotate n[] in 3-D, such that for all i, n[i] = m[i] would be true. In other words, I want to turn a plane into another plane, preserving the pairwise distances. Here's my code in java. But it does not help so much: double[] rotate(double[] point, double[] currentEquation, double[] targetEquation) { double[] currentNormal = new double[]{currentEquation[0], currentEquation[1], currentEquation[2]}; double[] targetNormal = new double[]{targetEquation[0], targetEquation[1], targetEquation[2]}; targetNormal = normalize(targetNormal); double angle = angleBetween(currentNormal, targetNormal); double[] axis = cross(targetNormal, currentNormal); double[][] R = getRotationMatrix(axis, angle); return rotated; } double[][] getRotationMatrix(double[] axis, double angle) { axis = normalize(axis); double cA = (float)Math.cos(angle); double sA = (float)Math.sin(angle); Matrix I = Matrix.identity(3, 3); Matrix a = new Matrix(axis, 3); Matrix aT = a.transpose(); Matrix a2 = a.times(aT); double[][] B = { {0, axis[2], -1*axis[1]}, {-1*axis[2], 0, axis[0]}, {axis[1], -1*axis[0], 0} }; Matrix A = new Matrix(B); Matrix R = I.minus(a2); R = R.times(cA); R = R.plus(a2); R = R.plus(A.times(sA)); return R.getArray(); } This is what I get. The point set on the right side is actually part of a point set on the left side. But they are on another plane. Here's a 2-D representation of what I try to do: There are two lines. The line on the bottom is the line I have. The line on the top is the target line. The distances are preserved (a, b and c). Edit: I have tried both methods written in answers. They both fail (I guess). Method of Martijn Courteaux public static double[][] getRotationMatrix(double[] v0, double[] v1, double[] v2, double[] u0, double[] u1, double[] u2) { RealMatrix M1 = new Array2DRowRealMatrix(new double[][]{ {1,0,0,-1*v0[0]}, {0,1,0,-1*v0[1]}, {0,0,1,0}, {0,0,0,1} }); RealMatrix M2 = new Array2DRowRealMatrix(new double[][]{ {1,0,0,-1*u0[0]}, {0,1,0,-1*u0[1]}, {0,0,1,-1*u0[2]}, {0,0,0,1} }); Vector3D imX = new Vector3D((v0[1] - v1[1])*(u2[0] - u0[0]) - (v0[1] - v2[1])*(u1[0] - u0[0]), (v0[1] - v1[1])*(u2[1] - u0[1]) - (v0[1] - v2[1])*(u1[1] - u0[1]), (v0[1] - v1[1])*(u2[2] - u0[2]) - (v0[1] - v2[1])*(u1[2] - u0[2]) ).scalarMultiply(1/((v0[0]*v1[1])-(v0[0]*v2[1])-(v1[0]*v0[1])+(v1[0]*v2[1])+(v2[0]*v0[1])-(v2[0]*v1[1]))); Vector3D imZ = new Vector3D(findEquation(u0, u1, u2)); Vector3D imY = Vector3D.crossProduct(imZ, imX); double[] imXn = imX.normalize().toArray(); double[] imYn = imY.normalize().toArray(); double[] imZn = imZ.normalize().toArray(); RealMatrix M = new Array2DRowRealMatrix(new double[][]{ {imXn[0], imXn[1], imXn[2], 0}, {imYn[0], imYn[1], imYn[2], 0}, {imZn[0], imZn[1], imZn[2], 0}, {0, 0, 0, 1} }); RealMatrix rotationMatrix = MatrixUtils.inverse(M2).multiply(M).multiply(M1); return rotationMatrix.getData(); } Method of Sam Hocevar static double[][] makeMatrix(double[] p1, double[] p2, double[] p3) { double[] v1 = normalize(difference(p2,p1)); double[] v2 = normalize(cross(difference(p3,p1), difference(p2,p1))); double[] v3 = cross(v1, v2); double[][] M = { { v1[0], v2[0], v3[0], p1[0] }, { v1[1], v2[1], v3[1], p1[1] }, { v1[2], v2[2], v3[2], p1[2] }, { 0.0, 0.0, 0.0, 1.0 } }; return M; } static double[][] createTransform(double[] A, double[] B, double[] C, double[] P, double[] Q, double[] R) { RealMatrix c = new Array2DRowRealMatrix(makeMatrix(A,B,C)); RealMatrix t = new Array2DRowRealMatrix(makeMatrix(P,Q,R)); return MatrixUtils.inverse(c).multiply(t).getData(); } The blue points are the calculated points. The black lines indicate the offset from the real position.

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  • Benefit of using Data URI to embed images within HTML document and its cross-browser compatibility

    - by Manoj Agarwal
    I want to embed an image using Data URI within HTML document so that we don't need image as a separate attachment, we get just one HTML file that contains the actual image. What are its advantages and disadvantages? Does IE10 supports it? Is it useful to have such an implementation? I am working on an application, where we have html documents that link towards images stored in some location. If I use tiny online editor, as images are saved somewhere in the server, while editing the document, i can provide a link towards that image, but can't preview the final document with images from within tiny editor. If I chose to download the file locally, then i will need to download the images from server side. It looks a bit overkill, so I thought if Data URI could be used in such a situation.

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  • Shaping the Future of Power

    - by caroline.yu
    In an energy marketplace that continues to evolve, gain insight into how utility executives increasingly confront the challenges of preparing their workers, regulators and customers for a period of volatility and promise. This free on-demand Web cast, sponsored and underwritten by Oracle Utilities, will provide you with an executive-level view of what it means and takes to be a utility leader. By viewing this Web cast, you will hear: NRG's CEO David Crane weighing in on next-gen nuclear, generation portfolio diversity, and what it's like to live through (and thrive in) a hostile takeover attempt EPRI's Clark Gellings, the father of demand side management, outlining the coming trends marrying technology with customer energy consumption patterns CEO Ralph Izzo discussing PSEG's low-carbon emissions strategy, commitment to solar power development, and pursuit of reliability through infrastructure investment. To view this Web cast, please follow this link.

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  • Boston: Free Java Developer Event March 3rd!

    - by Jacob Lehrbaum
    Attention Boston area developers!  Oracle has been running a series of free one-day Java Developer events in the US, Europe, and Asia since last November, and on March 3rd, this highly popular series is coming to the Westin Copley Place in Boston.  The Java Developer Day will include four tracks of sessions and hands-on-labs designed for developers interested in Server, Desktop, Embedded, and core Java SE platform topics.  Technologies covered include Java EE, Java ME and Java SE (including the JDK).  From the event page: Come to this free event if you are interested in:Evaluating the Java platformUsing other languages on the JVMBuilding server side JavaConstructing Rich Web or Desktop ApplicationsUnderstanding the JVM and its built in diagnosticsMaking Smart Devices even smarterCheck out the event page to read more and/or register.  The event is free, but space is limited so register today!

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  • Mario Warfare: Live Action Adventures in the Mushroom Kingdom

    - by Jason Fitzpatrick
    What if the tale of the Mario Bros. and their exploits was told in the form of an action flick? Mario Warfare explores the gritty side of the battle for the Mushroom Kingdom. In the above video we’re treated to a trailer-style peek at a work-in progress film. While there is no set release date, we have our fingers crossed that it’s completed sooner rather than later–a film this awesome demands to be seen. [via Geekosystem] How to Get Pro Features in Windows Home Versions with Third Party Tools HTG Explains: Is ReadyBoost Worth Using? HTG Explains: What The Windows Event Viewer Is and How You Can Use It

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  • Adding new events to be handled by script part without recompilation of c++ source code

    - by paul424
    As in title I want to write an Event system with handling methods written in external script language, that is Angelscript. The AS methods would have acess to game's world modifing API ( which has to be regsitered for Angelscript Machine as the game starts) . I have come to this problem : if we use the Angelsript for rapid prototyping of the game's world behavior , we would like to be able to define new Event Types, without recompiling the main binary. Is that ever possible , don't stick to Angelscript, I think about any possible scripting language. The main thought is this : If there's some really new Event possible to be constructed , we must monitor some information coming from the binary, for example some variable value changing and the Events are just triggered on some conditions on those changes , wer might be monitoring the Creatures HP, by having a function call on each change, there we could define new Events such as Creature hurt, creature killed, creature healed , creature killed and tormented to pieces ( like geting HP very much below 0 ) . Are there any other ideas of constructing new Events at the scripting side ?

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  • How should I structure my urls for both SEO and localization?

    - by artlung
    When I set up a site in multiple languages, how should I set up my urls for search engines and usability? Let's say my site is www.example.com, and I'm translating into French and Spanish. What is best for usability and SEO? Directory option: http://www.example.com/sample.html http://www.example.com/fr/sample.html http://www.example.com/es/sample.html Subdomain option: http://www.example.com/sample.html http://fr.example.com/sample.html http://es.example.com/sample.html Filename option: http://www.example.com/sample.html http://www.example.com/sample.fr.html http://www.example.com/sample.es.html Accept-Language header: Or should I simply parse the Accept-Language header and generate content server-side to suit that header? Is there another way to do this? If the different language versions don't have different urls, what do I do about the search engines?

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  • How to render 2D particles as fluid?

    - by luke
    Suppose you have a nice way to move your 2D particles in order to simulate a fluid (like water). Any ideas on how to render it? This is for a 2D game, where the perspective is from the side, like this. The water will be contained in boxes that can be broken in order to let it fall down and interact with other objects. The simplest way that comes to my mind is to use a small image for each particle. I am interested in hearing more ways of rendering water.

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  • NY Coherence SIG, June 3

    - by ruma.sanyal
    The New York Coherence SIG is hosting its eighth meeting. Since its inception in August 2008, over 85 different companies have attended NYCSIG meetings, with over 375 individual members. Whether you're an experienced Coherence user or new to Data Grid technology, the NYCSIG is the community for realizing Coherence-related projects and best practices. Date: Thursday, June 3, 2010 Time: 5:30pm - 8:00pm ET Where: Oracle Office, Room 30076, 520 Madison Avenue, 30th Floor, NY The new book by Aleksander Seovic "Oracle Coherence 3.5" will be raffled! Presentations:? "Performance Management of Coherence Applications" - Randy Stafford, Consulting Solutions Architect (Oracle) "Best practices for monitoring your Coherence application during the SDLC" - Ivan Ho, Co-founder and EVP of Development (Evident Software) "Coherence Cluster-side Programming" - Andrew Wilson, Coherence Architect (at a couple of Tier-1 Banks in London) Please Register! Registration is required for building security.

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  • Strategies for browser compatibility on web applications in a corporate environment

    - by TiagoBrenck
    With the new CSS 3 and HTML 5 technology, web applications have gained a lot of new tools for a better UI (user interface) interaction, beautiful templates and even responsive layout to fit into tablets and smartphones. Within a corporate environment, those new technologies are required so the company can "follow" the IT evolution and their concurrent, but they also want that those new web applications supports old browsers. How should I deal with this situation? By one side we are asked to follow the the evolution of technology, create responsive layouts and use a lot of cool jQuery plugins. On the other hand, we are asked to support old browsers that do not support those new responsive features, plugins or components. I would like advice and strategies on how to create "modern" web applications that are also supported on old browsers. How does your company deal with this situation? Is it possible to have the same web application run well and beautifully on old browsers, and be responsive and interactive on newer browsers?

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  • Mixed Emotions: Humans React to Natural Language Computer

    - by Applications User Experience
    There was a big event in Silicon Valley on Tuesday, November 15. Watson, the natural language computer developed at IBM Watson Research Center in Yorktown Heights, New York, and its inventor and principal research investigator, David Ferrucci, were guests at the Computer History Museum in Mountain View, California for another round of the television game Jeopardy. You may have read about or watched on YouTube how Watson beat Ken Jennings and Brad Rutter, two top Jeopardy competitors, last February. This time, Watson swept the floor with two Silicon Valley high-achievers, one a venture capitalist with a background  in math, computer engineering, and physics, and the other a technology and finance writer well-versed in all aspects of culture and humanities. Watson is the product of the DeepQA research project, which attempts to create an artificially intelligent computing system through advances in natural language processing (NLP), among other technologies. NLP is a computing strategy that seeks to provide answers by processing large amounts of unstructured data contained in multiple large domains of human knowledge. There are several ways to perform NLP, but one way to start is by recognizing key words, then processing  contextual  cues associated with the keyword concepts so that you get many more “smart” (that is, human-like) deductions,  rather than a series of “dumb” matches.  Jeopardy questions often require more than key word matching to get the correct answer; typically several pieces of information put together, often from vastly different categories, to come up with a satisfactory word string solution that can be rephrased as a question.  Smarter than your average search engine, but is it as smart as a human? Watson was especially fast at descrambling mixed-up state capital names, and recalling and pairing movie titles where one started and the other ended in the same word (e.g., Billion Dollar Baby Boom, where both titles used the word Baby). David said they had basically removed the variable of how fast Watson hit the buzzer compared to human contestants, but frustration frequently appeared on the faces of the contestants beaten to the punch by Watson. David explained that top Jeopardy winners like Jennings achieved their success with a similar strategy, timing their buzz to the end of the reading of the clue,  and “running the board”, being first to respond on about 60% of the clues.  Similar results for Watson. It made sense that Watson would be good at the technical and scientific stuff, so I figured the venture capitalist was toast. But I thought for sure Watson would lose to the writer in categories such as pop culture, wines and foods, and other humanities. Surprisingly, it held its own. I was amazed it could recognize a word definition of a syllogism in the category of philosophy. So what was the audience reaction to all of this? We started out expecting our formidable human contestants to easily run some of their categories; however, they started off on the wrong foot with the state capitals which Watson could unscramble so efficiently. By the end of the first round, contestants and the audience were feeling a little bit, well, …. deflated. Watson was winning by about $13,000, and the humans had gone into negative dollars. The IBM host said he was going to “slow Watson down a bit,” and the humans came back with respectable scores in Double Jeopardy. This was partially thanks to a very sympathetic audience (and host, also a human) providing “group-think” on many questions, especially baseball ‘s most valuable players, which by the way, couldn’t have been hard because even I knew them.  Yes, that’s right, the humans cheated. Since Watson could speak but not hear us (it didn’t have speech recognition capability), it was probably unaware of this. In Final Jeopardy, the single question had to do with law. I was sure Watson would blow this one, but all contestants were able to answer correctly about a copyright law. In a career devoted to making computers more helpful to people, I think I may have seen how a computer can do too much. I’m not sure I’d want to work side-by-side with a Watson doing my job. Certainly listening and empathy are important traits we humans still have over Watson.  While there was great enthusiasm in the packed room of computer scientists and their friends for this standing-room-only show, I think it made several of us uneasy (especially the poor human contestants whose egos were soundly bashed in the first round). This computer system, by the way , only took 4 years to program. David Ferrucci mentioned several practical uses for Watson, including medical diagnoses and legal strategies. Are you “the expert” in your job? Imagine NLP computing on an Oracle database.   This may be the user interface of the future to enable users to better process big data. How do you think you’d like it? Postscript: There were three little boys sitting in front of me in the very first row. They looked, how shall I say it, … unimpressed!

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  • ASP.Net 4.0 and tableless menu control

    - by nikolaosk
    One of the issues I really like to read and learn is client side technologies. I am an ASP.Net guy at heart but I find CSS particular useful and I have been blogging about CSS in my other blog. Have a look here if you want for some interesting posts on CSS I believe designing web applications and sites according to web standards. I do not think designing our websites with tables is correct. Tables should be used for what they are good at doing, Display tabular data . So if we are in charge of our...(read more)

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  • Delving into design patterns, and what that means for the Oracle user experience

    - by Kathy.Miedema
    By Kathy Miedema, Oracle Applications User Experience George Hackman, Senior Director, Applications User Experiences The Oracle Applications User Experience team has some exciting things happening around Fusion Applications design patterns. Because we’re hoping to have some new offerings soon (stay tuned with VoX to see what’s in the pipeline around Fusion Applications design patterns), now is a good time to talk more about what design patterns can do for the individual user as well as the entire company. George Hackman, Senior Director of Operations User Experience, says the first thing to note is that user experience is not just about the user interface. It’s about understanding how people do things, observing them, and then finding the patterns that emerge. The Applications UX team develops those patterns and then builds them into Oracle applications. What emerges, Hackman says, is a consistent, efficient user experience that promotes a productive workplace. Creating design patterns What is a design pattern in the context of enterprise software? “Every day, people use technology to get things done,” Hackman says. “They navigate a virtual world that reaches from enterprise to consumer apps, and from desktop to mobile. This virtual world is constantly under construction. New areas are being developed and old areas are being redone. As this world is being built and remodeled, efficient pathways and practices emerge. “Oracle's user experience team watches users navigate this world. We measure their productivity and ask them about their satisfaction. We take the most efficient, most productive pathways from the enterprise and consumer world and turn them into Oracle's user experience patterns.” Hackman describes the process as combining all of the best practices from every part of a user’s world. Members of the user experience team observe, analyze, design, prototype, and measure each work task to find the best possible pattern for a particular work flow. As the team builds the patterns, “we make sure they are fully buildable using Oracle technology,” Hackman said. “So customers know they can use these patterns. There’s no need to make something up from scratch, not knowing whether you can even build it.” Hackman says that creating something on a computer is a good example of a user experience pattern. “People are creating things all the time,” he says. “On the consumer side, they are creating documents. On the enterprise side, they are creating expense reports. On a mobile phone, they are creating contacts. They are using different apps like iPhone or Facebook or Gmail or Oracle software, all doing this creation process.” The Applications UX team starts their process by observing how people might create something. “We observe people creating things. We see the patterns, we analyze and document, then we apply them to our products. It might be different from phone to web browser, but we have these design patterns that create a consistent experience across platforms, and across products, too. The result for customers Oracle constantly improves its part of the virtual world, Hackman said. New products are created and existing products are upgraded. Because Oracle builds user experience design patterns, Oracle's virtual world becomes both more powerful and more familiar at the same time. Because of design patterns, users can navigate with ease as they embrace the latest technology – because it behaves the way they expect it to. This means less training and faster adoption for individual users, and more productivity for the business as a whole. Hackman said Oracle gives customers and partners access to design patterns so that they can build in the virtual world using the same best practices. Customers and partners can extend applications with a user experience that is comfortable and familiar to their users. For businesses that are integrating different Oracle applications, design patterns are key. The user experience created in E-Business Suite should be similar to the user experience in Fusion Applications, Hackman said. If a user is transitioning from one application to the other, it shouldn’t be difficult for them to do their work. With design patterns, it isn’t. “Oracle user experience patterns are the building blocks for the virtual world that ensure productivity, consistency and user satisfaction,” Hackman said. “They are built for the enterprise, but incorporate the best practices from across the virtual world. They empower productivity and facilitate social interaction. When you build with patterns, you get all the end-user benefits of less training / retraining from the finished product. You also get faster / cheaper development.” What’s coming? You can already access design patterns to help you build Dashboards with OBIEE here. And we promised you at the beginning that we had something in the pipeline on Fusion Applications design patterns. Look for the announcement about when they are available here on VoX.

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