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• I know fundamental programming. But how do I get started in game development now?

  - by Rohan Menon

  I'm a 20 year old programming student. I know fundamental programming in BASIC, C, C++ and JAVA. What I wanted to ask is, where do I go from here? Are there any books that the community can mention that will help me develop a game or at least learn game development? I've had a lot of ideas and really want to make some sort of prototype to see if I'm suited for the industry. I really don't mind learning any new languages but I need to know what I should begin with. A good book that will help with a little more understanding as I go up will be very helpful. Maybe a tutorial to develop some basic 2D games like a side-scroller, snake or pocket tanks in an easy to understand SDK? I know that to get some credit under your belt, you need to be able to make a few games on your own. Also, what platform should I start on? The PC, iOS or Android (as an introduction) for now. I don't want to get into high level game design just yet. Just something a bit basic to help out in future development. Anything pointing me in the right direction will be really really helpful. Edit: Also, I want to say that I'm looking towards this from a game designer's point of view more than a game programmer. I want suggestions on any SDKs or easy to use programs I can use to understand game design. Then delve deeper into the programming after that. Not as employment but as developing your own games (for now).

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• E3 Booth Babes Display a Painful Lack of Video Game Knowledge [Video]

  - by Jason Fitzpatrick

  If you thought a prerequisite for manning a booth at an electronics expo was a passing knowledge of the electronics and games you were promoting, you were wrong. In the above video Chloe Dykstra puts a set of “booth babes” from the E3 2011 conference to the test by asking them simple questions about video games both new and old. If you’re a gaming fan and you can watch this video without laughing out loud you’ve got an iron will (or you’re shaking your head in disbelief that someone could work a gaming convention and not know the answers to these questions). We won’t lie, we were shaking our head when the one model admitted that she’d worked at GameStop for a year and still didn’t know any of the answers. What questions would you put on list? How about “Finish this sentence: ‘Your Princess is in another…’”, “Dimension?”. 5HP: Booth Babe Edition – E3 2011 [YouTube via Kotaku] How To Encrypt Your Cloud-Based Drive with BoxcryptorHTG Explains: Photography with Film-Based CamerasHow to Clean Your Dirty Smartphone (Without Breaking Something)

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• NRF Big Show 2011 -- Part 1

  - by David Dorf

  When Apple decided to open retail stores, they came to 360Commerce (now part of Oracle Retail) to help with the secret project. Similarly, when Disney Stores decided to reinvent itself, they also came to us for their POS system. In both cases visiting a store is an experience where sales take a backseat to entertainment, exploration, and engagement This quote from a recent Stores Magazine article says it all: "We compete based on an experience, emotion and immersion like Disney," says Neal Lassila, vice president of global information technology for Disney. "That's opposed to [competing] on price and hawking a doll for $19.99. There is no sales pressure technique." Instead, it's about delivering "a great time." While you're attending the NRF conference in New York next week, you'll definitely want to stop by the new 20,000 square-foot Disney store in Times Square. If you're not attending, you can always check out the videos to get a feel for the stores' vibe. This year we've invited Disney Stores to open a pop-up store within the Oracle Retail booth. There will be lots of items on sale that fit in your suitcase, and there's no better way to demonstrate our POS, including the mobile POS running on an iPod Touch. You should also plan to attend Tuesday morning's super-session The Magic of the Disney Store: An Immersive Retail Experience with Steve Finney. In the case of Apple and Disney, less POS is actually a good thing. In both cases it was important to make the checkout process fast and easy so as not to detract from the overall experience. There will be ample opportunities to see this play out in New York next week, so I hope you take advantage.

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• Migrating Forms to Java or ADF, the truth and no FUD

  - by Grant Ronald

  The question about migrating Forms to Java (or ADF or APEX) comes up time and time again.  I wanted to pull some core information together in a single blog post to address this question. The first question I always ask is "WHY" - Forms may still be a viable option for you so "if it ain't broke don't fix it".  Bottom line is whatever anyone tells you, its going to be a considerable effort and cost to migrate from Forms to something else so the business is going to want to know WHY you spend all those hard earned dollars switching from something that might have been serving you quite adequately. Second point, if you are going to switch, I would encourage you NOT to look at building a Forms clone.  So many times I see people trying to build an ADF application and EXACTLY mimic the Forms model - ADF is NOT a Forms clone.  You should be building to the sweet spot of your target technology, not your 20 year old client/server technology.  This is also the chance for the business to embrace change, so maybe look at new processes, channels and technology options that weren't available when you first developed your Forms applications. To help you understand what is involved, I've put together a number of resources. Thinking about migration of Forms to Java, ADF or APEX, read this to prepare yourself Oracle Forms to ADF: When, Why and How - this gives you an overview of our vision, directly from Oracle Product Management Redeveloping a Forms Application with Oracle JDeveloper and Oracle ADF.  This is a conference session from myself and Lynn Munsinger on how ADF can be used in a Forms migration/rewrite As someone who manages both Forms and ADF Product Management teams, I've a foot in either camp and am happy to see you use either tool.  However, I want you to be able to make an informed decision.  My hope is that there information sources will help you do that.

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• How should I make progress further as a programmer?

  - by mushfiq

  Hello, I have just left my college after doing graduation in computer engineering,during my college life I tried to do some freelancing in local market.I succeeded in the last year and earned some small amounts based on joomla,wordpress and visual basic based job.I had some small projects on php,mysql also. After finishing my undergrad life,I sat for an written test for post of python programmer and luckily I got the job and is working there(Its a small software firm do most of the task in python).Day by day I have gained some experience with core python. Meanwhile an USA based web service firm called me for the interview and after finishing three steps(oral+mini coding project+final oral)they selected me(i was wondered!).And I am going to join their with in few days.There I have to work in python(based on Django framework,I know only basic of this framework). My problem is when I started to work with python simultaneously I worked in Odesk as a wordpress,joomla,drupal,php developer. Now a days I am feeling that I am getting "Jack of all trades master of none". My current situation is i am familiar with several popular web technologies but not an expert.I want to make myself skilled. How should I organize myself to be a skilled web programmer?

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• What happened to the Journal of Game Development?

  - by Ricket

  The lengthy mission statement from its website states: The lack of game-specific research has prevented many in the academic community from embracing game development as a serious field of study. The Journal of Game Development (JOGD), however, provides a much-needed, peer-reviewed, medium of communication and the raison d'etre for serious academic research focused solely on game-related issues. The JOGD provides the vehicle for disseminating research and findings indigenous to the game development industry. It is an outlet for peer-reviewed research that will help validate the work and garner acceptance for the study of game development by the academic community. JOGD will serve both the game development industry and academic community by presenting leading-edge, original research, and theoretical underpinnings that detail the most recent findings in related academic disciplines, hardware, software, and technology that will directly affect the way games are conceived, developed, produced, and delivered. The Journal of Game Development was established in 2003. It's hard to find any information about the issues but at four issues per year, I estimate the last issue was distributed sometime in 2005 or 2006. It had a good editorial board of college professors and a founding editor from Ubisoft. The list of articles looks good. The price was reasonable. So what happened to it? Its website recently went down but you can see the last Archive.org version. The editor-in-chief is a professor at my school so I intend to ask him in person in a week or two, but I thought I'd see what you might be able to dig up about it first. Of course I will be sure to add an answer with his official word on the matter at that time.

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• Opportunity Nokia's

  - by Andrew Clarke

  Nokia’s alliance with Microsoft is likely to be good news for anyone using Microsoft technologies, and particularly for .NET developers. Before the announcement, the future wasn’t looking so bright for the ‘mobile’ version of Windows, Windows Phone. Microsoft currently has only 3.1% of the Smartphone market, even though it has been involved in it for longer than its main rivals. Windows Phone has now got the basics right, but that is hardly sufficient by itself to change its predicament significantly. With Nokia's help, it is possible. Despite the promise of multi-tasking for third party apps, integration with Microsoft platforms such as Xbox and Office, direct integration of Twitter support, and the introduction of IE 9 “later this year”, there have been frustratingly few signs of urgency on Microsoft’s part in improving the Windows Phone  product. Until this happens, there seems little prospect of reward for third-party developers brave enough to support the platform with applications. This is puzzling when one sees how well SQL Server and Microsoft’s other server technologies have thrived in recent years, under good leadership from a management that understands the technology. The same just hasn’t been true for some of the consumer products. In consequence, iPads and Android tablets have already exposed diehard Windows users, for the first time, to an alternative GUI for consumer Tablet PCs, and the comparisons aren’t always in Windows’ favour. Nokia’s problem is obvious: Android’s meteoric rise. Android now has 33% of the worldwide market for smartphones, while the market share of Nokia’s Symbian has dropped from 44% to 31%. As details of the agreement emerge, it would seem that Nokia will bring a great deal of expertise, such as imaging and Nokia Maps, to Windows Phone that should make it more competitive. It is wrong to assume that Nokia’s decline will continue: the shock of Android’s sudden rise could be enough to sting them back to their previous form, and they have Microsoft’s huge resources and marketing clout to help them. For the sake of the whole Windows stack, I really hope the alliance succeeds.

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• Get a culture specific list of month names

  - by erwin21

  A while ago I found a clever way to retrieve a dynamic culture specific list of months names in C# with LINQ. 1: var months = Enumerable.Range(1, 12) 2: .Select(i => new 3: { 4: Month = i.ToString(), 5: MonthName = new DateTime(1, i, 1).ToString("MMMM") 6: }) 7: .ToList(); .csharpcode, .csharpcode pre { font-size: small; color: black; font-family: consolas, "Courier New", courier, monospace; background-color: #ffffff; /*white-space: pre;*/ } .csharpcode pre { margin: 0em; } .csharpcode .rem { color: #008000; } .csharpcode .kwrd { color: #0000ff; } .csharpcode .str { color: #006080; } .csharpcode .op { color: #0000c0; } .csharpcode .preproc { color: #cc6633; } .csharpcode .asp { background-color: #ffff00; } .csharpcode .html { color: #800000; } .csharpcode .attr { color: #ff0000; } .csharpcode .alt { background-color: #f4f4f4; width: 100%; margin: 0em; } .csharpcode .lnum { color: #606060; } It’s fairly simple, for a range of numbers from 1 to 12 a DateTime object is created (year and day doesn’t matter in this case), then the date time object formatted to a full month name with ToString(“MMMM”). In this example an anonymous object is created with a Month and MonthName property. You can use this solution to populate your dropdown list with months or to display a user friendly month name.

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• I need advice on laptop purchase for university [closed]

  - by Systemic33

  I'm currently in University studying Computer Science/IT/Information Technology. And this first year i've managed to do with the laptop I had; an ASUS Eee PC 1000H with a 10.1" screen. But this is getting way too underpowered and small for programming more than just quick programming introduction excercises. So I'm looking to buy a more suitable laptop. It's not supposed to be a desktop replacement though, since I've got a pretty good desktop already with a 24" monitor. So the kinda laptop I want to buy is one suited for university. If this bears any significance, I'm working in Java atm, but I will likely work with lots of other things incl. web development. I'm looking to spend about $1700 plus/minus. And it should be powerful/big enough for working on programming projects as well as the usual university stuff like MATLAB, Maple, etc out "in the field", and sometimes for maybe a week when visiting my parents. What I'm looking at right now is the ASUS Zenbook UX31A with the 1920 x 1080 resolution on 13.3" IPS display. But I'm kinda nervous that this will be too petite for programming. In essence i'm looking for a powerfull computer, that has good enough battery, and looks good. I would love suggestions or any type of feedback, either with maybe a better choice, or input on how its like programming on 13" laptops. Very much thanks in advance for anyone who even went through all that! PS. I don't want a mac, or my inner karma would commit Seppuku xD But experiences from working on the 13" Macbook Air would kinda be equivalent to the Zenbook i'm considering, so I would love to hear that. tl;dr The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog ;)

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• How to hire support people?

  - by Martin

  I manage a tech support team at a mid-sized software company. We are the last line of support, so issues that we can't fix need to be escalated to the development team. When I joined the company, our team wasn't capable of much beyond using a specific set of troubleshooting steps to solve known issues and escalating anything else to the developers. It's always been a goal of mine for our team to shoulder as much of the support burden as possible without ever bothering a developer. Over the past few years, I, along with several new hires I've made, have made pretty good progress in that direction. We've coded our own troubleshooting tools which now ship with several of our products. When users have never-before-seen issues, we analyze stack traces and troubleshoot down to the code level, and if we need to submit a bug, half the time we've already identified in the code where in the code the bug is and offered a patch to fix it. Here's the problem I've always had: finding support people capable of the work I've described above is really difficult. I've hired 3 people in the past 3 years, and I've probably looked at several thousand resumes and conducted several hundred phone screens to do so. I know it's pretty well accepted that hiring good people is tough in the tech industry, but it seems that support is especially difficult -- there are clearly thousands of people walking around calling themselves support analysts, but 99%+ of them seemingly aren't capable of anything beyond reading a script. I'm curious if anyone has experience recruiting the sort of folks I'm talking about, and if you have any suggestions to share. We've tried all sorts of things -- different job titles/descriptions, using headhunters, etc. And while we've managed to hire a few good folks, it's basically taken us a year to find an appropriate candidate for each opening we've had, and I can't help but wonder if there's something we could be doing differently.

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• Would adding award points or game features to workplace software be viewed poorly amongst the programming community?

  - by Eric P

  So one of my responsibilities at work is to build an internal tool that helps the workers enter in all their information. It's an enterprise application that is similar to a Windows forms database tool. So it's not much different than like developing a Word + Excel combo application, but the average person in this workgroup is a 20-40 year old woman or a random chatty male type. Plus I know all of these people are heavily involved with Facebook on a daily basis. How bad would it be if I styled my new interface to be similar to what Facebook does. People could get award points and stuff when they fill out different types of forms and basically compete against each other like it was a game. When people had completed one, it would be posted on their wall and everyone could comment/like stuff just like in Facebook. And it would be like they are doing peer reviewing for fun. The rewards would be outstanding I would imagine. These people are so into Facebook and Facebook games that productivity would rise due to them trying to compete and earn points and achievements. Would this be taking advantage of the people by 'tricking them into working harder by giving them a game' or would it be viewed as something that would improve happiness at work?

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• Is Linq having a mind-numbing effect on .NET programmers?

  - by Aaronaught

  A lot of us started seeing this phenomenon with jQuery about a year ago when people started asking how to do absolutely insane things like retrieve the query string with jQuery. The difference between the library (jQuery) and the language (JavaScript) is apparently lost on many programmers, and results in a lot of inappropriate, convoluted code being written where it is not necessary. Maybe it's just my imagination, but I swear I'm starting to see an uptick in the number of questions where people are asking to do similarly insane things with Linq, like find ranges in a sorted array. I can't get over how thoroughly inappropriate the Linq extensions are for solving that problem, but more importantly the fact that the author just assumed that the ideal solution would involve Linq without actually thinking about it (as far as I can tell). It seems that we are repeating history, breeding a new generation of .NET programmers who can't tell the difference between the language (C#/VB.NET) and the library (Linq). What is responsible for this phenomenon? Is it just hype? Magpie tendencies? Has Linq picked up a reputation as a form of magic, where instead of actually writing code you just have to utter the right incantation? I'm hardly satisfied with those explanations but I can't really think of anything else. More importantly, is it really a problem, and if so, what's the best way to help enlighten these people?

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• Open source license with backlink requirement

  - by KajMagnus

  I'm developing a Javascript library, and I'm thinking about releasing it under an open source license (e.g. GPL, BSD, MIT) — but that requires that websites that use the software link back to my website. Do you know about any such licenses? And how have they formulated the attribution part of the license text? Do you think this BSD-license would do what you think that I want? (I suppose it doesn't :-)) [...] 3. Each website that redistributes this work must include a visible rel=follow link to my-website.example.com, reachable via rel=follow links from each page where the software is being redistributed. (For example, you could have a link back to your homepage, and from your homepage to an About-Us section, which could link to a Credits section) I realize that some companies wouldn't want to use the library because of legal issues with interpreting non-standard licenses (have a look at this answer: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/a/156859/54906). — After half a year, or perhaps some years, I'd change the license to plain GPL + MIT.

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• An Oracle Event for Your Facility & Equipment Maintenance Staff

  - by Mark Rosenberg

  The 7th Annual Oracle Maintenance Summit will occur February 4 – 6, 2013 at the Hyatt Regency San Francisco. This year, the Maintenance Summit will be one of the major pillars of a larger Oracle Value Chain Summit. What makes this event different from the other events hosted by Oracle and the PeopleSoft Community’s various user groups is that it is specifically meant to provide a venue for the facility and equipment maintenance community to talk about all things related to maintenance.  Maintenance Planners, Maintenance Schedulers, Vice Presidents and Directors of Physical Plant, Operations Managers, Craft Supervisors, IT management, and IT analysts typically attend this event and find it to be a very valuable experience. The Maintenance pillar will provide the same atmosphere and opportunity to hear from PeopleSoft Maintenance Management customers, Oracle Product Strategy, and partners, as in past years.  For more information, you can access the registration website for the Value Chain Summit. For existing PeopleSoft Maintenance Management customers…if you are interested in participating in the PeopleSoft Maintenance Management Focus Group in which Oracle discusses product roadmap topics with the community of customers who have licensed the PeopleSoft Maintenance Management application, please contact [email protected], [email protected], or [email protected]. The Focus Group will meet on February 7th, and attendance is by invitation only.We look forward to seeing you in San Francisco! P.S.  The Early Bird registration fee is $195. Register before December 31 to take advantage of this introductory low price, as the registration fee will go up to $295 after that date.

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• JavaOne 2012 Conference Preview

  - by Janice J. Heiss

  A new article, by noted freelancer Steve Meloan, now up on otn/java, titled “JavaOne 2012 Conference Preview,” looks ahead to the fast approaching JavaOne 2012 Conference, scheduled for September 30-October 4 in San Francisco. The Conference will celebrate and highlight one of the world’s leading technologies. As Meloan states, “With 9 million Java developers worldwide, 5 billion Java cards in use, 3 billion mobile phones running Java, 1 billion Java downloads each year, and 100 percent of Blu-ray disk players and 97 percent of enterprise desktops running Java, Java is a technology that literally permeates our world.”The 2012 JavaOne is organized under seven technical tracks:* Core Java Platform* Development Tools and Techniques* Emerging Languages on the JVM* Enterprise Service Architectures and the Cloud* Java EE Web Profile and Platform Technologies* Java ME, Java Card, Embedded, and Devices* JavaFX and Rich User ExperiencesConference keynotes will lay out the Java roadmap. For the Sunday keynote, such Oracle luminaries as Cameron Purdy, Vice President of Development; Nandini Ramani, Vice President of Engineering, Java Client and Mobile Platforms; Richard Bair, Chief Architect, Client Java Platform; and Mark Reinhold, Chief Architect, Java Platform will be presenting.For the Thursday IBM keynote, Jason McGee, Distinguished Engineer and Chief Architect for IBM PureApplication System, and John Duimovich, Java CTO and IBM Distinguished Engineer, will explore Java and IBM's cloud-based initiatives.All in all, the JavaOne 2012 Conference should be as exciting as ever.Link to the article here. Originally published on blogs.oracle.com/javaone.

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• JavaOne 2012 Conference Preview

  - by Janice J. Heiss

  A new article, by noted freelancer Steve Meloan, now up on otn/java, titled “JavaOne 2012 Conference Preview,” looks ahead to the fast approaching JavaOne 2012 Conference, scheduled for September 30-October 4 in San Francisco. The Conference will celebrate and highlight one of the world’s leading technologies. As Meloan states, “With 9 million Java developers worldwide, 5 billion Java cards in use, 3 billion mobile phones running Java, 1 billion Java downloads each year, and 100 percent of Blu-ray disk players and 97 percent of enterprise desktops running Java, Java is a technology that literally permeates our world.” The 2012 JavaOne is organized under seven technical tracks: * Core Java Platform* Development Tools and Techniques* Emerging Languages on the JVM* Enterprise Service Architectures and the Cloud* Java EE Web Profile and Platform Technologies* Java ME, Java Card, Embedded, and Devices* JavaFX and Rich User Experiences Conference keynotes will lay out the Java roadmap. For the Sunday keynote, such Oracle luminaries as Cameron Purdy, Vice President of Development; Nandini Ramani, Vice President of Engineering, Java Client and Mobile Platforms; Richard Bair, Chief Architect, Client Java Platform; and Mark Reinhold, Chief Architect, Java Platform will be presenting. For the Thursday IBM keynote, Jason McGee, Distinguished Engineer and Chief Architect for IBM PureApplication System, and John Duimovich, Java CTO and IBM Distinguished Engineer, will explore Java and IBM's cloud-based initiatives.All in all, the JavaOne 2012 Conference should be as exciting as ever. Link to the article here.

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• Oracle Supply Chain at Pella Showcase, April 24-25, 2012

  - by Stephen Slade

  Nothing promtes a product like a grest customer testimony! For nearly a decade, Pella has been holding these 'open-houses' or Showcases as they are called, to illustrate the utilization of Oracle products in their operations. Building custom windows and doors is not an easy task.  With about a trillion combinations of unique sizes, colors and features availalbe, getting the complex multi-unit custom order wrong can be easy to do. I've been to a few of these Showcases and each time,  continually impressed by the precision, best practices and lean disciplines enacted at Pella. Operations representatives and users at Pella, demonstrate the way in which they use Oracle Supply Chain products to deliver fulfillment excellence. Orders are all custom made and delivered in about a week.  Factory tours are conducted and visitors have a chance to see Oracle in operation on the shop floor, driving informational flow and order accuracy in the 99+% range.  It's a must see for anyone considering expansion of their supply chain footprint.  The event is April 24-25 in Pella Iowa, outside Des Moines.   This year, there is a seperate track for CIOs and executives. Register at 1.800.820.5592  - ask for event 10281

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• ArchBeat Link-o-Rama for November 20, 2012

  - by Bob Rhubart

  Oracle Utilities Application Framework V4.2.0.0.0 Released | Anthony Shorten Principal Product Manager Anthony Shorten shares an overview of the changes implemented in the new release. Towards Ultra-Reusability for ADF - Adaptive Bindings | Duncan Mills "The task flow mechanism embodies one of the key value propositions of the ADF Framework," says Duncan Mills. "However, what if we could do more? How could we make task flows even more re-usable than they are today?" As you might expect, Duncan has answers for those questions. Oracle BPM Process Accelerators and process excellence | Andrew Richards "Process Accelerators are ready-to-deploy solutions based on best practices to simplify process management requirements," says Capgemini's Andrew Richards. "They are considered to be 'product grade,' meaning they have been designed; engineered, documented and tested by Oracle themselves to a level that they can be deployed as-is for a solution to a problem or extended as appropriate for a particular scenario." Oracle SOA Suite 11g PS 5 introduces BPEL with conditional correlation for aggregation scenarios | Lucas Jellema An extensive, detailed technical post from Oracle ACE Director Lucas Jellema. Check Box Support in ADF Tree Table Different Levels | Andrejus Baranovskis Oracle ACE Director Andrejus Baranovskis updates last year's "ADF Tree - How to Autoselect/Deselect Checkbox" post with new information. As Boom Lures App Creators, Tough Part Is Making a Living Great New York Times article about mobile app develoment also touches on other significant IT issues. Thought for the Day "Building large applications is still really difficult. Making them serve an organisation well for many years is almost impossible." — Malcolm P. Atkinson Source: SoftwareQuotes.com

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• Help finding good players that would display music library as folder structure

  - by cipricus

  I have a big music library. Nothing special here. But I very much dislike the way usually music library is displayed in most recommended players, according to Artist/Album/Year/Genre tags, ignoring my folder structure or making it hardly accessible. The problem is that not all my music is tagged according to genre etc, but all is perfectly ordered by folder structure which takes into account all characteristics handled by tags, as well as many others, which I can change and specify at any time. (I can decide ordering my music by country, inside a sub-category like "baroque music", for example). The advantage of using folder structure in displaying media library is that all the logical structure is displayed, with all sub-categories, which can vary and be changed, visible at the same time. Some Players, like Clementine and Quod Libet, can display folders, but when comes to displaying only the library, they still display it only by tags. I am looking for some plugins to good players that would provide a solution to this, and I am looking for different solutions to this. Therefore I'll display as my own answer some solutions that I have already found and welcome other answers with new and better ways to achieve the same purpose. (Most welcome are of course players that, beside having the capability discussed here, would include other elementary features like playlists in tabs, search, and so forth.)

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• CEO Taken Captive in His Own Factory?

  - by Stephen Slade

  Last Friday was no ordinary day for Chip Starnes, the 42 year old factory owner of Specialty Medical Supplies in China. He recently announced movement of some of the production of their diabetes testing equipment from Beijing to Mumbai India.  Of the 110 employees at the facility, about 80 protested by blocking the doors and refusing to let Chip Starnes out of the facility.  He has been trapped in his office several days now.  The employees think the factory was closing but Mr. Starnes said it was not. Mis-information? Poor communications? Work-stoppage. This is a good example of supply chain disruption. Parked cars are blocking the entrance to the facility, front gates are chained close, the CEO a prisoner in his own factory. Chip Starnes was presented with documents to sign in Chinese indicating he would pay severance and other demands he did not understand, possibly bankrupting the company.    If you depend on supply from China and other foreign suppliers, how reliable are your sources? For example how are the shopfloor employee relations? Is it possible to predict these types of HR risks and plan around them? What are your contingencies? It's important to ask the right questions and hear good answers. Having tools in place to rapidly evaluate, assess and react to these disruptions are the keys to survival. Hear how leading organizations are reinforcing their supply chains and mitigating risk through technology with Oracle's latest release of Oracle Supply Chain Management. Source: WSJ pg.B1, June 25, 2013

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• SQLRally Nordic gets underway

  - by Rob Farley

  PASS is becoming more international, which is great. The SQL Community has always been international – it’s not as if data is only generated in North America. And while it’s easy for organisations to have a North American focus, PASS is taking steps to become international. Regular readers will be aware that I’m one of three advisors to the PASS Board of Directors, with a focus on developing PASS as a more global organisation. With this in mind, it’s great that today is Day 1 of SQLRally Nordic, being hosted in in Sweden – not only a non-American country, but one that doesn’t have English as its major language. The event has been hosted by the amazing Johan Åhlén and Raoul Illyés, two guys who I met earlier this year, but the thing that amazes me is the incredible support that this event has from the SQL Community. It’s been sold out for a long time, and when you see the list of speakers, it’s not surprising. Some of the industry’s biggest names from Microsoft have turned up, including Mark Souza (who is also a PASS Director), Thomas Kejser and Tobias Thernström. Business Intelligence experts such as Jen Stirrup, Chris Webb, Peter Myers, Marco Russo and Alberto Ferrari are there, as are some of the most awarded SQL MVPs such as Itzik Ben-Gan, Aaron Bertrand and Kevin Kline. The sponsor list is also brilliant, with names such as HP, FusionIO, SQL Sentry, Quest and SolidQ complimented by Swedish companies like Cornerstone, Informator, B3IT and Addskills. As someone who is interested in PASS becoming global, I’m really excited to see this event happening, and I hope it’s a launch-pad into many other international events hosted by the SQL community. If you have the opportunity, thank Johan and Raoul for putting this event on, and the speakers and sponsors for helping support it. The noise from Twitter is that everything is going fantastically well, and everyone involved should be thoroughly congratulated! @rob_farley

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• Double audio cd ripping weirdness

  - by jqno

  Since I installed Ubuntu 12.04, Rhythmbox, Banshee and Sound Juicer have started acting weird around double cd's, and specifically, cd #2 of said double cd. Sometimes, they will show the information of cd #1. Track names, durations, and even count are incorrect. Sometimes, they will first show the tracks for cd #1, then continue onto cd #2 if cd #2 has more tracks than #1. Sound Juicer seems to be unable to find any track durations at all, even for single cd's. Obviously, this is a pain when I'm trying to rip double cd's. And I have a fair number of them, which I want to rip. This happens on both my machines (a slightly aging iMac, and a 1-year-old Sony Vaio). However, on previous versions of Ubuntu, this never happened. All on the same machines. So I suspect 12.04 is using a different lib for extracting audio cd data. Just for kicks, I tried with Linux Mint 13, and there it works correctly, even though it claims to be based on Ubuntu 12.04 and therefore should be using (partially) the same software. So if the Mint guys can fix it, I should be able to do it too, right? So, my question: what changed in 12.04 that could cause this? And more importantly: what can I do to fix it?

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• MDX needs a function or macro syntax

  - by Darren Gosbell

  I was having an interesting discussion with a few people about the impact of named sets on performance (the same discussion noted by Chris Webb here: http://cwebbbi.wordpress.com/2011/03/16/referencing-named-sets-in-calculations). And apparently the core of the performance issue comes down to the way named sets are materialized within the SSAS engine. Which lead me to the thought that what we really need is a syntax for declaring a non-materialized set or to take this even further a way of declaring an MDX expression as function or macro so that it can be re-used in multiple places. Because sometimes you do want the set materialised, such as when you use an ordered set for calculating rankings. But a lot of the time we just want to make our MDX modular and want to avoid having to repeat the same code over and over. I did some searches on connect and could not find any similar suggestions so I posted one here: https://connect.microsoft.com/SQLServer/feedback/details/651646/mdx-macro-or-function-syntax Although apparently I did not search quite hard enough as Chris Webb made a similar suggestion some time ago, although he also included a request for true MDX stored procedures (not the .Net style stored procs that we have at the moment): https://connect.microsoft.com/SQLServer/feedback/details/473694/create-parameterised-queries-and-functions-on-the-server Chris also pointed out this post that he did last year http://cwebbbi.wordpress.com/2010/09/13/iccube/ where he pointed out that the icCube product already has this sort of functionality. So if you think either or both of these suggestions is a good idea then I would encourage you to click on the links and vote for them.

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• IT Optimization Plan Pays Off For UK Retailer

  - by [email protected]

  I caught this article in ComputerworldUK yesterday. The headline talks about UK-based supermarket chain Morrisons is increasing their IT spend...OK, sounds good. Even nicer that Oracle is a big part of that. But what caught my eye were three things: 1) Morrison's truly has a long term strategy for IT. In this case, modernizing and optimizing how they use IT for business advantage. 2) Even in a tough economic climate, Morrison's views IT investments as contributing to and improving the bottom line. Specifically, "The investment in IT contributed to a 21 percent increase in Morrison's underlying profit.." 3) The phased, 3-year "Optimization Plan" took a holistic approach to their business--from CRM and Supply Chain systems to the underlying application infrastructure. On the infrastructure front, adopting a more flexible Service-Oriented Architecture enabled them to be more agile and adapt their business and Identity Management helped with sometimes mundane (but costly) issues like lost passwords and being able to document who has access to what. Things don't always turn out so rosy. And I know it was a long and difficult process...but it's nice to see a happy ending every once in a while.

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• Only 5 days left...your vote is needed!

  - by mvaughan

       By Misha Vaughan, Oracle Applications User Experience It is a bit early for the voting season here in the U.S., but there is a very important (to me) voting window now upon us. Until Aug. 31, the public gets to vote on submissions to South by Southwest (SXSW) Interactive in Austin, Texas, in March 2013. This is a thought-leading software conference discussing the up-and-coming trends in industry. I have attended the interactive and the music portions of SXSW before, but I have never attempted a submission. This is my first year trying.  I am building on the themes from this conversation on simplicity with Jeremy Ashley for Oracle OpenWorld 2012. The SXSW session will be a chance to share best practices for moving designs that focus on simplicity successfully through an organization. Please take a moment and cast your vote.  Help me get Oracle on the roster at SXSW! There are only five days left to vote! My colleague Ultan O’Broin has also submitted, and I encourage you to vote for his sessions as well. 

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