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• Setting up Ubuntu on my mother's computer

  - by idealmachine

  Intended use My mother had an old Compaq desktop computer running Windows 98, which she used for occasional Web browsing and playing cards. The name of her card game is Hoyle Card Games 3. Although I had to repair it several times over the last 10 years, it worked fine until it finally died at the end of last year. Hardware specifications A relative brought up a newer computer soon afterward: Operating system: Windows XP Asus K8N motherboard (with broken on-board sound; getting a sound card) Athlon 64? processor (don't remember the clock speed) 512 MB RAM Hope the graphics card works... Replacement sound card will be one of: Ensoniq ES1370 AudioPCI Diamond Monster Sound MX300 (Aureal chipset) Sound Blaster Audigy 2 SE Peripherals HP Scanjet 3400c scanner (USB connected) HP LaserJet multi-function printer (parallel port connected, and printing works with a PCL driver) Same serial mouse as old computer Question I had set up an SSH/VNC connection to allow for remotely working out problems. Or so I thought. A month later, the computer would not boot, rendering the SSH connection useless and an OS reinstall necessary. Unfortunately, I have neither the original Windows disc nor the product key. Unless I were to pay $200 for a full Windows 7 Home Premium license for my computer, I would not be able to re-install Windows XP on hers. I consider myself an advanced Linux user, having used Debian for years. So here are my questions. I have only one day to decide whether to use Ubuntu or buy Windows: A quick search leads me to believe all the hardware listed above is supposed to work with Linux, but am I mistaken? Would Ubuntu/Xubuntu suffice (specify which one if it matters), or would I be better off paying the $200 necessary for Windows XP? Is the card game likely to run on Wine? I believe the minimum system requirement is Windows 95. Failing Wine compatibility, will VirtualBox run fast enough on such a computer (Windows 98 as the guest OS)? Are there any free card games just as good? She plays mainly Bridge, Poker, and Solitaire. Is there any "Large Fonts" option for those with poor vision? The lack of it would be a big disadvantage. BONUS: Although I would probably replace the old mouse upon a move to Ubuntu, is it even possible to get a serial mouse working?

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• eSTEP Newsletter December 2012

  - by uwes

  Dear Partners,We would like to inform you that the December issue of our Newsletter is now available.The issue contains informations to the following topics: Notes from Corporate: It's Earth day - Every Day, Oracle SPARC Newsletter, Pre-Built Developer VMs (for Oracle VM VirtualBox), Oracle Database Appliance Now Certified by SAP, Database High Availability, Cultivating Business-Led Innovation Technical Corner: Geek Fest! Talking About the Design of the T4 and T5 SPARC Chips, Blog: Is This Your Idea of Disaster Recovery?; Oracle® Practitioner Guide - A Pragmatic Approach to Cloud Adoption; Oracle Practitioner Guide: A pragmatic Approach to Cloud Adoption; Darren Moffat Explains the new ZFS Encryption Features in Solaris 11.1; Command Summary: Basic Operations with the Image Packaging System; SPARC T4 Server Delivers Outstanding Performance on Oracle Business Intelligence Enterprise Edition 11g; SPARC T4-4 Servers Set First World Record on PeopleSoft HCM 9.1 Benchmark; Sun ZFS Appliance Monitor Refresh: Core Factor Table; Remanufactured Systems Program for Sun Systems from Oracle; Reminder: Oracle Premier Support for Systems; Reminder: Oracle Platinum Services Learning & Events: eSTEP Events Schedule; Recently Delivered Techcasts; Webinar: Maximum Availibility with Oracle GoldenGate References: LUKOIL Overseas Holding Optimizes Oil Field Development Projects with Integrated Project Management; United Networks Increases Accounting Flexibility and Boosts System Performance with ERP Applications Upgrade; Ziggo Rapidly Creates Applications That Accelerate Communications-Service Orders l How to ...: The Role of Oracle Solaris Zones and Oracle Linux Containers in a Virtualization Strategy; How to Update to Oracle Solaris 11.1; Using svcbundle to Create Manifests and Profiles in Oracle Solaris 11.1; How to Migrate Your Data to Oracle Solaris 11 Using Shadow Migration; How to Script Oracle Solaris 11.1 Zones for Easy Cloning; How to Script Oracle Solaris 11 Zones Creation for a Network-in-a-Box Configuration; How to Know Whether T4 Crypto Accelerators Are in Use; Fault Handling and Prevention – Part 1; Transforming and Consolidating Web Data with Oracle Database; Looking Under the Hood at Networking in Oracle VM Server for x86; Best Way to Migrate Data from Legacy File System to ZFS in Oracle Solaris 11; Special Year End Article: The Top 10 Strategic CIO Issues For 2013 You find the Newsletter on our portal under eSTEP News ---> Latest Newsletter. You will need to provide your email address and the pin below to get access. Link to the portal is shown below.URL: http://launch.oracle.com/PIN: eSTEP_2011Previous published Newsletters can be found under the Archived Newsletters section and more useful information under the Events, Download and Links tab. Feel free to explore and any feedback is appreciated to help us improve the service and information we deliver.Thanks and best regards,Partner HW Enablement EMEA

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• Unable to ping inside or outside network with default gateway 0.0.0.0

  - by agentroadkill

  I've been around here before and I could usually piece together everything to more or less get myself up and running, but this time I'm truly stumped. I'm trying to connect my new 14.04 install to a network, and I'm forced to be behind my college's router. Now I've tested the vary cable that is right now plugged into my Ubuntu box on a Windows, Mac OS X, and even my friend's Ubuntu 14.04 box, and they all connect no problem. I've been trying to track this down for about two days, but every time I get close to it, the bug jumps to some other piece of my connection. Anyway, as it sits ifconfig -a gives: eth2 Lninkencap:Ethernet HWaddr:00:1f:bc:08:31:1d inet addr:10.32.51.51 Bcast:10.32.51.155 Mask: 255.255.255.0 UP BROADCAST MULTICAST MTU:1500 Metric:1 RX packets:0 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0 TX packets:0 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0 RX bytes:0 TX bytes:0 as well as the local loopback, but I'm assuming that is not an issue here. sudo dhclient -v eth2 returns: Listening on LPF/<hardware address of my integrated NIC, above> Sending on <same> Sending on Socket/fallback DHCPREQUEST of 10.32.51.51 on eth2 to 255.255.255.255 port 67 (xid=0x6f4a66ba) <two more lines of same> DHCPDISCOVER on eth2 to 255.255.255.255 port 67 interval 3 (xid=0x156f9fb4) <many more of above with varying intervals> No DHCPOFFERS received. Trying recorded lease 10.32.51.51 RTNETLINK answers: File exists bound: renewal in <large number> seconds If I then try ping 8.8.8.8, I get: connect: Network is unreachable /etc/resolv.conf only contains the two lines telling you not to edit it, while /etc/network/interfaces only has the loopback interface block in it. I've tried commenting out the "option rfc3442" line in /etc/dhcp/dhclient.conf which seemed to fix this issue for many people, as well as adding the line send vendor-class-indentifier "MSFT5.0" to dhclient.conf as well to tell the router I'm a windows box, in case they don't like Linux. Finally, route -n reveals: Destination Gateway Genmask Flags Metric Ref Use Iface 10.32.51.0 0.0.0.0 255.255.255.0 U 0 0 0 eth2 I would like to apologize in advance for the doubtless butchered text alignment, but I'm obviously typing this all by hand, reading from the terminal as I type commands. I'm hoping this is an interesting problem, and not something I blithely stumbled past in my (apparent) over-confidence. TIA! Quick addendum before posting: The activity light on the ethernet port are lit and one blinks during boot, but they rarely (and seemingly randomly) do so afterwards (both are dark) even while running dhclient in the foreground. When I had the Ubuntu box tethered to my MacBook earlier, I got what looked like a normal power/uplink blinking pattern, but was unable to ping one from the other.

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• Arçelik A.S. Uses Advanced Analytics to Improve Product Development

  - by Sylvie MacKenzie, PMP

  "Oracle’s Primavera P6 Enterprise Project Portfolio Management’s advanced analytics gives us better insight into the product development process by helping us to identify potential roadblocks.” – Iffet Iyigun Meydanli, Innovation and System Development Manager, R&D Center, Arçelik A.S. Founded in 1955, Arçelik A.S. is now the leading household appliance manufacturer in Turkey, and the third-largest household appliance company in Europe. It operates 14 production facilities in five countries (Turkey, Romania, Russia, China, and South Africa), with international sales and marketing offices in 20 countries. Additionally, the company manages 10 brands (Arçelik, Beko, Grundig, Blomberg, Elektrabregenz, Arctic, Leisure, Flavel, Defy, and Altus). The company has a household presence in more than 100 countries, including China and the United States. Arçelik’s Beko brand is among the top-10 household appliance brands in world, as a market leader for refrigerators, freezers, and washing machines in the United Kingdom. Arçelik implemented Oracle’s Primavera P6 Enterprise Project Portfolio Management for improved management of its design and manufacturing projects. With the solution, Arelik has improved its research and development (R&D) with the ability to evaluate technology risks when planning its projects. Also, it is now more easy to make plans for several locations, monitor all resources, and plan for future projects.  Challenges Improve monitoring of R&D resources?including human resources and critical laboratory equipment?to optimize management of the company’s R&D project portfolio Establish a transparent project platform to enable better product and process planning, gain insight into product performance, and facilitate advanced analytics that support R&D and overall business decisions Identify potential roadblocks for better risk management Solutions Worked with Oracle Partner PRM to implement Oracle’s Primavera P6 Enterprise Project Portfolio Management to manage the entire household-appliance, R&D project portfolio lifecycle, enabling managers and project leaders to better track and monitor resources and deliverables in real time Improved risk analysis and evaluation abilities for R&D projects Supported long-term planning needs Used advanced reporting features to capture data needed for budgeting and other project details, including employee performance evaluations Improved monitoring abilities and insight into the overall performance of products postproduction Enabled flexible, fast, and customized reporting with the P6 dashboard on a centralized platform to meet custom reporting needs for project leaders and support on-time and on-budget deliverables Integrated with other corporate departments, such as accounts payable, to upload project invoice data into the Primavera solution and the company’s e-mail system, so that project leaders will be alerted about milestones and other project related information Partner“Oracle Partner PRM provided us with a quick, reliable, and solution-focused approach to its support,” said Iffet Iyigun Meydanli, innovation and system development manager, R&D Center, Arçelik A.S. “The company’s service covered the entire spectrum of our needs, including implementation, training, configuration, problem solving, and integration.”

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• Are we ready for the Cloud computing era?

  - by andrewkatumba

  Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin-top:0in; mso-para-margin-right:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:10.0pt; mso-para-margin-left:0in; line-height:115%; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:11.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-ascii-font-family:Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-fareast; mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin;} "Elite?" developer circles are abuzz with the notion of Cloud computing . The increasing bandwidth, the desire for faster and leaner operations and ofcourse the need for outsourcing non core it related business requirements e.g wordprocessing, spreadsheets, data backups. In strolls Chrome OS (am sure other similar OSes will join with their own wagons for us to jump on), offering just that, internet based services(more like a repository of), quick efficient and "reliable" and for the most part cheap and often time even free! And we all go rhapsodic!  It boils down to the age old dilemma, "if the cops are so busy protecting us then who will protect them" (even the folks back at Hollywood keep us reminded)! Who is going to ensure that these internet based services do not go down(either intentionally or by some malicious third party) leading to a multinational colossal disaster .At the risk of sounding pessimistic,  IT IS NOT AN ISSUE OF TRUST, this is but a mere case of Murphy's Law!  What then? Should the "cloud" be trusted to this extent at this time?  This is an era where challenges are rapidly solved with lightning promptness to "beat the competition", my hope is that our solutions are not just creating problems that we may not be able to solve!  Keeping my ear on the Ground.

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• Data Virtualization: Federated and Hybrid

  - by Krishnamoorthy

  Data becomes useful when it can be leveraged at the right time. Not only enterprises application stores operate on large volume, velocity and variety of data. Mobile and social computing are in the need of operating in foresaid data. Replicating and transferring large swaths of data is one challenge faced in the field of data integration. However, smaller chunks of data aggregated from a variety of sources presents and even more interesting challenge in the industry. Over the past few decades, technology trends focused on best user experience, operating systems, high performance computing, high performance web sites, analysis of warehouse data, service oriented architecture, social computing, cloud computing, and big data. Operating on the ‘dark data’ becomes mandatory in the future technology trend, although, no solution can make dark data useful data in a single day. Useful data can be quantified by the facts of contextual, personalized and on time delivery. In most cases, data from a single source may not be complete the picture. Data has to be combined and computed from various sources, where data may be captured as hybrid data, meaning the combination of structured and unstructured data. Since related data is often found across disparate sources, effectively integrating these sources determines how useful this data ultimately becomes. Technology trends in 2013 are expected to focus on big data and private cloud. Consumers are not merely interested in where data is located or how data is retrieved and computed. Consumers are interested in how quick and how the data can be leveraged. In many cases, data virtualization is the right solution, and is expected to play a foundational role for SOA, Cloud integration, and Big Data. The Oracle Data Integration portfolio includes a data virtualization product called ODSI (Oracle Data Service Integrator). Unlike other data virtualization solutions, ODSI can perform both read and write operations on federated/hybrid data (RDBMS, Webservices,  delimited file and XML). The ODSI Engine is built on XQuery, hence ODSI user can perform computations on data either using XQuery or SQL. Built in data and query caching features, which reduces latency in repetitive calls. Rightly positioning ODSI, can results in a highly scalable model, reducing spend on additional hardware infrastructure.

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• Professional immigration

  - by etranger

  Hello all, Does anyone here have a practical advice on professional relocation from Russia to Europe? The reasons behind making such a decision are far beyond the subject, perhaps, so I'll stick to the practical part. Having done some of the "common stuff" for finding a job, I am now facing two serious problems: I am a "dual-class" person, with university degree in marketing, and multiple years of self-studied computer competence (hence my writing here). Have professional experience in both areas. I don't currently hold a European work permit. From what I can see, this results in normal HR person throwing out my CV as either being "overqualified" or "too much trouble with making the permit". I do have the skills and character to start my own business, but it requires start-up capital that I don't have, over the last years I had to pay high bills for medical treatment of my family member, who had deceased. Now, I'm almost out of debts. As you can probably guess, English is not a problem, and I'm open to new languages, but first steps of entering the market, or the society, is the problematic part. I live close to Norway, and am trying to get some professional contacts there, but it hasn't got me any practical perspective so far. Any advice is greatly appreciated. EDIT: I am currently making my living off web site development, and occasional consulting services both in IT and marketing. For purely geographic reasons I'm dealing with clients that reside in the same city where I live, pop. 350 000. Being quite local, market requirements for web sites are simple and stable — clients need to control navigation, write articles in a word-like editor, upload illustrations and place ad banners, all with no additional programming. As many web developers do, I'm using my own content management system that fits these expectations. I have also started developing a newer version of this system that has better support for international environments, but I'm too distant from the real market demand in Europe to speak of the right track here. Technically it's based on php/mysql and uses xslt for templating. It allows for quick website deployment, and has architectural neatness, lack of which made me abandon similar opensource solutions (Joomla and the like). Deploying time from rasterized design proofs is normally under 6-8 working hours, don't know how that compares to the world practice. EDIT 2: Can anyone share what Norwegian (Scandinavian) web solutions market currently demands?

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• WebLogic Silent Install 11.1.1.4 (WLS 10.3.4)

  - by john.graves(at)oracle.com

  This is just a quick note to remind myself of how incredibly easy it is to install the base products without the aid of a mouse! Note to Windoze users: Why?!?!  I’m only showing Linux examples in this blog so I encourage you to just say NO to win-no-z  install.sh !/bin/bash ./wls1034_oepe111161_linux32.bin -mode=silent -silent_xml=./silent.xml silent.xml <?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?> <bea-installer> <input-fields> <data-value name="BEAHOME" value="/opt/app/wls10.3.4" /> <data-value name="WLS_INSTALL_DIR" value="/opt/app/wls10.3.4/wlserver_10.3" /> </input-fields> </bea-installer> .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; } Note about Oracle_Home: Since all products are moving to a common WLS base, I simply use the WLS version as my Oracle Home.  In this case wls10.3.4.  Also, I keep my user_projects outside my Oracle_Home directory to keep things clean.  I typically use /opt/app/user_projects or a variation of that.

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• Get AutoHotkey Script To Run As Admin At Startup

  - by deadlydog

  A few weeks back I posted some problems with running AutoHotkey (AHK) in Windows 8, and that the solution was to run your AHK script as admin.  I also showed how to have the script start automatically when you logged into Windows.  What I didn’t realize at the time though was that the method only worked because I had disabled UAC in the registry (which prevents most Metro apps from working in Windows 8, and likely isn’t acceptable for most people). So here is a Windows 8, UAC-friendly method to accomplish the same task (also works in previous versions of Windows).  The trick is to use the Task Scheduler: 1. Open the Task Scheduler (also known as “Schedule tasks” in Windows 8 Settings).   2. Create a new Basic Task. 3. Give it a name and description (something like “launch AutoHotkey script at login”), and then specify to have it run “When I log on”.  Then specify that you want it to “Start a program”, and then point it towards your AutoHotkey script.  Before you finish the wizard, check off “Open the Properties dialog for this task when I click Finish”.   4. When that Properties dialog opens up, go to the Conditions tab and make sure none of the checkboxes under the Power category are checked off; this will ensure the script still launches if you are on a laptop and not plugged into AC power.   5. Now here is the important part; To have your script “Run as admin”, on the General tab check off “Run with highest privileges”. Now your AHK script should start automatically as soon as you log into Windows; even when UAC is enabled   6. If your AHK script uses an #Include statement to include other files, you may get an error similar to this one when your task runs: “#Include file … cannot be opened. The program will exit.” The solution to this is to tell your AHK script to start in the same directory as the file that you want to include.  So you will need to edit your scheduled task’s Action to specify the Start In directory. Happy coding!

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• Use Expressions with LINQ to Entities

  - by EltonStoneman

  [Source: http://geekswithblogs.net/EltonStoneman] Recently I've been putting together a generic approach for paging the response from a WCF service. Paging changes the service signature, so it's not as simple as adding a behavior to an existing service in config, but the complexity of the paging is isolated in a generic base class. We're using the Entity Framework talking to SQL Server, so when we ask for a page using LINQ's .Take() method we get a nice efficient SQL query for just the rows we want, with minimal impact on SQL Server and network traffic. We use the maximum ID of the record returned as a high-water mark (rather than using .Skip() to go to the next record), so the approach caters for records being deleted between page requests. In the paged response we include a HasMorePages indicator, computed by comparing the max ID in the page of results to the max ID for the whole resultset - if the latter is bigger, then there are more pages. In some quick performance testing, the paged version of the service performed much more slowly than the unpaged version, which was unexpected. We narrowed it down to the code which gets the max ID for the full resultset - instead of building an efficient MAX() SQL query, EF was returning the whole resultset and then computing the max ID in the service layer. It's easy to reproduce - take this AdventureWorks query:             var context = new AdventureWorksEntities();             var query = from od in context.SalesOrderDetail                         where od.ModifiedDate >= modified                          && od.SalesOrderDetailID.CompareTo(id) > 0                         orderby od.SalesOrderDetailID                         select od;   We can find the maximum SalesOrderDetailID like this:             var maxIdEfficiently = query.Max(od => od.SalesOrderDetailID);   which produces our efficient MAX() SQL query. If we're doing this generically and we already have the ID function in a Func:             Func<SalesOrderDetail, int> idFunc = od => od.SalesOrderDetailID;             var maxIdInefficiently = query.Max(idFunc);   This fetches all the results from the query and then runs the Max() function in code. If you look at the difference in Reflector, the first call passes an Expression to the Max(), while the second call passes a Func. So it's an easy fix - wrap the Func in an Expression:             Expression<Func<SalesOrderDetail, int>> idExpression = od => od.SalesOrderDetailID;             var maxIdEfficientlyAgain = query.Max(idExpression);   - and we're back to running an efficient MAX() statement. Evidently the EF provider can dissect an Expression and build its equivalent in SQL, but it can't do that with Funcs.

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• Announcing the Next AppAdvantage IT Leader Documentary

  - by Tanu Sood

  Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 Close on the heels of the very successful launch of Oracle BPM 12c, we are so excited to be announcing the next video in the Oracle AppAdvantage IT Leaders Series. As you know, the Oracle AppAdvantage IT Leaders Series profiles a successful executive in an industry leading organization that has embarked on a business transformation or platform modernization journey by taking full advantage of the Oracle AppAdvantage pace layered architecture. Tune in on Tuesday, September 9th at 10 am Pacific/1 pm Eastern to catch our IT executive, Regis Louis in an in-depth conversation with IT executives from Siram S.p.a., a major energy services management company in Italy. The documentary will explore how the company is doing process orchestration and business process management to build inter-department collaboration, maintain data integrity and offer complete transparency throughout their Request for Proposal (RFP) process. Oracle’s technology expert will then do a comprehensive walk-through of Siram’s IT model, the various components and how Oracle Fusion Middleware technologies are enabling their Oracle E-Business Suite processes. Experts will be at hand to answer your questions live. Check out this live documentary webcast and find out how organizations like yours are building business agility leveraging existing investments in Oracle Applications. Register today. And if you are on twitter, send your questions to @OracleMiddle with #ITLeader, #AppAdvantage. We look forward to connecting with you on Tue, Sep 9. Siram Achieves Commercial Efficiency with Improved Business Process Agility Date: Tuesday, September 9, 2014 Time: 10:00 AM PT / 1:00 PM ET /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin-top:0in; mso-para-margin-right:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:10.0pt; mso-para-margin-left:0in; line-height:115%; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-ascii- mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-fareast; mso-hansi- mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;}

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• Multiplayer tile based movement synchronization

  - by Mars

  I have to synchronize the movement of multiple players over the Internet, and I'm trying to figure out the safest way to do that. The game is tile based, you can only move in 4 directions, and every move moves the sprite 32px (over time of course). Now, if I would simply send this move action to the server, which would broadcast it to all players, while the walk key is kept being pressed down, to keep walking, I have to take this next command, send it to the server, and to all clients, in time, or the movement won't be smooth anymore. I saw this in other games, and it can get ugly pretty quick, even without lag. So I'm wondering if this is even a viable option. This seems like a very good method for single player though, since it's easy, straight forward (, just take the next movement action in time and add it to a list), and you can easily add mouse movement (clicking on some tile), to add a path to a queue, that's walked along. The other thing that came to my mind was sending the information that someone started moving in some direction, and again once he stopped or changed the direction, together with the position, so that the sprite will appear at the correct position, or rather so that the position can be fixed if it's wrong. This should (hopefully) only make problems if someone really is lagging, in which case it's to be expected. For this to work out I'd need some kind of queue though, where incoming direction changes and stuff are saved, so the sprite knows where to go, after the current movement to the next tile is finished. This could actually work, but kinda sounds overcomplicated. Although it might be the only way to do this, without risk of stuttering. If a stop or direction change is received on the client side it's saved in a queue and the char keeps moving to the specified coordinates, before stopping or changing direction. If the new command comes in too late there'll be stuttering as well of course... I'm having a hard time deciding for a method, and I couldn't really find any examples for this yet. My main problem is keeping the tile movement smooth, which is why other topics regarding synchronization of pixel based movement aren't helping too much. What is the "standard" way to do this?

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• S11 launched

  - by unixman

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

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• Getting a virus is *very* annoying

  - by bconlon

  I spent most of yesterday removing an annoying virus from my PC. I feel slightly foolish for getting one in the first place, but after so many years I guess I was always going to eventually succumb. I was also a little surprised at the failure of various tools at removing it. The virus would redirect the browser to websites including ‘licosearch’, ‘hugosearch’ and ‘facebook’, and the disk would be thrashing away infecting dlls in some way. I had the full up to date version of McAfee installed. This identified that there was an issue in some dlls on the system and was able to ‘fix’ them. But they kept getting re-infected. So I installed Microsoft Security Essentials and this too was able to identify and ‘fix’ the infected dlls. The system scans take forever and I really expected better results. I also tried Malwarebytes, Hitman Pro, AVG and Sophos to no avail. Eventually I thought I’d investigate myself. It turned out that on reboot, the virus would start 3 instances of Firefox.exe which I’m guessing would do bad things including infecting as many dlls on the system as possible. I removed Firefox and the virus cleverly then launched 3 instances of Chrome! So I uninstalled Chrome and yes, it then started to launch 3 instances of iexplore.exe. If I’m honest, by this stage I was just seeing if it would be able to use any of the browsers! As it was starting these on reboot, I looked in my User Startup folder and there was a <randomly named>.exe and several log files. I deleted these and rebooted. When I looked they had been recreated. So I then looked in the registry Run and RunOnce entries: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Run. Sure enough there were entries to run a file in C:\Program Files\<random name folder>\<random name file>.exe. I deleted this and rebooted and it was fixed. I also looked in the event log and found a warning that Winlogon had failed to start the file C:\Program Files\<random name folder>\<random name file>.exe So I also checked HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Winlogon and this entry had also been changed. Finally I ran a full system scan to clean up any infected dlls. I hope it’s gone for good!  #

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• eSTEP Newsletter for October 2013 Now Available

  - by Cinzia Mascanzoni

  The October'13 issue of our Newsletter is now available. The issue contains information on the following topics: Oracle Open World Summary Oracle Cloud: Oracle Engineered Systems Oracle Database and Middleware Oracle Applications and Software as a Service Oracle Industries Oracle Partners and the "Internet of Things" JavaOne News MySQL News Corporate News Create Your HR Strategic Vision at Oracle HCM World Oracle Database Protection Redefined A Preview: Oracle Database Backup Logging Recovery Appliance Oracle closed Tekelec acquisition Congratulations to ORACLE TEAM USA! Tech sectionARC M6 Oracle's SPARC M6 Oracle SuperCluster M6-32 - Oracle’s Most Scalable Engineered System Oracle Multitenant on SPARC Servers and Oracle Solaris Oracle Database 12c Enterprise Edition: Plug into the Cloud Oracle In-Memory Database Cache Oracle Virtual Compute Appliance New Benchmark-Results published (Sept. 2013) Video Interview: Elasticity, the Biggest Challenge Facing Data Centers Today Tech blog Announcing New Sun Storage 2500-M2 Drives SPARC Product Line Update ZFS RAID Calculator v6 What ships with ODA X3-2? Tech Article: Oracle Multitenant on SPARC Servers and Oracle Solaris New release of Sun Rack II capacity calculator available Announcing: Oracle Solaris Cluster Product Bulletin, September 2013 Learning & events Planned TechCasts Quarterly Partner Update Live Webcast: Simplify and Accelerate Oracle Database deployment with Oracle VM Templates Join us for OTN's Virtual Developer Day - Harnessing the Power of Oracle WebLogic and Oracle Coherence. Learn from OOW 2013 what is going on in Virtualization How to Implementing Early Arriving Facts in ODI, Part I and Part II: Proof of Concept Overview Multi-Factor Authentication in Oracle WebLogic Using multi-factor authentication to protect web applications deployed on Oracle WebLogic. If Virtualization Is Free, It Can't Be Any Good—Right? Looking beyond System/HW SOA and User Interfaces Overcoming the challenges to developing user interfaces in a service oriented References Vodafone Romania Improves Business Agility and Customer Satisfaction, with 10x Faster Business Intelligence Delivery and 12x Faster Processing Emirates Integrated Telecommunications Captures 47% Market Share in a Competitive Market, Thanks to 24/7 Availability Home Credit and Finance Bank Accelerates Getting New Banking Products to Market Extra A Conversation with Java Champion Johan Vos You can find the Newsletter on our portal under eSTEP News ---> Latest Newsletter. You will need to provide your email address and the pin below to get access. Link to the portal is shown below. URL: http://launch.oracle.com/ PIN: eSTEP_2011 Previous published Newsletters can be found under the Archived Newsletters section and more useful information under the Events, Download and Links tab.

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• Does it make the game more fun when the user is forced to progress thru the levels sequentially rather than letting them pick and play?

  - by BeachRunnerJoe

  Hello. For the first time in my game, I'm stuck with a real design dilemma. I guess that's a good thing ;) I'm building a word puzzle game that has five levels, each with 30 puzzles. Currently, the user has to solve one puzzle at a time before moving to the next. However, I'm finding the user occasionally gets stuck on a puzzle, at which point they can no longer play until they solve it. This is obviously bad because many people will just quit playing the game and delete the app since they get frustrated and can't play any other puzzles until the current puzzle is solved. The only elegant solution I can find to helping the player get unstuck is changing the design of the game to allow the users to pick any puzzle to play at any time. This way, if they get stuck, they can come back to it later and at least they have other puzzles to play in the meantime. It's my opinion, however, that this new flow design doesn't make the game as fun as the original flow design where the player has to complete a puzzle before moving to the next. To me, it's like anything else, when you only have one of something, it's more enjoyable, but when you have 30 of something, it's far less enjoyable. In fact, when I present the user with 30 puzzles to choose from that they need to solve before unlocking the next level, it almost seems as tho I'm making them feel like it's work they have to do. I even had a tester voluntarily tell me that being forced to complete a puzzle before moving to the next is more motivating. My questions are... Do you agree/disagree? Do you have any suggestions for how I can help the player get unstuck? Thanks so much in advance for your thoughts! EDIT: I should mention that I've already considered a few other solutions to helping the user get unstuck, but none of them seem like good ideas. They are... Add more hints: Currently, the user gets two hints per puzzle. If I increase the hint count, it only makes the game more easy and still leaves the possibility of the user getting stuck. Add a "Show Solution" button: This seems like a bad idea because it's my opinion this takes the fun out of the game for many people who would probably otherwise solve the puzzle if they didn't have the quick option to see the solution.

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• Bukkit saving inventory

  - by HcgRandon

  Alright i will make this quick... I am working on a command in my plugin to allow you to transfer worlds and i am trying to save inventory but i am getting a problem here is the code: public void savePlayerInv(Player p, World w){ File playerInvConfigFile = new File(plugin.getDataFolder() + File.separator + "players" + File.separator + p.getName(), "inventory.yml"); FileConfiguration pInv = YamlConfiguration.loadConfiguration(playerInvConfigFile); PlayerInventory inv = p.getInventory(); int i = 0; for (ItemStack stack : inv.getContents()) { //increment integer i++; String startInventory = w.getName() + ".inv." + Integer.toString(i); //save inv pInv.set(startInventory + ".amount", stack.getAmount()); pInv.set(startInventory + ".durability", Short.toString(stack.getDurability())); pInv.set(startInventory + ".type", stack.getTypeId()); //pInv.set(startInventory + ".enchantment", stack.getEnchantments()); //TODO add enchant saveing } i = 0; for (ItemStack armor : inv.getArmorContents()){ i++; String startArmor = w.getName() + ".armor." + Integer.toString(i); //save armor pInv.set(startArmor + ".amount", armor.getAmount()); pInv.set(startArmor + ".durability", armor.getDurability()); pInv.set(startArmor + ".type", armor.getTypeId()); //pInv.set(startArmor + ".enchantment", armor.getEnchantments()); } //save exp if (p.getExp() != 0) { pInv.set(w.getName() + ".exp", p.getExp()); } } Now here is the stack trace i recive it is commplaing about line 130 which is this line pInv.set(startInventory + ".amount", stack.getAmount()); okay now trace 2012-03-21 13:23:25 [SEVERE] null org.bukkit.command.CommandException: Unhandled exception executing command 'wtp' in plugin Needs v1.0 at org.bukkit.command.PluginCommand.execute(PluginCommand.java:42) at org.bukkit.command.SimpleCommandMap.dispatch(SimpleCommandMap.java:166) at org.bukkit.craftbukkit.CraftServer.dispatchCommand(CraftServer.java:461) at net.minecraft.server.NetServerHandler.handleCommand(NetServerHandler.java:818) at net.minecraft.server.NetServerHandler.chat(NetServerHandler.java:778) at net.minecraft.server.NetServerHandler.a(NetServerHandler.java:761) at net.minecraft.server.Packet3Chat.handle(Packet3Chat.java:33) at net.minecraft.server.NetworkManager.b(NetworkManager.java:229) at net.minecraft.server.NetServerHandler.a(NetServerHandler.java:112) at net.minecraft.server.NetworkListenThread.a(NetworkListenThread.java:78) at net.minecraft.server.MinecraftServer.w(MinecraftServer.java:554) at net.minecraft.server.MinecraftServer.run(MinecraftServer.java:452) at net.minecraft.server.ThreadServerApplication.run(SourceFile:490) Caused by: java.lang.NullPointerException at com.devoverflow.improved.needs.commands.CommandWorldtp.savePlayerInv(CommandWorldtp.java:130) at com.devoverflow.improved.needs.commands.CommandWorldtp.onCommand(CommandWorldtp.java:60) at org.bukkit.command.PluginCommand.execute(PluginCommand.java:40) ... 12 more

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• F# Project Euler Problem 1

  - by MarkPearl

  Every now and then I give project Euler a quick browse. Since I have been playing with F# I have found it a great way to learn the basics of the language. Today I thought I would give problem 1 an attempt… Problem 1 If we list all the natural numbers below 10 that are multiples of 3 or 5, we get 3, 5, 6 and 9. The sum of these multiples is 23. Find the sum of all the multiples of 3 or 5 below 1000. My F# Solution I broke this problem into two functions… 1) be able to generate a collection of numbers that are multiples of a number but but are smaller than another number. let GenerateMultiplesOfXbelowY X Y = X |> Seq.unfold (fun i -> if (i<Y) then Some(i, i+X) else None) I then needed something that generated collections for multiples of 3 & 5 and then removed any duplicates. Once this was done I would need to sum these all together to get a result. I found the Seq object to be extremely useful to achieve this… let Multiples = Seq.append (GenerateMultiplesOfXbelowY 3 1000) (GenerateMultiplesOfXbelowY 5 1000) |> Seq.distinct |> Seq.fold(fun acc a -> acc + a) 0 |> Console.WriteLine |> Console.ReadLine My complete solution was … open System let GenerateMultiplesOfXbelowY X Y = X |> Seq.unfold (fun i -> if (i<Y) then Some(i, i+X) else None) let Multiples = Seq.append (GenerateMultiplesOfXbelowY 3 1000) (GenerateMultiplesOfXbelowY 5 1000) |> Seq.distinct |> Seq.fold(fun acc a -> acc + a) 0 |> Console.WriteLine |> Console.ReadLine   Which seemed to generate the correct result in a relatively short period of time although I am sure I will get some comments from the experts who know of some intrinsic method to achieve all of this in one method call.

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• WHERE x = @x OR @x IS NULL

  - by steveh99999

  Every SQL DBA and developer should read the blog of MVP Erland Sommarskog – but particularly  his article on dynamic search conditions in T-SQL. I’ve linked above to his SQL 2005 article but his 2008 version is also a must-read. I seem to regularly come across uses of the SQL in the title above… Erland’s article explains in detail why this is inefficient, but I came across a nice example recently… A stored procedure contained the following code :- WHERE @Name is null or [Name] like @Name as a nonclustered index exists on the Name column, you might assume this would be handled efficiently by SQL Server. However, I got the following output from SET STATISTICS IO Table 'xxxxx'. Scan count 15, logical reads 47760, physical reads 9, read-ahead reads 13872, lob logical reads 0, lob physical reads 0, lob read-ahead reads 0. Note the high number of logical reads… After a bit of investigation, we found that @Name could never actually be set to NULL in this particular example. ie the @x IS NULL was spurious… So, we changed the call to WHERE  [Name] like @Name Now, how much more efficient is this code ? Table 'xxxxx'. Scan count 3, logical reads 24, physical reads 0, read-ahead reads 0, lob logical reads 0, lob physical reads 0, lob read-ahead reads 0 A nice easy win in this case…… a full index scan has been replaced by a significantly more efficient index seek. I managed to recreate the same behaviour on Adventureworks – here’s a quick query to demonstrate :- USE adventureworks SET STATISTICS IO ON DECLARE @id INT = 51721 SELECT * FROM Sales.SalesOrderDetail WHERE @id IS NULL OR salesorderid = @id SELECT * FROM Sales.SalesOrderDetail WHERE salesorderid = @id Take a look at the STATISTICS IO output and compare the actual query plans used to prove the impact of  WHERE @id IS NULL. And just to follow some of Erland’s advice – here’s how you could get similar performance if it was possible that @id could actually sometimes contain NULL. DECLARE @sql NVARCHAR(4000), @parameterlist NVARCHAR(4000) DECLARE @id INT = 51721 – or change to NULL to prove query is functionally correct SET @sql = 'SELECT * FROM Sales.SalesOrderDetail WHERE 1 = 1' IF @id IS NOT NULL SET @sql = @sql + ' AND salesorderid = @id' IF @id IS NULL SET @sql = @sql + ' AND salesorderid IS NULL' SET @parameterlist = '@id INT' EXEC sp_executesql @sql, @parameterlist,@id Sometimes I think we focus too much on hardware and SQL Server configuration – when really the answer is focus on writing efficient SQL.

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• List of common pages to have in the footer [closed]

  - by user359650

  I would like to post this question as a reference for webmasters wondering what pages they should include in the footer. I will use answers to complete my initial list: About us / About MyCompany / MyCompany About / About us: description about the company, its mission, and its vision. History: summary of milestones achieved by the company. The team / Management / Board of directors: depending on size of the company there may be one of more pages describing the people involved in the company, depending on their position. Awards: list of awards received by the company if any. In the press / They're talking about us: list of links to external websites, usually highly regarded news websites, which mentioned the company in one of their articles. Media Wallpapers: wallpapers with company logo in different colors and formats that fans can set as desktop image for their computer. logos: company logo in different colors and formats that websites/blogs posting about the website can use for illustration purposes. Media kits: documents, usually in PDF format summarizing the key company figures and facts that journalists can download and read to get a quick overview of the company. Misc Contact / Contact us: contact details the company is prepared to disclose if any (address, email, phone) or contact form. Careers / Jobs / Join us: list of open vacancies with contact form to apply. Investors / Partners / Publishers: information and contact forms for companies willing to become Investors/Partners/Publishers or login page to access portal restricted to those who already are. FAQ: list of common questions and answers to guide users and reduce number of support requests. Follow us / Community Facebook / Twitter / Google+: links to the company's pages/accounts on various social networks. Legal Terms / Terms of use / Terms & Conditions: rules users must follow when browsing the website. Privacy / Privacy Statement: explanations as to how the company deals with users' personal data and what users can do about it (request information to be deleted...). cookies: page that starts appearing on more and more websites due to new regulation (notably EU) imposing more transparency and control for users about cookies (e.g. BBC cookie page). Any input is welcome PS: if someone with enough rep could add the footer tag that would be great (min. 300 required).

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• OAuth with RestSharp in Windows Phone

  - by midoBB

  Nearly every major API provider uses OAuth for the user authentication and while it is easy to understand the concept, using it in a Windows Phone app isn’t pretty straightforward. So for this quick tutorial we will be using RestSharp for WP7 and the API from getglue.com (an entertainment site) to authorize the user. So the first step is to get the OAuth request token and then we redirect our browserControl to the authorization URL private void StartLogin() {   var client = new RestClient("https://api.getglue.com/"); client.Authenticator = OAuth1Authenticator.ForRequestToken("ConsumerKey", "ConsumerSecret"); var request = new RestRequest("oauth/request_token"); client.ExecuteAsync(request, response => { _oAuthToken = GetQueryParameter(response.Content, "oauth_token"); _oAuthTokenSecret = GetQueryParameter(response.Content, "oauth_token_secret"); string authorizeUrl = "http://getglue.com/oauth/authorize" + "?oauth_token=" + _oAuthToken + "&style=mobile"; Dispatcher.BeginInvoke(() => { browserControl.Navigate(new Uri(authorizeUrl)); }); }); } private static string GetQueryParameter(string input, string parameterName) { foreach (string item in input.Split('&')) { var parts = item.Split('='); if (parts[0] == parameterName) { return parts[1]; } } return String.Empty; } Then we listen to the browser’s Navigating Event private void Navigating(Microsoft.Phone.Controls.NavigatingEventArgs e) { if (e.Uri.AbsoluteUri.Contains("oauth_callback")) { var arguments = e.Uri.AbsoluteUri.Split('?'); if (arguments.Length < 1) return; GetAccessToken(arguments[1]); } } private void GetAccessToken(string uri) { var requestToken = GetQueryParameter(uri, "oauth_token"); var client = new RestClient("https://api.getglue.com/"); client.Authenticator = OAuth1Authenticator.ForAccessToken(ConsumerKey, ConsumerSecret, _oAuthToken, _oAuthTokenSecret); var request = new RestRequest("oauth/access_token"); client.ExecuteAsync(request, response => { AccessToken = GetQueryParameter(response.Content, "oauth_token"); AccessTokenSecret = GetQueryParameter(response.Content, "oauth_token_secret"); UserId = GetQueryParameter(response.Content, "glue_userId"); }); } Now to test it we can access the user’s friends list var client = new RestClient("http://api.getglue.com/v2"); client.Authenticator = OAuth1Authenticator.ForProtectedResource(ConsumerKey, ConsumerSecret, GAccessToken, AccessTokenSecret); var request = new RestRequest("/user/friends"); request.AddParameter("userId", UserId,ParameterType.GetOrPost); // request.AddParameter("category", "all",ParameterType.GetOrPost); client.ExecuteAsync(request, response => { TreatFreindsList(); }); And that’s it now we can access all OAuth methods using RestSharp.

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• Does it make the game more fun when the user is forced to progress through the levels sequentially rather than letting them pick and play?

  - by BeachRunnerJoe

  Hello. For the first time in my game, I'm stuck with a real design dilemma. I guess that's a good thing ;) I'm building a word puzzle game that has five levels, each with 30 puzzles. Currently, the user has to solve one puzzle at a time before moving to the next. However, I'm finding the user occasionally gets stuck on a puzzle, at which point they can no longer play until they solve it. This is obviously bad because many people will probably just quit playing the game and delete the app. The only elegant solution I can find to helping the player get unstuck is changing the design of the game to allow the users to pick any puzzle to play at any time. This way, if they get stuck, they can come back to it later and at least they have other puzzles to play in the meantime. It's my opinion, however, that this new flow design doesn't make the game as fun as the original flow design where the player has to complete a puzzle before moving to the next. To me, it's like anything else, when you only have one of something, it's more enjoyable, but when you have 30 of something, it's far less enjoyable. In fact, when I present the user with 30 puzzles to choose from, I'm concerned I might be making them feel like it's a lot of work they have to do and that's bad. I even had a tester voluntarily tell me that being forced to complete a puzzle before moving to the next is actually motivating. My questions are... Do you agree/disagree? Do you have any suggestions for how I can help the player get unstuck? Thanks so much in advance for your thoughts! EDIT: I should mention that I've already considered a few other solutions to helping the user get unstuck, but none of them seem like good ideas. They are... Add more hints: Currently, the user gets two hints per puzzle. If I increase the hint count, it only makes the game more easy and still leaves the possibility of the user getting stuck. Add a "Show Solution" button: This seems like a bad idea because it's my opinion this takes the fun out of the game for many people who would probably otherwise solve the puzzle if they didn't have the quick option to see the solution.

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• The Problem Should Define the Process, Not the Tool

  - by thatjeffsmith

  All around awesome tool, but not the only gadget in your toolbox.I’m stepping down from my SQL Developer pulpit today and standing up on my philosophical soap box. I’m frequently asked to help folks transition from one set of database tools over to Oracle SQL Developer, which I’m MORE than happy to do. But, I’m not looking to simply change the way people interact with Oracle database. What I care about is your productivity. Is there a faster, more efficient way for you to connect the dots, get from A to B, or just get home to your kids or to the pub for happy hour? If you have defined a business process around a specific tool, what happens when that tool ‘goes away?’ Does the business stop? No, you feel immediate pain until you are able to re-implement the process using another mechanism. Where I get confused, or even frustrated, is when someone asks me to redesign our tool to match their problem. Tools are just tools. Saying you ‘can’t load your data anymore because XYZ’ isn’t valid when you could easily do that same task via SQL*Loader, Create Table As Selects, or 9 other different mechanisms. Sometimes changes brings opportunity for improvement in the process. Don’t be afraid to step back and re-evaluate a problem with a fresh set of eyes. Just trying to replicate your process in another tool exactly as it was done in the ‘old tool’ doesn’t always make sense. Quick sidebar: scheduling a Windows program to kick off thousands if not millions of table inserts from Excel versus using a ‘proper’ server process using SQL*Loader and or external tables means sacrificing scalability and reliability for convenience. Don’t let old habits blind you to new solutions and possibilities. Of couse I’m not going to sit here and say that our tools aren’t deficient in some areas or can’t be improved upon. But I bet if we work together we can find something that’s not only better for the business, but is also better for you. What do you ‘miss’ since you’ve started using SQL Developer as your primary Oracle database tools? I’d love to start a thread here and share ideas on how we can better serve you and your organizations needs. The end solution might not look exactly what you have in mind starting out, but I had no idea I’d be a Product Manager when I started college either What can you no longer ‘do’ since you picked up SQL Developer? What hurts more than it should? What keeps you from being great versus just good?

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• Are You Meeting Social Customer Service Expectations?

  - by Mike Stiles

  Whether it’s B2B or B2C, one sure path to repeat business is making sure your buyer has a memorably pleasant and successful customer service experience with you. If they get that kind of treatment consistently, that’s called a relationship. And those aren’t broken easily. Social customer service, driven by integrated SRM (social relationship management) technology, is the venue that can effectively connect customers not only to the brand, but to other customers. Positive experiences, once administered, don’t just rest with the recipient. They’re published in the form of public raves and peer-to-peer recommendation, a force far more actionable than push advertising. What’s more, your customers have come to expect access to you and satisfaction from you using social. An NM Incite study shows 83% of Twitter users and 71% of Facebook users expect to get an answer from brands the same day they post to them on their social assets. To make sure you’re responding, you’ve got to have a tech platform that’s set up to moderate and alert so you’ll know ASAP a customer needs help. The more integrated your social enterprise is, the faster you can not only respond, but respond with the answer they’re looking for, because your system is connected to the internal resources that can surface the answer or put wheels in motion to rectify the situation in the shortest amount of time possible. But if you go to the necessary lengths to make sure your customers feel valued and important, will they really reward you? The study says 71% of consumers who got quick and effective responses from companies they contacted via social were more likely to recommend the brand to their friends and followers. So yes, sweeping people off their feet pays big dividends in terms of word-of-mouth marketing. But you should be keenly aware of the reverse side of that coin. Give people a negative experience, either in real world or virtual customer service, and that message is highly likely to get amplified through social channels faster and louder. Only 36% of the NM Incite study’s respondents reported that their problems were solved quickly and effectively. 36%? That’s hardly an impressive number. It gets worse. 10% never got so much as a response - at all. Going back to the relationship analogy, companies that are this deep in the ditch where customer service is concerned are making their girl or boyfriends really easy for a competitor to steal. Given the technology tools and data available right now for having an intimate knowledge of the customer, what products they’ve purchased, likely problems with those products, effective resolutions to those problems, and follow-up communication to gauge satisfaction, there are fewer excuses than ever for making the lifeblood of your business feel like you couldn’t care less. @mikestiles

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• Unintentional run-in with C# thread concurrency

  - by geekrutherford

  For the first time today we began conducting load testing on a ASP.NET application already in production. Obviously you would normally want to load test prior to releasing to a production environment, but that isn't the point here.   We ran a test which simulated 5 users hitting the application doing the same actions simultaneously. The first few pages visited seemed fine and then things just hung for a while before the test failed. While the test was running I was viewing the performance counters on the server noting that the CPU was consistently pegged at 100% until the testing tool gave up.   Fortunately the application logs all exceptions including those unhandled to the database (thanks to log4net). I checked the log and low and behold the error was:   System.ArgumentException: An item with the same key has already been added. (The rest of the stack trace intentionally omitted)   Since the code was running with debug on the line number where the exception occured was also provided. I began inspecting the code and almost immediately it hit me, the section of code responsible for the exception is trying to initialize a static class. My next question was how is this code being hit multiple times when I have a rudimentary check already in place to prevent this kind of thing (i.e. a check on a public variable of the static class before entering the initializing routine). The answer...the check fails because the value is not set before other threads have already made it through.   Not being one who consistently works with threading I wasn't quite sure how to handle this problem. Fortunately a co-worker recalled having to lock a section of code in the past but couldn't recall exactly how. After a quick search on Google the solution is as follows:   Object objLock = new Object(); lock(objLock) { //logic requiring lock }   The lock statement takes an object and tells the .NET runtime that the current thread has exclusive access while the code within brackets is executing. Once the code completes, the lock is released for another thread to utilize.   In my case, I only need to execute the inner code once to initialize my static class. So within the brackets I have a check on a public variable to prevent it from being initialized again.

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