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• CodePlex Daily Summary for Saturday, October 29, 2011

  CodePlex Daily Summary for Saturday, October 29, 2011Popular Releasespatterns & practices: Enterprise Library Contrib: Enterprise Library Contrib - 5.0 (Oct 2011): This release of Enterprise Library Contrib is based on the Microsoft patterns & practices Enterprise Library 5.0 core and contains the following: Common extensionsTypeConfigurationElement<T> - A Polymorphic Configuration Element without having to be part of a PolymorphicConfigurationElementCollection. AnonymousConfigurationElement - A Configuration element that can be uniquely identified without having to define its name explicitly. Data Access Application Block extensionsMySql Provider - ...Network Monitor Open Source Parsers: Network Monitor Parsers 3.4.2748: The Network Monitor Parsers packages contain parsers for more than 400 network protocols, including RFC based public protocols and protocols for Microsoft products defined in the Microsoft Open Specifications for Windows and SQL Server. NetworkMonitor_Parsers.msi is the base parser package which defines parsers for commonly used public protocols and protocols for Microsoft Windows. In this release, NetowrkMonitor_Parsers.msi continues to improve quality and fix bugs. It has included the fo...Duckworth Lewis Professional Edition Calculator: DLcalc 3.0: DLcalc 3.0 can perform Duckworth/Lewis Professional Edition calculations 100% accurately. It also produces over-by-over and ball-by-ball PAR score tables.Folder Bookmarks: Folder Bookmarks 2.2.0.1: In this version: Custom Icons - now you can change the icons of the bookmarks. By default, whenever an image is added, the icon is automatically changed to a thumbnail of the picture. This can be turned off in the settings (Options... > Settings) Ability to remove items from the 'Recent' category Bugfixes - 'Choose' button in 'Edit Bookmark' now works Another bug fix: another problem in the 'Edit Bookmark' windowMedia Companion: MC 3.420b Weekly: Ensure .NET 4.0 Full Framework is installed. (Available from http://www.microsoft.com/download/en/details.aspx?id=17718) Ensure the NFO ID fix is applied when transitioning from versions prior to 3.416b. (Details here) Movies Fixed: Fanart and poster scraping issues TV Shows (Re)Added: Rebuild single show Fixed: Issue when shows are moved from original location Ability to handle " for actor nicknames Crash when episode name contains "<" (does not scrape yet) Clears fanart when switch...patterns & practices - Unity: Unity 3.0 for .NET4.5 Preview: The Unity 3.0.1026.0 Preview enables Unity to work on .NET 4.5 with both the WinRT and desktop profiles. The major changes include: Unity projects updated to target .NET 4.5. Dynamic build plans modified to use compiled lambda expressions instead of Reflection.Emit Converting reflection to use the new TypeInfo for reflection. Projects updated to work with the Microsoft Visual Studio 2011 Preview Notes/Known Issues: The Microsoft.Practices.Unity.UnityServiceLocator class cannot be use...Managed Extensibility Framework: MEF 2 Preview 4: Detailed information on this release is available on the BCL team blog.Image Converter: Image Converter 0.3: New Features: - English and German support Technical Improvements: - Microsoft All Rules using Code Analysis Planned Features for future release: 1. Unit testing 2. Command line interface 3. Automatic UpdatesAcDown????? - Anime&Comic Downloader: AcDown????? v3.6: ?? ● AcDown??????????、??????，??????????????????????，???????Acfun、Bilibili、???、???、???、Tucao.cc、SF???、?????80????，???????????、?????????。 ● AcDown???????????????????????????，???，???????????????????。 ● AcDown???????C#??，????.NET Framework 2.0??。?????"Acfun?????"。 ????32??64? Windows XP/Vista/7 ????????????? ??：????????Windows XP???,?????????.NET Framework 2.0???(x86)?.NET Framework 2.0???(x64)，?????"?????????"??? ??????????????，??????????： ??"AcDown?????"????????? ?? v3.6?? ??“????”...DotNetNuke® Events: 05.02.01: This release fixes any know bugs from any previous version. Events 05.02.01 will work for any DNN version 5.5.0 and up. Full details on the changes can be found at http://dnnevents.codeplex.com/workitem/list/basic Please review and rate this release... (stars are welcome)BUG FIXESAdded validation around category cookie RSS feed was missing an explicit close of the file when writing. Fixed. Added extra security into detail view .ICS Files did not include correct line folding. Fixed Cha...Microsoft Ajax Minifier: Microsoft Ajax Minifier 4.33: Add JSParser.ParseExpression method to parse JavaScript expressions rather than source-elements. Add -strict switch (CodeSettings.StrictMode) to force input code to ECMA5 Strict-mode (extra error-checking, "use strict" at top). Fixed bug when MinifyCode setting was set to false but RemoveUnneededCode was left it's default value of true.Path Copy Copy: 8.0: New version that mostly adds lots of requested features: 11340 11339 11338 11337 This version also features a more elaborate Settings UI that has several tabs. I tried to add some notes to better explain the use and purpose of the various options. The Path Copy Copy documentation is also on the way, both to explain how to develop custom plugins and to explain how to pre-configure options if you're a network admin. Stay tuned.MVC Controls Toolkit: Mvc Controls Toolkit 1.5.0: Added: The new Client Blocks feaure of Views A new "move" js method for the TreeViews The NewHtmlCreated js event to the DataGrid Improved the ChoiceList structure that now allows also the selection list of a dropdown to be chosen with a lambda expression Improved the AcceptViewHintAttribute controller filter. Now a client can specify not only the name of a View or Partial View it prefers, but also to receive just the rough data in Json format. Fixed: Issue with partial thrust Cl...Free SharePoint Master Pages: Buried Alive (Halloween) Theme: Release Notes *Created for Halloween, you will find theme file, custom css file and images. *Created by Al Roome @AlstarRoome Features: Custom styling for web part Custom background *Screenshot https://s3.amazonaws.com/kkhipple/post/sharepoint-showcase-halloween.pngDevForce Application Framework: DevForce AF 2.0.3 RTW: PrerequisitesWPF 4.0 Silverlight 4.0 DevForce 2010 6.1.3.1 Download ContentsDebug and Release Assemblies API Documentation Source code License.txt Requirements.txt Release HighlightsNew: EventAggregator event forwarding New: EntityManagerInterceptor<T> to intercept EntityManger events New: IHarnessAware to allow for ViewModel setup when executed inside of the Development Harness New: Improved design time stability New: Support for add-in development New: CoroutineFns.To...NicAudio: NicAudio 2.0.5: Minor change to accept special DTS stereo modes (LtRt, AB,...)NDepend TFS 2010 integration: version 0.5.0 beta 1: Only the activity and the VS plugin are avalaible right now. They basically work. Data types that are logged into tfs reports are subject to change. This is no big deal since data is not yet sent into the warehouse.Windows Azure Toolkit for Windows Phone: Windows Azure Toolkit for Windows Phone v1.3.1: Upgraded Windows Azure projects to Windows Azure Tools for Microsoft Visual Studio 2010 1.5 – September 2011 Upgraded the tools tools to support the Windows Phone Developer Tools RTW Update SQL Azure only scenarios to use ASP.NET Universal Providers (through the System.Web.Providers v1.0.1 NuGet package) Changed Shared Access Signature service interface to support more operations Refactored Blobs API to have a similar interface and usage to that provided by the Windows Azure SDK Stor...DotNetNuke® FAQ: 05.00.00: FAQ (Frequently Asked Questions) 05.00.00 will work for any DNN version 5.6.1 and up. It is the first version which is rewritten in C#. The scope of this update is to fix all known issues and improve user interface. Please review and rate this release... (stars are welcome)BUG FIXESManage Categories button text was not localized Edit/Add FAQ Entry: button text was not localized ENHANCEMENTSAdded an option to select the control for category display: Listbox with checkboxes (flat category ...SiteMap Editor for Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011: SiteMap Editor (1.0.921.340): Added CodePlex and PayPal links New iconNew ProjectsAsynk: Asynk is a framework/application that allows existing applications to easily be extended with an offloaded asynchronous worker layer. Asynk is developed using C#.Blob Tower Defense: 3D tower defense game for Windows Phone 7. School project for Brno University of Technology, computer graphics class.Booz: Booz is... An extended version of the boo shell (booish2 to be precise). Offers additional commands like cd, md, ls etc. I hope this shell can be used to take the position of/surpass the native windows shell in the near future.CIMS: a sanction infomation system for sencience and technology of hustCrystalDot - Icon Collection / Pack (LGPL): .Net / Mono freundliche Varainte der Crystal-Icons von Everaldo Icon collection / pack for .NET and Mono designed by Everaldo - KDE style http://www.everaldo.com/crystal/dotetes: dotetes adalah teka teki silang tool dikembangkan dengan bahasa c#Emoe': This Project is a Windows Phone 7.1 application.Equation Inversion: Visual Studion 2008 Add-in for equation inversions.Exploring VMR Features on WEC7: This is the sample application helps you to do alpha blending the bitmap on camera streaming in Windows Embedded Compact 7 using Directshow video Renderer (VMR). It is a VS2008 based smart device project developed on C++. I have explained the sample application in the following blog link. http://www.e-consystems.com/blog/windowsce/?p=759 EzValidation: Custom validation extensions for ASP.NET MVC 3. Includes server and client side model based validation attributes for: -- Equal To -- Not Equal To -- Greater Than -- Greater Than or Equal To -- Less Than -- Less Than or Equal To Supports validating against: -- Another Model Field -- A Specific Value -- Current Date/Yesterday/Tomorrow (for Dates and Strings) Download & Install via NuGet "package-install ezvalidation"Flu.net: Flu.net is a tool that helps you creating your own fluent syntax for .NET Framework applications in a declarative fashion. It is aimed for infrastructures and other open-source projects use.For Chess Endgames: King vs. King Opposition Calculator: You must input the locations of 2 kings on a chessboard, and whose turn it is to move. The calculator will display which king has the opposition, and how it can be used or maintained.GameTrakXNA: This project aims to create a simple library to use the unique GameTrak controller within XNA and Flash.Google Speech Recognition Example: Google Speech Recognition contains a working example of application that uses google speech recognition API. App contains all necessary dlls to record, decode and send your voice request to google service and recieve a text representation of what you've said. It's developed in C#Interval Mandelbrot Explorer: Explore the Mandelbrot set using interval arithmetic.ISD training tasks: ISD training examples and tasksiTunesControlBar: The iTunesControlBar helps user control their iTunes Application while it is minimized. iTunesControlBar resides at the top of the screen, invisible when not used, and allows playback and volume control, library searches and media information without the need to bring up iTunes.iTurtle: A bunch of Powerscripts to automate server management in AD environment.M26WC - Mono 2.6 Wizard Control: Wizard which runs under Mono2.6 A fork of: http://aerowizard.codeplex.com/Microsoft Help Viewer 2: Help Viewer 2 is the help runtime for both Visual Studio 11 help and Windows 8 help. The code in this project will help you use and understand the HV2 runtime API.MONTRASEC: Monitoring Trafficking in human beings and Sexual Exploitation of Children: benchmarking for member state and EU reporting, turning the SIAMSECT templates into a user-friendly interface and reporting tool. MTF.NET Runtime: Managed Task Framework .NET Runtime The MTF.NET runtime software and resulting assemblies are required to run applications built using the Managed Task Framework.NET Professional (Visual Studio 2010 extension) software design editor. The MTF.NET team are committed to continuously improving the core MTF.NET runtime and ensuring it is always available free and fully transparent. Pandoras Box: A greenfield inversion of control project utilising the power and flexibility of expressions and preferring convention over configuration.Pass the Puzzle: Pass the Puzzle is a frantic word-guessing party game. The game displays a few letters, and the players must come up with words containing those letters. But beware: if the timer goes off, you lose! It is based on the folk party game Pass the Parcel and is written in C#.PerCiGal: Percigal is a project for the development of applications for managing your personal media library. It consists in - a windows application to use at home to catalog movies, TV series, cast and books, with the support of the Internet for information retrieval; - a web interface for viewing and cataloging everywhere your media; - an application for smartphones. Project Flying Carpet: Este jogo é um projeto para a cadeira Projeto de Jogos: Motores Jogos do curso de Jogos Digitais da Unisinos.proxy browser: sed leo Latin's Butterfly....Python Multiple Dispatch: Multiple dispatch (AKA multimethods) for Python 3 via a metaclass and type annotations.reDune: ?????????? ???? ? ????? «????????? ? ???????? ???????». ???????? ?? Dune2000 ?? Westwood ? Electronic Arts.Rereadable: Keep page from internet for read it latter.ServStop: ServStop is a .NET application that makes it easy to stop several system services at once. Now you don't have to change startup types or stop them one at a time. It has a simple list-based interface with the ability to save and load lists of user services to stop. Written in C#.SharePoint 2010 Audience Membership Workflow Activity (Full Trust): A simple SharePoint 2010 workflow activity / workflow condition to check whether the user initiating the workflow is a member of a specified audience. Farm-level .wsp solution, written in C#. Once installed, the workflow activity can be used in SharePoint Designer 2010 declarative workflows.SQL Server® to Firebird DB converter: Converts Microsoft SQL Server® database into Firebird database including entire structure and datastegitest: test projectSystem.Threading.Joins: The Joins project provides asynchronous concurrency semantics based on join calculus and modeled after the Microsoft Research C? (C Omega) project.TestAndroidGame: try dev a TestAndroidGametetribricks: block game Topographic Explorer: A project to import, convert, explore, manipulate, and save topographical maps. Looking to use C# and WPF.Trading: Under construction!!!Trombone: Trombone makes it easier for Windows Mobile Professional users to automate status reply through SMS. It's developed in Visual C# 2008.Tulsa SharePoint Interest Group: Repository for source code for the Tulsa SharePoint Interest Group's web site. The Tulsa SharePoint Interest Group is using the Community Kit for SharePoint. This project will house any modifications that are specific to our user group.World of Tanks RU tiny stats collection utilty.: Tiny utility to load players stats for World of Tanks RU server. Results saved to comma separated file.WS-Discovery Proxy: Attempt at creating general purpose WS-Discovery Proxy.Yamaha Tu?n Tr?c: This application is used to manage information for Yamaha Tu?n Tr?c

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• Cloud Computing = Elasticity * Availability

  - by Herve Roggero

  What is cloud computing? Is hosting the same thing as cloud computing? Are you running a cloud if you already use virtual machines? What is the difference between Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) and a cloud provider? And the list goes on… these questions keep coming up and all try to fundamentally explain what “cloud” means relative to other concepts. At the risk of over simplification, answering these questions becomes simpler once you understand the primary foundations of cloud computing: Elasticity and Availability.   Elasticity The basic value proposition of cloud computing is to pay as you go, and to pay for what you use. This implies that an application can expand and contract on demand, across all its tiers (presentation layer, services, database, security…).  This also implies that application components can grow independently from each other. So if you need more storage for your database, you should be able to grow that tier without affecting, reconfiguring or changing the other tiers. Basically, cloud applications behave like a sponge; when you add water to a sponge, it grows in size; in the application world, the more customers you add, the more it grows. Pure IaaS providers will provide certain benefits, specifically in terms of operating costs, but an IaaS provider will not help you in making your applications elastic; neither will Virtual Machines. The smallest elasticity unit of an IaaS provider and a Virtual Machine environment is a server (physical or virtual). While adding servers in a datacenter helps in achieving scale, it is hardly enough. The application has yet to use this hardware.  If the process of adding computing resources is not transparent to the application, the application is not elastic.   As you can see from the above description, designing for the cloud is not about more servers; it is about designing an application for elasticity regardless of the underlying server farm.   Availability The fact of the matter is that making applications highly available is hard. It requires highly specialized tools and trained staff. On top of it, it's expensive. Many companies are required to run multiple data centers due to high availability requirements. In some organizations, some data centers are simply on standby, waiting to be used in a case of a failover. Other organizations are able to achieve a certain level of success with active/active data centers, in which all available data centers serve incoming user requests. While achieving high availability for services is relatively simple, establishing a highly available database farm is far more complex. In fact it is so complex that many companies establish yearly tests to validate failover procedures.   To a certain degree certain IaaS provides can assist with complex disaster recovery planning and setting up data centers that can achieve successful failover. However the burden is still on the corporation to manage and maintain such an environment, including regular hardware and software upgrades. Cloud computing on the other hand removes most of the disaster recovery requirements by hiding many of the underlying complexities.   Cloud Providers A cloud provider is an infrastructure provider offering additional tools to achieve application elasticity and availability that are not usually available on-premise. For example Microsoft Azure provides a simple configuration screen that makes it possible to run 1 or 100 web sites by clicking a button or two on a screen (simplifying provisioning), and soon SQL Azure will offer Data Federation to allow database sharding (which allows you to scale the database tier seamlessly and automatically). Other cloud providers offer certain features that are not available on-premise as well, such as the Amazon SC3 (Simple Storage Service) which gives you virtually unlimited storage capabilities for simple data stores, which is somewhat equivalent to the Microsoft Azure Table offering (offering a server-independent data storage model). Unlike IaaS providers, cloud providers give you the necessary tools to adopt elasticity as part of your application architecture.    Some cloud providers offer built-in high availability that get you out of the business of configuring clustered solutions, or running multiple data centers. Some cloud providers will give you more control (which puts some of that burden back on the customers' shoulder) and others will tend to make high availability totally transparent. For example, SQL Azure provides high availability automatically which would be very difficult to achieve (and very costly) on premise.   Keep in mind that each cloud provider has its strengths and weaknesses; some are better at achieving transparent scalability and server independence than others.    Not for Everyone Note however that it is up to you to leverage the elasticity capabilities of a cloud provider, as discussed previously; if you build a website that does not need to scale, for which elasticity is not important, then you can use a traditional host provider unless you also need high availability. Leveraging the technologies of cloud providers can be difficult and can become a journey for companies that build their solutions in a scale up fashion. Cloud computing promises to address cost containment and scalability of applications with built-in high availability. If your application does not need to scale or you do not need high availability, then cloud computing may not be for you. In fact, you may pay a premium to run your applications with cloud providers due to the underlying technologies built specifically for scalability and availability requirements. And as such, the cloud is not for everyone.   Consistent Customer Experience, Predictable Cost With all its complexities, buzz and foggy definition, cloud computing boils down to a simple objective: consistent customer experience at a predictable cost.  The objective of a cloud solution is to provide the same user experience to your last customer than the first, while keeping your operating costs directly proportional to the number of customers you have. Making your applications elastic and highly available across all its tiers, with as much automation as possible, achieves the first objective of a consistent customer experience. And the ability to expand and contract the infrastructure footprint of your application dynamically achieves the cost containment objectives.     Herve Roggero is a SQL Azure MVP and co-author of Pro SQL Azure (APress).  He is the co-founder of Blue Syntax Consulting (www.bluesyntax.net), a company focusing on cloud computing technologies helping customers understand and adopt cloud computing technologies. For more information contact herve at hroggero @ bluesyntax.net .

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• JavaOne Rock Star – Adam Bien

  - by Janice J. Heiss

  Among the most celebrated developers in recent years, especially in the domain of Java EE and JavaFX, is consultant Adam Bien, who, in addition to being a JavaOne Rock Star for Java EE sessions given in 2009 and 2011, is a Java Champion, the winner of Oracle Magazine’s 2011 Top Java Developer of the Year Award, and recently won a 2012 JAX Innovation Award as a top Java Ambassador. Bien will be presenting the following sessions: TUT3907 - Java EE 6/7: The Lean Parts CON3906 - Stress-Testing Java EE 6 Applications Without Stress CON3908 - Building Serious JavaFX 2 Applications CON3896 - Interactive Onstage Java EE Overengineering I spoke with Bien to get his take on Java today. He expressed excitement that the smallest companies and startups are showing increasing interest in Java EE. “This is a very good sign,” said Bien. “Only a few years ago J2EE was mostly used by larger companies -- now it becomes interesting even for one-person shows. Enterprise Java events are also extremely popular. On the Java SE side, I'm really excited about Project Nashorn.” Nashorn is an upcoming JavaScript engine, developed fully in Java by Oracle, and based on the Da Vinci Machine (JSR 292) which is expected to be available for Java 8.    Bien expressed concern about a common misconception regarding Java's mediocre productivity. “The problem is not Java,” explained Bien, “but rather systems built with ancient patterns and approaches. Sometimes it really is ‘Cargo Cult Programming.’ Java SE/EE can be incredibly productive and lean without the unnecessary and hard-to-maintain bloat. The real problems are ‘Ivory Towers’ and not Java’s lack of productivity.” Bien remarked that if there is one thing he wanted Java developers to understand it is that, "Premature optimization is the root of all evil. Or at least of some evil. Modern JVMs and application servers are hard to optimize upfront. It is far easier to write simple code and measure the results continuously. Identify the hotspots first, then optimize.”   He advised Java EE developers to, “Rethink everything you know about Enterprise Java. Before you implement anything, ask the question: ‘Why?’ If there is no clear answer -- just don't do it. Most well known best practices are outdated. Focus your efforts on the domain problem and not the technology.” Looking ahead, Bien remarked, “I would like to see open source application servers running directly on a hypervisor. Packaging the whole runtime in a single file would significantly simplify the deployment and operations.” Check out a recent Java Magazine interview with Bien about his Java EE 6 stress monitoring tool here.

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• &ldquo;Our Users are Doing Something Surprising&rdquo;&hellip; but what?

  - by antonio romero

  I’ve just started a discussion on the OWB Linkedin Group based on a blog post from Laura Klein’s “Users Know” blog, entitled “Your Users are Doing Something Surprising”… As a PM I found the post thought-provoking and a good reminder to learn from our customers: ...You may have written user stories and work flows... But you know who didn’t read your user stories? That’s right: your users. The result? Somewhere out there, a whole lot of your users are doing something totally unexpected with your product.... Your customers want to do something with your product so badly that they’re going out of their way to come up with clever ways to do it on their own. There are three excellent reasons for you to know what your customers are actually doing with your product: So you know if you are missing an opportunity to pivot your product or marketing So you know if you are missing an important feature So you don’t accidentally destroy a commonly used workaround or "unplanned feature" Truer words were rarely blogged. In fact just in the last few weeks I have had several "users" (some customers, and some internal to Oracle, in fact) turn up having built unexpected but powerful things around OWB, because it has such extensibility mechanisms built into it: OMB*Plus, the old Java APIs back before 10.2, and now the code template/knowledge module framework OWB shares with ODI. Some of our external users show astounding knowledge of how to make OWB really sing. (We hope to feature case studies from several of them over the course of the year on the OWB blog.) My question to all of you: can you identify things you have done or are doing with OWB or that you depend on in it that you think would come as a surprise to us? This could be either some development so advanced as to leave us all gob-smacked, or just some common (to you) thing that you use it for that you find enormously valuable but that you think is a bit off the theoretical "main line" use case of loading data warehouses. I invite the readers of this blog to come visit the OWB and ODI LinkedIn group and share their unusual applications of OWB or the very ordinary-looking features that you don’t want us to forget or would like us to extend. Your anecdotes will impress the crowd and will also help shape future data integration products from Oracle... Come on, surprise us. :)

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• Which techniques to study?

  - by Djentleman

  Just to give you some background info, I'm studying a programming major at a tertiary level and am in my third year, so I'm not a newbie off the street. However, I am still quite new to game programming as a subset of programming. One of my personal projects for next semester is to design and create a 2D platformer game with emphasis on procedural generation and "neato" effects (think metroidvania). I've written up a list of some techniques to help me improve my personal skills (using XNA for the time being). The list is as follows: QuadTrees: Build a basic program in XNA that moves basic 2D sprites (circles and squares) around a set path and speed and changes their colour when they collide. Add functionality to add and delete objects of different sizes (select a direction and speed when adding and just drag and drop them in). Particles: Build a basic program in XNA in which you can select different colours and create particle effects of those colours on screen by clicking and dragging the mouse around (simple particles emerging from where the mouse is clicked). Add functionality where you can change the amount of particles to be drawn and the speed at which they travel and when they expire. Possibly implement gravity and wind after part 3 is complete. Physics: Build a basic program in XNA where you have a ball in a set 2D environment, a wind slider, and a gravity slider (can go to negative for reverse gravity). You can click to drag the ball around and release to throw it and, depending on what you do, the ball interacts with the environment. Implement other shapes afterwards. Random 2D terrain generation: Build a basic program in XNA that randomly generates terrain (including hills, caves, etc) created from 2D tiles. Add functionality that draws the tiles from a tileset and places different tiles depending on where they lie on the y-axis (dirt on top, then rock, then lava, etc). Randomised objects: Build a basic program in XNA that, when a button is clicked, displays a randomised item sprite based on parameters (type, colour, etc) with the images pulled from tilesets. Add the ability to save the item as an object, which stores it in a side-pane where it can be selected for viewing. Movement: Build a basic program in XNA where you can move an object around in an environment (tile-based) with a camera that pans with it. No gravity. Implement gravity and wind, allow the character to jump and fall with some basic platforms. So my question is this: Are there any other commonly used techniques that I should research, and can I get some suggestions as to the effectiveness of the techniques I've chosen to work on (e.g., don't do QuadTree stuff because [insert reason here], or, do [insert technique here] before you start working on particles because [insert reason here])? I hope this is clear enough and please let me know if I can further clarify anything!

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• Oracle Solaris at the OpenStack Summit in Atlanta

  - by Glynn Foster

  I had the fortune of attending my 2nd OpenStack summit in Atlanta a few weeks ago and it turned out to be a really excellent event. Oracle had many folks there this time around across a variety of different engineering teams - Oracle Solaris, Oracle ZFSSA, Oracle Linux, Oracle VM and more. Really great to see continuing momentum behind the project and we're very happy to be involved. Here's a list of the highlights that I had during the summit: The operators track was a really excellent addition, with a chance for users/administrators to voice their opinions based on experiences. Really good to hear how OpenStack is making businesses more agile, but also equally good to hear about some of the continuing frustrations they have (fortunately many of them are new and being addressed). Seeing this discussion morph into a "Win the enterprise" working group is also very pleasing. Enjoyed Troy Toman's keynote (Rackspace) about designing a planet scale cloud OS and the interoperability challenges ahead of us. I've been following some of the discussion around DefCore for a bit and while I have some concerns, I think it's mostly heading in the right direction. Certainly seems like there's a balance to strike to ensure that this effects the OpenStack vendors in such a way as to avoid negatively impacting our end users. Also enjoyed Toby Ford's keynote (AT&T) about his desire for a NVF (Network Function Virtualization) architecture. What really resonated was also his desire for OpenStack to start addressing the typical enterprise workload, being less like cattle and more like pets. The design summit was, as per usual, pretty intense for - definitely would get more value from these if I knew the code base a little better. Nevertheless, attended some really great sessions and got a better feeling of the roadmap for Juno. Markus Flierl gave a great presentation (see below) at the demo theatre for what we're doing with OpenStack on Oracle Solaris (and more widely at Oracle across different products). Based on the discussions that we had at the Oracle booth, there's a huge amount of interest there and we talked to some great customers during the week about their thoughts and directions in this respect. Undoubtedly Atlanta had some really good food. Highlights were the smoked ribs and brisket and the SweetWater brewing company. That said, I also loved the fried chicken, fried green tomatoes and collared greens, and wonderful hosting of "big momma" at Pitty Pat's Porch. Couldn't quite bring myself to eat biscuits and gravy in the morning though. Visiting the World of Coca-Cola just before flying out. A total brain washing exercise, but very enjoyable. And very much liked Beverly (contrary to many other opinions on the internet) - but then again, I'd happily drink tonic water every day of the year... Looking forward to Paris in November!

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• Java Spotlight Episode 78: Jasper Potts on the JavaFX Scene Builder

  - by Roger Brinkley

  Tweet An interview with Jasper Potts about the new JavaFX Scene Builder. Joining us this week on the Java All Star Developer Panel are Dalibor Topic, Java Free and Open Source Software Ambassador and Arun Gupta, Java EE Guy. Right-click or Control-click to download this MP3 file. You can also subscribe to the Java Spotlight Podcast Feed to get the latest podcast automatically. If you use iTunes you can open iTunes and subscribe with this link:  Java Spotlight Podcast in iTunes. Show Notes News JavaFX Scene Builder Developer Preview available for testing. Java EE Unlock the Java EE 6 Platform using NetBeans 7.1 Tuning GlassFish for Production JSF 2.2 Update from Ed Burns John Rose at Microsoft's Lang.NEXT summit Recording of John's Java 8 presentation Jeroen Frijters' presentation on IKVM.NET Martin Odersky's keynote JVM Language Summit 2012 July 30 – August 1; Oracle Santa Clara (same as last year) CFP coming in a few days JVM Language Summit 2011 Presentations & Recordings Proposed development schedule for JDK 8 Say hello to Mathias Axelsson Events April 11, Cleveland JUG, Cleveland, OH April 12, GreenJUG, Greenville, SC April 17-18, JavaOne Russia, Moscow Russia April 18–20, Devoxx France, Paris, France April 17-20, GIDS, Bangalore April 21, Java Summit, Chennai April 26, Mix-IT, Lyon, France, May 3-4, JavaOne India, Hyderabad, India May 5, Bangalore, Pune, ?? - JUG outreach May 7, OTN Developer Day, Mumbai May 8, OTN Developer Day, Delhi Feature InterviewJasper Potts is the Developer Experience Architect for the Java Client Group at Oracle. Responsible for technical design for everything thats sis on the core platform including Controls, Tools, Samples and Blueprints. Formally a lead engineer on the JavaFX & Swing teams working on the new JavaFX UI Controls and Graphics frameworks. Also responsible for designing, developing and presenting demos during the keynotes at JavaOne and Devoxx. A JavaOne Rockstar presenter having presented many sessions on JavaFX and Swing at many conferences. Prior to Sun he founded Xerto a desktop applications company developing Imagery a Java professional photo management application. In this interview Jasper talks about the recently release JavaFX Scene Builder. Mail Bag What’s Cool Contribute to GlassFish in Five Different Ways Stephen Chin and James Weaver join Oracle Adam Bien - Building Java FX 2 Libraries From Source With Maven 3 Paul Sandoz - Java Boomerang Building Jigsaw on Mac OS X using VirtualBox Mandy Chung: Jigsaw for Mac OS X

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• Recap: Oracle at the Gartner Business Intelligence Summit

  - by kimberly.billings

  Getting to Vegas was no fun. As anyone who lives in the Bay Area knows, the SF airport shuts down one runway when it rains, causing major havoc. So rain, rain, rain on Sunday meant delay, delay, delay at the airport. Needless to say, my 6:30 pm flight didn't land in Vegas until 3:00 am! But the travel pains were worth it. There was a lot to be learned at the Gartner BI Summit this year, and the uptick in attendance was reflected in strong booth traffic and engaging conversations in the Oracle booth. Oracle customer, Dawn Conant, Director, Business Intelligence at Beckman Coulter, generated a lot of interest in her presentation about migrating from Business Objects to Oracle Business Intelligence, Enterprise Edition with Oracle Database 11g. Dawn's story was a very relatable one, as many of the attendees had plans for similar projects. One of the most interesting Gartner-led sessions compared BI/DW megavendors, IBM, Oracle, SAP and Microsoft. According to Gartner analyst Rita Sallam, these megavendors control about two-thirds of the BI market. Sallem attributes this in part to the fact that organizations are expanding their definitions of BI to also include analytics and performance management. In doing so, they require greater integration of BI applications with a broader set of applications and middleware. In a related session, a panel of Gartner analysts compared the Magic Quadrants for BI Platforms; CPM; Data Quality; Data Integration Tools; and Data Warehouses. Oracle is a leader in all of the Magic Quadrants in which it participates and has the most complete stack including hardware and software, according to Donald Feinberg. Feinberg also commented that in situations with VLDW and solid mixed workloads, Oracle Exadata is making a big difference! var gaJsHost = (("https:" == document.location.protocol) ? "https://ssl." : "http://www."); document.write(unescape("%3Cscript src='" + gaJsHost + "google-analytics.com/ga.js' type='text/javascript'%3E%3C/script%3E")); try { var pageTracker = _gat._getTracker("UA-13185312-1"); pageTracker._trackPageview(); } catch(err) {}

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• Is commented out code really always bad?

  - by nikie

  Practically every text on code quality I've read agrees that commented out code is a bad thing. The usual example is that someone changed a line of code and left the old line there as a comment, apparently to confuse people who read the code later on. Of course, that's a bad thing. But I often find myself leaving commented out code in another situation: I write a computational-geometry or image processing algorithm. To understand this kind of code, and to find potential bugs in it, it's often very helpful to display intermediate results (e.g. draw a set of points to the screen or save a bitmap file). Looking at these values in the debugger usually means looking at a wall of numbers (coordinates, raw pixel values). Not very helpful. Writing a debugger visualizer every time would be overkill. I don't want to leave the visualization code in the final product (it hurts performance, and usually just confuses the end user), but I don't want to loose it, either. In C++, I can use #ifdef to conditionally compile that code, but I don't see much differnce between this: /* // Debug Visualization: draw set of found interest points for (int i=0; i<count; i++) DrawBox(pts[i].X, pts[i].Y, 5,5); */ and this: #ifdef DEBUG_VISUALIZATION_DRAW_INTEREST_POINTS for (int i=0; i<count; i++) DrawBox(pts[i].X, pts[i].Y, 5,5); #endif So, most of the time, I just leave the visualization code commented out, with a comment saying what is being visualized. When I read the code a year later, I'm usually happy I can just uncomment the visualization code and literally "see what's going on". Should I feel bad about that? Why? Is there a superior solution? Update: S. Lott asks in a comment Are you somehow "over-generalizing" all commented code to include debugging as well as senseless, obsolete code? Why are you making that overly-generalized conclusion? I recently read Robert Glass' "Clean Code", which says: Few practices are as odious as commenting-out code. Don't do this!. I've looked at the paragraph in the book again (p. 68), there's no qualification, no distinction made between different reasons for commenting out code. So I wondered if this rule is over-generalizing (or if I misunderstood the book) or if what I do is bad practice, for some reason I didn't know.

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• E-Business Suite Sessions at Sangam 2013 in Hyderabad

  - by Sara Woodhull

  The Sangam 2013 conference, sponsored jointly by the All-India Oracle Users' Group (AIOUG) and India Oracle Applucations Users Group (IOAUG), will be in Hyderabad, India on November 8-9, 2013.  This year, the E-Business Suite Applications Technology Group (ATG) will offer two speaker sessions and a walk-in usability test of upcoming EBS user interface features.  It's only about two weeks away, so make your plans to attend if you are in India. Sessions Oracle E-Business Suite Technology: Latest Features and Roadmap Veshaal Singh, Senior Director, ATG Development Friday, Nov. 9, 11:00-12:00 This Oracle development session provides an overview of Oracle's product strategy for Oracle E-Business Suite technology, the capabilities and associated business benefits of recent releases, and a review of capabilities on the product roadmap. This is the cornerstone session for Oracle E-Business Suite technology. Come hear about the latest new usability enhancements of the user interface; systems administration and configuration management tools; security-related updates; and tools and options for extending, customizing, and integrating Oracle E-Business Suite with other applications. Integration Options for Oracle E-Business Suite Rekha Ayothi, Lead Product Manager, ATG Friday, Nov. 9, 2:00-3:00 In this Oracle development session, you will get an understanding of how, when and where you can leverage Oracle's integration technologies to connect end-to-end business processes across your enterprise, including your Oracle Applications portfolio. This session offers a technical look at Oracle E-Business Suite Integrated SOA Gateway, Oracle SOA Suite, Oracle Application Adapters for Data Integration for Oracle E-Business Suite, and other options for integrating Oracle E-Business Suite with other applications. Usability Testing There will be multiple opportunities to participate in usability testing at Sangam '13.  The User Experience team is running a one-on-one usability study that requires advance registration.  In addition, we will be hosting a special walk-in usability lab to get feedback for new Oracle E-Business Suite OA Framework features.  The walk-in lab is a shorter usability experience that does not require any pre-registration.  In both cases, Oracle wants your feedback!  Even if you only have a few minutes, come by the User Experience Lab, meet the team, and try the walk-in lab.

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• Diagnosing the problem when Canon printer fails to print under Ubuntu

  - by MMA

  I understand that the issue of Canon printer under Linux has a number of posts. Actually one of these, was started by me. After inputs from others I have successfully printed using Canon LBP6000 from my Ubuntu machine for around a year. If it failed to print, restarting the daemon using this homemade script coaxed the printer to print. #!/bin/bash pkill -9 -x ccpd pkill -9 -x captmoncnabc /etc/init.d/ccpd start /etc/init.d/ccpd status Recently, I am not successful any more, or successful on a limited and sporadic basis. Sometimes it prints when turned on after logging in, sometimes when the driver is reinstalled. I keep on trying the random steps (call abracadabras) until I get success. Again, not always success comes. I frustrate on for hours only to get single page printed. I loose precious time on the issue of printing. I have read and read all the documents available over the Internet. However, if you please notice, none of the guides, articles, tutorials (these are too many to list here) seem to be dealing with diagnosing the problem when it fails to print. They tell you where to find the drivers, how to install them, or which script to run to make the installation process automatic. Yes, some of the articles or comments suggest a step to try, without any systematic order. But these fail to suggest a step based on symptoms, mostly. This morning, my Canon LBP6000 failed to print. After sometime, there was a message for system error, details of which was found to be something like this. When I search for this error (c3pldrv crashed with SIGSEGV in write ()), I find a number of articles including this one. None of these are actually helpful. Mostly, these are 'me too', 'tell me if you find anything'. Running captstatusui -P LBP6000 produced this, Yes, the printer is connected and actually turned on. I believe that there a number of frustrated Canon printer users out there like me. But there is not a step by step definitive guide to systematically diagnose a non-printing printer. Do you think that you can provide your diagnosing inputs so that a systematic document can be built? May be we will want the Ubuntu users to stay away from Canon printers. But as I believe, as a Linux user for more than fifteen years, such a scenario is not acceptable any more. May be this was acceptable in the infancy days of Linux, but not today. I am using Ubuntu 12.04, by the way, I prefer LTS versions.

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• Favorite moments of JavaOne

  - by Tori Wieldt

  There are so many events and sessions to attend at JavaOne, it's unfair to ask people to choose just one thing they liked, but here are some favorite moments: I loved meeting many open source contributors and friends I have not met in person before and seeing that projects like e.g. Hudson are alive and kicking and have a great future ahead of them. -Manfred Moser My "The Problem with Women" session. It had LOADS of interactivity from the audience, who really helped to make that session.  I came out if it with a real sense of optimism - we love our jobs, we love what we do, and we should be proud of telling everyone about it to attract different talent into the industry. (Read her blog JavaOne: The Problem With Women - A Technical Approach for details.) -Trish Gee My kudos to Oracle for making the presentation materials quickly available to the public. Some of them were already available during JavaOne. Lots of slide decks are already there, and in some cases you may even find the video recordings too. Go to http://www.oracle.com/javaone and select JavaOne Technical Sessions.  -Yakov Fain I loved that not only was James Gosling present at the Community Keynote (which felt more like the keynotes of old times [big space, big screens, fun and tech]) but he was also found wandering the halls of the Hilton the day prior. Bring back James! Add back the toys section in the Community Keynote. Let the t-shirt tossing begin anew. These are "small" things that really fire up the community. -Andres Almiray Seeing James Gosling at JavaOne was a real shot in the arm for Java.  He needs to be there every year. -Frank Greco +42 on having James and the T-shirt tossing. -Stephan Janssen The session "Integrate Java with Robots, Home Automation, Musical Instruments, and Kinect." Fabiane Nardon explained connecting Jenkins to jHome to a truck horn placed in their sysadmin's bedroom. She dubbed it "extreme feedback."  -Tori Wieldt The User Group Forum [on Sunday] was a success! Congratulations Bruno Souza and John Yeary and everybody that were involved. I believe it really helps to increase community participation! There were lots of interesting talks, and great discussion with JUG leaders and members. Thank you Oracle for supporting that! -Yara Senger What was your favorite moment? Please comment! 

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• Twitte API for Java - Hello Twitter Servlet (TOTD #178)

  - by arungupta

  There are a few Twitter APIs for Java that allow you to integrate Twitter functionality in a Java application. This is yet another API, built using JAX-RS and Jersey stack. I started this effort earlier this year and kept delaying to share because wanted to provide a more comprehensive API. But I've delayed enough and releasing it as a work-in-progress. I'm happy to take contributions in order to evolve this API and make it complete, useful, and robust. Drop a comment on the blog if you are interested or ping me at @arungupta. How do you get started ? Just add the following to your "pom.xml": <dependency> <groupId>org.glassfish.samples</groupId> <artifactId>twitter-api</artifactId> <version>1.0-SNAPSHOT</version></dependency> The implementation of this API uses Jersey OAuth Filters for authentication with Twitter and so the following dependencies are required if any API that requires authentication, which is pretty much all the APIs ;-) <dependency> <groupId>com.sun.jersey.contribs.jersey-oauth</groupId>     <artifactId>oauth-client</artifactId>     <version>${jersey.version}</version> </dependency> <dependency>     <groupId>com.sun.jersey.contribs.jersey-oauth</groupId>     <artifactId>oauth-signature</artifactId>     <version>${jersey.version}</version> </dependency> Once the dependencies are added to your project, inject Twitter  API in your Servlet (or any other Java EE component) as: @Inject Twitter twitter; Here is a simple non-secure invocation of the API to get you started: SearchResults result = twitter.search("glassfish", SearchResults.class);for (SearchResultsTweet t : result.getResults()) { out.println(t.getText() + "<br/>");} This code returns the tweets that matches the query "glassfish". The source code for the complete project can be downloaded here. Download it, unzip, and mvn package will build the .war file. And then deploy it on GlassFish or any other Java EE 6 compliant application server! The source code for the API also acts as the javadocs and can be checked out from here. A more detailed sample using security and several other API from this library is coming soon!

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• Mark Zuckerberg tops the list of 50 Highest Rated CEOs. 3 Indian CEOs feature in the list.

  - by Gopinath

  Mark Zuckerberg, the CEO of Facebook is rated as the best CEO according to a report released by the popular employee reviews website Glassdoor.com. 50,000 employees reviews submitted to Glassdoor in the past 1 year are considered for preparing the rating list and Zukerberg topped the list with 99 percent approval to the question “Do you approve of the way your CEO is leading the company?”. Wow! That’s an amazing support to Zukergerg from his employees though stock market and share holders are not with him. Coincidently Facebook is also rated as the best company to work by Glassdoor in a recent survey. Here is the list of top 10 CEOs Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook; 99.3% Approval Bill McDermott & Jim Hagemann Snabe, SAP; 99% Approval Dominic Barton, McKinsey & Company; 97% Approval Jim Turley, Ernst & Young; 96% Approval John E. Schlifske, Northwestern Mutual; 96% Approval Frank D’Souza, Cognizant Technology Solutions; 96% Approval Joe Tucci, EMC; 96% Approval Paul E. Jacobs, QUALCOMM; 95% Approval Richard K. Davis, U.S. Bank; 95% Approval Pierre Nanterme, Accenture; 95% Approval 3 Indian CEOs in the top 50 list – TCS, Wipro & MindTree The list featured three Indian CEOs and all the three are leading Software IT Services organizations in India and creating thousands of IT jobs.  Natarajan Chandrasekaran – the CEO of TCS is at 25th position, Krishnakumar Natarajan – the CEO of MindTree is at 28th position and  Wipro’s T.K.Kurien is at 44th position. Glad to see Indian CEO joining the global ranks. Tech Heavy Weights Google, Apple, Amazon & Microsoft aren’t in top 10 Another thing to note from this report is that the CEO’s of technology heavy weights Google, Apple, Amazon and Microsoft are not in the top10 list- looks like their employees are not really happy with their bosses. At least not as happy as their peers at Facebook. Google CEO’s Larry Page is at 11th position, Jeff Bezos of Amazon at 16th position and Tim Cook of Apple is at 18th position. Well the Microsoft CEO is not even in the list of top 50!! You can read the complete list of ratings at Glassdoor.com’s blog. Photo Credit: Andrew Feinberg

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• Second Edition of Regular Expressions Cookbook Has Been Published

  - by Jan Goyvaerts

  %COOKBOOKFRAME% The first edition of Regular Expressions Cookbook was published in May of 2009. It quickly became a bestseller, briefly holding the #1 spot in computer books on Amazon.com. It also had staying power. The ebook version was O’Reilly’s top seller during the whole year of 2010. So it’s no surprise that our editor at O’Reilly soon contacted us for a second edition. With Steven and I always being very busy, those plans were delayed until finally both of us found the time to update the book. Work started in January. Today you can buy your own copy of the second edition of Regular Expressions Cookbook. O’Reilly’s online shop sells the eBook in DRM-free ePub, Mobi, and PDF formats for $39.99 and the print version for $49.99. These are the list prices for the eBook and the print book. If you’re looking for a discount and free shipping of the print book, you can pre-order on one of the various Amazon sites. Deliveries should start soon. The discount rates differ and are subject to change. Amazon will also pay me an affiliate commission if you use one of these links, which pretty much doubles the income I get from the book. Amazon.com. Free shipping to the USA. Amazon.co.uk. Free shipping to the UK and Ireland. Amazon.fr. Free shipping to France, Monaco, Luxembourg, and Belgium. Amazon.de. Free shipping to Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Luxembourg, Liechtenstein, Belgium, and The Netherlands. If you don’t want to wait for the print book to arrive, the Kindle edition is already available for instant delivery. The Kindle edition works on Amazon’s Kindle hardware, and on PCs via Amazon’s Kindle software (free download). Amazon.com Amazon.co.uk Amazon.fr Amazon.de I’ll blog more about the book in the coming days and weeks with details about what’s new in the second edition.

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• Advice for moving from custom domain hosted on blogspot to new custom domain on hosting provider [closed]

  - by Chan

  Need some advice :) a) Facts: 1. Currently, we have a blog www.thebigbigsky.net hosted on blogspot.com. The site has been up for around a year and google had cached some of the posts. 2. The idea for setting up the blog was to promote/share articles/write-up about personal development and self-growth, and also to offer counseling services related to them. 3. There is another subdomain - chinese.thebigbigsky.net hosting similar blog posts but in Chinese. This is hosted on blogspot as well. b) What we want to do: 1. We did some research on the internet and understood that, to make a website more popular, it is better to have a domain name that is related to the content of the site. Hence, in our case, a domain name containing "personal development" would be more ideal and easier for people to remember. 2. Hence, we are thinking to move away from blogspot to a meaningful new domain (example: personaldevelopmentwithxyz.com) and move all contents there. The new domain will be hosted on a hosting provider e.g. hostgator.com c) Here are the steps we have in mind: 1. Register the new domain (example: personaldevelopmentwithxyz.com) 2. Get a hosting provider hostgator.com 3. Setup a new site based on Wordpress, import all contents from existing blog to this new site - personaldevelopmentwithxyz.com. 4. Switch current blog back to thebigbigsky.blogspot.com 5. Switch DNS of www.thebigbigsky.net to point to the new site on hostgator.com 6. On hostgator.com, setup permanent redirect 301 of www.thebigbigsky.net to point to personaldevelopmetnwithxyz.com by following the tutorial mentioned here - http://www.blogbloke.com/migrating-redirecting-blogger-wordpress-htaccess-apache-best-method/ Questions: 1. Will it have major impact on the current google pagerank or SEO of thebigbigsky.net? As the site is not that popular, we assumed that the impact would not be a major one. 2. Is the domain personaldevelopmentwithxyz.com considered too long? (For SEO etc) 3. Steps c.4 and c.5 above - Will this work for our case? 4. How about the subdomain - chinese.thebigbigsky.net? We would like keep it as separate blog with the domain e.g. chinese.personaldevelopmentwithxyz.com 5. We added "facebook comments" to the existing post on www.thebigtbigsky.net and would not want to lose it. Will the comments still be there after we moved to the new domain? 6. Any better idea to do it? :) Thank you very much! regards, -chan

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• I Choose iNada

  - by Mark Treadwell

  As a laptop and Kindle user, I have been looking at the usual cyclical Apple frenzy in the press with the same kind of amused tolerance I give my three-year-old son.  They never seem to learn, and they keep repeating the same things.  However when I ready articles like this, I am reminded that that is not always the case. I am a happy user of a monster-sized HP HDX laptop, HP touch screen all-in-one system, and multi-screen Dell desktops at home as well as a HP business laptop at work.  I have no iPod, iMac, iTouch or any other relationship with the company who wants to trademark the prefix “i”. I have not missed them. That is not to say that I have no technological gadgets.  I do.  They just do not dominate Every company wants to preserve their customer base, but Apple just does it too rigidly.  The buy-in necessary rubs me wrong.  When the fanboys scream about the next great iApple thing which will kill off another market segment (this time, the iPad will kill off laptops), the amused tolerance returns. From what I have seen, the iPad virtual keyboard is a poor substitute for an actual keyboard.  It was intended to let you get some kind of text into a device that is not really intended for keyboard input, but rather for touch manipulation of a designed interface.  I like the virtual keyboard on my LG Dare cell phone, but you will not catch me writing my next novel with it.  But, you hear, you can connect a real keyboard and get info from another computer.  That is when you realize that the iPad is not a true standalone device like a laptop.  You have to make more hardware purchases to get what you truly want.  It is an expensive accommodation to get you a different form of freedom. So if Apple made a product with me in mind, you can have it.  Everyone gets to make their own choice.  My choice is the iNada.

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• Design for complex ATG applications

  - by Glen Borkowski

  Overview Needless to say, some ATG applications are more complex than others.  Some ATG applications support a single site, single language, single catalog, single currency, have a single development staff, single business team, and a relatively simple business model.  The real complex applications have to support multiple sites, multiple languages, multiple catalogs, multiple currencies, a couple different development teams, multiple business teams, and a highly complex business model (and processes to go along with it).  While it's still important to implement a proper design for simple applications, it's absolutely critical to do this for the complex applications.  Why?  It's all about time and money.  If you are unable to manage your complex applications in an efficient manner, the cost of managing it will increase dramatically as will the time to get things done (time to market).  On the positive side, your competition is most likely in the same situation, so you just need to be more efficient than they are. This article is intended to discuss a number of key areas to think about when designing complex applications on ATG.  Some of this can get fairly technical, so it may help to get some background first.  You can get enough of the required background information from this post.  After reading that, come back here and follow along. Application Design Of all the various types of ATG applications out there, the most complex tend to be the ones in the telecommunications industry - especially the ones which operate in multiple countries.  To get started, let's assume that we are talking about an application like that.  One that has these properties: Operates in multiple countries - must support multiple sites, catalogs, languages, and currencies The organization is fairly loosely-coupled - single brand, but different businesses across different countries There is some common functionality across all sites in all countries There is some common functionality across different sites within the same country Sites within a single country may have some unique functionality - relative to other sites in the same country Complex product catalog (mostly in terms of bundles, eligibility, and compatibility) At this point, I'll assume you have read through the required reading and have a decent understanding of how ATG modules work... Code / configuration - assemble into modules When it comes to defining your modules for a complex application, there are a number of goals: Divide functionality between the modules in a way that maps to your business Group common functionality 'further down in the stack of modules' Provide a good balance between shared resources and autonomy for countries / sites Now I'll describe a high level approach to how you could accomplish those goals...  Let's start from the bottom and work our way up.  At the very bottom, you have the modules that ship with ATG - the 'out of the box' stuff.  You want to make sure that you are leveraging all the modules that make sense in order to get the most value from ATG as possible - and less stuff you'll have to write yourself.  On top of the ATG modules, you should create what we'll refer to as the Corporate Foundation Module described as follows: Sits directly on top of ATG modules Used by all applications across all countries and sites - this is the foundation for everyone Contains everything that is common across all countries / all sites Once established and settled, will change less frequently than other 'higher' modules Encapsulates as many enterprise-wide integrations as possible Will provide means of code sharing therefore less development / testing - faster time to market Contains a 'reference' web application (described below) The next layer up could be multiple modules for each country (you could replace this with region if that makes more sense).  We'll define those modules as follows: Sits on top of the corporate foundation module Contains what is unique to all sites in a given country Responsible for managing any resource bundles for this country (to handle multiple languages) Overrides / replaces corporate integration points with any country-specific ones Finally, we will define what should be a fairly 'thin' (in terms of functionality) set of modules for each site as follows: Sits on top of the country it resides in module Contains what is unique for a given site within a given country Will mostly contain configuration, but could also define some unique functionality as well Contains one or more web applications The graphic below should help to indicate how these modules fit together: Web applications As described in the previous section, there are many opportunities for sharing (minimizing costs) as it relates to the code and configuration aspects of ATG modules.  Web applications are also contained within ATG modules, however, sharing web applications can be a bit more difficult because this is what the end customer actually sees, and since each site may have some degree of unique look & feel, sharing becomes more challenging.  One approach that can help is to define a 'reference' web application at the corporate foundation layer to act as a solid starting point for each site.  Here's a description of the 'reference' web application: Contains minimal / sample reference styling as this will mostly be addressed at the site level web app Focus on functionality - ensure that core functionality is revealed via this web application Each individual site can use this as a starting point There may be multiple types of web apps (i.e. B2C, B2B, etc) There are some techniques to share web application assets - i.e. multiple web applications, defined in the web.xml, and it's worth investigating, but is out of scope here. Reference infrastructure In this complex environment, it is assumed that there is not a single infrastructure for all countries and all sites.  It's more likely that different countries (or regions) could have their own solution for infrastructure.  In this case, it will be advantageous to define a reference infrastructure which contains all the hardware and software that make up the core environment.  Specifications and diagrams should be created to outline what this reference infrastructure looks like, as well as it's baseline cost and the incremental cost to scale up with volume.  Having some consistency in terms of infrastructure will save time and money as new countries / sites come online.  Here are some properties of the reference infrastructure: Standardized approach to setup of hardware Type and number of servers Defines application server, operating system, database, etc... - including vendor and specific versions Consistent naming conventions Provides a consistent base of terminology and understanding across environments Defines which ATG services run on which servers Production Staging BCC / Preview Each site can change as required to meet scale requirements Governance / organization It should be no surprise that the complex application we're talking about is backed by an equally complex organization.  One of the more challenging aspects of efficiently managing a series of complex applications is to ensure the proper level of governance and organization.  Here are some ideas and goals to work towards: Establish a committee to make enterprise-wide decisions that affect all sites Representation should be evenly distributed Should have a clear communication procedure Focus on high level business goals Evaluation of feature / function gaps and how that relates to ATG release schedule / roadmap Determine when to upgrade & ensure value will be realized Determine how to manage various levels of modules Who is responsible for maintaining corporate / country / site layers Determine a procedure for controlling what goes in the corporate foundation module Standardize on source code control, database, hardware, OS versions, J2EE app servers, development procedures, etc only use tested / proven versions - this is something that should be centralized so that every country / site does not have to worry about compatibility between versions Create a innovation team Quickly develop new features, perform proof of concepts All teams can benefit from their findings Summary At this point, it should be clear why the topics above (design, governance, organization, etc) are critical to being able to efficiently manage a complex application.  To summarize, it's all about competitive advantage...  You will need to reduce costs and improve time to market with the goal of providing a better experience for your end customers.  You can reduce cost by reducing development time, time allocated to testing (don't have to test the corporate foundation module over and over again - do it once), and optimizing operations.  With an efficient design, you can improve your time to market and your business will be more flexible  and agile.  Over time, you'll find that you're becoming more focused on offering functionality that is new to the market (creativity) and this will be rewarded - you're now a leader. In addition to the above, you'll realize soft benefits as well.  Your staff will be operating in a culture based on sharing.  You'll want to reward efforts to improve and enhance the foundation as this will benefit everyone.  This culture will inspire innovation, which can only lend itself to your competitive advantage.

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• What Is Nuclear Meltdown?

  - by Gopinath

  Japan was first hit by a massive earth quake, then a ruthless tsunami washed away thousands of homes and now they fear the worst – meltdown of nuclear power stations in the quake hit year. Nuclear meltdowns are horrifying – remember the Chernobyl incident in Russia? The Chernobyl reactor meltdown released 400 times more radio active material than the atomic bombing of Hiroshima. The effects of nuclear meltdowns are beyond imagination of a common man, thousands of people loose their lives and many more lakhs of people suffer with radiation related diseases for many years. Nuclear Meltdowns are dangerous, but how do they happen? What causes a nuclear meltdown? In simple terms – Nuclear meltdown is an accident that happens due to severe overheating of a nuclear reactor and results in release of nuclear radiation into the environment.  How A Nuclear Meltdown Happens? According to Wikipedia A meltdown occurs when a severe failure of a nuclear power plant system prevents proper cooling of the reactor core, to the extent that the nuclear fuel assemblies overheat and melt. A meltdown is considered very serious because of the potential that radioactive materials could be released into the environment. The fuel assemblies in a reactor core can melt if heat is not removed. A nuclear reactor does not have to remain critical for a core damage incident to occur, because decay heat continues to heat the reactor fuel assemblies after the reactor has shut down, though this heat decreases with time. A core damage accident is caused by the loss of sufficient cooling for the nuclear fuel within the reactor core. The reason may be one of several factors, including a loss of pressure control accident, a loss of coolant accident (LOCA), an uncontrolled power excursion or, in some types, a fire within the reactor core. Failures in control systems may cause a series of events resulting in loss of cooling. Contemporary safety principles of defense in depth, ensure that multiple layers of safety systems are always present to make such accidents unlikely. Video – What Causes Nuclear Meltdown AlJazeera news has a good analysis on feared nuclear meltdown of Japan’s nuclear plants and also an animation on what causes Nuclear Meltdown. cc image credit: flickr/jtjdt This article titled,What Is Nuclear Meltdown?, was originally published at Tech Dreams. Grab our rss feed or fan us on Facebook to get updates from us.

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• ACORD LOMA 2010: Building Insurance Companies in the Clouds

  - by [email protected]

  Chuck Johnston, vice president of global strategy and alliances for Oracle Insurance, participated in a featured speaking session at ACORD LOMA 2010. He provides an update on his discussions with insurers at the show and after his presentation. Every year I always make a point of walking the show floor at the ACORD LOMA technology conference to visit with colleagues and competitors, and try to get a feel for which way the industry will move over the next 12 months. Insurers are looking for substance in cloud (computing), trying to mix business with pleasure (monetizing social networks), and expect differentiation through commodity (Software as a Service). The disconnect at this show is that most vendors are still struggling with creating a clear path from Facebook to customer intimacy, SaaS to core cost savings and clouds to ubiquitous presence. Vendors need to find new ways to help insurers find the real value in these potentially disruptive technologies by understanding the changes coming to the insurance business and how these new technologies impact the new insurance business. Oracle's approach to understanding the evolving insurance industry comes from a discussion with our customers in our Insurance CIO Council, where one of our customers suggested we buy an insurance company to really understand our customers. We have decided to do the next best thing and build our own model of an insurance company, Alamere Insurance, that uses the latest technologies to transform its own business. Alamere will never issue an actual policy, but it does give us a framework to consider the impacts of changes in the insurance landscape and how Oracle technology meets the challenge or needs to evolve to help our customers be successful. In preparing for my talk at the conference using Alamere as my organizing theme, I found myself reading actuarial memoranda on CSO table changes and articles on underwriting theory that really made me think about my customer's problems first and foremost, and then how Oracle technology can provide answers. As much as I prefer techno-thrillers and sci-fi novels to actuarial papers for plane reading, I got very excited about the idea of putting myself back in the customer shoes I haven't worn in a decade, and really looking at how Oracle can power the Adaptive Insurance Enterprise. Talking to customers and industry people after the session, the idea of Alamere seemed to excite people and I got a lot of suggestions as to what lines of business we should model and where we should focus first on technology uptake. One customer said to a colleague that Oracle's attempt to "share their pain" was unique among vendors. More about Alamere, and the Adaptive Insurance Enterprise next time. Chuck Johnston is vice president of global strategy and alliances for Oracle Insurance.

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• Source of (programmer) inefficiency

  - by Daniel

  I am interested to gain a better insight about the possible reasons of personal inefficiency as programmers (and only in programming) due to – simply - our own errors (because we are humans – well, almost all of us). I am not interested in how much we are productive or in how many adjustements the customer asks for when the work is done, but where and how each of us spend that part of its time in tasks that are unproductive and there is no one to blame except ourselves. Excluding ego - feeding and / or self – gratification, what I am trying to get (for all of us) is: what are the common issues eating our time; insight on reasons for that issues; identify simple way for us, personally (not delegating actions to other or our organizations), to correct our own problems. Please, do not think in academic terms but aim at the opportunity to compare our daily experiences and understand what are and how we try to fix our personal deficiencies. If you are interested to respond to this post, please: integrate the list if you see something important (or obvious) missing; highlight or name honestly your first issue tellng the way you try to address and solve your issue acting on yourself and yourself only in a sort of "continuous quality improving" My criteria for accepting the answer is: choose the best solution (feasibility and utility) to fix one (or more) of the problems of the list. Of course, selecting an error is not a vote on our skills: maybe we are hyper professional programmers and we lose ten minutes only every year or we are terribly inefficient, losing a couple of days a week: reasons for inefficiency could be really the same - but in a different scale. A possible list: Plain error in the names (variables, functions). Inability to see the obvious in your code. Misreading. Lack of concentration. Trying to use a technology you have not mastered. Errors with data types. Time required to understand your previous code or your documentation. Trying to do something more than requested because you enjoy it Using solutions more complicated than required because you enjoy it. Plain logical errors. Errors due to your fault in communications. Distraction My first personal issue: "Trying to use a technology you do not master." I have to use daily several technologies and I often need to spend significant time correcting code because my assumptions were plainly wrong. Reasons for this: production needs put high pressure and make difficult to find the time to learn. I try to address this reading technical books - as many as I can - even if this actually consumes a lot of time.

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• Looking for Cutting-Edge Data Integration: 2014 Excellence Awards

  - by Sandrine Riley

  Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 It is nomination time!!! This year's Oracle Fusion Middleware Excellence Awards will honor customers and partners who are creatively using various products across Oracle Fusion Middleware. Think you have something unique and innovative with one or a few of our Oracle Data Integration products? We would love to hear from you! Please submit today. The deadline for the nomination is June 20, 2014. What you win: An Oracle Fusion Middleware Innovation trophy One free pass to Oracle OpenWorld 2014 Priority consideration for placement in Profit magazine, Oracle Magazine, or other Oracle publications & press release Oracle Fusion Middleware Innovation logo for inclusion on your own Website and/or press release Let us reminisce a little… For details on the 2013 Data Integration Winners: Royal Bank of Scotland’s Market and International Banking and The Yalumba Wine Company, check out this blog post: 2013 Oracle Excellence Awards for Fusion Middleware Innovation… and the Winners for Data Integration are… and for details on the 2012 Data Integration Winners: Raymond James and Morrisons, check out this blog post: And the Winners of Fusion Middleware Innovation Awards in Data Integration are…  Now to view the 2013 Winners (for all categories). We hope to honor you! Here's what you need to do:  Click here to submit your nomination today.  And just a reminder: the deadline to submit a nomination is 5pm Pacific Time on June 20, 2014. /* 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-hansi-font-family:Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin;}

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• Overload Avoidance

  - by mikef

  A little under a year ago, Matt Simmons wrote a rather reflective article about his terrifying brush with stress-induced ill health. SysAdmins and DBAs have always been prime victims of work-related stress, but I wonder if that predilection is perhaps getting worse, despite the best efforts of Matt and his trusty side-kick, HR. The constant pressure from share-holders and CFOs to 'streamline' the workforce is partially to blame, but the more recent culprit is technology itself. I can't deny that the rise of technologies like virtualization, PowerCLI, PowerShell, and a host of others has been a tremendous boon. As a result, individual IT professionals are now able to handle more and more tasks and manage increasingly large and complex environments. But, without a doubt, this is a two-edged sword; The reward for competence is invariably more work. Unfortunately, SysAdmins play such a pivotal role in modern business that it's easy to see how they can very quickly become swamped in conflicting demands coming from different directions. However, that doesn't justify the ridiculous hours many are asked (or volunteer) to devote to their work. Admirably though their commitment is, it isn't healthy for them, it sets a dangerous expectation, and eventually something will snap. There are times when everyone needs to step up to the plate outside of 'normal' work hours, but that time isn't all the time. Naturally, with all that lovely technology, you can automate more and more of those tricky tasks to keep on top of the workload, but you are still only human. Clever though you may be, there is a very real limit to how far technology can take you. I'm not suggesting that you avoid these technologies, or deliberately aim for mediocrity; I'm just saying that you need to be more than just technically skilled (and Wesley Nonapeptide riffs on and around this topic in his excellent 'Telepathic Robot Drones' blog post). You need to be able to manage expectations, not just Exchange. Specifically, that means your own expectations of what you are capable of, because those come before everyone else's. After all, how can you keep your work-life balance under control, if you're the one setting the bar way too high? Talking to your manager, or discussing issues with your users, is only going to be productive if you have some facts to work with. "Know Thyself" is the first law of managing work overload, and this is obviously a skill which people develop over time; the fact that veteran Sysadmins exist at all is testament to this. I'd just love to know how you get to that point. Personally, I'm using RescueTime to keep myself honest, but I'm open to recommendations for better methods. Do you track your own time, do you have an intuitive sense of what is possible, or do you just rely on someone else to handle that all for you? Cheers, Michael

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• BPEL 11.1.1.6 Certified for Prebuilt E-Business Suite 12.1.3 SOA Integrations

  - by Steven Chan (Oracle Development)

  Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) integrations with Oracle E-Business Suite can either be custom integrations that you build yourself or prebuilt integrations from Oracle.  For more information about the differences between the two options for SOA integrations, see this previously-published certification announcement. There are five prebuilt BPEL business processes by Oracle E-Business Suite Release 12 product teams: Oracle Price Protection (DPP) Complex Maintenance, Repair & Overhaul (CMRO/AHL) Oracle Transportation Management (WMS, WSH, PO) Advanced Supply Chain Planning (MSC) Product Information Management (PIM/EGO) Last year we announced the certification of BPEL 11.1.1.5 for Prebuilt E-Business Suite 12.1.3 SOA integrations.  The five prebuilt BPEL processes have now been certified with Oracle BPEL Process Manager 11g version 11.1.1.6 (in Oracle Fusion Middleware SOA Suite 11g).  These prebuilt BPEL processes are certified with Oracle E-Business Suite Release 12.1.3 and higher. Note: The Supply Chain Trading Connector (CLN) product team has opted not to support BPEL 11g with their prebuilt business processes previously certified with BPEL 10.1.3.5.  If you have a requirement for that certification, I would recommend contacting your Oracle account manager to ensure that the Supply Chain team is notified appropriately.  For additional information about prebuilt integrations with Oracle E-Business Suite Release 12.1.3, please refer to the following documentation: Integrating Oracle E-Business Suite Release 12 with Oracle BPEL available in Oracle SOA Suite 11g (Note 1321776.1) Oracle Fusion Middleware 11g (11.1.1.6.0) Documentation Library Installing Oracle SOA Suite and Oracle Business Process Management Suite Release Notes for Oracle Fusion Middleware 11g (11.1.1.6) Certified Platforms Linux x86 (Oracle Linux 4, 5) Linux x86 (RHEL 5) Linux x86 (SLES 10) Linux x86-64 (Oracle Linux 4, 5, 6) Linux x86-64 (RHEL 5) Linux x86-64 (SLES 10)  Oracle Solaris on SPARC (64-bit) (9, 10, 11) HP-UX Itanium (11.23, 11.31) HP-UX PA-RISC (64-bit) (11.23, 11.31) IBM AIX on Power Systems (64-bit) (5.3, 6.1, 7) IBM: Linux on System z (RHEL 5, SLES 10) Microsoft Windows Server (32-bit) (2003, 2008)  Microsoft Windows x64 (64-bit) (2008 R2) Getting SupportIf you need support for the prebuilt EBS 12.1.3 BPEL business processes, you can log Service Requests against the Applications Technology Group product family. Related Articles BPEL 11.1.1.5 Certified for Prebuilt E-Business Suite 12.1.3 SOA Integrations Webcast Replay Available: SOA Integration Options for E-Business Suite Securing E-Business Suite Web Services with Integrated SOA Gateway

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• How to Use Your Android Phone as a Modem; No Rooting Required

  - by Jason Fitzpatrick

  If your cellular provider’s mobile hotspot/tethering plans are too pricey, skip them and tether your phone to your computer without inflating your monthly bill. Read on to see how you can score free mobile internet. We recently received a letter from a How-To Geek reader, requesting help linking their Android phone to their laptop to avoid the highway robbery their cellular provider was insisting upon: Dear How-To Geek, I recently found out that my cellphone company charges $30 a month to use your smartphone as a data modem. That’s an outrageous price when I already pay an extra $15 a month charge just because they insist that because I have a smartphone I need a data plan because I’ll be using so much more data than other users. They expect me to pay what amounts to a $45 a month premium just to do some occasional surfing and email checking from the comfort of my laptop instead of the much smaller smartphone screen! Surely there is a work around? I’m running Windows 7 on my laptop and I have an Android phone running Android OS 2.2. Help! Sincerely, No Double Dipping! Well Double Dipping, this is a sentiment we can strongly related to as many of us on staff are in a similar situation. It’s absurd that so many companies charge you to use the data connection on the phone you’re already paying for. There is no difference in bandwidth usage if you stream Pandora to your phone or to your laptop, for example. Fortunately we have a solution for you. It’s not free-as-in-beer but it only costs $16 which, over the first year of use alone, will save you $344. Let’s get started! Latest Features How-To Geek ETC What Can Super Mario Teach Us About Graphics Technology? Windows 7 Service Pack 1 is Released: But Should You Install It? How To Make Hundreds of Complex Photo Edits in Seconds With Photoshop Actions How to Enable User-Specific Wireless Networks in Windows 7 How to Use Google Chrome as Your Default PDF Reader (the Easy Way) How To Remove People and Objects From Photographs In Photoshop Make Efficient Use of Tab Bar Space by Customizing Tab Width in Firefox See the Geeky Work Done Behind the Scenes to Add Sounds to Movies [Video] Use a Crayon to Enhance Engraved Lettering on Electronics Adult Swim Brings Their Programming Lineup to iOS Devices Feel the Chill of the South Atlantic with the Antarctica Theme for Windows 7 Seas0nPass Now Offers Untethered Apple TV Jailbreaking

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