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• When a problem is resolved

  - by Rob Farley

  This month’s T-SQL Tuesday is hosted by Jen McCown, and she’s picked the topic of Resolutions. It’s a new year, and she’s thinking about what people have resolved to do this year. Unfortunately, I’ve never really done resolutions like that. I see too many people resolve to quit smoking, or lose weight, or whatever, and fail miserably. I’m not saying I don’t set goals, but it’s not a thing for New Year. The obvious joke is “1920x1080” as a resolution, but I’m not going there. I think Resolving is a strange word. It makes it sound like I’m having to solve a problem a second time, when actually, it’s more along the lines of solving a problem well enough for it to count as finished. If something has been resolved, a solution has been provided. There is a resolution, through the provision of a solution. It’s a strangeness of English. When I look up the word resolution at dictionary.com, it has 12 options, including “settling of a problem”. There’s a finality about resolution. If you resolve to do something, you’re saying “Yes. This is a done thing. I’m resolving to do it, which means that it may as well be complete already.” I like to think I resolve problems, rather than just solving them. I want my solving to be final and complete. If I tune a query, I don’t want to find that I’m back in there, re-tuning it at some point. Strangely, if I re-solve a problem, that implies that I didn’t resolve it in the first place. I only solved it. Temporarily. We “data-folk” live in a world where the most common answer is “It depends.” Frustratingly, the thing an answer depends on may still be changing in the system in question. That probably means that any solution that is put in place may need reinvestigating at some point later. So do I resolve things? Yes. Am I Chuck Norris, and solve things so well the world would break first? No. Do these two claims happily sit beside each other? No, unfortunately not. But I happily take responsibility for things, and let my clients depend on me to see it through. As far as they are concerned, it is resolved. And so I resolve to keep resolving, right through 2011.

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• Another Custom Property Locator: a Library of Books

  - by Cindy McMullen

  Introduction The previous post gave an introduction to custom property locators and showed how create one using JDeveloper.  This post continues on the custom locator theme, with a slightly more complex locator: a library of books.  It demonstrates using the DAO pattern to delegate data access from the Locator, which is likely how many actual backing stores will integrate with the Locator.  You can imagine, rather than a library of books, the data store might be a user database of sorts.  The same sort of pattern would apply. This post uses the BookLocator example originally shown in the WebCenter documentation, but has: updated the source code to reflect the final Property APIs includes the steps for generating the namespace and property definition files via JDeveloper detailed usage of the PropertyService APIs Getting Started If you're new to JDeveloper, you might want to check out this tutorial.  There is also the "Jump-Start to using Personalization" blog post that you might find useful.  Otherwise, if you're already familiar with both, you can skip those tutorials and jump right in to using JDeveloper. Download the BookLocator.zip file (which has been updated from the original post) and unzip it to a new directory.  Start JDeveloper, navigate to the BookLocator.jws file, and open it.   It should look something like this: The Properties Namespace file contains the property definitions and property set definitions you define.  It is explained more in detail in the Namespace documentation.  Although this example doesn't show it, the property set definitions have the ability to reference multiple locators per property.   This can be done by right-clicking on the 'Locator Info' box.  Configure the contents of the Locator Map  by editing locators and mapping them to available property names in the property set definition. Compiling, deploying, and running your locator The rest of the steps in this tutorial basically follow those in the previous blog on custom locators, and won't be repeated here.   A scenario to invoke your locator is included with the sample app: see BookProperties.scenarios_diagram above.  Summary This post demonstrates a simple library of books accessed by the BookPropertyLocator via the DAO layer.  This is a useful pattern for more realistic property retrievals, such as a backing user store.  It also points out the possibility of retrieving properties from multiple locators, which would be quite handy to retrieve user attributes from multiple sources.

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• Behaviour Trees with irregular updates

  - by Robominister

  I'm interested in behaviour trees that aren't iterated every game tick, but every so often. (Edit: the tree could specify how many frames within the main game loop to wait before running its tick function again). Every theoretical implementation I have seen of behaviour trees talks of the tree search being carried out every game update - which seems necessary, because a leaf node (eg a behaviour, like 'return to base') needs to be constantly checked to see if is still running, failed or completed. Can anyone suggest how I might start implementing a tree that isnt run every tick, or point me in the direction of good material specific to this case (I am struggling to find anything)? My thoughts so far: action leaf nodes (when they start) must only push some kind of action object onto a list for an entity, rather than directly calling any code that makes the entity do something. The list of actions for the entity would be run every frame (update any that need to run, pop any that have completed from the list). the return state from a given action must be fed back into the tree, so that when we run the tree iteration again (and reach the same action leaf node - so the tree has so far determined that we ought to still be trying this action) - that the action has completed, or is still running etc. If my actual action code is running from an action list on an entity, then I possibly need to cancel previously running actions in the list - i am thinking that I can just delete the entire stack of queued up actions. I've seen the idea of ActionLists which block lower priority actions when a higher priority one is added, but this seems like very close logic to behaviour trees, and I dont want to be duplicating behaviour. This leaves me with some questions 1) How would I feed the action return state back into the tree? Its obvious I need to store some information relating to 'currently executing actions' on the entity, and check that in the tree tick, but I can't imagine how. 2) Does having a seperate behaviour tree (for deciding behaviour) and action list (for carrying out actual queued up actions) sound like a reasonable approach? 3) Is the approach of updating a behaviour tree irregularly actually used by anyone? It seems like a nice idea for budgeting ai search time when you have a lot of ai entities to process. (Edit) - I am also thinking about storing a single instance of a given behaviour tree in memory, and providing it by reference to any entity that uses it. So any information about what action was last selected for execution on an entity must be stored in a data context relative to the entity (which the tree can check). (I am probably answering my own questions as i go!) I hope I have expressed my questions adequately! Thanks in advance for any help :)

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• Harnessing Business Events for Predictive Decision Making - part 1 / 3

  - by Sanjeev Sharma

  Businesses have long relied on data mining to elicit patterns and forecast future demand and supply trends. Improvements in computing hardware, specifically storage and compute capacity, have significantly enhanced the ability to store and analyze mountains of data in ever shrinking time-frames. Nevertheless, the reality is that data growth is outpacing storage capacity by a factor of two and computing power is still very much bounded by Moore's Law, doubling only every 18 months.Faced with this data explosion, businesses are exploring means to develop human brain-like capabilities in their decision systems (including BI and Analytics) to make sense of the data storm, in other words business events, in real-time and respond pro-actively rather than re-actively. It is more like having a little bit of the right information just a little bit before hand than having all of the right information after the fact. To appreciate this thought better let's first understand the workings of the human brain.Neuroscience research has revealed that the human brain is predictive in nature and that talent is nothing more than exceptional predictive ability. The cerebral-cortex, part of the human brain responsible for cognition, thought, language etc., comprises of five layers. The lowest layer in the hierarchy is responsible for sensory perception i.e. discrete, detail-oriented tasks whereas each of the above layers increasingly focused on assembling higher-order conceptual models. Information flows both up and down the layered memory hierarchy. This allows the conceptual mental-models to be refined over-time through experience and repetition. Secondly, and more importantly, the top-layers are able to prime the lower layers to anticipate certain events based on the existing mental-models thereby giving the brain a predictive ability. In a way the human brain develops a "memory of the future", some sort of an anticipatory thinking which let's it predict based on occurrence of events in real-time. A higher order of predictive ability stems from being able to recognize the lack of certain events. For instance, it is one thing to recognize the beats in a music track and another to detect beats that were missed, which involves a higher order predictive ability.Existing decision systems analyze historical data to identify patterns and use statistical forecasting techniques to drive planning. They are similar to the human-brain in that they employ business rules very much like mental-models to chunk and classify information. However unlike the human brain existing decision systems are unable to evolve these rules automatically (AI still best suited for highly specific tasks) and  predict the future based on real-time business events. Mistake me not,  existing decision systems remain vital to driving long-term and broader business planning. For instance, a telco will still rely on BI and Analytics software to plan promotions and optimize inventory but tap into business events enabled predictive insight to identify specifically which customers are likely to churn and engage with them pro-actively. In the next post, i will depict the technology components that enable businesses to harness real-time events and drive predictive decision making.

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• How are you coping with Ubuntu's Unity app launcher? (It auto-hides, can't minimize apps)

  - by Bad Learner

  [Firstly, let me tell you that this cannot be subjective in anyway, as I think at least Ubuntu beginners will have these questions boggling in their mind; and yes, this is a question that has a definite answer - - so, I am completely within the rules.] Okay, coming to the point, I see that Ubuntu uses Unity since v10.xx (netbook edition?) and carried the same to v11.04 & v11.10. As someone who's stuck to Windows for all these years, it's somewhat difficult to cope with Ubuntu's Unity, for the following reasons: [1] The Unity app launcher (to the screen's left) auto-hides when a window is maximized. [2]- And once launched, apps cannot be minimized by clicking the app's icon in the launcher. I have to go to the top-left of the screen and click the "_" button. I do know I can fix these issues by installing some configuration tool. But the thing is, if that's how it's meant to work, Canonical/Ubuntu would have designed it that way. But they didn't. Why? w.r.t above points [1], [2]: [1] EDITED: So, does it mean, it's good to work without maximizing the windows? Because if I maximize the window, the app launcher hides. And I need to hover the mouse to the left of the screen, wait a bit (even if it's a sec or even less, I can still feel the lag), and then click on the next app icon in the launcher to switch to it. I do know, I can use Alt+TAB to switch, but I am not sure which window comes next. This, I feel, isn't productive. Also, this makes me feel, Ubuntu is designed for large screens (it's nice on my 1920x1080p screen), because I can have two windows side-by-side or something like that on a large screen. This is not possible on smaller screens. [2]- Being able to minimize an application's window by clicking on its icon in the launcher (just like it works on Windows & probably elsewhere) would have been great, rather than having to go to the top-left and clicking the _ (minimize) button which brings up the app launcher itself (from hiding) most of the time. It's too tiring to have these small issues in the UI. I really would like to know how you are coping with these issues the way they are?

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• Addressing threats introduced by the BYOD trend

  - by kyap

  With the growth of the mobile technology segment, enterprises are facing a new type of threats introduced by the BYOD (Bring Your Own Device) trend, where employees use their own devices (laptops, tablets or smartphones) not necessarily secured to access corporate network and information.In the past - actually even right now, enterprises used to provide laptops to their employees for their daily work, with specific operating systems including anti-virus and desktop management tools, in order to make sure that the pools of laptop allocated are spyware or trojan-horse free to access the internal network and sensitive information. But the BYOD reality is breaking this paradigm and open new security breaches for enterprises as most of the username/password based systems, especially the internal web applications, can be accessed by less or none protected device.To address this reality we can adopt 3 approaches:1. Coué's approach: Close your eyes and assume that your employees are mature enough to know what he/she should or should not do.2. Consensus approach: Provide a list of restricted and 'certified' devices to the internal network. 3. Military approach: Access internal systems with certified laptop ONLYIf you choose option 1: Thanks for visiting my blog and I hope you find the others entries more useful :)If you choose option 2: The proliferation of new hardware and software updates every quarter makes this approach very costly and difficult to maintain.If you choose option 3: You need to find a way to allow the access into your sensitive application from the corporate authorized machines only, managed by the IT administrators... but how? The challenge with option 3 is to find out how end-users can restrict access to certain sensitive applications only from authorized machines, or from another angle end-users can not access the sensitive applications if they are not using the authorized machine... So what if we find a way to store the applications credential secretly from the end-users, and then automatically submit them when the end-users access the application? With this model, end-users do not know the username/password to access the applications so even if the end-users use their own devices they will not able to login. Also, there's no need to reconfigure existing applications to adapt to the new authenticate scheme given that we are still leverage the same username/password authenticate model at the application level. To adopt this model, you can leverage Oracle Enterprise Single Sign On. In short, Oracle ESSO is a desktop based solution, capable to store credentials of Web and Native based applications. At the application startup and if it is configured as an esso-enabled application - check out my previous post on how to make Skype essso-enabled, Oracle ESSO takes over automatically the sign-in sequence with the store credential on behalf of the end-users. Combined with Oracle ESSO Provisioning Gateway, the credentials can be 'pushed' in advance from an actual provisioning server, like Oracle Identity Manager or Tivoli Identity Manager, so the end-users can login into sensitive application without even knowing the actual username and password, so they can not login with other machines rather than those secured by Oracle ESSO.Below is a graphical illustration of this approach:With this model, not only you can protect the access to sensitive applications only from authorized machine, you can also implement much stronger Password Policies in terms of Password Complexity as well as Password Reset Frequency but end-users will not need to remember the passwords anymore.If you are interested, do not hesitate to check out the Oracle Enterprise Single Sign-on products from OTN !

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• Can working exclusively with niche apps or tech hurt your career in software development? How to get out of the cycle? [closed]

  - by Keoma

  I'm finding myself in a bit of a pickle. I've been at a pretty comfortable IT group for almost a decade. I got my start here working on web development, mostly CRUD, but have demonstrated the ability to figure out more complex problems. I'm not a rock star, but I have received many compliments on my programming aptitude, and technologists and architects have commented on my ability to pick things up (for example, I recently learned a very popular web framework that shall remain nameless since I don’t want to be identified). My problem is that, over time, my responsibilities have been shifting towards work such as support or ‘development’ with some rather niche products (afraid to mention here due to potential for being identified). Some of this work, if it includes anything resembling coding, is very menial scripting in languages such as Powershell or VBScript. The vast majority of the time, however, a typical day consists of going back and forth with the product’s vendor support to send them logs and apply configuration changes or patches they recommend. I’m basically starved for some actual software development. However, even though I’m more than capable of doing that development work (and actually do a much better job at it than anything else), our boss is more interested in the kind of work I mentioned above, her reasoning being that since no one else in the organization wants to do it, it must mean job security. This has been going on for close to 3 years, and the only reason I have held on is on the promise that we would eventually get more development projects assigned to us. Well, that turned out not to be true at all. A recent talk with the boss has just made it more explicitly clear, as she told me in no uncertain terms that it’s very likely that development work (web or otherwise) would go to another group. The reason given to me is that our we don’t have enough resources in our group to handle that. So now I find myself in the position that I either have to stay in what has essentially become a dead end IT job that is tied to the fortunes of a niche stack of apps, or try to find a position that will be better for my long term career. My problem (is it a problem?), however, is that compared to others, my development projects in the last three years are very sparse in number. To compound things, projects using the latest and most popular frameworks, amount to the big fat number of just one—with no work of that kind in the foreseeable future. I am very concerned that this sparseness in my resume is a deficit, and that it will hurt my chances of landing a different job. I’m also wondering how much it will hurt me, and whether that can be ameliorated with hobby projects of my own. I guess I’m looking for opinions. Thank you very much for reading.

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• I'm a C Programmer, but I can't find a comfortable environment to work in

  - by Jesse Brands

  Hello everyone, Last time I asked a question, I was having issues dealing with Java which I had to do for a course work. I generally use C for my development work - especially personal projects - and I've grown up in what is pretty much a Linux/UNIX world. In this world, it was easy to use C, you had your C compiler (GCC is excellent in that regard) and a wealth of tools such as the command line and vi/emacs/whatever-you-got. However, that was all that I really liked about Linux/UNIX. It really fitted well with the C language; nowadays, I'm somewhat forced into Windows/Mac OS X for most of my work. C seems poorly supported on a mac for starters, there's no GUI API to use and pretty much you get forced into Obj-C. This is not a problem, I like Objective-C, but it's another language I have to learn. Now coming to Windows. Why does everything about Windows Development try to scare me away? It's basically come down to: USE C# AND .NET OR DIE. I don't like C#, I like C, they are fundamentally different. Yet when I make a Windows Forms application in MSVC++ (I know that's not C), I get a main function riddled with weird things I've never heard of before, along with a poor, barely-compliant C/C++ compiler. What am I to do when I just want to program in C, make applications that look and feel like native Windows applications (I am a sucker for aesthetics, and I'm not looking to make something cross-platform. I just want it to work on Windows, and look as native as possible.). C++ is a fine alternative, but it really looks like the only way to make a decent, native feeling Windows application, is to use C#. Am I missing something here? I'd rather not use CYGWIN. Like I said, I want people to install the program, and it should just work out of the box on Windows 7. Program in question involves a Media Player, if anyone is curious what I'm targetting at. Anyone who had the same experiences who can help me out? How can I code something in ANSI C and still have a native feel?

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• What Counts for a DBA: Passion

  - by drsql

  One of my first questions, when interviewing for a DBA/Programmer position, is always: “Why do you want this job?” The answers I receive range from cheesy hyperbole (“I want to enhance your services with my vast knowledge”) to deadpan realism (“I have N kids who all have a hole in the front of their face where food goes"). Both answers are fine in their own way, at least displaying some self-confidence, humour and honesty, but once in a while, I'll hear the answer that is music to me ears... “I LOVE DATABASES!” Whenever I hear it, my nerves tingle in hopeful anticipation; have I found someone for whom working with database isn't just a job, but a passion? Inevitably, I'm often disappointed. What initially seemed like passion turns out to be rather shallow enthusiasm; the person is enthusiastic about working with databases in the same way he or she might be about eating a bag of Cajun spiced kettle chips; enjoyable, but not something to think about too deeply or take too seriously. Enthusiasm comes, and enthusiasm goes. I've seen countless technical forum users burst onto the scene in a blaze of frantic question-answering, only to fade away within days, never to be heard from again. Passion, however, is more of a longstanding commitment. The biographies of the great technologists and authors of the recent past are full of the sort of passion and engrossment that lead a person to write a novel non-stop for a fortnight with no sleep and only dog food to eat (Philip K. Dick), or refuse to leave the works of the first tunnel under the Thames, even though it was flooded (Brunel). In a similar (though more modest) way, my passion for working with databases has led me to acts that might cause someone for whom it was "just a job" to roll their eyes in disbelief. Most evenings you're more likely to find me reading a database book than watching TV. I've spent hundreds of hours of my spare time writing blogs and articles (some of which are only read by tens of people); I've spent hundreds of dollars travelling to conferences, paying my own flight and hotel expenses, so that I can share a little of what I know, and mix with some like-minded people. And I know I'm far from alone in this, in the SQL Server community. Passion isn't everything, of course, and it isn't always accompanied by any great skill, but in almost every case, that skill can be cultivated over time. If you are doing what you are passionate about, work turns into more than just a way to feed your kids; it becomes your hobby, entertainment, and preoccupation. And it is this passion that gives a DBA the obsessive stubbornness, the refusal to be beaten by even the most difficult problem, which is often so crucial. A final word of warning though: passion without limits can turn weird. Never let it get in the way of your wife, kids, bills, or personal hygiene.

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• Top down space game control problem

  - by Phil

  As the title suggests I'm developing a top down space game. I'm not looking to use newtonian physics with the player controlled ship. I'm trying to achieve a control scheme somewhat similar to that of FlatSpace 2 (awesome game). I can't figure out how to achieve this feeling with keyboard controls as opposed to mouse controls though. Any suggestions? I'm using Unity3d and C# or javaScript (unityScript or whatever is the correct term) works fine if you want to drop some code examples. Edit: Of course I should describe FlatSpace 2's control scheme, sorry. You hold the mouse button down and move the mouse in the direction you want the ship to move in. But it's not the controls I don't know how to do but rather the feeling of a mix of driving a car and flying an aircraft. It's really well made. Youtube link: FlatSpace2 on iPhone I'm not developing an iPhone game but the video shows the principle of the movement style. Edit 2 As there seems to be a slight interest, I'll post the version of the code I've used to continue. It works good enough. Sometimes good enough is sufficient! using UnityEngine; using System.Collections; public class ShipMovement : MonoBehaviour { public float directionModifier; float shipRotationAngle; public float shipRotationSpeed = 0; public double thrustModifier; public double accelerationModifier; public double shipBaseAcceleration = 0; public Vector2 directionVector; public Vector2 accelerationVector = new Vector2(0,0); public Vector2 frictionVector = new Vector2(0,0); public int shipFriction = 0; public Vector2 shipSpeedVector; public Vector2 shipPositionVector; public Vector2 speedCap = new Vector2(0,0); void Update() { directionModifier = -Input.GetAxis("Horizontal"); shipRotationAngle += ( shipRotationSpeed * directionModifier ) * Time.deltaTime; thrustModifier = Input.GetAxis("Vertical"); accelerationModifier = ( ( shipBaseAcceleration * thrustModifier ) ) * Time.deltaTime; directionVector = new Vector2( Mathf.Cos(shipRotationAngle ), Mathf.Sin(shipRotationAngle) ); //accelerationVector = Vector2(directionVector.x * System.Convert.ToDouble(accelerationModifier), directionVector.y * System.Convert.ToDouble(accelerationModifier)); accelerationVector.x = directionVector.x * (float)accelerationModifier; accelerationVector.y = directionVector.y * (float)accelerationModifier; // Set friction based on how "floaty" controls you want shipSpeedVector.x *= 0.9f; //Use a variable here shipSpeedVector.y *= 0.9f; //<-- as well shipSpeedVector += accelerationVector; shipPositionVector += shipSpeedVector; gameObject.transform.position = new Vector3(shipPositionVector.x, 0, shipPositionVector.y); } }

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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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• New computer hangs on shutdown/reboot, how to troubleshoot?

  - by Torben Gundtofte-Bruun

  My system is working perfectly but it freezes during shutdown/reboot/suspend/hibernate: All windows and the menu bar disappear but the desktop wallpaper remains. It doesn't even show the shutdown screen (the one with the animated dots) where I could hit ESC and watch the shutdown console text. The system is brand-new and fully updated using Update Manager. How can I determine what is causing the freeze? Is there a log I can investigate? How can I fix this? I see no obvious cause of the freeze. The only USB attachment is a mouse/keyboard; I don't have any external storage attached; and I don't have any programs running (the machine freezes even when doing shutdown right from the login screen). What I've tried so far: Based on other questions (this, this, and this) that suggest some ACPI settings, I've tried sudo shutdown -h now to see whether the shutdown console text display offers any hints, but the system doesn't even get that far - it still freezes while the screen shown the desktop background image, without any toolbars. Only sudo shutdown --force works, but that's not a solution. Editing the grub menu to add acpi=off to the kernel didn't help. I guess there's not much point in trying the other (lesser) ACPI suggestions? Adding noapic to the grub entry had no discernible effect. Adding nolapic instead did something (I had removed the quiet option) - the system managed to continue further with the shutdown, right until the line Checking for running unattended-upgrades: which were the last characters on the screen. I've also checked the system BIOS, especially regarding power options, but didn't see anything out of the ordinary. Switching the BIOS standby setting from S3 to S1 didn't help. The standby setting can't be disabled, and there are no other ACPI-related settings AFAIK. BIOS reset didn't help. Not surprised; hadn't changed anything. I tried going to a virtual console (CtrlAltF1) as suggested by djeikyb and from there did a shutdown -h now and it froze there too, after this console output. I didn't try killing processes one at a time because I'm still too newbie to figure out how to do that. Booting with kernel 2.6.35.22 rather than 2.6.35.25 didn't help. Disabling the Nvidia drivers didn't help. Booting from Live CD (USB stick in fact) didn't help; it freezes the same way. Booting from Live CD, with acpi=off noapic nolapic didn't help either. Neither did just nolapic. So evidently this is not some custom setting in my install, but some sort of basic issue. MemTest competed in 1 hour without errors.

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• Understanding exceptional cases

  - by Justin

  I've been studying the use of exceptions in various php projects (such as Doctrine and Zend Framework). Exceptions seem to be thrown when unordinary input/state occurs. A perfect example is Doctrine throwing an exception when you try to use a invalid query string. I think the creators of the doctrine api understood that first, you can't query data by using an invalid DQL statement, and a developer should immediately be warned that an error has occurred, rather then letting execution continue with the possibility of an error code going un-checked. I also bet that this simplifies reading the code. I can't think of a situation where you would want to use an invalid DQL statement, except unit testing. Since this is true, it's better to avoid plaguing a bunch of code with null/error checks and use exceptions. I've read in books that exceptions shouldn't be thrown when validating dating user input. I've seen examples where of where the guideline is broken. One example is the Zend framework. If supplying an invalid controller or action name, an exception is thrown. Unlike doctrine, the user has more direct control over this sort of input. I know you can configure an error controller and set up a 404 message or what have you, but I'm curious why they have used an exception in this scenario? I guess you can argue the Zend Framework does not know how to continue processing the quest. One last example Is I wrote a function to return some html based on a given resource type. This resource type is hard-coded and sent when a user interacts with a web site (such as clicking a button to display the form to input data). I don't expect users to be mucking around with the request type. Under normal operating conditions, the resource type should be valid. To clean up some logic, I was going to throw an exception if a particular form wasn't found. This is mainly to find the correct form associated with a resource type so proper validation can occur. Does this sound like a valid use case for an exception? Right now it's pretty trivial, but I do plan to implement a restful consumer and re-using a function to map resources to their validation services would be very useful. I can then catch the exception and based on the consumer, return an error message suitable for the request type...

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• What to answer to a customer who asks which one of two equivalent technologies must be used?

  - by MainMa

  As a freelancer, I am often asked by my customers what they must choose between similar elements, neither of which being better than another. Examples: “Do I need my e-commerce website be in PHP or ASP.NET?” “Do I need to host this ordinary web service in Cloud or use an ordinary hosting service?” “Which one is better for my new website: MySQL or Oracle?” etc. There is maybe at most 1% of cases where the choice is relevant, and there is a real, objective reason to use one over another, based on the precise metrics and studies. In all other cases, it doesn't matter at all. It is totally, completely irrelevant, either because there are no implications¹, or because those implications are too small to be taken in account², or, finally, because it's impossible to predict those implications³. If you know one thing and not another one, the answer to those questions is easy: “You can either write the application in C# or Java, both being probably equivalent in your case. Note that I'm a C# developer, so if you choose Java, I would not be able to work on your project and you would need to find another freelancer.” When you know both technologies, you can't answer that. In this case, how to explain to the customer that the question he asks is subject to flamewar and has no real consequences on his project? In other words, how to explain that you've chosen to use one technology rather than an equivalent one for the reasons related to human resources, without giving the impression to be unprofessional or to not care about the project? ¹ Example: Is MySQL better (worse?), performance-wise, compared to Oracle, for a personal website which will be accessed by, oh, let's be optimistic, two people per day? ² Example: for a given project, I was asked to asset if Windows Azure hosting would be cheaper than the hosting of the same application on a well-known ASP.NET hosting provider. The cost revealed to be exactly the same. ³ Example: your customer have an idea of a future application (the idea itself being extremely vague). There is no business plan, no requirements, nothing at all. Just an idea. You are asked if Java is better than C# for this app. What do you answer?

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• Social Networks & the Cloud

  - by kellsey.ruppel

  It’s no secret that millions of people are connected to the Internet. And it also probably doesn’t come as a surprise that a lot of those people are connected on social networking sites.  Social networks have become an excellent platform for sharing and communication that reflects real world relationships and they play a major part in the everyday lives of many people. Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, LinkedIn, Google+ and hundreds of others have transformed the way we interact and communicate with one another. Social networks are becoming more than just an online gathering of friends. They are becoming a destination for ideation, e-commerce, and marketing. But it doesn’t just stop there. Some organizations are utilizing social networks internally, integrated with their business applications and processes and the possibility of social media and cloud integration is compelling. Forrester alone estimates enterprise cloud computing to grow to over $240 billion by 2020. It’s hard to find any current IT project today that is NOT considering cloud-based deployments. Security and quality of service concerns are no longer at the forefront; rather, it’s about focusing on the right mix of capabilities for the business. Cloud vs. On-Premise? Policies & governance models? Social in the cloud? Cloud’s increasing sophistication, security in applications, mobility, transaction processing and social capabilities make it an attractive way to manage information. And Oracle offers all of this through the Oracle Cloud and Oracle Social Network. Oracle Social Network is a secure private network that provides a broad range of social tools designed to capture and preserve information flowing between people, enterprise applications, and business processes. By connecting you with your most critical applications, Oracle Social Network provides contextual, real-time communication within and across enterprises. With Oracle Social Network, you and your teams have the tools you need to collaborate quickly and efficiently, while leveraging the organization’s collective expertise to make informed decisions and drive business forward. Oracle Social Network is available as part of a portfolio of application and platform services within the Oracle Cloud. Oracle Cloud offers self-service business applications delivered on an integrated development and deployment platform with tools to rapidly extend and create new services. Oracle Social Network is pre-integrated with the Fusion CRM Cloud Service and the Fusion HCM Cloud Service within the Oracle Cloud. Learn more how you can use Oracle Social Network to revolutionize how you create, understand, and achieve true value through enterprise social networking. And be sure to check out the follow sessions here at Oracle OpenWorld, where can learn more about Oracle Cloud and Oracle Social Network. Tuesday, Oct 2 – Oracle WebCenter’s Cloud Strategy: From Social and Platform Services to Mashups, 1:15pm - 2:15pm, Moscone West – 3001  Wednesday, Oct 3 – Oracle Social Network: Your Strategy for Socially Enabled Oracle Fusion Applications, 11:45am - 12:45pm, Moscone West – 3002/3004

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• Simple thruster like behaviour when rotating sprite

  - by ensamgud

  I'm prototyping some 2D game concepts with XNA and have added some basic keyboard inputs to control a triangle sprite. When I press key up the sprite accelerates in it's current facing direction, when I release the key it brakes down. For rotation, when I press left/right keys I rotate the sprite. Currently the sprite immedately changes direction when I rotate it. What I want is for it to keep moving in the same direction when I rotate, until I hit key up, adding thrust in whatever direction the sprite is pointing at. This would simulate thrusters on a classic space shooter like Asteroids. I'm adding an image to describe the behaviour I'm after and some code samples of how I'm doing things at the moment. This is my player struct, holding information of the sprite. public struct PlayerData { public Vector2 Position; // where to draw the sprite public Vector2 Direction; // travel direction of sprite public float Angle; // rotation of sprite public float Velocity; public float Acceleration; public float Decelleration; public float RotationAcceleration; public float RotationDecceleration; public float TopSpeed; public float Scale; } This is how I'm currently handling thrusting / braking (when pressing/releasing key up) (simplified, removed some bounds checking etc): player.Velocity += player.Acceleration * 0.1f; player.Velocity -= player.Acceleration * 0.1f; And when I rotate the sprite left and right: player.Angle -= player.RotationAcceleration * 0.1f; player.Angle += player.RotationAcceleration * 0.1f; This runs in the update loop, keeps the direction updated and updates the position: Vector2 up = new Vector2(0f, -1f); Matrix rotMatrix = Matrix.CreateRotationZ(player.Angle); player.Direction = Vector2.Transform(up, rotMatrix); player.Direction *= player.Velocity; player.Position += player.Direction; I am following along various beginner tutorials and haven't found any describing this, but I have tried some on my own without success. Do I need to change my velocity and acceleration fields to Vectors instead of floats to accomplish this type of movement? I realise my Angle and the Direction vector is currently tied together and I need to disconnect these somehow to be able to rotate freely without changing the direction of the movement, but I can't quite figure out how to do this while keeping the acceleration/decceleration functional. Would appreciate an explanation rather than pure code samples. Thanks,

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• What economic books would you suggest for learning about economic valuation of goods and simulations thereof?

  - by Rushyo

  I'm looking to create an economic model for a game based on goods created procedurally. Every natural resource and produced good would be procedurally generated, with certain goods being assigned certain uses. Fakesium might be used for the production of Weapon A and produced from Fakesium factories which use Dilithium and Widgets as reagents, where Widgets are also the product of Foo and Bar The problem is not creating the resources and their various production utlities - but getting the game's AI empires and merchants to (Addendum: somewhat) correctly value the goods according to their scarcity, utility and production costs. I need to create a simulation of goods which allows the various game factions to assign a common value denominator (credits) to each resource, depending on how much its worth to that empire. I see the simulation being something like: "I have a high requirement for Weapon A. Since I don't have much of Fakesium, which is needed for Weapon A - I must have a high demand for Fakesium. If I can acquire Fakesium, devalue it. If not, increase its value - and also increase demand for Dilithium and Widgets too." This is very naive - because it may be much much cheaper for the empire to simply purchase Dilithium and Widgets directly rather than purchasing Fakesium, for example. Another example is two resources might allow the creation of Weapon A (Fakesium and Lieron), so we'd need to consider that. I've been scratching my head over the problem and it keeps growing. By the time the player joins the world, I'd expect enough iterations of this process to have occurred that prices would have largely normalised - and would then only trigger rarely to compensate for major changes (eg. if the player blows up the world's only Foo mine!) Could anyone suggest resources (books, largely) which outline this style of modelling, preferably in the context of simulations? Since this problem would never occur outside fantasy worlds, I figured this is probably the most likely place to find people who have encountered similar problems and I'm sure there's people who know of good places for Games Developers to start looking at less specific economic theory too. Additionally, does anyone know of any developers with blogs whose games or research applications perform similar modelling? EDIT: I think I should underline that I'm not looking for optimal solutions. I'm looking to make the actors impulsive - making rudimentary decisions based on fuzzy inputs about what they care about or don't. I'm aiming to understand the problem area better not derive answers. All the textbooks I've found seem to be about real-world economics or how to solve complex theoretical problems, neither of which are terribly relevant to the actor's decision making.

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• Setting MTU on Exalogic

  - by csoto

  For many reasons, a system administrator may want to change the MTU settings of a server. But in a system like Exalogic which contains lots of interconnected nodes and other various components, it's important to understand how this applies to the different networks. For example, when bringing up bonding of InfiniBand an error like the following may be thrown: Bringing up interface bond1: SIOCSIFMTU: Invalid argument Both scripts ifcfg-ib0 and ifcfg-ib1 (from the /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ direectory) have MTU set to 65500, which is a valid MTU value only if all IPoIB slaves operate in connected mode and are configured with the same value, so the line below must be added to both network scripts and then restart the network: CONNECTED_MODE=yes By the way, an error of the form “SIOCSIFMTU: Invalid argument” indicates that the requested MTU was rejected by the kernel. Typically this would be due to it exceeding the maximum value supported by the interface hardware. In that case you must either reduce the MTU to a value that is supported or obtain more capable hardware. This problem has been seen when trying to modify the MTU using the ifconfig command, like the output of the example below: [root@elxxcnxx ~]# ifconfig ib1 mtu 65520 SIOCSIFMTU: Invalid argument It's important to insist that in most cases the nodes must be rebooted after the MTU size has been changed. Although in some circumstances it may work without a reboot, it is not how it is typically documented. Now, in order to achieve a reduced memory consumption and improve performance for network traffic received on IPoIB related interfaces, it is recommend to reduce the MTU value in interface configuration files for IPoIB related bonds from 65520 to 64000. The change needs to be made to interface configuration files under the /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts directory and applies to the interface configuration files for bonds over IPoIB related slave devices, for example /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ifcfg-bond1. However, keep in mind that the numeric portion of the interface filenames that corresponding to IPoIB interfaces is expected to vary across compute nodes and vServers and so cannot be relied upon to identify which interface files are for bonds are over IPoIB rather than EoIB related slave interfaces. To fix these MTU values to the recommended settings, there are very useful instructions and a script on the MOS Note 1624434.1, and it's applicable physical and virtual configurations of Exalogic. Regarding the recommended MTU value for EoIB related interfaces, its maximum appropriate value is 1500. If for some reason a vServer has been created with a higher value (set on the /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ifcfg-bond0 file), then it must be fixed. An error like the following could be thrown under this circumstance: [root@vServer ~]# service network restart ... Bringing up interface bond0:  SIOCSIFMTU: Invalid argument Also an error like the one below can be seen on the /var/log/messages file of the vServer: kernel: T5074835532 [mlx4_vnic] eth1:vnic_change_mtu:360: failed: new_mtu 64000 2026 The MOS Note 1611657.1 is very useful for this purpose.

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• Issue 56 - Super Stylesheets Skinning in DotNetNuke 5

  May 2010 Welcome to Issue 56 of DNN Creative Magazine In this issue we show you how to use the powerful new Super Stylesheets skinning feature in DotNetNuke 5. Super Stylesheets are ideal for both beginner and experienced skin designers, they provide skin layouts using CSS. The advantage of Super Stylesheets is that you can easily create a skin layout which works in all browsers without the need to learn complex CSS techniques. They are also very quick to build and you can change a skin layout in a matter of minutes rather than hours. We show you how to build a skin from the very beginning using Super Stylesheets, we show you how to create various skin layouts, as well as multi-layouts. We also show you how to style the skin, how to add tokens such as the logo, menu, login links etc. and walk you through how to create a fully working skin from scratch. Following this we continue the Open Web Studio tutorials, this month we demonstrate how to create an installable DotNetNuke PA module using OWS. This is an essential technique which allows you to package up the OWS applications that you have created and build them into an installable zip package. The zip file is then installable as a standard DotNetNuke module which means you can easily install your OWS applications on other DotNetNuke installations by simply installing them as a standard DotNetNuke module. To finish, we have part six of the "How to Build a News Application with DotNetMushroom Rapid Application Developer (RAD)" article, where we demonstrate how to create a News Carousel using RAD, JQuery and the JCarousel plugin. This issue comes complete with 15 videos. Skinning: Super Stylesheets Skinning in DotNetNuke 5 - DNN Layouts (12 videos - 98mins) Module Development Series: How to Create an Installable DotNetNuke PA Module Using OWS (3 videos - 23mins) How to Implement a News Carousel Using DotNetMushroom RAD and JQuery View issue 56 to download all of the videos in one zip file DNN Creative Magazine for DotNetNuke Web Designers Covering DotNetNuke module video reviews, video tutorials, mp3 interviews, resources and web design tips for working with DotNetNuke. In 56 issues we have created 578 videos!Did you know that DotNetSlackers also publishes .net articles written by top known .net Authors? We already have over 80 articles in several categories including Silverlight. Take a look: here.

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• What kind of position matches my skills, experience and interests? [closed]

  - by Ryan

  I work in a large firm and my current job covers a variety of different duties. Due to several factors I am seriously considering finding a new job (hours, pay-cut, limited career growth). I have worked for the company nearly 4 years and almost 2 years ago I transitioned into more of a business analyst role (previously I was working in a client facing role for our audit group). In this role I have overseen all aspects of the development of a large scale re-platforming of our firm's key tool in analyzing investment portfolios. I gathered requirements, wrote specs, designed the UI and functionality, worked closely with developers (onshore and offshore) to see to it the implementation was correct, managed schedules and was the lead tester. This is a large scale system used by thousands of people around the world. I've also written Excel macros, reports in SQL, given trainings, written technical manuals, interfaced with senior managers and partners, etc. I've been on a couple interviews sporadically, most of which were for positions aimed at higher management consulting type positions, dealing with strategy, overall process management, project management, etc. What really interests me is the technical stuff and overseeing a project from beginning to end (although I would rather not have to do so many of the tasks on my own). I genuinely like a lot of what I do, but the company culture and attitude towards overworking people combined with my recent pay-cut (my overtime was cut due to a promotion to a higher level) has lead me to want to seek work elsewhere. The problem is - what type of work could I realistically do? I feel like traditional business analysis is too much business and not enough tech stuff, and I've really taken a shine lately to beefing up my programming abilities and creating small programs to automate things around work. I also feel that because my actual years of experience as a business analyst (figure 1.5 years realistically) puts me at a junior level doing a lot of grunt requirements gathering, when the work that I have been doing with my current company is more in line with what a Program Manager does (depending on your definition I guess). So in reality, when I'm job hunting I get a bit perplexed because I feel like the traditional BA stuff wouldn't really suit me, and even if it did it's usually something along the lines of 5-10 years experience for the type of work that is similar to what I've done (and I've also found most BA jobs to be contract only which at the moment I'm not too keen on). Program Manager is something that interests me, but again I feel like the experience is lacking because that's a much more senior position. Am I in some kind of career no-man's land? Any idea what would best suit me given my experience and abilities, as well as my interests? I plan to keep learning programming on the side, but don't expect to get a job being a straight programmer given my relative inexperience with programming.

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• What shall I include in a 10 week web technologies course?

  - by Iain

  In September I will be teaching a university module on web technologies. This session will be available to 1st year (freshman) students who don't necessarily have any programming knowledge or know how the web works. In the 2nd semester I will be teaching Flash, which is my specialism, so I know exactly what I am going to teach, but in the 1st semester I will be teaching them web standards technologies - HTML, CSS, JS, jQuery, PHP and MySQL. Where I need advice is how to proportion the emphasis for each part, and which parts of each technology to cover. Another real issue I'm struggling with is how much of the bad old ways should I teach them? Do they need to know about bold as well as strong, etc. UPDATE: based, on your feedback I will only be teaching the latest version of everything - CSS3, HTML5 etc. I'm not sure exactly how long the semester will be but I'm guessing about 10-12 weeks. Each session is a 2 hour lab. Obviously there's only so much I can cover in that time and it will be up to the students to go a research this stuff properly on W3 schools etc. My ideas so far were: Lesson 0 - Course intro and overview of the current tech landscape. What is out there, what will we be learning, what won't we. What is a web server, URL etc. Looking at different example websites and discussing how they work. Lesson 1 - HTML basics (head, body, title, img, table, a, lists, h1, strong etc) Lesson 2 - CSS for styling and layout - fonts, webfonts, float etc Lesson 3 - Intro to programming JS (variables, loops, conditionals, functions) Lesson 4 - more JS programming fundamentals, DOM manipulation Lesson 5 - jQuery - making things fly about and look cool Lesson 6 - XML and Ajax Lesson 7 - PHP basics - syntax, server-side principles Lesson 8 - PHP and MySQL - forms, logins, saving user info Lesson 9 - don't know Lesson 10 - don't know Please let me know if you think this is the right order, what have I missed, how to use any spare sessions etc. Thanks :) UPDATE BASED ON RESPONSES: Thanks for all your responses - some great stuff. To be absolutely clear, this is not a computer science course, it is a practical module on a creative technology course. The emphasis definitely has to be on making cool things work rather than understanding how the backbone of the internet works. That can come later, if the students are interested. At the end of the module I would like the students to be able to produce a web page or pages that does something cool, using some or all of the technologies I cover. Many of these topics are of course far beyond the scope of a 2 hour session, however I do not have the option of reducing the syllabus, I will just have to explain what the technology does and encourage the student to research it in their own time.

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• Link instead of Attaching

  - by Daniel Moth

  With email storage not being an issue in many companies (I think I currently have 25GB of storage on my email account, I don’t even think about storage), this encourages bad behaviors such as liberally attaching office documents to emails instead of sharing a link to the document in SharePoint or SkyDrive or some file share etc. Attaching a file admittedly has its usage scenarios too, but it should not be the default. I thought I'd list the reasons why sharing a link can be better than attaching files directly. In no particular order: Better Review. It allows multiple recipients to review the file and their comments are aggregated into a single document. The alternative is everyone having to detach the document, add their comments, then send back to you, and then you have to collate. Wirth the alternative, you also potentially miss out on recipients reading comments from other recipients. Always up to date. The attachment becomes a fork instead of an always up to date document. For example, you send the email on Thursday, I only open it on Tuesday: between those days you could have made updates that now I am missing because you decided to share a link instead of an attachment. Better bookmarking. When I need to find that document you shared, you are forcing me to search through my email (I may not even be running outlook), instead of opening the link which I have bookmarked in my browser or my collection of links in my OneNote or from the recent/pinned links of the office app on my task bar, etc. Can control access. If someone accidentally or naively forwards your link to someone outside your group/org who you’d prefer not to have access to it, the location of the document can be protected with specific access control. Can add more recipients. If someone adds people to the email thread in outlook, your attachment doesn't get re-attached - instead, the person added is left without the attachment unless someone remembers to re-attach it. If it was a link, they are immediately caught up without further actions. Enable Discovery. If you put it on a share, I may be able to discover other cool stuff that lives alongside that document. Save on storage. So this doesn't apply to me given my opening statement, but if in your company you do have such limitations, attaching files eats up storage on all recipients accounts and will also get "lost" when those people archive email (and lose completely at some point if they follow the company retention policy). Like I said, attachments do have their place, but they should be an explicit choice for explicit reasons rather than the default. Comments about this post by Daniel Moth welcome at the original blog.

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• Survey: Your Plans for Adopting New Firefox Releases?

  - by Steven Chan (Oracle Development)

  Mozilla is committing to releasing new Firefox versions every six weeks.  Mozilla released Firefox 5 this week.  With this release, Mozilla states that Firefox 4 is End-of-Life and will not receive any additional security updates.  In a comment thread posted on to a Mike Kaply's blog article discussing these new Firefox policies, Asa Dotzler from Mozilla stated: ... Enterprise has never been (and I’ll argue, shouldn’t be) a focus of ours. Until we run out of people who don’t have sysadmins and enterprise deployment teams looking out for them, I can’t imagine why we’d focus at all on the kinds of environments you care so much about.  In a later comment, he added: ... A minute spent making a corporate user happy can better be spent making many regular users happy. I’d much rather Mozilla spending its limited resources looking out for the billions of users that don’t have enterprise support systems already taking care of them. Asa then confirmed that every new Firefox release will put the previous one into End-of-Life: As for John’s concern, “By the time I validate Firefox 5, what guarantee would I have that Firefox 5 won’t go EOL when Firefox 6 is released?” He has the opposite of guarantees that won’t happen. He has my promise that it will happen. Firefox 6 will be the EOL of Firefox 5. And Firefox 7 will be the EOL for Firefox 6.  He added: “You’re basically saying you don’t care about corporations.” Yes, I’m basically saying that I don’t care about making Firefox enterprise friendly. Kev Needham, Channel Manager at Mozilla later stated to PC Mag: The Web and Web browsers continue to evolve rapidly. Mozilla's focus is on providing users with the best Web experience possible, and Firefox needs to evolve at the pace the Web's users and developers expect. By releasing small, focused updates more often, we are able to deliver improved security and stability even as we introduce new features, which is better for our users, and for the Web.We recognize that this shift may not be compatible with a large organization's IT Policy and understand that it is challenging to organizations that have effort-intensive certification polices. However, our development process is geared toward delivering products that support the Web as it is today, while innovating and building future Web capabilities. Tying Firefox product development to an organizational process we do not control would make it difficult for us to continue to innovate for our users and the betterment of the Web.  Your feedback needed for E-Business Suite certifications  Mozilla's new support policy has significant implications for enterprise users of Firefox with Oracle E-Business Suite.  We are reviewing the implications for our certification and support policies for Firefox now.  It would be very helpful if you could let me know about your organisation's plans for Firefox in light of this new information.  Please feel free to drop me a private email, or post a comment here if that's appropriate. 

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• Profiling Startup Of VS2012 &ndash; Ants Profiler

  - by Alois Kraus

  I just downloaded ANTS Profiler 7.4 to check how fast it is and how deep I can analyze the startup of Visual Studio 2012. The Pro version which is useful does cost 445€ which is ok. To measure a complex system I decided to simply profile VS2012 (Update 1) on my older Intel 6600 2,4GHz with 3 GB RAM and a 32 bit Windows 7. Ants Profiler is really easy to use. So lets try it out. The Ants Profiler does want to start the profiled application by its own which seems to be rather common. I did choose Method Level timing of all managed methods. In the configuration menu I did want to get all call stacks to get full details. Once this is configured you are ready to go.   After that you can select the Method Grid to view Wall Clock Time in ms. I hate percentages which are on by default because I do want to look where absolute time is spent and not something else.   From the Method Grid I can drill down to see where time is spent in a nice and I can look at the decompiled methods where the time is spent. This does really look nice. But did you see the size of the scroll bar in the method grid? Although I wanted all call stacks I do get only about 4 pages of methods to drill down. From the scroll bar count I would guess that the profiler does show me about 150 methods for the complete VS startup. This is nonsense. I will never find a bottleneck in VS when I am presented only a fraction of the methods that were actually executed. I have also tried in the configuration window to also profile the extremely trivial functions but there was no noticeable difference. It seems that the Ants Profiler does filter away way too many details to be useful for bigger systems. If you want to optimize a CPU bound operation inside NUnit then Ants Profiler is with its line level timings a very nice tool to work with. But for bigger stuff it is certainly not usable. I also do not like that I must start the profiled application from the profiler UI. This makes it hard to profile processes which are started by some other process. Next: JetBrains dotTrace

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• How to refactor a method which breaks "The law of Demeter" principle?

  - by dreza

  I often find myself breaking this principle (not intentially, just through bad design). However recently I've seen a bit of code that I'm not sure of the best approach. I have a number of classes. For simplicity I've taken out the bulk of the classes methods etc public class Paddock { public SoilType Soil { get; private set; } // a whole bunch of other properties around paddock information } public class SoilType { public SoilDrainageType Drainage { get; private set; } // a whole bunch of other properties around soil types } public class SoilDrainageType { // a whole bunch of public properties that expose soil drainage values public double GetProportionOfDrainage(SoilType soil, double blockRatio) { // This method does a number of calculations using public properties // exposed off SoilType as well as the blockRatio value in some conditions } } In the code I have seen in a number of places calls like so paddock.Soil.Drainage.GetProportionOfDrainage(paddock.Soil, paddock.GetBlockRatio()); or within the block object itself in places it's Soil.Drainage.GetProportionOfDrainage(this.Soil, this.GetBlockRatio()); Upon reading this seems to break "The Law of Demeter" in that I'm chaining together these properties to access the method I want. So my thought in order to adjust this was to create public methods on SoilType and Paddock that contains wrappers i.e. on paddock it would be public class Paddock { public double GetProportionOfDrainage() { return Soil.GetProportionOfDrainage(this.GetBlockRatio()); } } on the SoilType it would be public class SoilType { public double GetProportionOfDrainage(double blockRatio) { return Drainage.GetProportionOfDrainage(this, blockRatio); } } so now calls where it used would be simply // used outside of paddock class where we can access instances of Paddock paddock.GetProportionofDrainage() or this.GetProportionOfDrainage(); // if used within Paddock class This seemed like a nice alternative. However now I have a concern over how would I enforce this usage and stop anyone else from writing code such as paddock.Soil.Drainage.GetProportionOfDrainage(paddock.Soil, paddock.GetBlockRatio()); rather than just paddock.GetProportionOfDrainage(); I need the properties to remain public at this stage as they are too ingrained in usage throughout the code block. However I don't really want a mixture of accessing the method on DrainageType directly as that seems to defeat the purpose altogether. What would be the appropiate design approach in this situation? I can provide more information as required to better help in answers. Is my thoughts on refactoring this even appropiate or should is it best to leave it as is and use the property chaining to access the method as and when required?

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