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• Fun with Python

  - by dotneteer

  I am taking a class on Coursera recently. My formal education is in physics. Although I have been working as a developer for over 18 years and have learnt a lot of programming on the job, I still would like to gain some systematic knowledge in computer science. Coursera courses taught by Standard professors provided me a wonderful chance. The three languages recommended for assignments are Java, C and Python. I am fluent in Java and have done some projects using C++/MFC/ATL in the past, but I would like to try something different this time. I first started with pure C. Soon I discover that I have to write a lot of code outside the question that I try to solve because the very limited C standard library. For example, to read a list of values from a file, I have to read characters by characters until I hit a delimiter. If I need a list that can grow, I have to create a data structure myself, something that I have taking for granted in .Net or Java. Out of frustration, I switched to Python. I was pleasantly surprised to find that Python is very easy to learn. The tutorial on the official Python site has the exactly the right pace for me, someone with experience in another programming. After a couple of hours on the tutorial and a few more minutes of toying with IDEL, I was in business. I like the “battery supplied” philosophy that gives everything that I need out of box. For someone from C# or Java background, curly braces are replaced by colon(:) and tab spaces. Although I tend to miss colon from time to time, I found that the idea of tab space is actually very nice once I get use to them. I also like to feature of multiple assignment and multiple return parameters. When I need to return a by-product, I just add it to the list of returns. When would use Python? I would use Python if I need to computer anything quick. The language is very easy to use. Python has a good collection of libraries (packages). The REPL of the interpreter allows me test ideas quickly before committing them into script. Lots of computer science work have been ported from Lisp to Python. Some universities are even teaching SICP in Python. When wouldn’t I use Python? I mostly would not use it in a managed environment, such as Ironpython or Jython. Both .Net and Java already have a rich library so one has to make a choice which library to use. If we use the managed runtime library, the code will tie to the particular runtime and thus not portable. If we use the Python library, then we will face the relatively long start-up time. For this reason, I would not recommend to use Ironpython for WP7 development. The only situation that I see merit with managed Python is in a server application where I can preload Python so that the start-up time is not a concern. Using Python as a managed glue language is an over-kill most of the time. A managed Scheme could be a better glue language as it is small enough to start-up very fast.

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• Blink-Data vs Instinct?

  - by Samantha.Y. Ma

  In his landmark bestseller Blink, well-known author and journalist Malcolm Gladwell explores how human beings everyday make seemingly instantaneous choices --in the blink of an eye--and how we “think without thinking.”  These situations actually aren’t as simple as they seem, he postulates; and throughout the book, Gladwell seeks answers to questions such as: 1.    What makes some people good at thinking on their feet and making quick spontaneous decisions?2.    Why do some people follow their instincts and win, while others consistently seem to stumble into error?3.    Why are some of the best decisions often those that are difficult to explain to others?In Blink, Gladwell introduces us to the psychologist who has learned to predict whether a marriage will last, based on a few minutes of observing a couple; the tennis coach who knows when a player will double-fault before the racket even makes contact with the ball; the antiquities experts who recognize a fake at a glance. Ultimately, Blink reveals that great decision makers aren't those who spend the most time deliberating or analyzing information, but those who focus on key factors among an overwhelming number of variables-- i.e., those who have perfected the art of "thin-slicing.” In Data vs. Instinct: Perfecting Global Sales Performance, a new report sponsored by Oracle, the Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU) explores the roles data and instinct play in decision-making by sales managers and discusses how sales executives can increase sales performance through more effective  territory planning and incentive/compensation strategies.If you are a sales executive, ask yourself this:  “Do you rely on knowledge (data) when you plan out your sales strategy?  If you rely on data, how do you ensure that your data sources are reliable, up-to-date, and complete?  With the emergence of social media and the proliferation of both structured and unstructured data, how do you know that you are applying your information/data correctly and in-context?  Three key findings in the report are:•    Six out of ten executives say they rely more on data than instinct to drive decisions. •    Nearly one half (48 percent) of incentive compensation plans do not achieve the desired results. •    Senior sales executives rely more on current and historical data than on forecast data. Strikingly similar to what Gladwell concludes in Blink, the report’s authors succinctly sum up their findings: "The best outcome is a combination of timely information, insightful predictions, and support data."Applying this insight is crucial to creating a sound sales plan that drives alignment and results.  In the area of sales performance management, “territory programs and incentive compensation continue to present particularly complex challenges in an increasingly globalized market," say the report’s authors. "It behooves companies to get a better handle on translating that data into actionable and effective plans." To help solve this challenge, CRM Oracle Fusion integrates forecasting, quotas, compensation, and territories into a single system.   For example, Oracle Fusion CRM provides a natural integration between territories, which define the sales targets (e.g., collection of accounts) for the sales force, and quotas, which quantify the sales targets. In fact, territory hierarchy is a core analytic dimension to slice and dice sales results, using sales analytics and alerts to help you identify where problems are occurring. This makes territoriesStart tapping into both data and instinct effectively today with Oracle Fusion CRM.   Here is a short video to provide you with a snapshot of how it can help you optimize your sales performance.  

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• Friday Tips #6, Part 1

  - by Chris Kawalek

  We have a two parter this week, with this post focusing on desktop virtualization and the next one on server virtualization. Question: Why would I use the Oracle Secure Global Desktop Secure Gateway? Answer by Rick Butland, Principal Sales Consultant, Oracle Desktop Virtualization: Well, for the benefit of those who might not be familiar with client connections in Oracle Secure Global Desktop (SGD), let me back up and briefly explain. An SGD client connects to an SGD server using two distinct protocols, which, by default, require two distinct TCP ports. The first is the HTTP protocol, used by the web browser to connect to the SGD webserver on TCP port 80, or if secure connections are enabled (SSL/TLS), then TCP port 443, commonly identified as the "HTTPS" port, that is, "SSL encrypted HTTP." The second protocol from the client to the server is the Adaptive Internet Protocol, or AIP, which is used for displaying applications, transferring drive mapping data, print jobs, and so on. By default, AIP uses the TCP port 3104, or port 5307 when SSL is enabled. When SGD clients need to access SGD over a firewall, the ports that AIP requires are typically "closed"; and most administrators are reluctant, to put it mildly, to change their firewall configurations to allow AIP traffic on 3144/5307.   To avoid this problem, SGD introduced "Firewall Forwarding", a technique where, in effect, both http and AIP traffic are "multiplexed" onto a single "well-known" TCP port, that is port 443, the https port.  This is also known as single-port firewall traversal.  This technique takes advantage of the fact that, as a "well-known service", port 443 is usually "open",   allowing (encrypted) traffic to pass. At the target SGD server, the two protocols are de-multiplexed and routed appropriately. The Secure Gateway was developed in response to requirements from customers for SGD to support multi-stage DMZ's, and to avoid exposing SGD servers and the information they contain directly to connections from the Internet. The Secure Gateway acts as a reverse-proxy in the first-tier of the DMZ, accepting, authenticating, and terminating incoming client connections, and then re-encrypting the connections, and proxying them, routing them on to SGD servers, deeper in the network. The client no longer needs to know the name/IP address of the SGD servers in their network, they connect to the gateway, only. The gateway takes care of those internal network details.     The Secure Gateway supports the same "single-port firewall" capability as does "Firewall Forwarding", but offers the additional advantage of load-balancing incoming client connections amongst SGD array members, which could be cumbersome without a forward-deployed secure gateway. Load-balancing weights and policies can be monitored and tuned using the "Balancer Manager" application, and Apache mod_proxy_balancer directives.   Going forward, our architects recommend the use of the Secure Gateway over "Firewall Forwarding" for single-port firewall traversal, due to its architectural advantages, its greater flexibility and enhanced features.  Finally, it should be noted that the Secure Gateway is not separately priced; any licensed SGD customer may use the Secure Gateway component at no additional cost.   For more information, see the "Secure Gateway Administrator's Guide".

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• Passed: Exam 70-480: Programming in HTML5 with JavaScript and CSS3

  First off: Mission accomplished successfully. And it was fun! Using the resources listed in my previous article about Learning Content, I'd like to thank Microsoft Technical Evangelists Jeremy Foster and Michael Palermo for their excellent jump start videos on Channel 9, and the various authors at Pluralsight. Local Prometric testing centre Back in November I chose a local testing centre which was the easiest to access from my office despite the horrible traffic you might experience here on the island. Actually, it was not the closest one. But due to their website, their awards as Microsoft Learning Center, and my general curiosity about the premises, I gave FRCI my priority. Boy, how should I regret this decision this morning... The official Prometric exam guide asks any attendee to show up at least 30 minutes prior to the scheduled time of the test. Well, this should have been the easier part but unfortunately due to heavier traffic than usual I arrived only 20 minutes before time. Not too bad but more to come. The building called 'le Hub' is nicely renovated and provides the right environment for an IT group of companies like FRCI. I think they have currently 5 independent IT departments over there. Even the handling at the reception was straight forward, welcoming and at my ease. But then... first shock: "We don't have any exam registration for today." - Hm, that's nice... Here's my mail confirmation from Prometric. First attack successfully handled and the lady went off again to check their records. Next shock: A couple of minutes later, another guy tries to explain me that "the staff of the testing centre is already on vacation and the centre is officially closed." - Are you kidding me? Here's the official confirmation by Prometric, and I don't find it funny that I take a day off today only to hear this kind of blubbering nonsense. I thought that I'll be on the safe side choosing a company with a good reputation here on the island. Another 40 (!) minutes later, they finally come back to the waiting area with a pre-filled form about the test appointment. And finally, after an hour of waiting, discussing, restarting the testing PC, and lots of talk, I am allowed to sit down and take the exam. Exam details Well, you know the rules. Signing an NDA doesn't allow me to provide you any details about the questions or topics that have been covered. Please check out the official exam description, and you're on the right way. Sorry, guys... ;-) The result "Congratulations! You have passed this Microsoft Certification exam." - In general, I have to admit that the parts on HTML5 and CSS3 were the easiest after all, and that I have to get myself a little bit more familiar with certain Javascript features like class definitions, inheritance and data security. Anyway, exam passed - who cares about the details? Next goal Of course, the journey to Microsoft Certifications continues and my next goal is to pass exams 70-481 - Essentials of Developing Windows Store Apps using HTML5 and JavaScript and 70-482 - Advanced Windows Store App Development using HTML5 and JavaScript. This would allow me to achieve the certification of MCSD: Windows Store Apps using HTML5. I guess, during 2013 I'll be busy with various learning and teaching lessons.

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• Oracle Solaris Crash Analysis Tool 5.3 now available

  - by user12609056

  Oracle Solaris Crash Analysis Tool 5.3 The Oracle Solaris Crash Analysis Tool Team is happy to announce the availability of release 5.3.  This release addresses bugs discovered since the release of 5.2 plus enhancements to support Oracle Solaris 11 and updates to Oracle Solaris versions 7 through 10. The packages are available on My Oracle Support - simply search for Patch 13365310 to find the downloadable packages. Release Notes General blast support The blast GUI has been removed and is no longer supported. Oracle Solaris 2.6 Support As of Oracle Solaris Crash Analysis Tool 5.3, support for Oracle Solaris 2.6 has been dropped. If you have systems running Solaris 2.6, you will need to use Oracle Solaris Crash Analysis Tool 5.2 or earlier to read its crash dumps. New Commands Sanity Command Though one can re-run the sanity checks that are run at tool start-up using the coreinfo command, many users were unaware that they were. Though these checks can still be run using that command, a new command, namely sanity, can now be used to re-run the checks at any time. Interface Changes scat_explore -r and -t option The -r option has ben added to scat_explore so that a base directory can be specified and the -t op[tion was added to enable color taggging of the output. The scat_explore sub-command now accepts new options. Usage is: scat --scat_explore [-atv] [-r base_dir] [-d dest] [unix.N] [vmcore.]N Where: -v Verbose Mode: The command will print messages highlighting what it's doing. -a Auto Mode: The command does not prompt for input from the user as it runs. -d dest Instructs scat_explore to save it's output in the directory dest instead of the present working directory. -r base_dir Instructs scat_explore to save it's under the directory base_dir instead of the present working directory. If it is not specified using the -d option, scat_explore names it's output file as "scat_explore_system_name_hostid_lbolt_value_corefile_name." -t Enable color tags. When enabled, scat_explore tags important text with colors that match the level of importance. These colors correspond to the color normally printed when running Oracle Solaris Crash Analysis Tool in interactive mode. Tag Name Definition FATAL An extremely important message which should be investigated. WARNING A warning that may or may not have anything to do with the crash. ERROR An error, usually printer with a suggested command ALERT Used to indicate something the tool discovered. INFO Purely informational message INFO2 A follow-up to an INFO tagged message REDZONE Usually used when prnting memory info showing something is in the kernel's REDZONE. N The number of the crash dump. Specifying unix.N vmcore.N is optional and not required. Example: $ scat --scat_explore -a -v -r /tmp vmcore.0 #Output directory: /tmp/scat_explore_oomph_833a2959_0x28800_vmcore.0 #Tar filename: scat_explore_oomph_833a2959_0x28800_vmcore.0.tar #Extracting crash data... #Gathering standard crash data collections... #Panic string indicates a possible hang... #Gathering Hang Related data... #Creating tar file... #Compressing tar file... #Successful extraction SCAT_EXPLORE_DATA_DIR=/tmp/scat_explore_oomph_833a2959_0x28800_vmcore.0 Sending scat_explore results The .tar.gz file that results from a scat_explore run may be sent using Oracle Secure File Transfer. The Oracle Secure File Transfer User Guide describes how to use it to send a file. The send_scat_explore script now has a -t option for specifying a to address for sending the results. This option is mandatory. Known Issues There are a couple known issues that we are addressing in release 5.4, which you should expect to see soon: Display of timestamps in threads and clock information is incorrect in some cases. There are alignment issues with some of the tables produced by the tool.

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• Call For Papers Tips and Tricks

  - by speakjava

  This year's JavaOne session review has just been completed and by now everyone who submitted papers should know whether they were successful or not.  I had the pleasure again this year of leading the review of the 'JavaFX and Rich User Experiences' track.  I thought it would be useful to write up a few comments to help people in future when submitting session proposals, not just for JavaOne, but for any of the many developer conferences that run around the world throughout the year.  This also draws on conversations I recently had with various Java User Group leaders at the Oracle User Group summit in Riga.  Many of these leaders run some of the biggest and most successful Java conferences in Europe. Try to think of a title which will sound interesting.  For example, "Experiences of performance tuning embedded Java for an ARM architecture based single board computer" probably isn't going to get as much attention as "Do you like coffee with your dessert? Java on the Raspberry Pi".  When thinking of the subject and title for your talk try to steer clear of sessions that might be too generic (and so get lost in a group of similar sessions).  Introductory talks are great when the audience is new to a subject, but beware of providing sessions that are too basic when the technology has been around for a while and there are lots of tutorials already available on the web. JavaOne, like many other conferences has a number of fields that need to be filled in when submitting a paper.  Many of these are selected from pull-down lists (like which track the session is applicable to).  Check these lists carefully.  A number of sessions we had needed to be shuffled between tracks when it was thought that the one selected was not appropriate.  We didn't count this against any sessions, but it's always a good idea to try and get the right one from the start, just in case. JavaOne, again like many other conferences, has two fields that describe the session being submitted: abstract and summary.  These are the most critical to a successful submission.  The two fields have different names and that is significant; a frequent mistake people make is to write an abstract for a session and then duplicate it for the summary.  The abstract (at least in the case of JavaOne) is what gets printed in the show guide and is typically what will be used by attendees when deciding what sessions to attend.  This is where you need to sell your session, not just to the reviewers, but also the people who you want in your audience.  Submitting a one line abstract (unless it's a really good one line) is not usually enough to decide whether this is worth investing an hour of conference time.  The abstract typically has a limit of a few hundred characters.  Try to use as many of them as possible to get as much information about your session across.  The summary should be different from the abstract (and don't leave it blank as some people do).  This field is where you can give the reviewers more detail about things like the structure of the talk, possible demonstrations and so on.  As a reviewer I look to this section to help me decide whether the hard-sell of the title and abstract will actually be reflected in the final content.  Try to make this comprehensive, but don't make it excessively long.  When you have to review possibly hundreds of sessions a certain level of conciseness can make life easier for reviewers and help the cause of your session. If you've not made many submissions for talks in the past, or if this is your first, try to give reviewers places to find background on you as a presenter.  Having an active blog and Twitter handle can also help reviewers if they're not sure what your level of expertise is.  Many call-for-papers have places for you to include this type of information.  It's always good to have new and original presenters and presentations for conferences.  Hopefully these tips will help you be successful when you answer the next call-for-papers.

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• Olympics data available for all on Windows Azure SQL Database and Power View

  - by jamiet

  Are you looking around for some decent test data for your BI demos? Well, if so, Microsoft have provided some data about all medals won at the Olympics Games (1900 to 2008) at OlympicsData workbook - Excel, SSIS, Azure sample; it provides analysis over athletes, countries, medal type, sport, discipline and various other dimensions. The data has been provided in an Excel workbook along with instructions on how to load the data into a Windows Azure SQL Database using SQL Server Integration Services (SSIS). Frankly though, the rigmarole of standing up your own Windows Azure SQL Database ok, SQL Azure database, is both costly (SQL Azure isn’t free) and time consuming (the provided instructions aren’t exactly an idiot’s guide and getting SSIS to work properly with Excel isn’t a barrel of laughs either). To ease the pain for all you BI folks out there that simply want to party on the data I have loaded it all into the SQL Azure database that I use for hosting AdventureWorks on Azure. You can read more about AdventureWorks on Azure below however I’ll summarise here by saying it is a SQL Azure database provided for the use of the SQL Server community and which is supported by voluntary donations. To view the data the credentials you need are: Server mhknbn2kdz.database.windows.net  Database AdventureWorks2012 User sqlfamily Password sqlf@m1ly Type those into SSMS and away you go, the data is provided in four tables [olympics].[Sport], [olympics].[Discipline], [olympics].[Event] & [olympics].[Medalist]: I figured this would be a good candidate for a Power View report so I fired up Excel 2013 and built such a report to slice’n’dice through the data – here are some screenshots that should give you a flavour of what is available: A view of all the available data Where do all the gymastics medals go? Which countries do top ten all-time medal winners come from? You get the idea. There is masses of information here and if you have Excel 2013 handy Power View provides a quick and easy way of surfing through it. To save you the bother of setting up the Power View report yourself you can have the one that I took these screenshots from, it is available on my SkyDrive at OlympicsAnalysis.xlsx so just hit the link and download to play to your heart’s content. Party on, people! As I said above the data is hosted on a SQL Azure database that I use for hosting “AdventureWorks on Azure” which I first announced in March 2013 at AdventureWorks2012 now available for all on SQL Azure. I’ll repeat the pertinent parts of that blog post here: I am pleased to announce that as of today … [AdventureWorks2012] now resides on SQL Azure and is available for anyone, absolutely anyone, to connect to and use for their own means. This database is free for you to use but SQL Azure is of course not free so before I give you the credentials please lend me your ears eyes for a short while longer. AdventureWorks on Azure is being provided for the SQL Server community to use and so I am hoping that that same community will rally around to support this effort by making a voluntary donation to support the upkeep which, going on current pricing, is going to be $119.88 per year. If you would like to contribute to keep AdventureWorks on Azure up and running for that full year please donate via PayPal to [email protected] Any amount, no matter how small, will help. If those 50+ people that retweeted me beforehand all contributed $2 then that would just about be enough to keep this up for a year. If the community contributes more than we need then there are a number of additional things that could be done: Host additional databases (Northwind anyone??) Host in more datacentres (this first one is in Western Europe) Make a charitable donation That last one, a charitable donation, is something I would really like to do. The SQL Community have proved before that they can make a significant contribution to charitable orgnisations through purchasing the SQL Server MVP Deep Dives book and I harbour hopes that AdventureWorks on Azure can continue in that vein. So please, if you think AdventureWorks on Azure is something that is worth supporting please make a contribution. I’d like to emphasize that last point. If my hosting this Olympics data is useful to you please support this initiative by donating. Thanks in advance. @Jamiet

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• When does a Tumbling Window Start in StreamInsight

  Whilst getting some courseware ready I was playing around writing some code and I decided to very simply show when a window starts and ends based on you asking for a TumblingWindow of n time units in StreamInsight.  I thought this was going to be a two second thing but what I found was something I haven’t yet found documented anywhere until now.   All this code is written in C# and will slot straight into my favourite quick-win dev tool LinqPad   Let’s first create a sample dataset   var EnumerableCollection = new [] { new {id = 1, StartTime = DateTime.Parse("2010-10-01 12:00:00 PM").ToLocalTime()}, new {id = 2, StartTime = DateTime.Parse("2010-10-01 12:20:00 PM").ToLocalTime()}, new {id = 3, StartTime = DateTime.Parse("2010-10-01 12:30:00 PM").ToLocalTime()}, new {id = 4, StartTime = DateTime.Parse("2010-10-01 12:40:00 PM").ToLocalTime()}, new {id = 5, StartTime = DateTime.Parse("2010-10-01 12:50:00 PM").ToLocalTime()}, new {id = 6, StartTime = DateTime.Parse("2010-10-01 01:00:00 PM").ToLocalTime()}, new {id = 7, StartTime = DateTime.Parse("2010-10-01 01:10:00 PM").ToLocalTime()}, new {id = 8, StartTime = DateTime.Parse("2010-10-01 02:00:00 PM").ToLocalTime()}, new {id = 9, StartTime = DateTime.Parse("2010-10-01 03:20:00 PM").ToLocalTime()}, new {id = 10, StartTime = DateTime.Parse("2010-10-01 03:30:00 PM").ToLocalTime()}, new {id = 11, StartTime = DateTime.Parse("2010-10-01 04:40:00 PM").ToLocalTime()}, new {id = 12, StartTime = DateTime.Parse("2010-10-01 04:50:00 PM").ToLocalTime()}, new {id = 13, StartTime = DateTime.Parse("2010-10-01 05:00:00 PM").ToLocalTime()}, new {id = 14, StartTime = DateTime.Parse("2010-10-01 05:10:00 PM").ToLocalTime()} };   Now let’s create a stream of point events   var inputStream = EnumerableCollection .ToPointStream(Application,evt=> PointEvent .CreateInsert(evt.StartTime,evt),AdvanceTimeSettings.StrictlyIncreasingStartTime);   Now we can create our windows over the stream.  The first window we will create is a one hour tumbling window.  We’'ll count the events in the window but what we do here is not the point, the point is our window edges.   var windowedStream = from win in inputStream.TumblingWindow(TimeSpan.FromHours(1),HoppingWindowOutputPolicy.ClipToWindowEnd) select new {CountOfEntries = win.Count()};   Now we can have a look at what we get.  I am only going to show the first non Cti event as that is enough to demonstrate what is going on   windowedStream.ToIntervalEnumerable().First(e=> e.EventKind == EventKind.Insert).Dump("First Row from Windowed Stream");   The results are below   EventKind Insert   StartTime 01/10/2010 12:00   EndTime 01/10/2010 13:00     { CountOfEntries = 5 }   Payload CountOfEntries 5   Now this makes sense and is quite often the width of window specified in examples.  So what happens if I change the windowing code now to var windowedStream = from win in inputStream.TumblingWindow(TimeSpan.FromHours(5),HoppingWindowOutputPolicy.ClipToWindowEnd) select new {CountOfEntries = win.Count()}; Now where does your window start?  What about   var windowedStream = from win in inputStream.TumblingWindow(TimeSpan.FromMinutes(13),HoppingWindowOutputPolicy.ClipToWindowEnd) select new {CountOfEntries = win.Count()};   Well for the first example your window will start at 01/10/2010 10:00:00 , and for the second example it will start at  01/10/2010 11:55:00 Surprised?   Here is the reason why and thanks to the StreamInsight team for listening.   Windows start at TimeSpan.MinValue. Windows are then created from that point onwards of the size you specified in your code.  If a window contains no events they are not produced by the engine to the output.  This is why window start times can be before the first event is created.

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• Virtualized data centre&ndash;Part three: Architecture

  - by marc dekeyser

  Having the basics (like discussed in the previous articles) is all good and well, but how do we get started on this?! It can be quite daunting after all!   From my own point of view I can absolutely confirm your worries and concerns, but also tell you that it is not as hard as it seems! Deciding on what kind of motherboard to buy, processor and how much memory is an activity you will spend quite some time doing research on. And that is not even mentioning storage! All in all it comes down to setting you expectations and your budget. Probably adjusting your expectations according to your budget :). Processors As a rule of thumb you want VT-D (virtualization) technology built in to the processor allowing you to have 64 bit machines running on your host. Memory The more the better! If you are building a home lab don’t bother with ECC unless you are going to run machines that absolutely should be on all the time and your comfort depends on it! Motherboard Depends on what you are going to do with storage: If you are going the NAS way then the number of SATA port/RAID capabilities do not really matter. If you decide to have a single server with lots of dedicated storage it obviously matters how much SATA ports you will have, alternatively you could use a RAID controller (but these set you back a pretty penny if you want one. DELL 6i’s are usually available for a good bargain if you can find one!). Easiest is to get one with a built-in graphics card (on-board) as you are just adding more heat, power usage and possible points of failure. Networking Just like your choice of motherboard the networking side tends to depend on how you want to go. A single virtualization  host with local storage can usually get away with having a single network card, a cluster or server which uses iSCSI storage tends to have more than one teamed up :). Storage The dreaded beast from the dark! The horror which lives in the forest! The most difficult decision you are going to make in the building of your lab. Why you might ask? Simple my friend, having the right choice of storage can make or break your virtualization solution. The performance of you storage choice will have an important impact on the responsiveness of your virtual machines and the deployment of new machines. It also makes a run with your budget! If you decide to go the NAS route you will be dropping a lot more money than if you would be having just a bunch of disks sitting in a server and manually distributing the virtual machines over the disks. Platform I’m a Microsoftee so Hyper-V is a dead giveaway for me. If you are interested in using VMware I won’t stop you but the rest of my posts will be oriented on Server 2012 Hyper-V (aka 3.0)! What did I use? Before someone asks me this in the comments I’ll give you a quick run down of what I am using. - Intel 2.4 quad core processors (i something something) - 24 GB DDR3 Memory - Single disk in each server (might look at this as I move the servers to 2012) - Synology DS1812+ NAS - 3 network interfaces where possible - HP1800 procurve managed switch I decided to spring for the NAS as I will also be using it for backups and media storage (which is working out quite nicely with my Xbox 360 I must say). At the time of building my 2 boxes (over a year and a half ago) these set me back about 900 euros each so I can image you can build the same or better for a lower price. Next article will be diagramming what I want to achieve and starting a build on the Hyper V 3.0 cluster!

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• Documentation and Test Assertions in Databases

  - by Phil Factor

  When I first worked with Sybase/SQL Server, we thought our databases were impressively large but they were, by today’s standards, pathetically small. We had one script to build the whole database. Every script I ever read was richly annotated; it was more like reading a document. Every table had a comment block, and every line would be commented too. At the end of each routine (e.g. procedure) was a quick integration test, or series of test assertions, to check that nothing in the build was broken. We simply ran the build script, stored in the Version Control System, and it pulled everything together in a logical sequence that not only created the database objects but pulled in the static data. This worked fine at the scale we had. The advantage was that one could, by reading the source code, reach a rapid understanding of how the database worked and how one could interface with it. The problem was that it was a system that meant that only one developer at the time could work on the database. It was very easy for a developer to execute accidentally the entire build script rather than the selected section on which he or she was working, thereby cleansing the database of everyone else’s work-in-progress and data. It soon became the fashion to work at the object level, so that programmers could check out individual views, tables, functions, constraints and rules and work on them independently. It was then that I noticed the trend to generate the source for the VCS retrospectively from the development server. Tables were worst affected. You can, of course, add or delete a table’s columns and constraints retrospectively, which means that the existing source no longer represents the current object. If, after your development work, you generate the source from the live table, then you get no block or line comments, and the source script is sprinkled with silly square-brackets and other confetti, thereby rendering it visually indigestible. Routines, too, were affected. In our system, every routine had a directly attached string of unit-tests. A retro-generated routine has no unit-tests or test assertions. Yes, one can still commit our test code to the VCS but it’s a separate module and teams end up running the whole suite of tests for every individual change, rather than just the tests for that routine, which doesn’t scale for database testing. With Extended properties, one can get the best of both worlds, and even use them to put blame, praise or annotations into your VCS. It requires a lot of work, though, particularly the script to generate the table. The problem is that there are no conventional names beyond ‘MS_Description’ for the special use of extended properties. This makes it difficult to do splendid things such ensuring the integrity of the build by running a suite of tests that are actually stored in extended properties within the database and therefore the VCS. We have lost the readability of database source code over the years, and largely jettisoned the use of test assertions as part of the database build. This is not unexpected in view of the increasing complexity of the structure of databases and number of programmers working on them. There must, surely, be a way of getting them back, but I sometimes wonder if I’m one of very few who miss them.

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• Access denied error while mounting a shared folder?

  - by SSH

  I am a linux newbie and I have a very basic question. I have three machines - machineA 10.108.24.132 machineB 10.108.24.133 machineC 10.108.24.134 and all those machines have Ubuntu 12.04 installed in it and I have root access to all those three machines. Now I am supposed to do below things in my above machines - Create mount point /opt/exhibitor/conf Mount the directory in all servers. sudo mount <NFS-SERVER>:/opt/exhibitor/conf /opt/exhibitor/conf/ I have already created /opt/exhibitor/conf directory in all those three machines as mentioned above. Now I am trying to create a Mount Point on all those three machines. So I followed the below process - Install NFS support files and NFS kernel server in all the above three machines $ sudo apt-get install nfs-common nfs-kernel-server Create the shared directory in all the above three machines $ mkdir /opt/exhibitor/conf/ Edited the /etc/exports and added the entry like this in all the above three machines - # /etc/exports: the access control list for filesystems which may be exported # to NFS clients. See exports(5). # # Example for NFSv2 and NFSv3: # /srv/homes hostname1(rw,sync,no_subtree_check) hostname2(ro,sync,no_subtree_check) # # Example for NFSv4: # /srv/nfs4 gss/krb5i(rw,sync,fsid=0,crossmnt,no_subtree_check) # /srv/nfs4/homes gss/krb5i(rw,sync,no_subtree_check) # /opt/exhibitor/conf/ 10.108.24.*(rw) Run exportfs in all the above three machines root@machineA:/# exportfs -rv exportfs: /etc/exports [1]: Neither 'subtree_check' or 'no_subtree_check' specified for export "10.108.24.*:/opt/exhibitor/conf/". Assuming default behaviour ('no_subtree_check'). NOTE: this default has changed since nfs-utils version 1.0.x exporting 10.108.24.*:/opt/exhibitor/conf Now I did showmount on machineA root@machineA:/# showmount -e 10.108.24.132 Export list for 10.108.24.132: /opt/exhibitor/conf 10.108.24.* And also I have started the NFS server like this in all the above three machines - sudo /etc/init.d/nfs-kernel-server start And now when I did this, I am getting an error - root@machineA:/# sudo mount -t nfs 10.108.24.132:/opt/exhibitor/conf /opt/exhibitor/conf/ mount.nfs: access denied by server while mounting 10.108.24.132:/opt/exhibitor/conf I have also tried doing the same thing from machineB and machineC as well and still I get the same error- root@machineB:/# sudo mount -t nfs 10.108.24.132:/opt/exhibitor/conf /opt/exhibitor/conf/ root@machineC:/# sudo mount -t nfs 10.108.24.132:/opt/exhibitor/conf /opt/exhibitor/conf/ Did my /etc/exports file looks good? As I have the same content in all the three machines. And also are there any logs related to NFS which I can see to find any clues? Any idea what wrong I am doing here? UPDATE:- So my etc/exports files would be like this in all the three machines - # /etc/exports: the access control list for filesystems which may be exported # to NFS clients. See exports(5). # # Example for NFSv2 and NFSv3: # /srv/homes hostname1(rw,sync,no_subtree_check) hostname2(ro,sync,no_subtree_check) # # Example for NFSv4: # /srv/nfs4 gss/krb5i(rw,sync,fsid=0,crossmnt,no_subtree_check) # /srv/nfs4/homes gss/krb5i(rw,sync,no_subtree_check) # /opt/exhibitor/conf/ 10.108.24.132(rw) /opt/exhibitor/conf/ 10.108.24.133(rw) /opt/exhibitor/conf/ 10.108.24.134(rw) Just a quick check - The IP Address that I am taking for each machine as mentioned above is like this - root@machineB:/# ifconfig eth0 Link encap:Ethernet HWaddr 00:50:56:ad:5b:a7 inet addr:10.108.24.133 Bcast:10.108.27.255 Mask:255.255.252.0 UP BROADCAST RUNNING MULTICAST MTU:1500 Metric:1 RX packets:5696812 errors:0 dropped:12462 overruns:0 frame:0 TX packets:5083427 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0 collisions:0 txqueuelen:1000 RX bytes:7904369145 (7.9 GB) TX bytes:601844910 (601.8 MB) lo Link encap:Local Loopback inet addr:127.0.0.1 Mask:255.0.0.0 UP LOOPBACK RUNNING MTU:16436 Metric:1 RX packets:187144 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0 TX packets:187144 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0 collisions:0 txqueuelen:0 RX bytes:24012302 (24.0 MB) TX bytes:24012302 (24.0 MB) Here the IP Address that I am taking for machineB is 10.108.24.133.

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• Library order is important

  - by Darryl Gove

  I've written quite extensively about link ordering issues, but I've not discussed the interaction between archive libraries and shared libraries. So let's take a simple program that calls a maths library function: #include <math.h int main() { for (int i=0; i<10000000; i++) { sin(i); } } We compile and run it to get the following performance: bash-3.2$ cc -g -O fp.c -lm bash-3.2$ timex ./a.out real 6.06 user 6.04 sys 0.01 Now most people will have heard of the optimised maths library which is added by the flag -xlibmopt. This contains optimised versions of key mathematical functions, in this instance, using the library doubles performance: bash-3.2$ cc -g -O -xlibmopt fp.c -lm bash-3.2$ timex ./a.out real 2.70 user 2.69 sys 0.00 The optimised maths library is provided as an archive library (libmopt.a), and the driver adds it to the link line just before the maths library - this causes the linker to pick the definitions provided by the static library in preference to those provided by libm. We can see the processing by asking the compiler to print out the link line: bash-3.2$ cc -### -g -O -xlibmopt fp.c -lm /usr/ccs/bin/ld ... fp.o -lmopt -lm -o a.out... The flag to the linker is -lmopt, and this is placed before the -lm flag. So what happens when the -lm flag is in the wrong place on the command line: bash-3.2$ cc -g -O -xlibmopt -lm fp.c bash-3.2$ timex ./a.out real 6.02 user 6.01 sys 0.01 If the -lm flag is before the source file (or object file for that matter), we get the slower performance from the system maths library. Why's that? If we look at the link line we can see the following ordering: /usr/ccs/bin/ld ... -lmopt -lm fp.o -o a.out So the optimised maths library is still placed before the system maths library, but the object file is placed afterwards. This would be ok if the optimised maths library were a shared library, but it is not - instead it's an archive library, and archive library processing is different - as described in the linker and library guide: "The link-editor searches an archive only to resolve undefined or tentative external references that have previously been encountered." An archive library can only be used resolve symbols that are outstanding at that point in the link processing. When fp.o is placed before the libmopt.a archive library, then the linker has an unresolved symbol defined in fp.o, and it will search the archive library to resolve that symbol. If the archive library is placed before fp.o then there are no unresolved symbols at that point, and so the linker doesn't need to use the archive library. This is why libmopt needs to be placed after the object files on the link line. On the other hand if the linker has observed any shared libraries, then at any point these are checked for any unresolved symbols. The consequence of this is that once the linker "sees" libm it will resolve any symbols it can to that library, and it will not check the archive library to resolve them. This is why libmopt needs to be placed before libm on the link line. This leads to the following order for placing files on the link line: Object files Archive libraries Shared libraries If you use this order, then things will consistently get resolved to the archive libraries rather than to the shared libaries.

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• Social HCM: Is Your Team Listening?

  - by Mike Stiles

  Does integrating Social HCM into your enterprise make sense? Consider Sam and Christina. Sam is a new hire at a big company. On the job 3 weeks, a question has come up on how to properly file an expense report to get reimbursed. It was covered in the onboarding session, but shockingly enough, Sam didn’t memorize or write down every word of the session. The answer is probably in a handout, in a stack of handouts 2 inches thick. It also might be on the employee web site…somewhere. Christina is a new hire at a different big company. She has the same question. She logs into her company’s social network, goes to the “new hires” group, asks her question and gets an answer in seconds. Christina says, “Cool!” Sam says, “Grrrr.” It’s safe to say the qualified talent your company wants is accustomed to using social platforms to communicate and get quick answers. As such, Christina is comfortable at her new company, whereas Sam is wondering what he’s gotten himself into. Companies that cling to talent communication and management systems that don’t speak to talent’s needs or expectations put themselves at risk. Right from the recruiting stage, prospects can determine if a company has embraced the communications tools of the 21st century. If they don’t see it, alarm bells go off. With great talent more in demand than ever, enterprises should reconsider making “this is the way we do it, you adapt to us” their mantra. Other blogs have clearly outlined that apart from meeting top recruits’ expectations, Social HCM benefits the organization itself in terms of efficiency, talent performance & measurement. Recruiting: Jobvite shows 64% of companies hired using social. 89% of job seekers are using social in their search. Social can give employers access to relevant communities of prospects and advance the brand. Nucleus Research found general hiring software can provide over 1,000% ROI by reducing churn and improving screening. Social talent acquisition should perform at least as well. Learning & Development:Employees, learning from the company or from peers, can be kept on top of the latest needed skillsets and engage in self-paced training so as to advance within the company. Performance Management:Just as gamers are egged on by levels and achievements, talent can reach for workplace kudos, be they shout-outs from peers & managers or formally established milestones. Plus employee reviews become consistent and fair as managers have access to the cumulative feedback social offers. Workflow and Collaboration:With workforces dispersing in terms of physical location, social provides a platform that helps eliminate drawbacks that would have brought just 10 years ago. Finding and connecting with just the right colleague to get the most relevant info at any given time has never been more possible…or expected. While yes, marketing has taken the social lead inside the enterprise, HCM (with the word “human” right there in its name) is the obvious locale for the next big integration of social in business. The technology is there. At Oracle, Fusion HCM apps are deeply embedded with Social HCM…just one example of systems taking social across the enterprise. Christina’s company is communicating with her in ways she’s used to. Sam’s company may as well be trying to talk to him using signal flags. @mikestilesPhoto via stock.xchng

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• Mobile Deals: the Consumer Wants You in Their Pocket

  - by Mike Stiles

  Mobile deals offer something we talk about a lot in social marketing, relevant content. If a consumer is already predisposed to liking your product and gets a timely deal for it that’s easy and convenient to use, not only do you score on the marketing side, it clearly generates some of that precious ROI that’s being demanded of social. First, a quick gut-check on the public’s adoption of mobile. Nielsen figures have 55.5% of US mobile owners using smartphones. If young people are indeed the future, you can count on the move to mobile exploding exponentially. Teens are the fastest growing segment of smartphone users, and 58% of them have one. But the largest demographic of smartphone users is 25-34 at 74%. That tells you a focus on mobile will yield great results now, and even better results straight ahead. So we can tell both from statistics and from all the faces around you that are buried in their smartphones this is where consumers are. But are they looking at you? Do you have a valid reason why they should? Everybody likes a good deal. BIA/Kelsey says US consumers will spend $3.6 billion this year for daily deals (the Groupons and LivingSocials of the world), up 87% from 2011. The report goes on to say over 26% of small businesses are either "very likely" or "extremely likely" to offer up a deal in the next 6 months. Retail Gazette reports 58% of consumers shop with coupons, a 40% increase in 4 years. When you consider that a deal can be the impetus for a real-world transaction, a first-time visit to a store, an online purchase, entry into a loyalty program, a social referral, a new fan or follower, etc., that 26% figure shows us there’s a lot of opportunity being left on the table by brands. The existing and emerging technologies behind mobile devices make the benefits of offering deals listed above possible. Take how mobile payment systems are being tied into deal delivery and loyalty programs. If it’s really easy to use a coupon or deal, it’ll get used. If it’s complicated, it’ll be passed over as “not worth it.” When you can pay with your mobile via technologies that connects store and user, you get the deal, you get the loyalty credit, you pay, and your receipt is uploaded, all in one easy swipe. Nothing to keep track of, nothing to lose or forget about. And the store “knows” you, so future offers will be based on your tastes. Consider the endgame. A customer who’s a fan of your belt buckle store’s Facebook Page is in one of your physical retail locations. They pull up your app, because they’ve gotten used to a loyalty deal being offered when they go to your store. Voila. A 10% discount active for the next 30 minutes. Maybe the app also surfaces social references to your brand made by friends so they can check out a buckle someone’s raving about. If they aren’t a fan of your Page or don’t have your app, perhaps they’ve opted into location-based deal services so you can still get them that 10% deal while they’re in the store. Or maybe they’ve walked in with a pre-purchased Groupon or Living Social voucher. They pay with one swipe, and you’ve learned about their buying preferences, credited their loyalty account and can encourage them to share a pic of their new buckle on social. Happy customer. Happy belt buckle company. All because the brand was willing to use the tech that’s available to meet consumers where they are, incentivize them, and show them how much they’re valued through rewards.

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• My shiny new gadget

  - by TechTwaddle

  About 3 months ago when I had tweeted (or twit?) that the HD7 could be my next phone I wasn’t a 100 percent sure, and when the HTC Mozart came out it was switch at first sight. I wanted to buy the Mozart mainly for three reasons; its unibody construction, smaller screen and the SLCD display. But now, holding a HD7 in my hand, I reminisce and think about how fate had its own plan. Too dramatic for a piece of gadget? Well, sort of, but seriously, this has been most exciting. So in short, I bought myself a HTC HD7 and am really loving it so far. Here are some pics (taken from my HD2 which now lies in a corner, crying),     Most of my day was spent setting up the device. Email accounts, Facebook, Marketplace etc. Since marketplace isn’t officially launched in India yet, my primary live id did not work. Whenever I tried launching marketplace it would say ‘marketplace is not currently supported in your country’. Searching the forums I found an easy work around. Just create a dummy live id with the country set to UK or US and log in to the device using this id. I was worried if the contacts and feeds from my primary live account would not be updated but that was not a problem. Adding another live account into the device does import your contacts, calendar and feeds from it. And that’s it, marketplace now works perfectly. I installed a few trial and free applications; haven’t checked if I can purchase apps though, will check that later and update this post. There is one issue I am still facing with the device, I can’t access the internet over GPRS. Windows Phone 7 only gives you the option to add an ‘APN’ and nothing else. Checking the connection settings on my HD2, I found out that there is also a proxy server I need to add to access GPRS, but so far I haven’t found a way to do that on WP7. Ideally HTC should have taken care of this, detect the operator and apply that operators settings on the device, but looks like that’s not happening. I also tried the ‘Connection Settings’ application that HTC bundled with the device, but it did nothing magical. If you’re reading this and know how to fix this problem please leave a comment. The next thing I did is install apps, a lot of apps. Read Engadget’s guide to essential apps for WP7. The apps and games I installed so far include Beezz (twitter app with push notifications), twitter (the official twitter app), Facebook, Youtube, NFS Undercover, Rocket Riot, Krashlander, Unite and the list goes on. All the apps run super smooth. The display looks fine indoors but I know it’s going to suck in bright sunlight. Anyhow, I am really impressed with what I’ve seen so far. I leave you with a few more photos. Have a great year ahead. Ciao!

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• Stepping outside Visual Studio IDE [Part 2 of 2] with Mono 2.6.4

  - by mbcrump

  Continuing part 2 of my Stepping outside the Visual Studio IDE, is the open-source Mono Project. Mono is a software platform designed to allow developers to easily create cross platform applications. Sponsored by Novell (http://www.novell.com/), Mono is an open source implementation of Microsoft's .NET Framework based on the ECMA standards for C# and the Common Language Runtime. A growing family of solutions and an active and enthusiastic contributing community is helping position Mono to become the leading choice for development of Linux applications. So, to clarify. You can use Mono to develop .NET applications that will run on Linux, Windows or Mac. It’s basically a IDE that has roots in Linux. Let’s first look at the compatibility: Compatibility If you already have an application written in .Net, you can scan your application with the Mono Migration Analyzer (MoMA) to determine if your application uses anything not supported by Mono. The current release version of Mono is 2.6. (Released December 2009) The easiest way to describe what Mono currently supports is: Everything in .NET 3.5 except WPF and WF, limited WCF. Here is a slightly more detailed view, by .NET framework version: Implemented C# 3.0 System.Core LINQ ASP.Net 3.5 ASP.Net MVC C# 2.0 (generics) Core Libraries 2.0: mscorlib, System, System.Xml ASP.Net 2.0 - except WebParts ADO.Net 2.0 Winforms/System.Drawing 2.0 - does not support right-to-left C# 1.0 Core Libraries 1.1: mscorlib, System, System.Xml ASP.Net 1.1 ADO.Net 1.1 Winforms/System.Drawing 1.1 Partially Implemented LINQ to SQL - Mostly done, but a few features missing WCF - silverlight 2.0 subset completed Not Implemented WPF - no plans to implement WF - Will implement WF 4 instead on future versions of Mono. System.Management - does not map to Linux System.EnterpriseServices - deprecated Links to documentation. The Official Mono FAQ’s Links to binaries. Mono IDE Latest Version is 2.6.4 That's it, nothing more is required except to compile and run .net code in Linux. Installation After landing on the mono project home page, you can select which platform you want to download. I typically pick the Virtual PC image since I spend all of my day using Windows 7. Go ahead and pick whatever version is best for you. The Virtual PC image comes with Suse Linux. Once the image is launch, you will see the following: I’m not going to go through each option but its best to start with “Start Here” icon. It will provide you with information on new projects or existing VS projects. After you get Mono installed, it's probably a good idea to run a quick Hello World program to make sure everything is setup properly. This allows you to know that your Mono is working before you try writing or running a more complex application. To write a "Hello World" program follow these steps: Start Mono Development Environment. Create a new Project: File->New->Solution Select "Console Project" in the category list. Enter a project name into the Project name field, for example, "HW Project". Click "Forward" Click “Packaging” then OK. You should have a screen very simular to a VS Console App. Click the "Run" button in the toolbar (Ctrl-F5). Look in the Application Output and you should have the “Hello World!” Your screen should look like the screen below. That should do it for a simple console app in mono. To test out an ASP.NET application, simply copy your code to a new directory in /srv/www/htdocs, then visit the following URL: http://localhost/directoryname/page.aspx where directoryname is the directory where you deployed your application and page.aspx is the initial page for your software. Databases You can continue to use SQL server database or use MySQL, Postgress, Sybase, Oracle, IBM’s DB2 or SQLite db. Conclusion I hope this brief look at the Mono IDE helps someone get acquainted with development outside of VS. As always, I welcome any suggestions or comments.

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• ODEE Green Field (Windows) Part 3 - SOA Suite

  - by AndyL-Oracle

   So you're still here, are you? I'm sure you're probably overjoyed at the prospect of continuing with our green field installation of ODEE. In my previous post, I covered the installation of WebLogic - you probably noticed, like I did, that it's a pretty quick install. I'm pretty certain this had everything to do with how quickly the next post made it to the internet! So let's dig in. Make sure you've followed the steps from the initial post to obtain the necessary software and prerequisites! Unpack the RCU (Repository Creation Utility). This ZIP file contains a directory (rcuHome) that should be extracted into your ORACLE_HOME. Run the RCU – execute rcuHome/bin/rcu.bat. Click Next. Select Create and click Next. Enter the database connection details and click Next – any failure to connection will show in the Messages box. Click Ok Expand and select the SOA Infrastructure item. This will automatically select additional required components. You can change the prefix used, but DEV is recommended. If you are creating a sandbox that includes additional components like WebCenter Content and UMS, you may select those schemas as well but they are not required for a basic ODEE installation. Click Next. Click OK. Specify the password for the schema(s). Then click Next. Click Next. Click OK. Click OK. Click Create. Click Close. Unpack the SOA Suite installation files into a single directory e.g. SOA. Run the installer – navigate and execute SOA/Disk1/setup.exe. If you receive a JDK error, switch to a command line to start the installer. To start the installer via command line, do Start?Run?cmd and cd into the SOA\Disk1 directory. Run setup.exe –jreLoc < pathtoJRE >. Ensure you do not use a path with spaces – use the ~1 notation as necessary (your directory must not exceed 8 characters so “Program Files” becomes “Progra~1” and “Program Files (x86)” becomes “Progra~2” in this notation). Click Next. Select Skip and click Next. Resolve any issues shown and click Next. Verify your oracle home locations. Defaults are recommended. Click Next. Select your application server. If you’ve already installed WebLogic, this should be automatically selected for you. Click Next. Click Install. Allow the installation to progress… Click Next. Click Finish. You can save the installation details if you want. That should keep you satisfied for the moment. Get ready, because the next posts are going to be meaty! 

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• Tetris Movement - Implementation

  - by James Brauman

  Hi gamedev, I'm developing a Tetris clone and working on the input at the moment. When I was prototyping, movement was triggered by releasing a directional key. However, in most Tetris games I've played the movement is a bit more complex. When a directional key is pressed, the shape moves one space in that direction. After a short interval, if the key is still held down, the shape starts moving in the direction continuously until the key is released. In the case of the down key being pressed, there is no pause between the initial movement and the subsequent continuous movement. I've come up with a solution, and it works well, but it's totally over-engineered. Hey, at least I can recognize when things are getting silly, right? :) public class TetrisMover { List registeredKeys; Dictionary continuousPressedTime; Dictionary totalPressedTime; Dictionary initialIntervals; Dictionary continousIntervals; Dictionary keyActions; Dictionary initialActionDone; KeyboardState currentKeyboardState; public TetrisMover() { *snip* } public void Update(GameTime gameTime) { currentKeyboardState = Keyboard.GetState(); foreach (Keys currentKey in registeredKeys) { if (currentKeyboardState.IsKeyUp(currentKey)) { continuousPressedTime[currentKey] = TimeSpan.Zero; totalPressedTime[currentKey] = TimeSpan.Zero; initialActionDone[currentKey] = false; } else { if (initialActionDone[currentKey] == false) { keyActions[currentKey](); initialActionDone[currentKey] = true; } totalPressedTime[currentKey] += gameTime.ElapsedGameTime; if (totalPressedTime[currentKey] = initialIntervals[currentKey]) { continuousPressedTime[currentKey] += gameTime.ElapsedGameTime; if (continuousPressedTime[currentKey] = continousIntervals[currentKey]) { keyActions[currentKey](); continuousPressedTime[currentKey] = TimeSpan.Zero; } } } } } public void RegisterKey(Keys key, TimeSpan initialInterval, TimeSpan continuousInterval, Action keyAction) { if (registeredKeys.Contains(key)) throw new InvalidOperationException( string.Format("The key %s is already registered.", key)); registeredKeys.Add(key); continuousPressedTime.Add(key, TimeSpan.Zero); totalPressedTime.Add(key, TimeSpan.Zero); initialIntervals.Add(key, initialInterval); continousIntervals.Add(key, continuousInterval); keyActions.Add(key, keyAction); initialActionDone.Add(key, false); } public void UnregisterKey(Keys key) { *snip* } } I'm updating it every frame, and this is how I'm registering keys for movement: tetrisMover.RegisterKey( Keys.Left, keyHoldStartSpecialInterval, keyHoldMovementInterval, () = { Move(Direction.Left); }); tetrisMover.RegisterKey( Keys.Right, keyHoldStartSpecialInterval, keyHoldMovementInterval, () = { Move(Direction.Right); }); tetrisMover.RegisterKey( Keys.Down, TimeSpan.Zero, keyHoldMovementInterval, () = { PerformGravity(); }); Issues that this doesn't address: If both left and right are held down, the shape moves back and forth really quick. If a directional key is held down and the turn finishes and the shape is replaced by a new one, the new one will move quickly in that direction instead of the little pause it is supposed to have. I could fix the issues, but I think it will make the solution even worse. How would you implement this?

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• Essbase BSO Data Fragmentation

  - by Ann Donahue

  Essbase BSO Data Fragmentation Data fragmentation naturally occurs in Essbase Block Storage (BSO) databases where there are a lot of end user data updates, incremental data loads, many lock and send, and/or many calculations executed.  If an Essbase database starts to experience performance slow-downs, this is an indication that there may be too much fragmentation.  See Chapter 54 Improving Essbase Performance in the Essbase DBA Guide for more details on measuring and eliminating fragmentation: http://docs.oracle.com/cd/E17236_01/epm.1112/esb_dbag/daprcset.html Fragmentation is likely to occur in the following situations: Read/write databases that users are constantly updating data Databases that execute calculations around the clock Databases that frequently update and recalculate dense members Data loads that are poorly designed Databases that contain a significant number of Dynamic Calc and Store members Databases that use an isolation level of uncommitted access with commit block set to zero There are two types of data block fragmentation Free space tracking, which is measured using the Average Fragmentation Quotient statistic. Block order on disk, which is measured using the Average Cluster Ratio statistic. Average Fragmentation Quotient The Average Fragmentation Quotient ratio measures free space in a given database.  As you update and calculate data, empty spaces occur when a block can no longer fit in its original space and will either append at the end of the file or fit in another empty space that is large enough.  These empty spaces take up space in the .PAG files.  The higher the number the more empty spaces you have, therefore, the bigger the .PAG file and the longer it takes to traverse through the .PAG file to get to a particular record.  An Average Fragmentation Quotient value of 3.174765 means the database is 3% fragmented with free space. Average Cluster Ratio Average Cluster Ratio describes the order the blocks actually exist in the database. An Average Cluster Ratio number of 1 means all the blocks are ordered in the correct sequence in the order of the Outline.  As you load data and calculate data blocks, the sequence can start to be out of order.  This is because when you write to a block it may not be able to place back in the exact same spot in the database that it existed before.  The lower this number the more out of order it becomes and the more it affects performance.  An Average Cluster Ratio value of 1 means no fragmentation.  Any value lower than 1 i.e. 0.01032828 means the data blocks are getting further out of order from the outline order. Eliminating Data Block Fragmentation Both types of data block fragmentation can be removed by doing a dense restructure or export/clear/import of the data.  There are two types of dense restructure: 1. Implicit Restructures Implicit dense restructure happens when outline changes are done using EAS Outline Editor or Dimension Build. Essbase restructures create new .PAG files restructuring the data blocks in the .PAG files. When Essbase restructures the data blocks, it regenerates the index automatically so that index entries point to the new data blocks. Empty blocks are NOT removed with implicit restructures. 2. Explicit Restructures Explicit dense restructure happens when a manual initiation of the database restructure is executed. An explicit dense restructure is a full restructure which comprises of a dense restructure as outlined above plus the removal of empty blocks Empty Blocks vs. Fragmentation The existence of empty blocks is not considered fragmentation.  Empty blocks can be created through calc scripts or formulas.  An empty block will add to an existing database block count and will be included in the block counts of the database properties.  There are no statistics for empty blocks.  The only way to determine if empty blocks exist in an Essbase database is to record your current block count, export the entire database, clear the database then import the exported data.  If the block count decreased, the difference is the number of empty blocks that had existed in the database.

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• Find Knowledge Quickly

  - by Get Proactive Customer Adoption Team

  Untitled Document Get to relevant knowledge on the Oracle products you use in a few quick steps! Customers tell us that the volume of search results returned can make it difficult to find the information they need, especially when similar Oracle products exist. These simple tips show you how to filter, browse, search, and refine your results to get relevant answers faster. Filter first: PowerView is your best friend Powerview is an often ignored feature of My Oracle Support that enables you to control the information displayed on the Dashboard, the Knowledge tab and regions, and the Service Request tab based on one or more parameters. You can define a PowerView to limit information based on product, product line, support ID, platform, hostname, system name and others. Using PowerView allows you to restrict: Your search results to the filters you have set The product list when selecting your products in Search & Browse and when creating service requests   The PowerView menu is at the top of My Oracle Support, near the title You turn PowerView on by clicking PowerView is Off, which is a button. When PowerView is On, and filters are active, clicking the button again will toggle Powerview off. Click the arrow to the right to create new filters, edit filters, remove a filter, or choose from the list of previously created filters. You can create a PowerView in 3 simple steps! Turn PowerView on and select New from the PowerView menu. Select your filter from the Select Filter Type dropdown list and make selections from the other two menus. Hint: While there are many filter options, selecting your product line or your list of products will provide you with an effective filter. Click the plus sign (+) to add more filters. Click the minus sign (-) to remove a filter. Click Create to save and activated the filter(s) You’ll notice that PowerView is On displays along with the active filters. For more information about the PowerView capabilities, click the Learn more about PowerView… menu item or view a short video. Browse & Refine: Access the Best Match Fast For Your Product and Task In the Knowledge Browse region of the Knowledge or Dashboard tabs, pick your product, pick your task, select a version, if applicable. A best match document – a collection of knowledge articles and resources specific to your selections - may display, offering you a one-stop shop. The best match document, called an “information center,” is an aggregate of dynamically updated links to information pertinent to the product, task, and version (if applicable) you chose. These documents are refreshed every 24 hours to ensure that you have the most current information at your fingertips. Note: Not all products have “information centers.” If no information center appears as a best match, click Search to see a list of search results. From the information center, you can access topics from a product overview to security information, as shown in the left menu. Just want to search? That’s easy too! Again, pick your product, pick your task, select a version, if applicable, enter a keyword term, and click Search. Hint: In this example, you’ll notice that PowerView is on and set to PeopleSoft Enterprise. When PowerView is on and you select a product from the Knowledge Base product list, the listed products are limited to the active PowerView filter. (Products you’ve previously picked are also listed at the top of the dropdown list.) Your search results are displayed based on the parameters you entered. It’s that simple! Related Information: My Oracle Support - User Resource Center [ID 873313.1] My Oracle Support Community For more tips on using My Oracle Support, check out these short video training modules. My Oracle Support Speed Video Training [ID 603505.1]

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• SharePoint: Numeric/Integer Site Column (Field) Types

  - by CharlesLee

  What field type should you use when creating number based site columns as part of a SharePoint feature? Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 provides you with an extensible and flexible method of developing and deploying Site Columns and Content Types (both of which are required for most SharePoint projects requiring list or library based data storage) via the feature framework (more on this in my next full article.) However there is an interesting behaviour when working with a column or field which is required to hold a number, which I thought I would blog about today. When creating Site Columns in the browser you get a nice rich UI in order to choose the properties of this field: However when you are recreating this as a feature defined in CAML (Collaborative Application Mark-up Language), which is a type of XML (more on this in my article) then you do not get such a rich experience.  You would need to add something like this to the element manifest defined in your feature: <Field SourceID="http://schemas.microsoft.com/sharepoint/3.0"        ID="{C272E927-3748-48db-8FC0-6C7B72A6D220}"        Group="My Site Columns"        Name="MyNumber"        DisplayName="My Number"        Type="Numeric"        Commas="FALSE"        Decimals="0"        Required="FALSE"        ReadOnly="FALSE"        Sealed="FALSE"        Hidden="FALSE" /> OK, its not as nice as the browser UI but I can deal with this. Hang on. Commas="FALSE" and yet for my number 1234 I get 1,234.  That is not what I wanted or expected.  What gives? The answer lies in the difference between a type of "Numeric" which is an implementation of the SPFieldNumber class and "Integer" which does not correspond to a given SPField class but rather represents a positive or negative integer.  The numeric type does not respect the settings of Commas or NegativeFormat (which defines how to display negative numbers.)  So we can set the Type to Integer and we are good to go.  Yes? Sadly no! You will notice at this point that if you deploy your site column into SharePoint something has gone wrong.  Your site column is not listed in the Site Column Gallery.  The deployment must have failed then?  But no, a quick look at the site columns via the API reveals that the column is there.  What new evil is this?  Unfortunately the base type for integer fields has this lovely attribute set on it: UserCreatable = FALSE So WSS 3.0 accordingly hides your field in the gallery as you cannot create fields of this type. However! You can use them in content types just like any other field (except not in the browser UI), and if you add them to the content type as part of your feature then they will show up in the UI as a field on that content type.  Most of the time you are not going to be too concerned that your site columns are not listed in the gallery as you will know that they are there and that they are still useable. So not as bad as you thought after all.  Just a little quirky.  But that is SharePoint for you.

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• OpenWorld: Our (Road) Maps are Looking Good!

  - by Tony Berk

  Wow, only one (or two) days down at Oracle OpenWorld! Are you on overload yet? I'm still trying to figure out how to be in 3 sessions at the same time... I guess everyone needs to prioritize! There was a lot to see in Monday's sessions, especially some great forward-looking roadmap sessions. In case you aren't here or you decided to go to other sessions, this is my quick summary of what I could capture from a couple of the roadmaps: In the Fusion CRM Strategy and Roadmap session, Anthony Lye provided an overview of the Fusion CRM strategy including the key design principles of 3 E's: Easy, Effective and Efficient. After an overview of how Oracle has deployed Fusion CRM internally to 25,000 users worldwide, Anthony discussed the features coming in the next release, the releases in the next 12 months and beyond. I can't detail too much since you haven't read Oracle's Safe Harbor statement, but check out Fusion Tap and look for new features and added functionality for sales prediction, marketing, social and integration with a number of the key Customer Experience products.  In the Oracle RightNow CX Cloud Service Vision and Roadmap session, Chris Hamilton presented the focus areas for the RightNow product. As a result of the large increase in development resources after the acquisition, the RightNow CX team is planning a lot of enhancements to the functionality, infrastructure and integrations. As a key piece of the Oracle Customer Experience (CX) strategy, RightNow will be integrated with Oracle Social Network, Oracle Commerce (ATG and Endeca), Oracle Knowledge, Oracle Policy Automation and, of course, further integration with Fusion Sales and Marketing. Look forward to seeing more on the Virtual Assistant, Smart Interaction Hub and Mobility. In addition to the roadmaps, I was looking forward to hearing from Oracle CRM customers. So, I sat in on two great Siebel customer panels: The Maximizing User Adoption Rates for Siebel Sales and Siebel Partner Relationship Management panel consisted of speakers from CSL Behring, McKesson and Intuit. It was great to get an overview of implementations for both B2B and B2C companies. It was great hearing that all of these companies have more than 1,000 sales users (Intuit has 4,000) and how the 360 degree view of the customer in Siebel is helping these customers improve their customers' experience (CX). They are all great examples of centralized implementations which have standardized processes across the globe and across business units.  Waste Management, Farmers Insurance and the US Citizenship & Immigration Services presented in the Driving Great Customer Experiences with Siebel Service Applications session. Talk about serving large customer bases! Is it possible that Farmers with only 10 million households is the smallest of these 3? All of them provided great examples of how they are improving the customer experience (CX) including 60-70% improvements in efficiency or reducing the number of applications the customer service reps (CSRs) need to use from 10 to 1 (Waste Management) and context aware call transfers to avoid the caller explaining their issue 3 times (USCIS). So that's my wrap up of only 4 sessions from Monday. In between sessions, I stopped by the Oracle DEMOgrounds and CRM Pavilion to visit with a group of great partners and see the products and partner integrations in action. Don't miss a recap of Mark Hurd's Keynote. I can't believe there were another 40+ sessions covering CRM, Fusion, Cloud, etc. that I missed today! Anyone else see any great sessions?

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• RemoveHandler Issues with Custom Events

  - by Jeff Certain

  This is a case of things being more complicated that I thought they should be. Since it took a while to figure this one out, I thought it was worth explaining and putting all of the pieces to the answer in one spot. Let me set the stage. Architecturally, I have the notion of generic producers and consumers. These put items onto, and remove items from, a queue. This provides a generic, thread-safe mechanism to load balance the creation and processing of work items in our application. Part of the IProducer(Of T) interface is: 1: Public Interface IProducer(Of T) 2: Event ItemProduced(ByVal sender As IProducer(Of T), ByVal item As T) 3: Event ProductionComplete(ByVal sender As IProducer(Of T)) 4: End Interface Nothing sinister there, is there? In order to simplify our developers’ lives, I wrapped the queue with some functionality to manage the produces and consumers. Since the developer can specify the number of producers and consumers that are spun up, the queue code manages adding event handlers as the producers and consumers are instantiated. Now, we’ve been having some memory leaks and, in order to eliminate the possibility that this was caused by weak references to event handles, I wanted to remove them. This is where it got dicey. My first attempt looked like this: 1: For Each producer As P In Producers 2: RemoveHandler producer.ItemProduced, AddressOf ItemProducedHandler 3: RemoveHandler producer.ProductionComplete, AddressOf ProductionCompleteHandler 4: producer.Dispose() 5: Next What you can’t see in my posted code are the warnings this caused. The 'AddressOf' expression has no effect in this context because the method argument to 'AddressOf' requires a relaxed conversion to the delegate type of the event. Assign the 'AddressOf' expression to a variable, and use the variable to add or remove the method as the handler.  Now, what on earth does that mean? Well, a quick Bing search uncovered a whole bunch of talk about delegates. The first solution I found just changed all parameters in the event handler to Object. Sorry, but no. I used generics precisely because I wanted type safety, not because I wanted to use Object. More searching. Eventually, I found this forum post, where Jeff Shan revealed a missing piece of the puzzle. The other revelation came from Lian_ZA in this post. However, these two only hinted at the solution. Trying some of what they suggested led to finally getting an invalid cast exception that revealed the existence of ItemProducedEventHandler. Hold on a minute! I didn’t create that delegate. There’s nothing even close to that name in my code… except the ItemProduced event in the interface. Could it be? Naaaaah. Hmmm…. Well, as it turns out, there is a delegate created by the compiler for each event. By explicitly creating a delegate that refers to the method in question, implicitly cast to the generated delegate type, I was able to remove the handlers: 1: For Each producer As P In Producers 2: Dim _itemProducedHandler As IProducer(Of T).ItemProducedEventHandler = AddressOf ItemProducedHandler 3: RemoveHandler producer.ItemProduced, _itemProducedHandler 4:  5: Dim _productionCompleteHandler As IProducer(Of T).ProductionCompleteEventHandler = AddressOf ProductionCompleteHandler 6: RemoveHandler producer.ProductionComplete, _productionCompleteHandler 7: producer.Dispose() 8: Next That’s “all” it took to finally be able to remove the event handlers and maintain type-safe code. Hopefully, this will save you the same challenges I had in trying to figure out how to fix this issue!

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• Cream of the Crop

  - by KemButller

  JD Edwards has been working hard to ensure that you shouldn't have to work so hard! Yet there are still JD Edwards customers that may not be up to speed on all the new and or improved tools and utilities we have delivered, all designed to make your life easier. So today, I want to share what I consider to be the cream of the crop….those items that every customer should know about and leverage to make ERP life just a little bit (or A LOT) easier! These are my top picks, the cream of a very good crop! Explore and enjoy, and gain some of your time back to do with as you please. · www.runjde.com It’s where to go when you need to know! The Resource Kits available on www.runjde.com provide comprehensive Resource Kits (guides) by user type. The guides provide brief descriptions of the wide array of resources that are available to JD Edwards’s eco system and links to each of those resources. · My Oracle Support (MOS) Information Centers This link will take you to an index that is designed to provide you with simple and quick navigation to the available EnterpriseOne Information Centers. This index provides links to: · EnterpriseOne Application specific Information Centers · EnterpriseOne Tools and Technology Information Centers · EnterpriseOne Performance Information Center · EnterpriseOne 9.1 and 9.0 Information Centers Information Centers give Oracle the ability to aggregate content for a given focus area and present this content in categories for easy browsing by our customers. Information Centers offer a variety of focused dynamic content organized around one or more of the following tasks. · Overview · Use · Troubleshooting · Patching and Maintenance · Install and Configure · Upgrade · Optimize Performance · Security · Certify JD Edwards Newsletters Be in the know by reading the Global Customer Support Product Newsletters. They are PACKED with news and information covering a wide range of topics and news. It is a must read if you want to know what’s happening in the JD Edwards universe! Read the latest EntepriseOne newsletter Read the latest World newsletter Learn How to receive notification when a new newsletter edition is published Oracle Learning Library – (OLL) Oracle Learn Library is the place to go for easy access to JD Edwards Application and Tools training. For a comprehensive view of the training available for a specific product/functional area, explore the Knowledge Paths For Net Change (new feature) training, explore the TOI sessions (TOI stands for Transfer Of Information). Tip: Be sure to experiment with the search filters! · www.upgradejde.com The site designed to help customers and partners with the process of upgrading JD Edwards. The site is a wealth of information, tools and resources designed to assist in the evaluation, planning and execution steps required when upgrading. Of note is the wildly successful upgrade strategy known as “The Art of the Possible” wherein JD Edwards and many of our partners hold free workshops to teach customers how to conduct upgrades in 100 days or less. Equally important is the fact that on www.upgradejde.com, customers can gain visibility into planned enhancements using the Product and Technology Feature Catalogs. The catalogs are great for creating customer specific reports about the net change between older releases and current or planned releases. Examples of other key resources on www.upgradejde.com are the product data base changes between releases, extensibility guides, (formerly known as programmer’s guides), whitepapers, ROI calculators and much more!

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• Take Snapshots of Your Favorite Movie Scenes in VLC

  - by DigitalGeekery

  Have you ever wanted to grab a screenshot of your favorite TV or movie scene? Today we’ll show you how to do so with VLC Media Player. If you don’t have it already, download and install the latest version of VLC (link below). Start playing your movie, and to grab a snapshot, select Video from the menu and click Snapshot.   When you take a snapshot, by default a preview is displayed at the top left and the folder where the file is saved is briefly displayed on the screen. If you enable the Advanced Controls, you can take a snapshot with a click of a button, and advance the video frame by frame to get a more accurate shot. To enable the Advanced Controls, select View and Advanced Controls.   You’ll see the Advanced Controls buttons appear below the slider. Now just click on the Snapshot button to grab an image.   You can more easily control the frame you wish to grab by pressing the Frame by Frame button. You can pause the movie when it is near the perfect spot for your snapshot, and then press the Frame by Frame button to advance a single frame at a time. By default, the snapshots are saved as PNG files in your My Pictures folder in Windows. You can change those setting in the Preferences. First, you’ll need to select All under Show settings at the bottom. Then click on Video on the left. Scroll down a bit and you’ll see the Snapshot section. Here you can change the format from PNG to JPG, change the directory to which the snapshots are stored, turn on and off the preview, and change the filename prefix. Click Save when finished.   Now you have nice screenshots of your favorite movie to display as you wish…such as a Desktop Background!   VLC is an excellent media player that runs on Windows, Mac, and Linux. In addition to playing almost any media file, it also makes grabbing screenshots of your videos a breeze. Want to know more about VLC? Check out some of our previous articles like how to rip DVDs and how to set a video as your desktop wallpaper. Download the Latest version of VLC Similar Articles Productive Geek Tips Desktop Fun: Rural Scenes WallpapersAutomatically Mount and View ISO files in Windows 7 Media CenterHow to Make/Edit a movie with Windows Movie Maker in Windows VistaAdd Images and Metadata to Windows 7 Media Center Movie LibraryQuickly Find Movies to Watch at Hello Movies TouchFreeze Alternative in AutoHotkey The Icy Undertow Desktop Windows Home Server – Backup to LAN The Clear & Clean Desktop Use This Bookmarklet to Easily Get Albums Use AutoHotkey to Assign a Hotkey to a Specific Window Latest Software Reviews Tinyhacker Random Tips Xobni Plus for Outlook All My Movies 5.9 CloudBerry Online Backup 1.5 for Windows Home Server Snagit 10 tinysong gives a shortened URL for you to post on Twitter (or anywhere) 10 Superb Firefox Wallpapers OpenDNS Guide Google TV The iPod Revolution Ultimate Boot CD can help when disaster strikes

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