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• Plymouth and GRUB do not show at all

  - by WarriorIng64

  I am using Ubuntu 11.04 64-bit as my only OS on my desktop computer, which used to only run Ubuntu 10.04 LTS until I had the time to upgrade it with a fresh install. It uses integrated NVIDIA graphics (listed as a GeForce 6150SE nForce 430 by the NVIDIA X Server Settings utility) with the current proprietary driver as provided by the Additional Drivers utility, and has a VGA connection to a 1680x1050 Acer monitor. I used to get the (ugly-looking version of) Plymouth graphical boot screen while under 10.04. It didn't look that great, but I was fine with it. Now, it doesn't show on 11.04 at all during boot (I just get an error message in a moving gray box from the monitor saying "Input Not Supported"), and only rarely it will show on shutdown, all garbled up. I could not get GRUB to show during boot while holding down Shift, either (same error message), but pressing Enter while it should be up starts the system normally. A picture of the error message I was getting: Once fully booted, the system still shows the login screen and desktop just fine. Any information on how to troubleshoot this would be appreciated. If there's any hardware-specific stuff I forgot to include here, let me know the relevant commands to run in a comment below. Things that I've tried: Running plymouth in a framebuffer: no effect Booting with nomodeset as my grub boot: option no effect Booting with nomodeset and plymouth in a framebuffer: no effect other than Plymouth showing during shutdown only Following the Softpedia instructions for fixing Plymouth's resolution: Problem mostly solved, except logo does not show in Plymouth during boot, and both grub and Plymouth are slightly off-center #4 above, but with nomodeset removed as a grub boot option: same effect as #4 #5 above, but with vt.handoff=7 added as a grub boot option: same effect as #4 I have added the current contents of /etc/default/grub as requested in the comments: # If you change this file, run 'update-grub' afterwards to update # /boot/grub/grub.cfg. # For full documentation of the options in this file, see: # info -f grub -n 'Simple configuration' GRUB_DEFAULT=0 GRUB_HIDDEN_TIMEOUT=0 GRUB_HIDDEN_TIMEOUT_QUIET=true GRUB_TIMEOUT=10 GRUB_DISTRIBUTOR=`lsb_release -i -s 2> /dev/null || echo Debian` GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT="quiet splash video=uvesafb:mode_option=1280x1024-24,mtrr=3,scroll=ywrap" GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX="" # Uncomment to enable BadRAM filtering, modify to suit your needs # This works with Linux (no patch required) and with any kernel that obtains # the memory map information from GRUB (GNU Mach, kernel of FreeBSD ...) #GRUB_BADRAM="0x01234567,0xfefefefe,0x89abcdef,0xefefefef" # Uncomment to disable graphical terminal (grub-pc only) #GRUB_TERMINAL=console # The resolution used on graphical terminal # note that you can use only modes which your graphic card supports via VBE # you can see them in real GRUB with the command `vbeinfo' GRUB_GFXMODE=1280x1024 # Uncomment if you don't want GRUB to pass "root=UUID=xxx" parameter to Linux #GRUB_DISABLE_LINUX_UUID=true # Uncomment to disable generation of recovery mode menu entries #GRUB_DISABLE_RECOVERY="true" # Uncomment to get a beep at grub start #GRUB_INIT_TUNE="480 440 1" CURRENT STATUS: I forgot to uncomment one line as per "things that I've tried" #4, so I took care of that. I can now see GRUB during startup when I hold Shift and a normal-looking Plymouth during shutdown...but Plymouth during boot is now just a solid purple screen. In each case, it's displayed a little off-center to the left, with a thin black bar running down the right side of the monitor. The error pictured above no longer shows. I'd say this problem is about 2/3 solved now. UPDATE: After Natty started freezing up on me, I decided to dual-boot with Oneiric, which unfortunately shows the same problems. Rather than trying all these workarounds though, I decided to do what I should have done from the start and file a pair of bug reports. LAST UPDATE: Bug 850908 has been confirmed as a legitimate nouveaufb bug. I have overwritten my 11.04 partition with 12.04 LTS, and I can confirm at this time that the issue is present there, as well. I will now flag this question to be closed, yet I hope it was helpful for anyone who experienced similar issues; if you are still having the same problem as me, please go there and mark yourself as affected. Thanks!

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• SQLAuthority News – Android Efficiency Tips and Tricks – Personal Technology Tip

  - by pinaldave

  I use my phone for lots of things.  I use it mainly to replace my tablet – I can e-mail, take and edit photos, and do almost everything I can do on a laptop with this phone.  And I am sure that there are many of you out there just like me.  I personally have a Galaxy S3, which uses the Android operating system, and I have decided to feature it as the third installment of my Technology Tips and Tricks series. 1) Shortcut to your favorite contacts on home screen Access your most-called contacts easily from your home screen by holding your finger on any empty spot on the home screen.  A menu will pop up that allows you to choose Shortcuts, and Contact.  You can scroll through your contact list and then just tap on the name of the person you want to be able to dial with a single click. 2) Keep track of your data usage Yes, we all should keep a close eye on our data usage, because it is very easy to go over our limits and then end up with a giant bill at the end of the month.  Never get surprised when you open that mobile phone envelope again.  Go to Settings, then Data Usage, and you can find a quick rundown of your usage, how much data each app uses, and you can even set alarms to let you know when you are nearing the limits.   Better yet, you can set the phone to stop using data when it reaches a certain limit. 3) Bring back Good Grammar We often hear proclamations about the downfall of written language, and how texting abbreviations, misspellings, and lack of punctuation are the root of all evil.  Well, we can show all those doomsdayers that all is not lost by bringing punctuation back to texting.  Usually we leave it off when we text because it takes too long to get to the screen with all the punctuation options.  But now you can hold down the period (or “full stop”) button and a list of all the commonly-used punctuation marks will pop right up. 4) Apps, Apps, Apps and Apps And finally, I cannot end an article about smart phones without including a list of my favorite apps.  Here are a list of my Top 10 Applications on my Android (not counting social media apps). Advanced Task Killer – Keeps my phone snappy by closing un-necessary apps WhatsApp - my favorite alternate to Text SMS Flipboard - my ‘timepass’ moments Skype – keeps me close to friends and family GoogleMaps - I am never lost because of this one thing Amazon Kindle – Books my best friends DropBox - My data always safe Pluralsight Player – Learning never stops for me Samsung Kies Air – Connecting Phone to Computer Chrome – Replacing default browser I have not included any social media applications in the above list, but you can be sure that I am linked to Twitter, Facebook, Google+, LinkedIn, and YouTube. Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.SQLAuthority.com)   Filed under: Best Practices, PostADay, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL Query, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, SQLAuthority News, T SQL, Technology Tagged: Android, Personal Technology

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• Is there a low carbon future for the retail industry?

  - by user801960

  Recently Oracle published a report in conjunction with The Future Laboratory and a global panel of experts to highlight the issue of energy use in modern industry and the serious need to reduce carbon emissions radically by 2050.  Emissions must be cut by 80-95% below the levels in 1990 – but what can the retail industry do to keep up with this? There are three key aspects to the retail industry where carbon emissions can be cut:  manufacturing, transport and IT.  Manufacturing Naturally, manufacturing is going to be a big area where businesses across all industries will be forced to make considerable savings in carbon emissions as well as other forms of pollution.  Many retailers of all sizes will use third party factories and will have little control over specific environmental impacts from the factory, but retailers can reduce environmental impact at the factories by managing orders more efficiently – better planning for stock requirements means economies of scale both in terms of finance and the environment. The John Lewis Partnership has made detailed commitments to reducing manufacturing and packaging waste on both its own-brand products and products it sources from third party suppliers. It aims to divert 95 percent of its operational waste from landfill by 2013, which is a huge logistics challenge.  The John Lewis Partnership’s website provides a large amount of information on its responsibilities towards the environment. Transport Similarly to manufacturing, tightening up on logistical planning for stock distribution will make savings on carbon emissions from haulage.  More accurate supply and demand analysis will mean less stock re-allocation after initial distribution, and better warehouse management will mean more efficient stock distribution.  UK grocery retailer Morrisons has introduced double-decked trailers to its haulage fleet and adjusted distribution logistics accordingly to reduce the number of kilometers travelled by the fleet.  Morrisons measures route planning efficiency in terms of cases moved per kilometre and has, over the last two years, increased the number of cases per kilometre by 12.7%.  See Morrisons Corporate Responsibility report for more information. IT IT infrastructure is often initially overlooked by businesses when considering environmental efficiency.  Datacentres and web servers often need to run 24/7 to handle both consumer orders and internal logistics, and this both requires a lot of energy and puts out a lot of heat.  Many businesses are lowering environmental impact by reducing IT system fragmentation in their offices, while an increasing number of businesses are outsourcing their datacenters to cloud-based services.  Using centralised datacenters reduces the power usage at smaller offices, while using cloud based services means the datacenters can be based in a more environmentally friendly location.  For example, Facebook is opening a massive datacentre in Sweden – close to the Arctic Circle – to reduce the need for artificial cooling methods.  In addition, moving to a cloud-based solution makes IT services more easily scaleable, reducing redundant IT systems that would still use energy.  In store, the UK’s Carbon Trust reports that on average, lighting accounts for 25% of a retailer’s electricity costs, and for grocery retailers, up to 50% of their electricity bill comes from refrigeration units.  On a smaller scale, retailers can invest in greener technologies in store and in their offices.  The report concludes that widely shared objectives of energy security, reduced emissions and continued economic growth are dependent on the development of a smart grid capable of delivering energy efficiency and demand response, as well as integrating renewable and variable sources of energy. The report is available to download from http://emeapressoffice.oracle.com/imagelibrary/detail.aspx?MediaDetailsID=1766I’d be interested to hear your thoughts on the report.   

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• ATG Live Webcast: Advanced E-Business Suite Architectures

  - by BillSawyer

  I am pleased to announce the ATG Live Webcast event for Dec. 8th, 2011: Advanced E-Business Suite Architectures Join Elke Phelps, Senior Principal Product Manager and Sriram Veeraraghavan, Senior Principal Software Engineer as they discuss advanced E-Business Suite architectures that can help you improve performance, scalability, business continuity, utilization, provisioning, and security. This one-hour webcasts provides an overview of advanced architectures with Q&A. This session will cover the latest advanced architectural options, including the use of Oracle database high-availability features and functions such as Real Application Clusters, ASM, Active Data Guard, clouds, virtualization, Oracle VM, high-availability and load-balancing architectures, WebLogic Server, and more. This session will also cover the latest updates to systems management tools like AutoConfig, and may also include sneak previews of upcoming functionality. This event is targeted to architects, system administrators, DBAs, developers, and implementers. The agenda for the Advanced E-Business Suite Architectures webcast includes the following topics: Advanced Oracle E-Business Suite Architectures Optional External Integrations Oracle E-Business Suite 12.2 Improving Performance and Scalability Providing Business Continuity Improving Utilization and Provisioning Improving Security Date:            Thursday, December 8, 2011Time:           8:00 AM - 9:00 AM Pacific Standard TimePresenter:  Elke Phelps, Senior Principal Product Manager                      Sriram Veeraraghavan, Senior Principal Software EngineerWebcast Registration Link (Preregistration is optional but encouraged)To hear the audio feed:    Domestic Participant Dial-In Number:           877-697-8128    International Participant Dial-In Number:      706-634-9568    Additional International Dial-In Numbers Link:    Dial-In Passcode:                                              98514To see the presentation:    The Direct Access Web Conference details are:    Website URL: https://ouweb.webex.com    Meeting Number:  273291684If you miss the webcast, or you have missed any webcast, don't worry -- we'll post links to the recording as soon as it's available from Oracle University.  You can monitor this blog for pointers to the replay. And, you can find our archive of our past webcasts and training at http://blogs.oracle.com/stevenChan/entry/e_business_suite_technology_learningIf you have any questions or comments, feel free to email Bill Sawyer (Senior Manager, Applications Technology Curriculum) at BilldotSawyer-AT-Oracle-DOT-com.

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• A temporary disagreement

  - by Tony Davis

  Last month, Phil Factor caused a furore amongst some MVPs with an article that attempted to offer simple advice to developers regarding the use of table variables, versus local and global temporary tables, in their code. Phil makes clear that the table variables do come with some fairly major limitations.no distribution statistics, no parallel query plans for queries that modify table variables.but goes on to suggest that for reasonably small-scale strategic uses, and with a bit of due care and testing, table variables are a "good thing". Not everyone shares his opinion; in fact, I imagine he was rather aghast to learn that there were those felt his article was akin to pulling the pin out of a grenade and tossing it into the database; table variables should be avoided in almost all cases, according to their advice, in favour of temp tables. In other words, a fairly major feature of SQL Server should be more-or-less 'off limits' to developers. The problem with temp tables is that, because they are scoped either in the procedure or the connection, it is easy to allow them to hang around for too long, eating up precious memory and bulking up the shared tempdb database. Unless they are explicitly dropped, global temporary tables, and local temporary tables created within a connection rather than within a stored procedure, will persist until the connection is closed or, with connection pooling, until the connection is reused. It's also quite common with ASP.NET applications to have connection leaks, as Bill Vaughn explains in his chapter in the "SQL Server Deep Dives" book, meaning that the web page exits without closing the connection object, maybe due to an error condition. This will then hang around in the heap for what might be hours before picked up by the garbage collector. Table variables are much safer in this regard, since they are batch-scoped and so are cleaned up automatically once the batch is complete, which also means that they are intuitive to use for the developer because they conform to scoping rules that are closer to those in procedural code. On the surface then, an ideal way to deal with issues related to tempdb memory hogging. So why did Phil qualify his recommendation to use Table Variables? This is another of those cases where, like scalar UDFs and table-valued multi-statement UDFs, developers can sometimes get into trouble with a relatively benign-looking feature, due to way it's been implemented in SQL Server. Once again the biggest problem is how they are handled internally, by the SQL Server query optimizer, which can make very poor choices for JOIN orders and so on, in the absence of statistics, especially when joining to tables with highly-skewed data. The resulting execution plans can be horrible, as will be the resulting performance. If the JOIN is to a large table, that will hurt. Ideally, Microsoft would simply fix this issue so that developers can't get burned in this way; they've been around since SQL Server 2000, so Microsoft has had a bit of time to get it right. As I commented in regard to UDFs, when developers discover issues like with such standard features, the database becomes an alien planet to them, where death lurks around each corner, and they continue to avoid these "killer" features years after the problems have been eventually resolved. In the meantime, what is the right approach? Is it to say "hammers can kill, don't ever use hammers", or is it to try to explain, as Phil's article and follow-up blog post have tried to do, what the feature was intended for, why care must be applied in its use, and so enable developers to make properly-informed decisions, without requiring them to delve deep into the inner workings of SQL Server? Cheers, Tony.

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• Software Architecture verses Software Design

  Recently, I was asked what the differences between software architecture and software design are. At a very superficial level both architecture and design seem to mean relatively the same thing. However, if we examine both of these terms further we will find that they are in fact very different due to the level of details they encompass. Software Architecture can be defined as the essence of an application because it deals with high level concepts that do not include any details as to how they will be implemented. To me this gives stakeholders a view of a system or application as if someone was viewing the earth from outer space. At this distance only very basic elements of the earth can be detected like land, weather and water. As the viewer comes closer to earth the details in this view start to become more defined. Details about the earth’s surface will start to actually take form as well as mane made structures will be detected. The process of transitioning a view from outer space to inside our earth’s atmosphere is similar to how an architectural concept is transformed to an architectural design. From this vantage point stakeholders can start to see buildings and other structures as if they were looking out of a small plane window. This distance is still high enough to see a large area of the earth’s surface while still being able to see some details about the surface. This viewing point is very similar to the actual design process of an application in that it takes the very high level architectural concept or concepts and applies concrete design details to form a software design that encompasses the actual implementation details in the form of responsibilities and functions. Examples of these details include: interfaces, components, data, and connections. In review, software architecture deals with high level concepts without regard to any implementation details. Software design on the other hand takes high level concepts and applies concrete details so that software can be implemented. As part of the transition between software architecture to the creation of software design an evaluation on the architecture is recommended. There are several benefits to including this step as part of the transition process. It allows for projects to ensure that they are on the correct path as to meeting the stakeholder’s requirement goals, identifies possible cost savings and can be used to find missing or nonspecific requirements that cause ambiguity in a design. In the book “Evaluating Software Architectures: Methods and Case Studies”, they define key benefits to adding an architectural review process to ensure that an architecture is ready to move on to the design phase. Benefits to evaluating software architecture: Gathers all stakeholders to communicate about the project Goals are clearly defined in regards to the creation or validation of specific requirements Goals are prioritized so that when conflicts occur decisions will be made based on goal priority Defines a clear expectation of the architecture so that all stakeholders have a keen understanding of the project Ensures high quality documentation of the architecture Enables discoveries of architectural reuse  Increases the quality of architecture practices. I can remember a few projects that I worked on that could have really used an architectural review prior to being passed on to developers. This project was to create some new advertising space on the company’s website in order to sell space based on the location and some other criteria. I was one of the developer selected to lead this project and I was given a high level design concept and a long list of ever changing requirements due to the fact that sales department had no clear direction as to what exactly the project was going to do or how they were going to bill the clients once they actually agreed to purchase the Ad space. In my personal opinion IT should have pushed back to have the requirements further articulated instead of forcing programmers to code blindly attempting to build such an ambiguous project.  Unfortunately, we had to suffer with this project for about 4 months when it should have only taken 1.5 to complete due to the constantly changing and unclear requirements. References  Clements, P., Kazman, R., & Klein, M. (2002). Evaluating Software Architectures. Westford, Massachusetts: Courier Westford. 

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• XNA Health Bar continually decreasing

  - by Craig

  As per the Health bar tutorial on ... http://www.xnadevelopment.com/tutorials/notsohealthy/NotSoHealthy.shtml I have set up the above, how do I make it decrease by 1 health per second? I want to create a mini survival game, and this is an important factor. Where am i going wrong? I want it to visibly decrease every second. using System; using System.Collections.Generic; using System.Linq; using Microsoft.Xna.Framework; using Microsoft.Xna.Framework.Audio; using Microsoft.Xna.Framework.Content; using Microsoft.Xna.Framework.GamerServices; using Microsoft.Xna.Framework.Graphics; using Microsoft.Xna.Framework.Input; using Microsoft.Xna.Framework.Media; namespace Health { /// <summary> /// This is the main type for your game /// </summary> public class Game1 : Microsoft.Xna.Framework.Game { GraphicsDeviceManager graphics; SpriteBatch spriteBatch; Texture2D healthBar; int currentHealth = 100; float seconds; public Game1() { graphics = new GraphicsDeviceManager(this); Content.RootDirectory = "Content"; } /// <summary> /// Allows the game to perform any initialization it needs to before starting to run. /// This is where it can query for any required services and load any non-graphic /// related content. Calling base.Initialize will enumerate through any components /// and initialize them as well. /// </summary> protected override void Initialize() { // TODO: Add your initialization logic here base.Initialize(); } /// <summary> /// LoadContent will be called once per game and is the place to load /// all of your content. /// </summary> protected override void LoadContent() { // Create a new SpriteBatch, which can be used to draw textures. spriteBatch = new SpriteBatch(GraphicsDevice); healthBar = Content.Load<Texture2D>("HealthBar"); // TODO: use this.Content to load your game content here } /// <summary> /// UnloadContent will be called once per game and is the place to unload /// all content. /// </summary> protected override void UnloadContent() { // TODO: Unload any non ContentManager content here } /// <summary> /// Allows the game to run logic such as updating the world, /// checking for collisions, gathering input, and playing audio. /// </summary> /// <param name="gameTime">Provides a snapshot of timing values.</param> protected override void Update(GameTime gameTime) { // Allows the game to exit if (GamePad.GetState(PlayerIndex.One).Buttons.Back == ButtonState.Pressed) this.Exit(); // TODO: Add your update logic here currentHealth = (int)MathHelper.Clamp(currentHealth, 0, 100); seconds += (float)gameTime.ElapsedGameTime.TotalSeconds; if (seconds >= 1) { currentHealth -= 1; } seconds = 0; base.Update(gameTime); } /// <summary> /// This is called when the game should draw itself. /// </summary> /// <param name="gameTime">Provides a snapshot of timing values.</param> protected override void Draw(GameTime gameTime) { GraphicsDevice.Clear(Color.CornflowerBlue); spriteBatch.Begin(); spriteBatch.Draw(healthBar, new Rectangle(this.Window.ClientBounds.Width / 2 - healthBar.Width / 2, 30, healthBar.Width, 44), new Rectangle(0, 45, healthBar.Width, 44), Color.Gray); spriteBatch.Draw(healthBar, new Rectangle(this.Window.ClientBounds.Width / 2 - healthBar.Width / 2, 30, (int)(healthBar.Width * ((double)currentHealth / 100)), 44), new Rectangle(0, 45, healthBar.Width, 44), Color.Red); spriteBatch.Draw(healthBar, new Rectangle(this.Window.ClientBounds.Width / 2 - healthBar.Width / 2, 30, healthBar.Width, 44), new Rectangle(0, 0, healthBar.Width, 44), Color.White); spriteBatch.End(); base.Draw(gameTime); } } } Cheers!

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• Industry perspectives on managing content

  - by aahluwalia

  Earlier this week I was noodling over a topic for my first blog post. My intention for this blog is to bring a practitioner's perspective on ECM to the community; to share and collaborate on best practices and approaches that address today's business problems. Reviewing my past 14 years of experience with web technologies, I wondered what topic would serve as a good "conversation starter". During this time, I received a call from a friend who was seeking insights on how content management applies to specific industries. She approached me because she vaguely remembered that I had worked in the Health Insurance industry in the recent past. She wanted me to tell her about the specific business needs of this industry. She was in for quite a surprise as she found out that I had spent the better part of a decade managing content within the Health Insurance industry and I discovered a great topic for my first blog post! I offer some insights from Health Insurance and invite my fellow practitioners to share their insights from other industries. What does content management mean to these industries? What can solution providers be aware of when offering solutions to these industries? The United States health care system relies heavily on private health insurance, which is the primary source of coverage for approximately 58% Americans. In the late 19th century, "accident insurance" began to be available, which operated much like modern disability insurance. In the late 20th century, traditional disability insurance evolved into modern health insurance programs. The first thing a solution provider must be aware of about the Health Insurance industry is that it tends to be transaction intensive. They are the ones who manage and administer our health plans and process our claims when we visit our health care providers. It helps to keep in mind that they are in the business of delivering health insurance and not technology. You may find the mindset conservative in comparison to the IT industry, however, the Health Insurance industry has benefited and will continue to benefit from the efficiency that technology brings to traditionally paper-driven processes. We are all aware of the impact that Healthcare reform bill has had a significant impact on the Health Insurance industry. They are under a great deal of pressure to explore ways to reduce their administrative costs and increase operational efficiency. Overall, administrative costs of health insurance include the insurer's cost to administer the health plan, the costs borne by employers, health-care providers, governments and individual consumers. Inefficiencies plague health insurance, owing largely to the absence of standardized processes across the industry. To achieve this, industry leaders have come together to establish standards and invest in initiatives to help their healthcare provider partners transition to the next generation of healthcare technology. The move to online services and paperless explanation of benefits are some manifestations of technological advancements in health insurance. Several companies have adopted Toyota's LEAN methodology or Six Sigma principles to improve quality, reduce waste and excessive costs, thereby increasing the value of their plan offerings. A growing number of health insurance companies have transformed their business systems in the past decade alone and adopted some form of content management to reduce the costs involved in administering health plans. The key strategy has been to convert paper documents and forms into electronic formats, automate the content development process and securely distribute content to various audiences via diverse marketing channels, including web and mobile. Enterprise content management solutions can enable document capture of claim forms, manage digital assets, integrate with Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) and Human Capital Management (HCM) solutions, build Business Process Management (BPM) processes, define retention and disposition instructions to comply with state and federal regulations and allow eBusiness and Marketing departments to develop and deliver web content to multiple websites, mobile devices and portals. Content can be shared securely within and outside the organization using Information Rights Management.  At the end of the day, solution providers who can translate strategic goals into solutions that maximize process automation, increase ease of use and minimize IT overhead are likely to be successful in today's health insurance environment.

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• ATG Live Webcast June 28: Scrambling Sensitive Data in EBS 12 Cloned Environments

  - by BillSawyer

  Securing the Oracle E-Business Suite includes protecting the underlying E-Business data in production and non-production databases.  While steps can be taken to provide a secure configuration to limit EBS access, a better approach to protecting non-production data is simply to scramble (mask) the data in the non-production copy.   The Oracle E-Business Suite Template for Data Masking Pack can be used in situations where confidential or regulated data needs to be shared with other non-production users who need access to some of the original data, but not necessarily every table.  Examples of non-production users include internal application developers or external business partners such as offshore testing companies, suppliers or customers. The Oracle E-Business Suite Template for Data Masking Pack is applied to a non-production environment with the Enterprise Manager Grid Control Data Masking Pack.  When applied, the Oracle E-Business Suite Template for Data Masking Pack will create an irreversibly scrambled version of your production database for development and testing. This ATG Live Webcast is your chance to come learn about the Oracle E-Business Suite Release 12.1.3 Template for Data Masking Pack from the experts. Oracle E-Business Suite Release 12.1.3 Template for Data Masking The agenda for the Oracle E-Business Suite Template for Data Masking Pack webcast includes the following topics: What does data masking do in E-Business Suite environments? De-identify the data Mask sensitive data Maintain data validity How can EBS customers use data masking? References Join Eric Bing, Senior Director and Elke Phelps, Senior Principal Product Manager, as they discusses the Oracle E-Business Suite Template for Data Masking Pack.Date:                  Thursday, June 28, 2012Time:                 8:00AM Pacific Standard TimePresenters:     Eric Bing, Senior Director                           Elke Phelps, Senior Principal Product ManagerWebcast Registration Link (Preregistration is optional but encouraged) To hear the audio feed:    Domestic Participant Dial-In Number:           877-697-8128    International Participant Dial-In Number:      706-634-9568    Additional International Dial-In Numbers Link:    Dial-In Passcode:                                              100865To see the presentation:    The Direct Access Web Conference details are:    Website URL: https://ouweb.webex.com    Meeting Number:  599097152If you miss the webcast, or you have missed any webcast, don't worry -- we'll post links to the recording as soon as it's available from Oracle University.  You can monitor this blog for pointers to the replay. And, you can find our archive of our past webcasts and training here.If you have any questions or comments, feel free to email Bill Sawyer (Senior Manager, Applications Technology Curriculum) at BilldotSawyer-AT-Oracle-DOT-com.

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• JD Edwards Apps in a Box - Update

  - by Hartmut Wiese

  Summary and clarification JD Edwards Apps in a box is a Partner offering to the customer. We as Oracle have a huge interest in getting a successful offering to the market and we help the Partner building their offering. We provide components like JD Edwards EnterpriseOne and the Hardware. The Business Partner adds the installation services and position this as a solution to the market for a single price. As you know JD Edwards EnterpriseOne can run on multiple hardware platforms. Linux/X-86 version As you all know we do have JD Edwards VM Templates available from Oracle for the X-86 architecture. Each Partner should or is already able to install JD Edwards EnterpriseOne using these images from our software delivery cloud. We built a master bill of material for a X3-2 Hardware configuration now. It has been uploaded on the Community Workspace now. This is a SUGGESTION and limited to 50 Users MAX. However I strongly recommend you to do a sizing as usual and verify the configuration for each opportunity individually. T4-1/X3-2 version Oracle is not providing similar images for the T4-1 SPARC / SOLARIS architecture. There is an Optimized Solution Team inside Oracle who has created an Optimized Solution for JD Edwards some time ago. They created a whitepaper which is still available to download. This whitepaper was used as a starting point however we decided to build a new version of it using the latest Software and Hardware available. This has now been finalized and we are happy to provide this to our partners. This image is more a service we provide for each partner which they can reuse and extend based on their individual offerings. It is not an official supported Oracle Product and cannot be used to deploy to customers immediately. You cannot resell “JDE in a box”. You can use these images to save time while building your own Go-to-Market offering. You might want to add functionality like Mobility. It is also not complete as also the Deployment Server needs to be configured individually at the customer site. We will create some documentation about: what this images contains (and what not)? what final installation activities needs to be provided by each VAD/Partner in this process?  I will send an email to the community once we are ready to share it. You find these assets than in the Community Workspace. The Business Model with Oracle Hardware For those who have not done any Hardware business with Oracle yet: Usually a HW reseller orders the hardware through a Value Add Distributors (VAD) and not from Oracle directly. Each Partner needs to have Hardware Resell rights to do so. The VAD is assembling the boxes according to the needs of each customer. It is easily possible for them to prepare the boxes with the images we/you provide. However the final configuration is something a reseller/implementer needs to do at the customer site. This process is not the same in the EMEA region. Sometimes a VAD are taking the order but they do not see the Hardware at all. In those cases a VAD cannot provide any help with the pre-loading of any images and the reseller/implementer needs to do that. In some countries we do not have VADs at all.

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• F1 Pit Pragmatics

  - by mikef

  "I hate computers. No, really, I hate them. I love the communications they facilitate, I love the conveniences they provide to my life. but I actually hate the computers themselves." - Scott Merrill, 'I hate computers: confessions of a Sysadmin' If Scott's goal was to polarize opinion and trigger raging arguments over the 'real reasons why computers suck', then he certainly succeeded. Impassioned vitriol sits side-by-side with rational debate. Yet Scott's fundamental point is absolutely on the money - Computers are a means to an end. The IT industry is finally starting to put weight behind the notion that good User Experience is an absolutely crucial goal, a cause championed by the likes of Microsoft's Bill Buxton, and which Apple's increasingly ubiquitous touch screen interface exemplifies. However, that doesn't change the fact that, occasionally, you just have to man up and deal with complex systems. In fact, sometimes you just need to sacrifice everything else in the name of performance. You'll find a perfect example of this Faustian bargain in Trevor Clarke's fascinating look into the (diabolical) IT infrastructure of modern F1 racing - high performance, high availability. high everything. To paraphrase, each car has up to 100 sensors, transmitting around 30Gb of data over the course of a race (70% in real-time). This data is then processed by no less than 3 servers (per car) so that the engineers in the pit have access to telemetry, strategy information, timing feeds, a connection back to the operations room in the team's home base - the list goes on. All of this while the servers are exposed "to carbon dust, oil, vibration, rain, heat, [and] variable power". Now, this is admittedly an extreme context where there's no real choice but to use complex systems where ease-of-use is, at best, a secondary concern. The flip-side is seen in small-scale personal computing such as that seen in Apple's iDevices, which are incredibly intuitive but limited in their scope. In terms of what kinds of systems they prefer to use, I suspect that most SysAdmins find themselves somewhere along this axis of Power vs. Usability, and which end of this axis you resonate with also hints at where you think the IT industry should focus its energy. Do you see yourself in the F1 pit, making split-second decisions, wrestling with information flows and reticent hardware to bend them to your will? If so, I imagine you feel that computers are subtle tools which need to be tuned and honed, using the advanced knowledge possessed only by responsible SysAdmins (If you have an iPhone, I suspect it's jail-broken). If the machines throw enigmatic errors, it's the price of flexibility and raw power. Alternatively, would you prefer to have your role more accessible, with users empowered by knowledge, spreading the load of managing IT environments? In that case, then you want hardware and software to have User Experience as their primary focus, and are of the "means to an end" school of thought (you're probably also fed up with users not listening to you when you try and help). At its heart, the dichotomy is between raw power (which might be difficult to use) and ease-of-use (which might have some limitations, but you can be up and running immediately). Of course, the ultimate goal is a fusion of flexibility, power and usability all in one system. It's achievable in specific software environments, and Red Gate considers it a target worth aiming for, but in other cases it's a goal right up there with cold fusion. I think it'll be a long time before we see it become ubiquitous. In the meantime, are you Power-Hungry or a Champion of Usability? Cheers, Michael Francis Simple Talk SysAdmin Editor

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• Get to Know a Candidate (8 of 25): Rocky Anderson&ndash;Justice Party

  - by Brian Lanham

  DISCLAIMER: This is not a post about “Romney” or “Obama”. This is not a post for whom I am voting. Information sourced for Wikipedia. Ross Carl “Rocky” Anderson served two terms as the 33rd mayor of Salt Lake City, Utah, between 2000 and 2008.  He is the Executive Director of High Road for Human Rights.  Prior to serving as Mayor, he practiced law for 21 years in Salt Lake City, during which time he was listed in Best Lawyers in America, was rated A-V (highest rating) by Martindale-Hubbell, served as Chair of the Utah State Bar Litigation Section[4] and was Editor-in-Chief of, and a contributor to, Voir Dire legal journal. As mayor, Anderson rose to nationwide prominence as a champion of several national and international causes, including climate protection, immigration reform, restorative criminal justice, LGBT rights, and an end to the "war on drugs". Before and after the invasion by the U.S. of Iraq in 2003, Anderson was a leading opponent of the invasion and occupation of Iraq and related human rights abuses. Anderson was the only mayor of a major U.S. city who advocated for the impeachment of President George W. Bush, which he did in many venues throughout the United States. Anderson's work and advocacy led to local, national, and international recognition in numerous spheres, including being named by Business Week as one of the top twenty activists in the world on climate change,serving on the Newsweek Global Environmental Leadership Advisory Board, and being recognized by the Human Rights Campaign as one of the top ten straight advocates in the United States for LGBT equality. He has also received numerous awards for his work, including the EPA Climate Protection Award, the Sierra Club Distinguished Service Award, the Respect the Earth Planet Defender Award, the National Association of Hispanic Publications Presidential Award, The Drug Policy Alliance Richard J. Dennis Drugpeace Award, the Progressive Democrats of America Spine Award, the League of United Latin American Citizens Profile in Courage Award, the Bill of Rights Defense Committee Patriot Award, the Code Pink (Salt Lake City) Pink Star honor, the Morehouse University Gandhi, King, Ikeda Award, and the World Leadership Award for environmental programs. Formerly a member of the Democratic Party, Anderson expressed his disappointment with that Party in 2011, stating, “The Constitution has been eviscerated while Democrats have stood by with nary a whimper. It is a gutless, unprincipled party, bought and paid for by the same interests that buy and pay for the Republican Party." Anderson announced his intention to run for President in 2012 as a candidate for the newly-formed Justice Party. Although founded by Rocky Anderson of Utah, the Justice Party was first recognized by Mississippi and describes itself as advocating economic justice through measures such as green jobs and a right to organize, environment justice through enforcing employee safeguards in trade agreements, and social and civic justice through universal health care. In its first press release, the Utah Justice Party set forth its goals for justice in the economic, environmental, social and civic realms, along with a call to rid the corrupting influence of big money from government, to reverse the erosion of rights guaranteed by the Constitution, and to stop draining American resources to support illegal wars of aggression. Its press release says its grassroots supporters believe that now is the time for all to "shed their skeptical view that their voices don't matter", that "our 2-party system is a 'duopoly' controlled by the same corporate and military interests", and that the people must act to ensure "that our nation will achieve a brighter, sustainable future.” Anderson has ballot access in CO, CT, FL, ID, LA, MI, MN, MS, NJ, NM, OR, RI, TN, UT, VT, WA (152 electoral votes) and has write-in access in AL, AK, DE, GA, IL, IO, KS, MD, MO, NE, NH, NY, PA, TX Learn more about Rocky Anderson and Justice Party on Wikipedia.

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• Lubuntu upgrade to 13.04 killed sound with ALSA. How to troubleshoot?

  - by Sven

  After upgrading to 13.04 from 12.10 Lubuntu lost audio playback after unplugging usb soundcard (Polycom) and plugging it back in. Volume control was gray and leading to pulseaudio mixer (not installed) so I uninstalled the pulseaudio package. I also removed and reinstalled the alsa-base package. After restart I have the alsamixer back everything seemingly as usual(volume 100%, unmute) but every sound program gets me errors no matter what device I select. aplay -L: null Discard all samples (playback) or generate zero samples (capture) pulse PulseAudio Sound Server default:CARD=NVidia HDA NVidia, ALC662 rev1 Analog Default Audio Device sysdefault:CARD=NVidia HDA NVidia, ALC662 rev1 Analog Default Audio Device front:CARD=NVidia,DEV=0 HDA NVidia, ALC662 rev1 Analog Front speakers surround40:CARD=NVidia,DEV=0 HDA NVidia, ALC662 rev1 Analog 4.0 Surround output to Front and Rear speakers surround41:CARD=NVidia,DEV=0 HDA NVidia, ALC662 rev1 Analog 4.1 Surround output to Front, Rear and Subwoofer speakers surround50:CARD=NVidia,DEV=0 HDA NVidia, ALC662 rev1 Analog 5.0 Surround output to Front, Center and Rear speakers surround51:CARD=NVidia,DEV=0 HDA NVidia, ALC662 rev1 Analog 5.1 Surround output to Front, Center, Rear and Subwoofer speakers surround71:CARD=NVidia,DEV=0 HDA NVidia, ALC662 rev1 Analog 7.1 Surround output to Front, Center, Side, Rear and Woofer speakers iec958:CARD=NVidia,DEV=0 HDA NVidia, ALC662 rev1 Digital IEC958 (S/PDIF) Digital Audio Output hdmi:CARD=NVidia,DEV=0 HDA NVidia, HDMI 0 HDMI Audio Output dmix:CARD=NVidia,DEV=0 HDA NVidia, ALC662 rev1 Analog Direct sample mixing device dmix:CARD=NVidia,DEV=1 HDA NVidia, ALC662 rev1 Digital Direct sample mixing device dmix:CARD=NVidia,DEV=3 HDA NVidia, HDMI 0 Direct sample mixing device dsnoop:CARD=NVidia,DEV=0 HDA NVidia, ALC662 rev1 Analog Direct sample snooping device dsnoop:CARD=NVidia,DEV=1 HDA NVidia, ALC662 rev1 Digital Direct sample snooping device dsnoop:CARD=NVidia,DEV=3 HDA NVidia, HDMI 0 Direct sample snooping device hw:CARD=NVidia,DEV=0 HDA NVidia, ALC662 rev1 Analog Direct hardware device without any conversions hw:CARD=NVidia,DEV=1 HDA NVidia, ALC662 rev1 Digital Direct hardware device without any conversions hw:CARD=NVidia,DEV=3 HDA NVidia, HDMI 0 Direct hardware device without any conversions plughw:CARD=NVidia,DEV=0 HDA NVidia, ALC662 rev1 Analog Hardware device with all software conversions plughw:CARD=NVidia,DEV=1 HDA NVidia, ALC662 rev1 Digital Hardware device with all software conversions plughw:CARD=NVidia,DEV=3 HDA NVidia, HDMI 0 Hardware device with all software conversions default:CARD=Communicator Default Audio Device sysdefault:CARD=Communicator Default Audio Device front:CARD=Communicator,DEV=0 Polycom Communicator, USB Audio Front speakers surround40:CARD=Communicator,DEV=0 Polycom Communicator, USB Audio 4.0 Surround output to Front and Rear speakers surround41:CARD=Communicator,DEV=0 Polycom Communicator, USB Audio 4.1 Surround output to Front, Rear and Subwoofer speakers surround50:CARD=Communicator,DEV=0 Polycom Communicator, USB Audio 5.0 Surround output to Front, Center and Rear speakers surround51:CARD=Communicator,DEV=0 Polycom Communicator, USB Audio 5.1 Surround output to Front, Center, Rear and Subwoofer speakers surround71:CARD=Communicator,DEV=0 Polycom Communicator, USB Audio 7.1 Surround output to Front, Center, Side, Rear and Woofer speakers iec958:CARD=Communicator,DEV=0 Polycom Communicator, USB Audio IEC958 (S/PDIF) Digital Audio Output dmix:CARD=Communicator,DEV=0 Polycom Communicator, USB Audio Direct sample mixing device dsnoop:CARD=Communicator,DEV=0 Polycom Communicator, USB Audio Direct sample snooping device hw:CARD=Communicator,DEV=0 Polycom Communicator, USB Audio Direct hardware device without any conversions plughw:CARD=Communicator,DEV=0 Polycom Communicator, USB Audio Hardware device with all software conversions etc/asound.conf: defaults.ctl.card 1 defaults.pcm.card 1 defaults.pcm.device 1 Following gets same result with both devices. aplay -vv -D front:CARD=NVidia,DEV=0 "Release the Pressure.wav": Playing WAVE 'Release the Pressure.wav' : Signed 16 bit Little Endian, Rate 44100 Hz, Mono aplay: set_params:1087: Channels count non available Guayadeque mp3 playback: AL lib: alsa_open_playback: Could not open playback device 'default': No such file or directory 21:32:14: Error: Gstreamer error 'Configured audiosink playbackbin is not working.' Audacious: ALSA error: snd_mixer_attach failed: No such file or directory. ALSA error: snd_pcm_open failed: No such device. So How do I fix my audio? UPDATE: I removed the usb soundcard and got rid of all alsa config. Everything is working as before the install but it sure feels fragile.

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• Launching Ops Center 12c

  - by user12601629

  Oracle Enterprise Manager Ops Center 12c is most ambitious version of the Ops Center tooling that we've ever released. I think that make it appropriate that we launched it in grand style! When it became clear we were going to be complete with the 12c final release about this time of year, the marketing team proposed that we roll the launch of 12c into Oracle OpenWorld Tokyo.  I thought that sounded like a fine idea!  You see, I have always loved Japan.  I even studied a bit of Japanese language back in school. OpenWorld Tokyo was an outstanding even this year.  It was held in Roppongi, one of the most stylish districts in Tokyo. And, to make things even better, the Sakura (cherry blossoms) were blooming.  If you've never been in Japan for cherry blossom season, it's a must see!  Here are a couple of pics for you. Here is a picture from Roppongi, near the conference.  Here's a picture near the Imperial Palace.  A couple of friends from the local sales team took me here before my flight out. So, now back to the product launch! We choose to launch the product in John Fowler's "Engineered Systems" keynote address.  It made perfect sense because of the close ties of Ops Center to the Systems portfolio of products.  It was a packed house for the keynote.  Here's a picture I took just before we started -- there were also hundreds more people in "overflow" rooms in other parts of the venue. Here's a picture of me on stage during the launch. While there are countless new features in Ops Center 12c that customers will love, I had to limit myself to discussing just three. Mission Critical Clouds Solaris 11 Engineered Systems So, what does Mission Critical Cloud mean?  It means we've expanded EM's cloud capabilities in a couple of key areas. First, we've expanded the "self service provisioning" capabilities we have to include SPARC -- not just x86.  Now you can build clouds of Solaris Zones with ease!  Second, we've much more deeply integrated high-end storage and network management into the cloud layers.  These may our IaaS story is now much more powerful! For Solaris 11, we didn't simply port our monitoring agent to S11.  That would have been easy, but also boring! We support S11 deeply.  Full access to the power of the IPS packaging system, the new virtualized networking stack, new Zones features, the Auto Install framework.  If you're ready to try Solaris 11 then Ops Center is ready for you. Last is on the area of Engineered Systems.  These combinations of hardware and software are fast and powerful. However, we're also on a mission to make them ever easier to manage.  We've made major strides with Ops Center 12c. Manage these systems as racks, not individual components.  The new capabilities for the new engineered systems like Exalogic and SPARC SuperCluster and striking. You can read more here: Oracle Unveils Oracle Enterprise Manager Ops Center 12c So, I'll wrap this up with one final bit of fun. One of my friends from the Oracle marketing department found a super cool place to get dinner.  It's a restaurant called Gonpachi. It turns out this is the place that inspired the scene in the Quentin Taratino movie Kill Bill where Uma Thurman fights 88 Ninjas.  Here is a picture I snapped while we were there. It was surely a good time. Check it out next time you're in Tokyo.

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• Enable grub boot menu on new system

  - by Remus Rigo

  I have installed Ubuntu 11.04 and I would like to see the boot menu when the system starts (by default it is hidden or the timeout=0) # # DO NOT EDIT THIS FILE # # It is automatically generated by grub-mkconfig using templates # from /etc/grub.d and settings from /etc/default/grub # ### BEGIN /etc/grub.d/00_header ### if [ -s $prefix/grubenv ]; then set have_grubenv=true load_env fi set default="0" if [ "${prev_saved_entry}" ]; then set saved_entry="${prev_saved_entry}" save_env saved_entry set prev_saved_entry= save_env prev_saved_entry set boot_once=true fi function savedefault { if [ -z "${boot_once}" ]; then saved_entry="${chosen}" save_env saved_entry fi } function recordfail { set recordfail=1 if [ -n "${have_grubenv}" ]; then if [ -z "${boot_once}" ]; then save_env recordfail; fi; fi } function load_video { insmod vbe insmod vga insmod video_bochs insmod video_cirrus } insmod part_msdos insmod ext2 set root='(hd0,msdos1)' search --no-floppy --fs-uuid --set=root 44f311b4-0b40-4d10-b004-78108539fc39 if loadfont /usr/share/grub/unicode.pf2 ; then set gfxmode=auto load_video insmod gfxterm fi terminal_output gfxterm insmod part_msdos insmod ext2 set root='(hd0,msdos1)' search --no-floppy --fs-uuid --set=root 44f311b4-0b40-4d10-b004-78108539fc39 set locale_dir=($root)/boot/grub/locale set lang=en_US insmod gettext if [ "${recordfail}" = 1 ]; then set timeout=-1 else set timeout=10 fi ### END /etc/grub.d/00_header ### ### BEGIN /etc/grub.d/05_debian_theme ### insmod part_msdos insmod ext2 set root='(hd0,msdos1)' search --no-floppy --fs-uuid --set=root 44f311b4-0b40-4d10-b004-78108539fc39 insmod jpeg if background_image /boot/grub/boot.jpg; then true else set menu_color_normal=white/black set menu_color_highlight=black/light-gray fi ### END /etc/grub.d/05_debian_theme ### ### BEGIN /etc/grub.d/10_linux ### if [ ${recordfail} != 1 ]; then if [ -e ${prefix}/gfxblacklist.txt ]; then if hwmatch ${prefix}/gfxblacklist.txt 3; then if [ ${match} = 0 ]; then set linux_gfx_mode=keep else set linux_gfx_mode=text fi else set linux_gfx_mode=text fi else set linux_gfx_mode=keep fi else set linux_gfx_mode=text fi export linux_gfx_mode if [ "$linux_gfx_mode" != "text" ]; then load_video; fi menuentry 'Ubuntu, with Linux 2.6.38-8-generic' --class ubuntu --class gnu-linux --class gnu --class os { recordfail set gfxpayload=$linux_gfx_mode insmod part_msdos insmod ext2 set root='(hd0,msdos1)' search --no-floppy --fs-uuid --set=root 44f311b4-0b40-4d10-b004-78108539fc39 linux /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.38-8-generic root=UUID=44f311b4-0b40-4d10-b004-78108539fc39 ro quiet splash vt.handoff=7 initrd /boot/initrd.img-2.6.38-8-generic } menuentry 'Ubuntu, with Linux 2.6.38-8-generic (recovery mode)' --class ubuntu --class gnu-linux --class gnu --class os { recordfail set gfxpayload=$linux_gfx_mode insmod part_msdos insmod ext2 set root='(hd0,msdos1)' search --no-floppy --fs-uuid --set=root 44f311b4-0b40-4d10-b004-78108539fc39 echo 'Loading Linux 2.6.38-8-generic ...' linux /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.38-8-generic root=UUID=44f311b4-0b40-4d10-b004-78108539fc39 ro single echo 'Loading initial ramdisk ...' initrd /boot/initrd.img-2.6.38-8-generic } ### END /etc/grub.d/10_linux ### ### BEGIN /etc/grub.d/20_linux_xen ### ### END /etc/grub.d/20_linux_xen ### ### BEGIN /etc/grub.d/20_memtest86+ ### menuentry "Memory test (memtest86+)" { insmod part_msdos insmod ext2 set root='(hd0,msdos1)' search --no-floppy --fs-uuid --set=root 44f311b4-0b40-4d10-b004-78108539fc39 linux16 /boot/memtest86+.bin } menuentry "Memory test (memtest86+, serial console 115200)" { insmod part_msdos insmod ext2 set root='(hd0,msdos1)' search --no-floppy --fs-uuid --set=root 44f311b4-0b40-4d10-b004-78108539fc39 linux16 /boot/memtest86+.bin console=ttyS0,115200n8 } ### END /etc/grub.d/20_memtest86+ ### ### BEGIN /etc/grub.d/30_os-prober ### if [ "x${timeout}" != "x-1" ]; then if keystatus; then if keystatus --shift; then set timeout=-1 else set timeout=0 fi else if sleep --interruptible 3 ; then set timeout=0 fi fi fi ### END /etc/grub.d/30_os-prober ### ### BEGIN /etc/grub.d/40_custom ### # This file provides an easy way to add custom menu entries. Simply type the # menu entries you want to add after this comment. Be careful not to change # the 'exec tail' line above. ### END /etc/grub.d/40_custom ### ### BEGIN /etc/grub.d/41_custom ### if [ -f $prefix/custom.cfg ]; then source $prefix/custom.cfg; fi ### END /etc/grub.d/41_custom ###

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• Seamless STP with Oracle SOA Suite

  - by user12339860

  STP stands for “Straight Through Processing”. Wikipedia describes STP as a solution that enables “the entire trade process for capital markets and payment transactions to be conducted electronically without the need for re-keying or manual intervention, subject to legal and regulatory restrictions” .I will deal with the later part of the definition i.e “payment transactions without manual intervention” in this article. The STP that I am writing about involves the interaction between a Bank and its’ corporate customers,to that extent this business case is also called “Corporate Payments”.Simply put a  Corporate Payment-STP solution needs to connect the payment transaction right from the Corporate ERP into the Bank’s Payment Hub. A SOA based STP solution can do a lot more than just process transaction. But before I get to the solution let me describe the perspectives of the two primary parties in this interaction. The Corporate customer and the Bank. Corporate's Interaction with Bank:  Typically it is the treasury department of an enterprise which interacts with the Bank on a daily basis. Here is how a day of interaction would look like from the treasury department of a corp. Corporate Cash Retrieve Beginning of day totals Monitor Cash Accounts Send or receive cash between accounts Supply chain payments Payment Settlements Calculate settlement positions Retrieve End of Day totals Assess Transaction Financial Impact Short Term Investment Desk Retrieve Current Account information Conduct Investment activities Bank’s Interaction with the Corporate :  From the Bank’s perspective, the interaction starts from the point of on boarding a corporate customer to billing the corporate for the value added services it provides. Once the corporate is on-boarded the daily interaction involves Handle the various formats of data arriving from customers Process Beginning of Day & End of Day reporting request from customers Meet compliance requirements Process Payments Transmit Payment Status Challenges with this Interaction :  Both the Bank & the Corporate face many challenges from these interactions. Some of the challenges include Keeping a consistent view of transaction data for various LOBs of the corporate & the Bank Corporate customers use different ERPs, hence the data formats are bound to be different Can the Bank’s IT systems convert the data formats that can be easily mapped to the corporate ERP How does the Bank manage the communication profiles of these customers?  Corporate customers are demanding near real time visibility on their corporate accounts Corporate customers can make better cash management decisions if they can analyse the impact. Can the Bank create opportunities to sell its products to the investment desks at corporate houses & manage their orders? How will the Bank bill the corporate customer for the value added services it provides. What does a SOA based Seamless STP solution bring to the table? Highlights of Oracle SOA based STP solution For the Corporate Customer: No Manual or Paper based banking transactions Secure Delivery of Payment data to the Bank from multiple ERPs without customization Single Portal for monitoring & administering payment transactions Rule based validation of payments Customer has data necessary for more effective handling of payment and cash management decisions  Business measurements track progress toward payment cost goals  For the Bank: Reduces time & complexity of transactions Simplifies the process of introducing new products to corporate customers Single Payment hub for all corporate ERP payments across multiple instruments New Revenue sources by delivering value added services to customers Leverages existing payment infrastructure Remove Inconsistent data formats and interchange between bank and corporate systems  Compliance and many other benefits

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• Clever memory usage through the years

  - by Ben Emmett

  A friend and I were recently talking about the really clever tricks people have used to get the most out of memory. I thought I’d share my favorites, and would love to hear yours too! Interleaving on drum memory Back in the ye olde days before I’d been born (we’re talking the 50s / 60s here), working memory commonly took the form of rotating magnetic drums. These would spin at a constant speed, and a fixed head would read from memory when the correct part of the drum passed it by, a bit like a primitive platter disk. Because each revolution took a few milliseconds, programmers took to manually arranging information non-sequentially on the drum, timing when an instruction or memory address would need to be accessed, then spacing information accordingly around the edge of the drum, thus reducing the access delay. Similar techniques were still used on hard disks and floppy disks into the 90s, but have become irrelevant with modern disk technologies. The Hashlife algorithm Conway’s Game of Life has attracted numerous implementations over the years, but Bill Gosper’s Hashlife algorithm is particularly impressive. Taking advantage of the repetitive nature of many cellular automata, it uses a quadtree structure to store the hashes of pieces of the overall grid. Over time there are fewer and fewer new structures which need to be evaluated, so it starts to run faster with larger grids, drastically outperforming other algorithms both in terms of speed and the size of grid which can be simulated. The actual amount of memory used is huge, but it’s used in a clever way, so makes the list . Elite’s procedural generation Ok, so this isn’t exactly a memory optimization – more a storage optimization – but it gets an honorable mention anyway. When writing Elite, David Braben and Ian Bell wanted to build a rich world which gamers could explore, but their 22K memory was something of a limitation (for comparison that’s about the size of my avatar picture at the top of this page). They procedurally generated all the characteristics of the 2048 planets in their virtual universe, including the names, which were stitched together using a lookup table of parts of names. In fact the original plans were for 2^52 planets, but it was decided that that was probably too many. Oh, and they did that all in assembly language. Other games of the time used similar techniques too – The Sentinel’s landscape generation algorithm being another example. Modern Garbage Collectors Garbage collection in managed languages like Java and .NET ensures that most of the time, developers stop needing to care about how they use and clean up memory as the garbage collector handles it automatically. Achieving this without killing performance is a near-miraculous feet of software engineering. Much like when learning chemistry, you find that every time you think you understand how the garbage collector works, it turns out to be a mere simplification; that there are yet more complexities and heuristics to help it run efficiently. Of course introducing memory problems is still possible (and there are tools like our memory profiler to help if that happens to you) but they’re much, much rarer. A cautionary note In the examples above, there were good and well understood reasons for the optimizations, but cunningly optimized code has usually had to trade away readability and maintainability to achieve its gains. Trying to optimize memory usage without being pretty confident that there’s actually a problem is doing it wrong. So what have I missed? Tell me about the ingenious (or stupid) tricks you’ve seen people use. Ben

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• Slick2D Rendering Lots of Polygons

  - by Hazzard

  I'm writing an little isometric game using Slick. The world terrain is made up of lots of quadrilaterals. In a small world that is 128 by 128 squares, over 16,000 quadrilaterals need to be rendered. This puts my pretty powerful computer down to 30 fps. I've though about caching "chunks" of the world so only single chunks would ever need updating at a time, but I don't know how to do this, and I am sure there are other ways to optimize it besides that. Maybe I'm doing the whole thing wrong, surely fancy 3D games that run fine on my machine are more intensive than this. My question is how can I improve the FPS and am I doing something wrong? Or does it actually take that much power to render those polygons? -- Here is the source code for the render method in my game state. It iterates through a 2d array or heights and draws polygons based on the height. public void render(GameContainer container, StateBasedGame game, Graphics gfx) throws SlickException { gfx.translate(offsetX * d + container.getWidth() / 2, offsetY * d + container.getHeight() / 2); gfx.scale(d, d); for (int y = 0; y < placeholder.length; y++) {// x & y are isometric // diag for (int x = 0; x < placeholder[0].length; x++) { Polygon poly; int hor = TestState.TILE_WIDTH * (x - y);// hor and ver are orthagonal int W = TestState.TILE_HEIGHT * (x + y) - 1 * heights[y + 1][x];//points to go off of int S = TestState.TILE_HEIGHT * (x + y) - 1 * heights[y + 1][x + 1]; int E = TestState.TILE_HEIGHT * (x + y) - 1 * heights[y][x + 1]; int N = TestState.TILE_HEIGHT * (x + y) - 1 * heights[y][x]; if (placeholder[y][x] == null) { poly = new Polygon();//Create actual surface polygon poly.addPoint(-TestState.TILE_WIDTH + hor, W); poly.addPoint(hor, S + TestState.TILE_HEIGHT); poly.addPoint(TestState.TILE_WIDTH + hor, E); poly.addPoint(hor, N - TestState.TILE_HEIGHT); float z = ((float) heights[y][x + 1] - heights[y + 1][x]) / 32 + 0.5f; placeholder[y][x] = new Tile(poly, new Color(z, z, z)); //ShapeRenderer.fill(placeholder[y][x]); } if (true) {//ONLY draw tile if it's on screen gfx.setColor(placeholder[y][x].getColor()); ShapeRenderer.fill(placeholder[y][x]); //gfx.fill(placeholder[y][x]); //placeholder[y][x]. //DRAW EDGES if (y + 1 == placeholder.length) {//draw South foundation edges gfx.setColor(Color.gray); Polygon found = new Polygon(); found.addPoint(-TestState.TILE_WIDTH + hor, W); found.addPoint(hor, S + TestState.TILE_HEIGHT); found.addPoint(hor, TestState.TILE_HEIGHT * (x + y + 1)); found.addPoint(-TestState.TILE_WIDTH + hor, TestState.TILE_HEIGHT * (x + y)); gfx.fill(found); } if (x + 1 == placeholder[0].length) {//north gfx.setColor(Color.darkGray); Polygon found = new Polygon(); found.addPoint(TestState.TILE_WIDTH + hor, E); found.addPoint(hor, S + TestState.TILE_HEIGHT); found.addPoint(hor, TestState.TILE_HEIGHT * (x + y + 1)); found.addPoint(TestState.TILE_WIDTH + hor, TestState.TILE_HEIGHT * (x + y)); gfx.fill(found); }//*/ } } } }

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• PASS Summit 2013 Review

  - by Ajarn Mark Caldwell

  As a long-standing member of PASS who lives in the greater Seattle area and has attended about nine of these Summits, let me start out by saying how GREAT it was to go to Charlotte, North Carolina this year.  Many of the new folks that I met at the Summit this year, upon hearing that I was from Seattle, commented that I must have been disappointed to have to travel to the Summit this year after 5 years in a row in Seattle.  Well, nothing could be further from the truth.  I cheered loudly when I first heard that the 2013 Summit would be outside Seattle.  I have many fond memories of trips to Orlando, Florida and Grapevine, Texas for past Summits (missed out on Denver, unfortunately).  And there is a funny dynamic that takes place when the conference is local.  If you do as I have done the last several years and saved my company money by not getting a hotel, but rather just commuting from home, then both family and coworkers tend to act like you’re just on a normal schedule.  For example, I have a young family, and my wife and kids really wanted to still see me come home “after work”, but there are a whole lot of after-hours activities, social events, and great food to be enjoyed at the Summit each year.  Even more so if you really capitalize on the opportunities to meet face-to-face with people you either met at previous summits or have spoken to or heard of, from Twitter, blogs, and forums.  Then there is also the lovely commuting in Seattle traffic from neighboring cities rather than the convenience of just walking across the street from your hotel.  So I’m just saying, there are really nice aspects of having the conference 2500 miles away. Beyond that, the training was fantastic as usual.  The SQL Server community has many outstanding presenters and experts with deep knowledge of the tools who are extremely willing to share all of that with anyone who wants to listen.  The opening video with PASS President Bill Graziano in a NASCAR race turned dream sequence was very well done, and the keynotes, as usual, were great.  This year I was particularly impressed with how well attended were the Professional Development sessions.  Not too many years ago, those were very sparsely attended, but this year, the two that I attended were standing-room only, and these were not tiny rooms.  I would say this is a testament to both the maturity of the attendees realizing how important these topics are to career success, as well as to the ever-increasing skills of the presenters and the program committee for selecting speakers and topics that resonated with people.  If, as is usually the case, you were not able to get to every session that you wanted to because there were just too darn many good ones, I encourage you to get the recordings. Overall, it was a great time as these events always are.  It was wonderful to see old friends and make new ones, and the people of Charlotte did an awesome job hosting the event and letting their hospitality shine (extra kudos to SQLSentry for all they did with the shuttle, maps, and other event sponsorships).  We’re back in Seattle next year (it is a release year, after all) but I would say that with the success of this year’s event, I strongly encourage the Board and PASS HQ to firmly reestablish the location rotation schedule.  I’ll even go so far as to suggest standardizing on an alternating Seattle – Charlotte schedule, or something like that. If you missed the Summit this year, start saving now, and register early, so you can join us!

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• Graphics trouble after resuming from hibernate or suspend

  - by Voyagerfan5761

  I have a Dell Inspiron 2650 (with NVidia graphics, using nouveau drivers) that I'm using to try out Ubuntu. It's all great, except that Hibernate and Suspend aren't usable. Yes, I know that questions about power-save issues are rampant in the Linux support universe, but it seems that every time I find a solution it's for a very specific hardware combination and doesn't apply to me. So anyway, here goes. When I resume from either power-saving mode, I'll get graphics problems anywhere on the range from a few scattered random-colored pixels that won't change; all the way to full-screen patterns that don't change as I move the mouse, hit keys on the keyboard, or even bring up the shutdown dialog using the power button. Those full-screen issues (which may involve stripes with random pixels, partial black screen, or both) always end in me forcing the machine to shut down by holding the power button. I haven't done much testing yet to determine what severity level is most commonly associated with each mode, but I do avoid using either power-save option because of these issues. I'll add info on my hardware as I can gather it (no home internet connection, and this laptop is tethered to my desk by a dead battery and casing degradation). Please feel free to request something specific in the question comments. Hardware Info See this hardinfo report for my system's hardware configuration. (No, my username is not "myuser"; I sanitized hardinfo's output before publishing it.) Screenshots These screenshots are from a relatively mild occurrence, which happened after the second hibernation I took that session. The first one worked great, though I used the wireless card and Firefox heavily between the two hibernation attempts. Take a look at what happened when I opened my home directory in Nautilus and scrolled it: See below for the situations I've tested so far. The real trouble comes when the machine resumes to an unusable state; in such cases I can't even unlock the screen or properly reboot, much less take a screenshot. I have a hunch that putting a CD in the drive will cause such major failures, and I will try that at some point; see related question. Situations Tested Maverick (10.10) Suspend Seems to suspend nicely with nothing running Seems to suspend nicely with flash drive plugged in On resume from suspend with no flash drive, Terminal and gedit running: Funky graphics on top of log output, then blank screen with pixelated cursor; no response to power button (normally will shutdown 60 seconds later) Hibernate Seems to hibernate nicely with nothing running Seems to hibernate nicely with a few apps (Terminal, Mouse preferences) running Seems to not hibernate when flash drive plugged in Seems to not hibernate when System Monitor is running Have encountered failed hibernation (after several hours and one successful hibernate/thaw cycle) with no external media connected and no programs running except normal background stuff Natty LiveCD (11.04_2010-12-22) When I tested it, Natty wouldn't stay logged in. It played part of the login sound and then [ OK ] appeared in the top right corner (white-on-black terminal text) for a few seconds. Then it kicked me back to the Unlock screen. It did that four times before I gave up and just tested suspend from the Unlock screen. Suspend Resumed to vertical gray and black lines 2px (?) wide, then shifted to vertical "jail bars" of black over a black screen with above-described random pixels and mouse pointer. No apparent response to input from mouse (clicking randomly). Keyboard and touchpad unrecognized.

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• Profiling Startup Of VS2012 &ndash; dotTrace Profiler

  - by Alois Kraus

  Jetbrains which is famous for the Resharper tool has also a profiler in its portfolio. I downloaded dotTrace 5.2 Professional (569€+VAT) to check how far I can profile the startup of VS2012. The most interesting startup option is “.NET Process”. With that you can profile the next started .NET process which is very useful if you want to profile an application which is not started by you.     I did select Tracing as and Wall time to get similar options across all profilers. For some reason the attach option did not work with .NET 4.5 on my home machine. But I am sure that it did work with .NET 4.0 some time ago. Since we are profiling devenv.exe we can also select “Standalone Application” and start it from the profiler. The startup time of VS does increase about a factor 3 but that is ok. You get mainly three windows to work with. The first one shows the threads where you can drill down thread wise where most time is spent. I The next window is the call tree which does merge all threads together in a similar view. The last and most useful view in my opinion is the Plain List window which is nearly the same as the Method Grid in Ants Profiler. But this time we do get when I enable the Show system functions checkbox not a 150 but 19407 methods to choose from! I really tried with Ants Profiler to find something about out how VS does work but look how much we were missing! When I double click on a method I do get in the lower pane the called methods and their respective timings. This is something really useful and I can nicely drill down to the most important stuff. The measured time seems to be Wall Clock time which is a good thing to see where my time is really spent. You can also use Sampling as profiling method but this does give you much less information. Except for getting a first idea where to look first this profiling mode is not very useful to understand how you system does interact.   The options have a good list of presets to hide by default many method and gray them out to concentrate on your code. It does not filter anything out if you enable Show system functions. By default methods from these assemblies are hidden or if the checkbox is checked grayed out. All in all JetBrains has made a nice profiler which does show great detail and it has nice drill down capabilities. The only thing is that I do not trust its measured timings. I did fall several times into the trap with this one to optimize at places which were already fast but the profiler did show high times in these methods. After measuring with Tracing I was certain that the measured times were greatly exaggerated. Especially when IO is involved it seems to have a hard time to subtract its own overhead. What I did miss most was the possibility to profile not only the next started process but to be able to select a process by name and perhaps a count to profile the next n processes of this name. Next: YourKit

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• Blind As a Bat in Multi-Monitor Hell &ndash; Free Program Inside!

  - by ToStringTheory

  If you know me personally, then you probably know that I am going blind thanks to a rare genetic eye disease.  My eye disease has already been a huge detriment to my eyesight.  One of the big things to suffer is my ability to see small things moving fast right in front of me.  On a multi-monitor setup, this makes finding the cursor absolute hell. The Problem I’ll keep this short, as I’ve basically already told you what the problem is.  On my three monitor development computer, I am constantly losing the mouse during the day.  I had used the Microsoft accessibility mousefinder (press CTRL, and it pings around the mouse).  The problem with this is, there is only an effect around 50-100 PX around the mouse, and it is a very light gray, almost unnoticeable.. For someone like me, if I am not looking at the monitor when I click the CTRL button, I have to click it multiple times and dart my eyes back and forth in a futile attempt to catch a glimpse of the action…  I had tried other cursor finders, but none I liked… The Solution So what’s a guy to do when he doesn’t like his options?  MAKE A NEW OPTION…  What else should we as developers do, am I right?  So, I went ahead and made a mousefinder of my own, with 6 separate settings to change the effect.  I am releasing it here for anyone else that may also have problems finding their mouse at times. Some of its features include: Multiple options to change to achieve the exact effect you want. If your mouse moves while it is honing in, it will hone in on its current position. Many times, I would press the button and move my mouse at the same time, and many times, the mouse happened to be at a screen edge, so I would miss it. This program will restart its animation on a new screen if the mouse changes its screen while playing. Tested on Windows 7 x64 Stylish color changing from green to red. Deployed as a ClickOnce, so easy to remove if you don't like it. Press Right CTRL to trigger effect Application lives in notification area so that you can easily reach configuration or close it. To get it to run on startup, copy its application shortcut from its startmenu directory to the “Startup” folder in your startmenu. Conclusion I understand if you don’t download this…  You don’t know me and I don’t know you.  I can only say that I have honestly NOT added any virus’ or malware to the package. Yeah, I know it’s weird Download: ‘ToString(theory) Mousefinder.zip’ CRC32: EEBCE300 MD5: 0394DA581BE6F3371B5BA11A8B24BC91 SHA-1: 2080C4930A2E7D98B81787BB5E19BB24E118991C Finally, if you do use this application - please leave a comment, or email me and tell me what you think of it. Encounter a bug or hashes no longer match? I want to know that too! <warning type=”BadPun”>Now, stop messing around and start mousing around!</warning>

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• Framework for Everything - Where to begin? [Longer post]

  - by SquaredSoft

  Back story of this question, feel free to skip down for the specific question Hello, I've been very interested in the idea of abstract programming the last few years. I've made about 30 attempts at creating a piece of software that is capable of almost anything you throw at it. I've undertook some attempts at this that have taken upwards of a year, while getting close, never releasing it beyond my compiler. This has been something I've always tried wrapping my head around, and something is always missing. With the title, I'm sure you're assuming, "Yes of course you noob! You can't account for everything!" To which I have to reply, "Why not?" To give you some background into what I'm talking about, this all started with doing maybe a shade of gray hat SEO software. I found myself constantly having to create similar, but slightly different sets of code. I've gone through as many iterations of way to communicate on http as the universe has particles. "How many times am I going to have to write this multi-threaded class?" is something I found myself asking a lot. Sure, I could create a class library, and just work with that, but I always felt I could optimize what I had, which often was a large undertaking and typically involved frequent use of the CRTL+A keyboard shortcut, mixed with the delete button. It dawned on me that it was time to invest in a plugin system. This would allow me to simply add snippets of code. as time went on, and I could subversion stuff out, and distribute small chunks of code, rather than something that encompasses only a specific function or design. This comes with its own complexity, of course, and by the time I had finished the software scope for this addition, it hit me that I would want to add to everything in the software, not just a new http method, or automation code for a specific website. Great, we're getting more abstract. However, the software that I have in my mind comes down to a quite a few questions regarding its execution. I have to have some parameters to what I am going to do. After writing what the perfect software would do in my mind, I came up with this as a list of requirements: Should be able to use networking A "Macro" or "Expression system" which would allow people to do something like : =First(=ParseToList(=GetUrl("http://www.google.com?q=helloworld!"), Template.Google)) Multithreaded Able to add UI elements through some type of XML -- People can make their own addons etc. Can use third party API through the plugins, such as Microsoft CRM, Exchange, etc. This would allow the software to essentially be used for everything. Really, any task you wish to automate, in a simple way. Making the UI was as also extremely hard. How do you do all of this? Its very difficult. So my question: With so many attempts at this, I'm out of ideas how to successfully complete this. I have a very specific idea in my mind, but I keep failing to execute it. I'm a self taught programmer. I've been doing it for years, and work professionally in it, but I've never encountered something that would be as complex and in-depth as a system which essentially does everything. Where would you start? What are the best practices for design? How can I avoid constantly having to go back and optimize my software. What can I do to generalize this and draw everything out to completion. These are things I struggle with. P.s., I'm using c# as my main language. I feel like in this example, I might be hitting the outer limit of the language, although, I don't know if that is the case, or if I'm just a bad programmer. Thanks for your time.

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• Using data input from pop-up page to current with partial refresh

  - by dpDesignz

  I'm building a product editor webpage using visual C#. I've got an image uploader popping up using fancybox, and I need to get the info from my fancybox once submitted to go back to the first page without clearing any info. I know I need to use ajax but how would I do it? <%@ Page Language="C#" AutoEventWireup="true" CodeFile="uploader.aspx.cs" Inherits="uploader" %> <!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd"> <html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"> <head id="Head1" runat="server"> <title></title> </head> <body style="width:350px; height:70px;"> <form id="form1" runat="server"> <asp:ScriptManager ID="ScriptManager1" runat="server"> </asp:ScriptManager> <div> <div style="width:312px; height:20px; background-color:Gray; color:White; padding-left:8px; margin-bottom:4px; text-transform:uppercase; font-weight:bold;">Uploader</div> <asp:FileUpload id="fileUp" runat="server" /> <asp:Button runat="server" id="UploadButton" text="Upload" onclick="UploadButton_Click" /> <br /><asp:Label ID="txtFile" runat="server"></asp:Label> <div style="width:312px; height:15px; background-color:#CCCCCC; color:#4d4d4d; padding-right:8px; margin-top:4px; text-align:right; font-size:x-small;">Click upload to insert your image into your product</div> </div> </form> </body> </html> CS so far using System; using System.Collections.Generic; using System.Linq; using System.Web; using System.Web.Configuration; // Add to page using System.Web.UI; using System.Web.UI.WebControls; using System.Data; // Add to the page using System.Data.SqlClient; // Add to the page using System.Text; // Add to Page public partial class uploader : System.Web.UI.Page { protected void Page_Load(object sender, EventArgs e) { } protected void UploadButton_Click(object sender, EventArgs e) { if (fileUp.HasFile) try { fileUp.SaveAs("\\\\london\\users\\DP006\\Websites\\images\\" + fileUp.FileName); string imagePath = fileUp.PostedFile.FileName; } catch (Exception ex) { txtFile.Text = "ERROR: " + ex.Message.ToString(); } finally { } else { txtFile.Text = "You have not specified a file."; } } }

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• I.T. Chargeback : Core to Cloud Computing

  - by Anand Akela

  Contributed by Mark McGill Consolidation and Virtualization have been widely adopted over the years to help deliver benefits such as increased server utilization, greater agility and lower cost to the I.T. organization. These are key enablers of cloud, but in themselves they do not provide a complete cloud solution. Building a true enterprise private cloud involves moving from an admin driven world, where the I.T. department is ultimately responsible for the provisioning of servers, databases, middleware and applications, to a world where the consumers of I.T. resources can provision their infrastructure, platforms and even complete application stacks on demand. Switching from an admin-driven provisioning model to a user-driven model creates some challenges. How do you ensure that users provisioning resources will not provision more than they need? How do you encourage users to return resources when they have finished with them so that others can use them? While chargeback has existed as a concept for many years (especially in mainframe environments), it is the move to this self-service model that has created a need for a new breed of chargeback applications for cloud. Enabling self-service without some form of chargeback is like opening a shop where all of the goods are free. A successful chargeback solution will be able to allocate the costs of shared I.T. infrastructure based on the relative consumption by the users. Doing this creates transparency between the I.T. department and the consumers of I.T. When users are able to understand how their consumption translates to cost they are much more likely to be prudent when it comes to their use of I.T. resources. This also gives them control of their I.T. costs, as moderate usage will translate to a lower charge at the end of the month. Implementing Chargeback successfully create a win-win situation for I.T. and the consumers. Chargeback can help to ensure that I.T. resources are used for activities that deliver business value. It also improves the overall utilization of I.T. infrastructure as I.T. resources that are not needed are not left running idle. Enterprise Manager 12c provides an integrated metering and chargeback solution for Enterprise Manager Targets. This solution is built on top of the rich configuration and utilization information already available in Enterprise Manager. It provides metering not just for virtual machines, but also for physical hosts, databases and middleware. Enterprise Manager 12c provides metering based on the utilization and configuration of the following types of Enterprise Manager Target: Oracle VM Host Oracle Database Oracle WebLogic Server Using Enterprise Manager Chargeback, administrators are able to create a set of Charge Plans that are used to attach prices to the various metered resources. These plans can contain fixed costs (eg. $10/month/database), configuration based costs (eg. $10/month if OS is Windows) and utilization based costs (eg. $0.05/GB of Memory/hour) The self-service user provisioning these resources is then able to view a report that details their usage and helps them understand how this usage translates into cost. Armed with this information, the user is able to determine if the resources are delivering adequate business value based on what is being charged. Figure 1: Chargeback in Self-Service Portal Enterprise Manager 12c provides a variety of additional interfaces into this data. The administrator can access summary and trending reports. Summary reports allow the administrator to drill-down through the cost center hierarchy to identify, for example, the top resource consumers across the organization. Figure 2: Charge Summary Report Trending reports can be used for I.T. planning and budgeting as they show utilization and charge trends over a period of time. Figure 3: CPU Trend Report We also provide chargeback reports through BI Publisher. This provides a way for users who do not have an Enterprise Manager login (such as Line of Business managers) to view charge and usage information. For situations where a bill needs to be produced, chargeback can be integrated with billing applications such as Oracle Billing and Revenue Management (BRM). Further information on Enterprise Manager 12c’s integrated metering and chargeback: White Paper Screenwatch Cloud Management on OTN

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