Search Results

Search found 2187 results on 88 pages for 'jeff stock'.

Page 82/88 | < Previous Page | 78 79 80 81 82 83 84 85 86 87 88  | Next Page >

• Social Engagement: One Size Doesn't Fit Anyone

  - by Mike Stiles

  The key to achieving meaningful social engagement is to know who you’re talking to, know what they like, and consistently deliver that kind of material to them. Every magazine for women knows this. When you read the article titles promoted on their covers, there’s no mistaking for whom that magazine is intended. And yet, confusion still reigns at many brands as to exactly whom they want to talk to, what those people want to hear, and what kind of content they should be creating for them. In most instances, the root problem is brands want to be all things to all people. Their target audience…the world! Good luck with that. It’s 2012, the age of aggregation and custom content delivery. To cope with the modern day barrage of information, people have constructed technological filters so that content they regard as being “for them” is mostly what gets through. Even if your brand is for men and women, young and old, you may want to consider social properties that divide men from women, and young from old. Yes, a man might find something in a women’s magazine that interests him. But that doesn’t mean he’s going to subscribe to it, or buy even one issue. In fact he’ll probably never see the article he’d otherwise be interested in, because in his mind, “This isn’t for me.” It wasn’t packaged for him. News Flash: men and women are different. So it’s a tall order to craft your Facebook Page or Twitter handle to simultaneously exude the motivators for both. The Harris Interactive study “2012 Connecting and Communicating Online: State of Social Media” sheds light on the differing social behaviors and drivers. -65% of women (vs. 59% of men) stay glued to social because they don’t want to miss anything. -25% of women check social when they wake up, before they check email. Only 18% of men check social before e-mail. -95% of women surveyed belong to Facebook vs. 86% of men. -67% of women log in to Facebook once a day or more vs. 54% of men. -Conventional wisdom is Pinterest is mostly a woman-thing, right? That may be true for viewing, but not true for sharing. Men are actually more likely to share on Pinterest than women, 23% to 10%. -The sharing divide extends to YouTube. 68% of women use it mainly for consumption, as opposed to 52% of men. -Women are as likely to have a Twitter account as men, but they’re much less likely to check it often. 54% of women check it once a week compared to 2/3 of men. Obviously, there are some takeaways from this depending on your target. Women don’t want to miss out on anything, so serialized content might be a good idea, right? Promotional posts that lead to a big payoff could keep them hooked. Posts for women might be better served first thing in the morning. If sharing is your goal, maybe male-targeted content is more likely to get those desired shares. And maybe Twitter is a better place to aim your male-targeted content than Facebook. Some grocery stores started experimenting with male-only aisles. The results have been impressive. Why? Because while it’s true men were finding those same items in the store just fine before, now something has been created just for them. They have a place in the store where they belong. Each brand’s strategy and targets are going to differ. The point is…know who you’re talking to, know how they behave, know what they like, and deliver content using any number of social relationship management targeting tools that meets their expectations. If, however, you’re committed to a one-size-fits-all, “our content is for everybody” strategy (or even worse, a “this is what we want to put out and we expect everybody to love it” strategy), your content will miss the mark for more often than it hits. @mikestilesPhoto via stock.schng

  Read the article

• What is Happening vs. What is Interesting

  - by Geertjan

  Devoxx 2011 was yet another confirmation that all development everywhere is either on the web or on mobile phones. Whether you looked at the conference schedule or attended sessions or talked to speakers at any point at all, it was very clear that no development whatsoever is done anymore on the desktop. In fact, that's something Tim Bray himself told me to my face at the speakers dinner. No new developments of any kind are happening on the desktop. Everyone who is currently on the desktop is working overtime to move all of their applications to the web. They're probably also creating a small subset of their application on an Android tablet, with an even smaller subset on their Android phone. Then you scratch that monolithic surface and find some interesting results. Without naming any names, I asked one of these prominent "ah, forget about the desktop" people at the Devoxx speakers dinner (and I have a witness): "Yes, the desktop is dead, but what about air traffic control, stock trading, oil analysis, risk management applications? In fact, what about any back office application that needs to be usable across all operating systems? Here there is no concern whatsoever with 100% accessibility which is, after all, the only thing that the web has over the desktop, (except when there's a network failure, of course, or when you find yourself in the 3/4 of the world where there's bandwidth problems)? There are 1000's of hidden applications out there that have processing requirements, security requirements, and the requirement that they'll be available even when the network is down or even completely unavailable. Isn't that a valid use case and aren't there 1000's of applications that fall into this so-called niche category? Are you not, in fact, confusing consumer applications, which are increasingly web-based and mobile-based, with high-end corporate applications, which typically need to do massive processing, of one kind or another, for which the web and mobile worlds are completely unsuited?" And you will not believe what the reply to the above question was. (Again, I have a witness to this discussion.) But here it is: "Yes. But those applications are not interesting. I do not want to spend any of my time or work in any way on those applications. They are boring." I'm sad to say that the leaders of the software development community, including those in the Java world, either share the above opinion or are led by it. Because they find something that is not new to be boring, they move on to what is interesting and start talking like the supposedly-boring developments don't even exist. (Kind of like a rapper pretending classical music doesn't exist.) Time and time again I find myself giving Java desktop development courses (at companies, i.e., not hobbyists, or students, but companies, i.e., the places where dollars are earned), where developers say to me: "The course you're giving about creating cross-platform, loosely coupled, and highly cohesive applications is really useful to us. Why do we never find information about this topic at conferences? Why can we never attend a session at a conference where the story about pluggable cross-platform Java is told? Why do we get the impression that we are uncool because we're not on the web and because we're not on a mobile phone, while the reason for that is because we're creating $1000,000 simulation software which has nothing to gain from being on the web or on the mobile phone?" And then I say: "Because nobody knows you exist. Because you're not submitting abstracts to conferences about your very interesting use cases. And because conferences tend to focus on what is new, which tends to be web related (especially HTML 5) or mobile related (especially Android). Because you're not taking the responsibility on yourself to tell the real stories about the real applications being developed all the time and every day. Because you yourself think your work is boring, while in fact it is fascinating. Because desktop developers are working from 9 to 5 on the desktop, in secure environments, such as banks and defense, where you can't spend time, nor have the interest in, blogging your latest tip or trick, as opposed to web developers, who tend to spend a lot of time on the web anyway and are therefore much more inclined to create buzz about the kind of work they're doing." So, next time you look at a conference program and wonder why there's no stories about large desktop development projects in the program, here's the short answer: "No one is going to put those items on the program until you start submitting those kinds of sessions. And until you start blogging. Until you start creating the buzz that the web developers have been creating around their work for the past 10 years or so. And, yes, indeed, programmers get the conference they deserve." And what about Tim Bray? Ask yourself, as Google's lead web technology evangelist, how many desktop developers do you think he talks to and, more generally, what his frame of reference is and what, clearly, he considers to be most interesting.

  Read the article

• Solaris 11 Launch Blog Carnival Roundup

  - by constant

  Solaris 11 is here! And together with the official launch activities, a lot of Oracle and non-Oracle bloggers contributed helpful and informative blog articles to help your datacenter go to eleven. Here are some notable blog postings, sorted by category for your Solaris 11 blog-reading pleasure: Getting Started/Overview A lot of people speculated that the official launch of Solaris 11 would be on 11/11 (whatever way you want to turn it), but it actually happened two days earlier. Larry Wake himself offers 11 Reasons Why Oracle Solaris 11 11/11 Isn't Being Released on 11/11/11. Then, Larry goes on with a summary: Oracle Solaris 11: The First Cloud OS gives you a short and sweet rundown of what the major new features of Solaris 11 are. Jeff Victor has his own list of What's New in Oracle Solaris 11. A popular Solaris 11 meme is to write a blog post about 11 favourite features: Jim Laurent's 11 Reasons to Love Solaris 11, Darren Moffat's 11 Favourite Solaris 11 Features, Mike Gerdt's 11 of My Favourite Things! are just three examples of "11 Favourite Things..." type blog posts, I'm sure many more will follow... More official overview content for Solaris 11 is available from the Oracle Tech Network Solaris 11 Portal. Also, check out Rick Ramsey's blog post Solaris 11 Resources for System Administrators on the OTN Blog and his secret 5 Commands That Make Solaris Administration Easier post from the OTN Garage. (Automatic) Installation and the Image Packaging System (IPS) The brand new Image Packaging System (IPS) and the Automatic Installer (IPS), together with numerous other install/packaging/boot/patching features are among the most significant improvements in Solaris 11. But before installing, you may wonder whether Solaris 11 will support your particular set of hardware devices. Again, the OTN Garage comes to the rescue with Rick Ramsey's post How to Find Out Which Devices Are Supported By Solaris 11. Included is a useful guide to all the first steps to get your Solaris 11 system up and running. Tim Foster had a whole handful of blog posts lined up for the launch, teaching you everything you need to know about IPS but didn't dare to ask: The IPS System Repository, IPS Self-assembly - Part 1: Overlays and Part 2: Multiple Packages Delivering Configuration. Watch out for more IPS posts from Tim! If installing packages or upgrading your system from the net makes you uneasy, then you're not alone: Jim Laurent will tech you how Building a Solaris 11 Repository Without Network Connection will make your life easier. Many of you have already peeked into the future by installing Solaris 11 Express. If you're now wondering whether you can upgrade or whether a fresh install is necessary, then check out Alan Hargreaves's post Upgrading Solaris 11 Express b151a with support to Solaris 11. The trick is in upgrading your pkg(1M) first. Networking One of the first things to do after installing Solaris 11 (or any operating system for that matter), is to set it up for networking. Solaris 11 comes with the brand new "Network Auto-Magic" feature which can figure out everything by itself. For those cases where you want to exercise a little more control, Solaris 11 left a few people scratching their heads. Fortunately, Tschokko wrote up this cool blog post: Solaris 11 manual IPv4 & IPv6 configuration right after the launch ceremony. Thanks, Tschokko! And Milek points out a long awaited networking feature in Solaris 11 called Solaris 11 - hostmodel, which I know for a fact that many customers have looked forward to: How to "bind" a Solaris 11 system to a specific gateway for specific IP address it is using. Steffen Weiberle teaches us how to tune the Solaris 11 networking stack the proper way: ipadm(1M). No more fiddling with ndd(1M)! Check out his tutorial on Solaris 11 Network Tunables. And if you want to get even deeper into the networking stack, there's nothing better than DTrace. Alan Maguire teaches you in: DTracing TCP Congestion Control how to probe deeply into the Solaris 11 TCP/IP stack, the TCP congestion control part in particular. Don't miss his other DTrace and TCP related blog posts! DTrace And there we are: DTrace, the king of all observability tools. Long time DTrace veteran and co-author of The DTrace book*, Brendan Gregg blogged about Solaris 11 DTrace syscall provider changes. BTW, after you install Solaris 11, check out the DTrace toolkit which is installed by default in /usr/dtrace/DTT. It is chock full of handy DTrace scripts, many of which contributed by Brendan himself! Security Another big theme in Solaris 11, and one that is crucial for the success of any operating system in the Cloud is Security. Here are some notable posts in this category: Darren Moffat starts by showing us how to completely get rid of root: Completely Disabling Root Logins on Solaris 11. With no root user, there's one major entry point less to worry about. But that's only the start. In Immutable Zones on Encrypted ZFS, Darren shows us how to double the security of your services: First by locking them into the new Immutable Zones feature, then by encrypting their data using the new ZFS encryption feature. And if you're still missing sudo from your Linux days, Darren again has a solution: Password (PAM) caching for Solaris su - "a la sudo". If you're wondering how much compute power all this encryption will cost you, you're in luck: The Solaris X86 AESNI OpenSSL Engine will make sure you'll use your Intel's embedded crypto support to its fullest. And if you own a brand new SPARC T4 machine you're even luckier: It comes with its own SPARC T4 OpenSSL Engine. Dan Anderson's posts show how there really is now excuse not to encrypt any more... Developers Solaris 11 has a lot to offer to developers as well. Ali Bahrami has a series of blog posts that cover diverse developer topics: elffile: ELF Specific File Identification Utility, Using Stub Objects and The Stub Proto: Not Just For Stub Objects Anymore to name a few. BTW, if you're a developer and want to shape the future of Solaris 11, then Vijay Tatkar has a hint for you: Oracle (Sun Systems Group) is hiring! Desktop and Graphics Yes, Solaris 11 is a 100% server OS, but it can also offer a decent desktop environment, especially if you are a developer. Alan Coopersmith starts by discussing S11 X11: ye olde window system in today's new operating system, then Calum Benson shows us around What's new on the Solaris 11 Desktop. Even accessibility is a first-class citizen in the Solaris 11 user interface. Peter Korn celebrates: Accessible Oracle Solaris 11 - released! Performance Gone are the days of "Slowaris", when Solaris was among the few OSes that "did the right thing" while others cut corners just to win benchmarks. Today, Solaris continues doing the right thing, and it delivers the right performance at the same time. Need proof? Check out Brian's BestPerf blog with continuous updates from the benchmarking lab, including Recent Benchmarks Using Oracle Solaris 11! Send Me More Solaris 11 Launch Articles! These are just a few of the more interesting blog articles that came out around the Solaris 11 launch, I'm sure there are many more! Feel free to post a comment below if you find a particularly interesting blog post that hasn't been listed so far and share your enthusiasm for Solaris 11! *Affiliate link: Buy cool stuff and support this blog at no extra cost. We both win! var flattr_uid = '26528'; var flattr_tle = 'Solaris 11 Launch Blog Carnival Roundup'; var flattr_dsc = '<strong>Solaris 11 is here!</strong>And together with the official launch activities, a lot of Oracle and non-Oracle bloggers contributed helpful and informative blog articles to help your datacenter <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Up_to_eleven">go to eleven</a>.Here are some notable blog postings, sorted by category for your Solaris 11 blog-reading pleasure:'; var flattr_tag = 'blogging,digest,Oracle,Solaris,solaris,solaris 11'; var flattr_cat = 'text'; var flattr_url = 'http://constantin.glez.de/blog/2011/11/solaris-11-launch-blog-carnival-roundup'; var flattr_lng = 'en_GB'

  Read the article

• Interesting articles and blogs on SPARC T4

  - by mv

  Interesting articles and blogs on SPARC T4 processor   I have consolidated all the interesting information I could get on SPARC T4 processor and its hardware cryptographic capabilities.  Hope its useful. 1. Advantages of SPARC T4 processor  Most important points in this T4 announcement are : "The SPARC T4 processor was designed from the ground up for high speed security and has a cryptographic stream processing unit (SPU) integrated directly into each processor core. These accelerators support 16 industry standard security ciphers and enable high speed encryption at rates 3 to 5 times that of competing processors. By integrating encryption capabilities directly inside the instruction pipeline, the SPARC T4 processor eliminates the performance and cost barriers typically associated with secure computing and makes it possible to deliver high security levels without impacting the user experience." Data Sheet has more details on these  : "New on-chip Encryption Instruction Accelerators with direct non-privileged support for 16 industry-standard cryptographic algorithms plus random number generation in each of the eight cores: AES, Camellia, CRC32c, DES, 3DES, DH, DSA, ECC, Kasumi, MD5, RSA, SHA-1, SHA-224, SHA-256, SHA-384, SHA-512" I ran "isainfo -v" command on Solaris 11 Sparc T4-1 system. It shows the new instructions as expected  : $ isainfo -v 64-bit sparcv9 applications crc32c cbcond pause mont mpmul sha512 sha256 sha1 md5 camellia kasumi des aes ima hpc vis3 fmaf asi_blk_init vis2 vis popc 32-bit sparc applications crc32c cbcond pause mont mpmul sha512 sha256 sha1 md5 camellia kasumi des aes ima hpc vis3 fmaf asi_blk_init vis2 vis popc v8plus div32 mul32  2.  Dan Anderson's Blog have some interesting points about how these can be used : "New T4 crypto instructions include: aes_kexpand0, aes_kexpand1, aes_kexpand2,         aes_eround01, aes_eround23, aes_eround01_l, aes_eround_23_l, aes_dround01, aes_dround23, aes_dround01_l, aes_dround_23_l.       Having SPARC T4 hardware crypto instructions is all well and good, but how do we access it ?      The software is available with Solaris 11 and is used automatically if you are running Solaris a SPARC T4.  It is used internally in the kernel through kernel crypto modules.  It is available in user space through the PKCS#11 library." 3.   Dans' Blog on Where's the Crypto Libraries? Although this was written in 2009 but still is very useful  "Here's a brief tour of the major crypto libraries shown in the digraph:   The libpkcs11 library contains the PKCS#11 API (C_\*() functions, such as C_Initialize()). That in turn calls library pkcs11_softtoken or pkcs11_kernel, for userland or kernel crypto providers. The latter is used mostly for hardware-assisted cryptography (such as n2cp for Niagara2 SPARC processors), as that is performed more efficiently in kernel space with the "kCF" module (Kernel Crypto Framework). Additionally, for Solaris 10, strong crypto algorithms were split off in separate libraries, pkcs11_softtoken_extra libcryptoutil contains low-level utility functions to help implement cryptography. libsoftcrypto (OpenSolaris and Solaris Nevada only) implements several symmetric-key crypto algorithms in software, such as AES, RC4, and DES3, and the bignum library (used for RSA). libmd implements MD5, SHA, and SHA2 message digest algorithms" 4. Difference in T3 and T4 Diagram in this blog is good and self explanatory. Jeff's blog also highlights the differences  "The T4 servers have improved crypto acceleration, described at https://blogs.oracle.com/DanX/entry/sparc_t4_openssl_engine. It is "just built in" so administrators no longer have to assign crypto accelerator units to domains - it "just happens". Every physical or virtual CPU on a SPARC-T4 has full access to hardware based crypto acceleration at all times. .... For completeness sake, it's worth noting that the T4 adds more crypto algorithms, and accelerates Camelia, CRC32c, and more SHA-x." 5. About performance counters In this blog, performance counters are explained : "Note that unlike T3 and before, T4 crypto doesn't require kernel modules like ncp or n2cp, there is no visibility of crypto hardware with kstats or cryptoadm. T4 does provide hardware counters for crypto operations.  You can see these using cpustat: cpustat -c pic0=Instr_FGU_crypto 5 You can check the general crypto support of the hardware and OS with the command "isainfo -v". Since T4 crypto's implementation now allows direct userland access, there are no "crypto units" visible to cryptoadm.  " For more details refer Martin's blog as well. 6. How to turn off  SPARC T4 or Intel AES-NI crypto acceleration  I found this interesting blog from Darren about how to turn off  SPARC T4 or Intel AES-NI crypto acceleration. "One of the new Solaris 11 features of the linker/loader is the ability to have a single ELF object that has multiple different implementations of the same functions that are selected at runtime based on the capabilities of the machine.   The alternate to this is having the application coded to call getisax(2) system call and make the choice itself.  We use this functionality of the linker/loader when we build the userland libraries for the Solaris Cryptographic Framework (specifically libmd.so and libsoftcrypto.so) The Solaris linker/loader allows control of a lot of its functionality via environment variables, we can use that to control the version of the cryptographic functions we run.  To do this we simply export the LD_HWCAP environment variable with values that tell ld.so.1 to not select the HWCAP section matching certain features even if isainfo says they are present.  This will work for consumers of the Solaris Cryptographic Framework that use the Solaris PKCS#11 libraries or use libmd.so interfaces directly.  For SPARC T4 : export LD_HWCAP="-aes -des -md5 -sha256 -sha512 -mont -mpul" .. For Intel systems with AES-NI support: export LD_HWCAP="-aes"" Note that LD_HWCAP is explained in  http://docs.oracle.com/cd/E23823_01/html/816-5165/ld.so.1-1.html "LD_HWCAP, LD_HWCAP_32, and LD_HWCAP_64 -  Identifies an alternative hardware capabilities value... A “-” prefix results in the capabilities that follow being removed from the alternative capabilities." 7. Whitepaper on SPARC T4 Servers—Optimized for End-to-End Data Center Computing This Whitepaper on SPARC T4 Servers—Optimized for End-to-End Data Center Computing explains more details.  It has DTrace scripts which may come in handy : "To ensure the hardware-assisted cryptographic acceleration is configured to use and working with the security scenarios, it is recommended to use the following Solaris DTrace script. #!/usr/sbin/dtrace -s pid$1:libsoftcrypto:yf*:entry, pid$target:libsoftcrypto:rsa*:entry, pid$1:libmd:yf*:entry { @[probefunc] = count(); } tick-1sec { printa(@ops); trunc(@ops); }" Note that I have slightly modified the D Script to have RSA "libsoftcrypto:rsa*:entry" as well as per recommendations from Chi-Chang Lin. 8. References http://www.oracle.com/us/corporate/features/sparc-t4-announcement-494846.html http://www.oracle.com/us/products/servers-storage/servers/sparc-enterprise/t-series/sparc-t4-1-ds-487858.pdf https://blogs.oracle.com/DanX/entry/sparc_t4_openssl_engine https://blogs.oracle.com/DanX/entry/where_s_the_crypto_libraries https://blogs.oracle.com/darren/entry/howto_turn_off_sparc_t4 http://docs.oracle.com/cd/E23823_01/html/816-5165/ld.so.1-1.html   https://blogs.oracle.com/hardware/entry/unleash_the_power_of_cryptography https://blogs.oracle.com/cmt/entry/t4_crypto_cheat_sheet https://blogs.oracle.com/martinm/entry/t4_performance_counters_explained  https://blogs.oracle.com/jsavit/entry/no_mau_required_on_a http://www.oracle.com/us/products/servers-storage/servers/sparc-enterprise/t-series/sparc-t4-business-wp-524472.pdf

  Read the article

• Time Tracking on an Agile Team

  - by Stephen.Walther

  What’s the best way to handle time-tracking on an Agile team? Your gut reaction to this question might be to resist any type of time-tracking at all. After all, one of the principles of the Agile Manifesto is “Individuals and interactions over processes and tools”.  Forcing the developers on your team to track the amount of time that they devote to completing stories or tasks might seem like useless bureaucratic red tape: an impediment to getting real work done. I completely understand this reaction. I’ve been required to use time-tracking software in the past to account for each hour of my workday. It made me feel like Fred Flintstone punching in at the quarry mine and not like a professional. Why You Really Do Need Time-Tracking There are, however, legitimate reasons to track time spent on stories even when you are a member of an Agile team.  First, if you are working with an outside client, you might need to track the number of hours spent on different stories for the purposes of billing. There might be no way to avoid time-tracking if you want to get paid. Second, the Product Owner needs to know when the work on a story has gone over the original time estimated for the story. The Product Owner is concerned with Return On Investment. If the team has gone massively overtime on a story, then the Product Owner has a legitimate reason to halt work on the story and reconsider the story’s business value. Finally, you might want to track how much time your team spends on different types of stories or tasks. For example, if your team is spending 75% of their time doing testing then you might need to bring in more testers. Or, if 10% of your team’s time is expended performing a software build at the end of each iteration then it is time to consider better ways of automating the build process. Time-Tracking in SonicAgile For these reasons, we added time-tracking as a feature to SonicAgile which is our free Agile Project Management tool. We were heavily influenced by Jeff Sutherland (one of the founders of Scrum) in the way that we implemented time-tracking (see his article http://scrum.jeffsutherland.com/2007/03/time-tracking-is-anti-scrum-what-do-you.html). In SonicAgile, time-tracking is disabled by default. If you want to use this feature then the project owner must enable time-tracking in Project Settings. You can choose to estimate using either days or hours. If you are estimating at the level of stories then it makes more sense to choose days. Otherwise, if you are estimating at the level of tasks then it makes more sense to use hours. After you enable time-tracking then you can assign three estimates to a story: Original Estimate – This is the estimate that you enter when you first create a story. You don’t change this estimate. Time Spent – This is the amount of time that you have already devoted to the story. You update the time spent on each story during your daily standup meeting. Time Left – This is the amount of time remaining to complete the story. Again, you update the time left during your daily standup meeting. So when you first create a story, you enter an original estimate that becomes the time left. During each daily standup meeting, you update the time spent and time left for each story on the Kanban. If you had perfect predicative power, then the original estimate would always be the same as the sum of the time spent and the time left. For example, if you predict that a story will take 5 days to complete then on day 3, the story should have 3 days spent and 2 days left. Unfortunately, never in the history of mankind has anyone accurately predicted the exact amount of time that it takes to complete a story. For this reason, SonicAgile does not update the time spent and time left automatically. Each day, during the daily standup, your team should update the time spent and time left for each story. For example, the following table shows the history of the time estimates for a story that was originally estimated to take 3 days but, eventually, takes 5 days to complete: Day Original Estimate Time Spent Time Left Day 1 3 days 0 days 3 days Day 2 3 days 1 day 2 days Day 3 3 days 2 days 2 days Day 4 3 days 3 days 2 days Day 5 3 days 4 days 0 days In the table above, everything goes as predicted until you reach day 3. On day 3, the team realizes that the work will require an additional two days. The situation does not improve on day 4. All of the sudden, on day 5, all of the remaining work gets done. Real work often follows this pattern. There are long periods when nothing gets done punctuated by occasional and unpredictable bursts of progress. We designed SonicAgile to make it as easy as possible to track the time spent and time left on a story. Detecting when a Story Goes Over the Original Estimate Sometimes, stories take much longer than originally estimated. There’s a surprise. For example, you discover that a new software component is incompatible with existing software components. Or, you discover that you have to go through a month-long certification process to finish a story. In those cases, the Product Owner has a legitimate reason to halt work on a story and re-evaluate the business value of the story. For example, the Product Owner discovers that a story will require weeks to implement instead of days, then the story might not be worth the expense. SonicAgile displays a warning on both the Backlog and the Kanban when the time spent on a story goes over the original estimate. An icon of a clock is displayed. Time-Tracking and Tasks Another optional feature of SonicAgile is tasks. If you enable Tasks in Project Settings then you can break stories into one or more tasks. You can perform time-tracking at the level of a story or at the level of a task. If you don’t break a story into tasks then you can enter the time left and time spent for the story. As soon as you break a story into tasks, then you can no longer enter the time left and time spent at the level of the story. Instead, the time left and time spent for a story is rolled up from its tasks. On the Kanban, you can see how the time left and time spent for each task gets rolled up into each story. The progress bar for the story is rolled up from the progress bars for each task. The original estimate is never rolled up – even when you break a story into tasks. A story’s original estimate is entered separately from the original estimates of each of the story’s tasks. Summary Not every Agile team can avoid time-tracking. You might be forced to track time to get paid, to detect when you are spending too much time on a particular story, or to track the amount of time that you are devoting to different types of tasks. We designed time-tracking in SonicAgile to require the least amount of work to track the information that you need. Time-tracking is an optional feature. If you enable time-tracking then you can track the original estimate, time left, and time spent for each story and task. You can use time-tracking with SonicAgile for free. Register at http://SonicAgile.com.

  Read the article

• XBRL US Conference Highlights

  - by john.orourke(at)oracle.com

  Back in early November I had an opportunity to attend the XBRL US National Conference in Philadelphia.  At the event, XBRL US announced that Oracle had joined the initiative, so I had a chance to participate in a press conference and attend a number of sessions.  Oracle joined XBRL US so we can stay ahead of the standard and leverage it in our products, and to help drive awareness with customers and improve adoption of XBRL. There were roughly 250 attendees at the event, about half of which were vendors and consultants and the rest financial reporting staff from corporate filers.  Event sponsors included Ernst & Young, SWIFT and Fujitsu.  There were also a number of XBRL technology and service providers exhibiting at the conference.  On Monday Nov. 8th, the XBRL US Steering Committee meetings and Annual Members meeting and reception were held.  At the Annual Members meeting the big news was that current XBRL US President, Mark Bolgiano, is moving to a new position at Howard Hughes Medical Center.  Campbell Pryde, who had led the Taxonomy Development for XBRL US, is taking over as XBRL US President. Other items that were highlighted at the members meeting included: The US GAAP XBRL taxonomy is being used by over 1500 SEC filers and has now been handed over to the FASB to maintain and enhance 16 filer training events were held in 2010 XBRL Global Magazine was launched Corporate Actions proposal was submitted to the SEC with SWIFT in May XBRL Labs for iPhone, XBRL US Consistency Suite launched ISO 2022 Corporate Actions Alignment with XBRL achieved The XBRL Credit Rating taxonomy was accepted Tuesday Nov. 9th included Keynotes, General Sessions, Innovation Workshop for Governments and Securities Professionals, and an Opening Reception.  General sessions included: Lessons Learned from the SEC's rollout of XBRL.  More than 18,000 errors were identified in reviews of filings between June 2009 and September 2010.  Most of these related to negative values being used where they shouldn't have.  Also, the SEC feels there are too many taxonomy extensions being created - mostly in the Cash Flow Statements.  They emphasize using existing elements in the US GAAP taxonomy and advise filers not to  create extensions to improve the visual formatting of XBRL filings. Investors and XBRL - Setting the Standard for Data Quality.  In this panel discussion, the key learning was that CFA's, academics and the financial community are not using XBRL as expected.  The issues raised include the  accuracy and completeness of filings, number of taxonomy extensions, and limited number of tools available to help analyze XBRL data.  Another big issue that was raised is the lack of historic results in XBRL - most analysts need 10 quarters of historic data.  On the positive side, XBRL has the potential to eliminate re-keying of data and errors here and can improve analytic capabilities for financial analysts once more historic data is available and more companies are providing detailed tagging of their filings. A US Roadmap for XBRL Financial Reporting.  This was a panel discussion featuring Jeff Neumann(SEC), Campbell Pryde(XBRL US), and Louis Matherne(FASB).  Key points included the fact that XBRL is currently used by 1500 companies, with 8000 more companies coming in 2011.  XBRL for Mutual Fund Reporting will start in 2011 for 8000 funds, and a Credit Rating Taxonomy has now been submitted for review.  The XBRL tagging/filing process is improving each quarter - more education is helping here.  The FASB is looking at extensions to date, and potential additions to US GAAP taxonomy, while the SEC is evaluating filings for accuracy, consistency in tagging, and tools for analyzing data.  The big news is that the FASB 2011 US GAAP Taxonomy has been completed and reviewed by SEC.  The 2011 US GAAP Taxonomy supports new FASB accounting standards issued since 2009, has new taxonomy elements for certain industries (i.e airlines) and the elimination of 500 concepts.  (meaning they can't be used going forward but are still supported for historical comparison)  The 2011 US GAAP Taxonomy will be available for usage with Q2 2011 SEC filings.  More information about this can be found on the FASB web site.  http://www.fasb.org/home Accounting Firms and XBRL.  This session covered the Role of Audit Firms, which includes awareness and education, validation of XBRL filings, and in-house transition planning.  The main advice provided was that organizations should document XBRL mapping process, perform peer comparisons, and risk assessments on a regular basis. Wednesday Nov. 10th included more Keynotes, General Sessions on Corporate Actions, and XBRL Essentials Workshop Training for corporate filers.  The XBRL Essentials Training included: Getting Started Once you Have the Basics Detailed Footnote Tagging and Handling Tables Quality Control and Trust in the XBRL Process Bringing XBRL In-House:  What are the Options, What should you consider? The US GAAP Financial Reporting Taxonomy - Overview of the 2011 release The XBRL Essentials Training was well-attended with about 80 people.  This included a good overview of the SEC's XBRL mandate, limited liability issue, tagging levels, recommended planning process, internal vs. outsourced approach, and how to manage service providers.  I learned a lot from the session on detailed tagging.  This is the requirement that kicks in during a company's second year of XBRL filing with the SEC and applies to financial statements, footnotes and disclosures (it does not apply to MD&A, executive communications and other information).  The review of the Linkbase model, or dimensional table structure, was very interesting and can be complex to understand.  The key takeaway here is that using dimensional tables in XBRL filings can help limit the number of taxonomy extensions that are required.  The slides from this session are posted on the XBRL US web site. (http://xbrl.us/events/Pages/archive.aspx) For me, the main summary points and takeaways from the XBRL US conference are: XBRL for financial reporting has turned the corner and gone mainstream - with 1500 companies currently using it and 8000 more coming in 2011 The expected value is not being achieved by filers or consumers of XBRL data - this will improve when more companies are filing in XBRL, more history is available, and more software tools are available for analysis (hmm, sounds like an opportunity for Oracle) XBRL is becoming the global standard for all business communications beyond just the financials - i.e. adoption for mutual funds, corporate actions and others planned for the future If you would like to learn more about XBRL and the various training programs, services and software tools that are available check out the XBRL US web site and even better - become a member.  Here's a link:  http://xbrl.us/Pages/default.aspx

  Read the article

• The Faces in the Crowdsourcing

  - by Applications User Experience

  By Jeff Sauro, Principal Usability Engineer, Oracle Imagine having access to a global workforce of hundreds of thousands of people who can perform tasks or provide feedback on a design quickly and almost immediately. Distributing simple tasks not easily done by computers to the masses is called "crowdsourcing" and until recently was an interesting concept, but due to practical constraints wasn't used often. Enter Amazon.com. For five years, Amazon has hosted a service called Mechanical Turk, which provides an easy interface to the crowds. The service has almost half a million registered, global users performing a quarter of a million human intelligence tasks (HITs). HITs are submitted by individuals and companies in the U.S. and pay from $.01 for simple tasks (such as determining if a picture is offensive) to several dollars (for tasks like transcribing audio). What do we know about the people who toil away in this digital crowd? Can we rely on the work done in this anonymous marketplace? A rendering of the actual Mechanical Turk (from Wikipedia) Knowing who is behind Amazon's Mechanical Turk is fitting, considering the history of the actual Mechanical Turk. In the late 1800's, a mechanical chess-playing machine awed crowds as it beat master chess players in what was thought to be a mechanical miracle. It turned out that the creator, Wolfgang von Kempelen, had a small person (also a chess master) hiding inside the machine operating the arms to provide the illusion of automation. The field of human computer interaction (HCI) is quite familiar with gathering user input and incorporating it into all stages of the design process. It makes sense then that Mechanical Turk was a popular discussion topic at the recent Computer Human Interaction usability conference sponsored by the Association for Computing Machinery in Atlanta. It is already being used as a source for input on Web sites (for example, Feedbackarmy.com) and behavioral research studies. Two papers shed some light on the faces in this crowd. One paper tells us about the shifting demographics from mostly stay-at-home moms to young men in India. The second paper discusses the reliability and quality of work from the workers. Just who exactly would spend time doing tasks for pennies? In "Who are the crowdworkers?" University of California researchers Ross, Silberman, Zaldivar and Tomlinson conducted a survey of Mechanical Turk worker demographics and compared it to a similar survey done two years before. The initial survey reported workers consisting largely of young, well-educated women living in the U.S. with annual household incomes above $40,000. The more recent survey reveals a shift in demographics largely driven by an influx of workers from India. Indian workers went from 5% to over 30% of the crowd, and this block is largely male (two-thirds) with a higher average education than U.S. workers, and 64% report an annual income of less than $10,000 (keeping in mind $1 has a lot more purchasing power in India). This shifting demographic certainly has implications as language and culture can play critical roles in the outcome of HITs. Of course, the demographic data came from paying Turkers $.10 to fill out a survey, so there is some question about both a self-selection bias (characteristics which cause Turks to take this survey may be unrepresentative of the larger population), not to mention whether we can really trust the data we get from the crowd. Crowds can perform tasks or provide feedback on a design quickly and almost immediately for usability testing. (Photo attributed to victoriapeckham Flikr While having immediate access to a global workforce is nice, one major problem with Mechanical Turk is the incentive structure. Individuals and companies that deploy HITs want quality responses for a low price. Workers, on the other hand, want to complete the task and get paid as quickly as possible, so that they can get on to the next task. Since many HITs on Mechanical Turk are surveys, how valid and reliable are these results? How do we know whether workers are just rushing through the multiple-choice responses haphazardly answering? In "Are your participants gaming the system?" researchers at Carnegie Mellon (Downs, Holbrook, Sheng and Cranor) set up an experiment to find out what percentage of their workers were just in it for the money. The authors set up a 30-minute HIT (one of the more lengthy ones for Mechanical Turk) and offered a very high $4 to those who qualified and $.20 to those who did not. As part of the HIT, workers were asked to read an email and respond to two questions that determined whether workers were likely rushing through the HIT and not answering conscientiously. One question was simple and took little effort, while the second question required a bit more work to find the answer. Workers were led to believe other factors than these two questions were the qualifying aspect of the HIT. Of the 2000 participants, roughly 1200 (or 61%) answered both questions correctly. Eighty-eight percent answered the easy question correctly, and 64% answered the difficult question correctly. In other words, about 12% of the crowd were gaming the system, not paying enough attention to the question or making careless errors. Up to about 40% won't put in more than a modest effort to get paid for a HIT. Young men and those that considered themselves in the financial industry tended to be the most likely to try to game the system. There wasn't a breakdown by country, but given the demographic information from the first article, we could infer that many of these young men come from India, which makes language and other cultural differences a factor. These articles raise questions about the role of crowdsourcing as a means for getting quick user input at low cost. While compensating users for their time is nothing new, the incentive structure and anonymity of Mechanical Turk raises some interesting questions. How complex of a task can we ask of the crowd, and how much should these workers be paid? Can we rely on the information we get from these professional users, and if so, how can we best incorporate it into designing more usable products? Traditional usability testing will still play a central role in enterprise software. Crowdsourcing doesn't replace testing; instead, it makes certain parts of gathering user feedback easier. One can turn to the crowd for simple tasks that don't require specialized skills and get a lot of data fast. As more studies are conducted on Mechanical Turk, I suspect we will see crowdsourcing playing an increasing role in human computer interaction and enterprise computing. References: Downs, J. S., Holbrook, M. B., Sheng, S., and Cranor, L. F. 2010. Are your participants gaming the system?: screening mechanical turk workers. In Proceedings of the 28th international Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (Atlanta, Georgia, USA, April 10 - 15, 2010). CHI '10. ACM, New York, NY, 2399-2402. Link: http://doi.acm.org/10.1145/1753326.1753688 Ross, J., Irani, L., Silberman, M. S., Zaldivar, A., and Tomlinson, B. 2010. Who are the crowdworkers?: shifting demographics in mechanical turk. In Proceedings of the 28th of the international Conference Extended Abstracts on Human Factors in Computing Systems (Atlanta, Georgia, USA, April 10 - 15, 2010). CHI EA '10. ACM, New York, NY, 2863-2872. Link: http://doi.acm.org/10.1145/1753846.1753873

  Read the article

• CodePlex Daily Summary for Monday, August 11, 2014

  CodePlex Daily Summary for Monday, August 11, 2014Popular ReleasesSpace Engineers Server Manager: SESM V1.15: V1.15 - Updated Quartz library - Correct a bug in the new mod managment - Added a warning if you have backup enabled on a server but no static map configuredAspose for Apache POI: Missing Features of Apache POI SS - v 1.2: Release contain the Missing Features in Apache POI SS SDK in comparison with Aspose.Cells What's New ? Following Examples: Create Pivot Charts Detect Merged Cells Sort Data Printing Workbooks Feedback and Suggestions Many more examples are available at Aspose Docs. Raise your queries and suggest more examples via Aspose Forums or via this social coding site.AngularGo (SPA Project Template): AngularGo.VS2013.vsix: First ReleaseTouchmote: Touchmote 1.0 beta 13: Changes Less GPU usage Works together with other Xbox 360 controls Bug fixesPublic Key Infrastructure PowerShell module: PowerShell PKI Module v3.0: Important: I would like to hear more about what you are thinking about the project? I appreciate that you like it (2000 downloads over past 6 months), but may be you have to say something? What do you dislike in the module? Maybe you would love to see some new functionality? Tell, what you think! Installation guide:Use default installation path to install this module for current user only. To install this module for all users — enable "Install for all users" check-box in installation UI ...Modern UI for WPF: Modern UI 1.0.6: The ModernUI assembly including a demo app demonstrating the various features of Modern UI for WPF. BREAKING CHANGE LinkGroup.GroupName renamed to GroupKey NEW FEATURES Improved rendering on high DPI screens, including support for per-monitor DPI awareness available in Windows 8.1 (see also Per-monitor DPI awareness) New ModernProgressRing control with 8 builtin styles New LinkCommands.NavigateLink routed command New Visual Studio project templates 'Modern UI WPF App' and 'Modern UI W...ClosedXML - The easy way to OpenXML: ClosedXML 0.74.0: Multiple thread safe improvements including AdjustToContents XLHelper XLColor_Static IntergerExtensions.ToStringLookup Exception now thrown when saving a workbook with no sheets, instead of creating a corrupt workbook Fix for hyperlinks with non-ASCII Characters Added basic workbook protection Fix for error thrown, when a spreadsheet contained comments and images Fix to Trim function Fix Invalid operation Exception thrown when the formula functions MAX, MIN, and AVG referenc...SEToolbox: SEToolbox 01.042.019 Release 1: Added RadioAntenna broadcast name to ship name detail. Added two additional columns for Asteroid material generation for Asteroid Fields. Added Mass and Block number columns to main display. Added Ellipsis to some columns on main display to reduce name confusion. Added correct SE version number in file when saving. Re-added in reattaching Motor when drag/dropping or importing ships (KeenSH have added RotorEntityId back in after removing it months ago). Added option to export and r...jQuery List DragSort: jQuery List DragSort 0.5.2: Fixed scrollContainer removing deprecated use of $.browser so should now work with latest version of jQuery. Added the ability to return false in dragEnd to revert sort order Project changes Added nuget package for dragsort https://www.nuget.org/packages/dragsort Converted repository from SVN to MercurialBraintree Client Library: Braintree 2.32.0: Allow credit card verification options to be passed outside of the nonce for PaymentMethod.create Allow billingaddress parameters and billingaddress_id to be passed outside of the nonce for PaymentMethod.create Add Subscriptions to paypal accounts Add PaymentMethod.update Add failonduplicatepaymentmethod option to PaymentMethod.create Add support for dispute webhooksThe Mario Kart 8 App: V1.0.2.1: First Codeplex release. WINDOWS INSTALLER ONLYAspose Java for Docx4j: Aspose.Words vs Docx4j - v 1.0: Release contain the Code Comparison for Features in Docx4j SDK and Aspose.Words What's New ?Following Examples: Accessing Document Properties Add Bookmarks Convert to Formats Delete Bookmarks Working with Comments Feedback and Suggestions Many more examples are available at Aspose Docs. Raise your queries and suggest more examples via Aspose Forums or via this social coding site.File System Security PowerShell Module: NTFSSecurity 2.4.1: Add-Access and Remove-Access now take multiple accoutsYourSqlDba: YourSqlDba 5.2.1.: This version improves alert message that comes a while after you install the script. First it says to get it from YourSqlDba.CodePlex.com If you don't want to update now, just-rerun the script from your installed version. To get actual version running just execute install.PrintVersionInfo. . You can go to source code / history and click on change set 72957 to see changes in the script.Manipulator: Manipulator: manipulatorXNB filetype plugin for Paint.NET: Paint.NET XNB plugin v0.4.0.0: CHANGELOG Reverted old incomplete changes. Updated library for compatibility with Paint .NET 4. Updated project to NET 4.5. Updated version to 0.4.0.0. INSTALLATION INSTRUCTIONS Extract the ZIP file to your Paint.NET\FileTypes folder.EdiFabric: Release 4.1: Changed MessageContextWix# (WixSharp) - managed interface for WiX: Release 1.0.0.0: Release 1.0.0.0 Custom UI Custom MSI Dialog Custom CLR Dialog External UIMath.NET Numerics: Math.NET Numerics v3.2.0: Linear Algebra: Vector.Map2 (map2 in F#), storage-optimized Linear Algebra: fix RemoveColumn/Row early index bound check (was not strict enough) Statistics: Entropy ~Jeff Mastry Interpolation: use Array.BinarySearch instead of local implementation ~Candy Chiu Resources: fix a corrupted exception message string Portable Build: support .Net 4.0 as well by using profile 328 instead of 344. .Net 3.5: F# extensions now support .Net 3.5 as well .Net 3.5: NuGet package now contains pro...babelua: 1.6.5.1: V1.6.5.1 - 2014.8.7New feature: Formatting code; Stability improvement: fix a bug that pop up error "System.Net.WebResponse EndGetResponse";New ProjectsDouDou: a little project.Dynamic MVC: Dynamically generate views from your model objects for a data centric MVC application.EasyDb - Simple Data Access: EasyDb is a simple library for data access that allows you to write less code.ExpressToAbroad: just go!!!!!Full Silverlight Web Video/Voice Conferencing: The Goal of this project is to provide complete Open Source (Voice/Video Chatting Client/Server) Modules Using SilverlightGaia: Gaia is an app for Windows plataform, Gaia is like Siri and Google Now or Betty but Gaia use only text commands.pxctest: pxctestSTACS: Career Management System for MIT by Team "STACS"StrongWorld: StrongWorld.WebSuiteXevas Tools: Xevas is a professional coders group of 'Nimbuzz'. We make all tools for worldwide users of nimbuzz at free of cost.????????: ????????????????: ???????????????: ??????????????: ??????????????: ??????????????: ??????????????: ??????????????: ????????????????: ????????????????: ???????????????: ???????????????: ??????????????: ??????????????: ??????????????: ??????????????: ??????????????: ??????????????: ??????????????: ???????????????: ???????????????: ??????????????: ??????????????: ??????????????: ????????????????: ????????????????: ???????????????: ???????????????: ??????????????: ??????????????: ??????????????: ??????????????: ??????????????: ??????????????: ??????????????: ??????????????: ??????????????: ??????????????: ??????????????: ??????????????: ??????????????: ??????????????: ??????????????: ??????????????: ??????????????: ???????????????: ???????????????: ??????????????: ??????????????: ??????????????: ???????????????: ???????????????: ??????????????: ??????????????: ??????????????: ??????????????: ??????????????: ??????????????: ??????????????: ??????????????: ??????????????: ??????????????: ??????????????: ??????????????: ??????????????: ??????????????: ??????????????: ??????????????: ??????????????: ??????????????: ??????????????: ??????????????: ??????????????: ??????????????: ??????????????: ??????????????: ??????????????: ??????????????: ??????????????: ??????????????: ??????????????: ??????????????: ??????????????: ??????????????: ??????????????: ??????????????: ??????????????: ??????????????: ??????????????: ??????????????: ??????????????: ???????????????: ???????????????: ??????????????: ??????????????: ??????????????: ???????????????: ????????????????: ???????????????: ??????????????: ??????????????: ??????????????: ??????????????: ??????????????: ??????????????: ???????????????: ???????????????: ??????????????: ??????????????: ??????????????: ??????????????: ??????????????: ??????????????: ??????????????: ??????????????: ???????????????: ???????????????: ??????????????: ??????????????: ??????????????: ??????????????: ????????????????: ????????????????: ??????????????: ??????????????: ??????????????: ??????????????: ??????????????: ??????????????: ??????????????: ??????????????: ??????????????: ??????????????: ??????????????: ??????????????: ??????????????: ???????????????: ???????????????: ??????????????: ??????????????: ??????????????: ????????????????: ?????????

  Read the article

• Listview Row Overlap Problem

  - by rgrandy

  I just updated my app and I am getting some odd complaints from people who update it. I am only getting complaints from people with non-stock android phones (phones that manufacturers have modified...HTC phones, cliq, pulse, etc), other phones like the Droid, Nexus work fine. My app (Photo Frame Deluxe) has a list in it with a Image View, Text View, View (spacer) and checkbox, all in a row. What happens on the affected phones is that the rows start overlapping and it cuts the top half of everything off. My layout code for this is below, I am pulling my hair out on this, what might I have wrong in this layout. Why does this work on some phones and not on others? Any help would be appreciated. Row Layout: <?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?> <LinearLayout xmlns:android="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res/android" android:layout_width="fill_parent" android:layout_height="wrap_content" android:orientation="horizontal"> <ImageView android:id="@+id/photorowIcon" android:layout_width="wrap_content" android:layout_height="wrap_content" android:layout_gravity="center_vertical" android:paddingTop="10dp" android:paddingBottom="10dp" android:paddingRight="5dp" /> <TextView android:id="@+id/photorowText" android:layout_width="wrap_content" android:layout_height="wrap_content" android:layout_gravity="center_vertical" /> <View android:layout_width="0px" android:layout_height="wrap_content" android:layout_weight="1"/> <CheckBox android:id="@+id/photorowCheckBox" android:layout_width="wrap_content" android:layout_height="wrap_content" android:layout_gravity="center_vertical" android:focusable="false" android:focusableInTouchMode="false" /> </LinearLayout> Layout Row is inserted in: <?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?> <LinearLayout xmlns:android="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res/android" android:layout_width="fill_parent" android:layout_height="fill_parent" android:orientation="vertical"> <LinearLayout android:layout_width="fill_parent" android:layout_height="wrap_content" android:background="@drawable/title1_gradient" android:orientation="vertical"> <TextView android:layout_width="fill_parent" android:layout_height="wrap_content" android:text="Select Photos to Display:" android:textSize="20sp" android:textStyle="bold" android:textColor="#FFFFFFFF" android:paddingLeft="5dp" android:paddingRight="5dp" android:paddingTop="5dp" /> <TextView android:layout_width="fill_parent" android:layout_height="wrap_content" android:id="@+id/folderName" android:textSize="15sp" android:textStyle="bold" android:textColor="#FFFFFFFF" android:paddingLeft="5dp" android:paddingRight="5dp" android:paddingBottom="5dp" /> <View android:layout_width="fill_parent" android:layout_height="1px" android:background="#406C6C6C"/> </LinearLayout> <ListView android:id="@android:id/list" android:layout_width="fill_parent" android:layout_height="0px" android:layout_weight="1" android:drawSelectorOnTop="false" android:paddingLeft="5dp" android:paddingRight="5dp" /> <LinearLayout android:layout_width="fill_parent" android:layout_height="wrap_content" android:orientation="vertical" android:layout_gravity="bottom"> <LinearLayout android:layout_width="fill_parent" android:layout_height="wrap_content" android:orientation="horizontal" android:layout_gravity="bottom" android:background="#FF6C6C6C" android:padding="5dp"> <Button android:layout_width="fill_parent" android:layout_height="wrap_content" android:id="@+id/ok" android:text="OK"/> </LinearLayout> </LinearLayout> </LinearLayout>

  Read the article

• How to change Jquery UI Slider handle

  - by Tom

  I want to modify the stock JQuery UI slider so that the handle has a arrow on it rather than being a square. i.e. I want to use a custom image as the handle. There are a few tutorials that do it: http://jqueryfordesigners.com/slider-gallery/ http://www.ryancoughlin.com/2008/11/04/using-the-jquery-ui-slider/ http://www.keepthewebweird.com/creating-a-nice-slider-with-jquery-ui/ But I can't get it to work. The following code results in a stationary handle image: <!DOCTYPE html> <html> <head> <link type="text/css" href="http://jqueryui.com/latest/themes/base/ui.all.css" rel="stylesheet" /> <script type="text/javascript" src="http://jqueryui.com/latest/jquery-1.3.2.js"></script> <script type="text/javascript" src="http://jqueryui.com/latest/ui/ui.core.js"></script> <script type="text/javascript" src="http://jqueryui.com/latest/ui/ui.slider.js"></script> <style type="text/css"> #myhandle {position: absolute;z-index: 100;height: 25px;width: 35px;top: auto;background: url(http://stackoverflow.com/content/img/so/vote-arrow-down.png) no-repeat;} </style> <script type="text/javascript"> $(document).ready(function(){ $("#slider").slider({handle: '#myhandle'}); }); </script> </head> <body> <div id="slider"><div id="myhandle"></div></div> </body> </html> It is as if JQuery doesn't pick up that I want to use the myhandle id for the handle. I'm wondering: Do I need a plugin for JQuery to recognise the handle option? (it is not documented in http://docs.jquery.com/UI/Slider). Or perhaps it only worked in an old version of JQuery? Any ideas?

  Read the article

• Best programming aids for a quadriplegic programmer

  - by Peter Rowell

  Before you jump to conclusions, yes, this is programming related. It covers a situation that comes under the heading of, "There, but for the grace of God, go you or I." This is brand new territory for me so I'm asking for some serious help here. A young man, Honza Ripa, in a nearby town did the classic Dumb Thing two weeks after graduating from High School -- he dove into shallow water in the Russian River and had a C-4/C-5 break, sometimes called a Swimming Pool break. In a matter of seconds he went from an exceptional golfer and wrestler to a quadriplegic. (Read the story ... all of us should have been so lucky as to have a girlfriend like Brianna.) That was 10 months ago and he has regained only tiny amounts of control of his right index finger and a couple of other hand/foot motions, none of them fine-grained. His total control of his computer (currently running Win7, but we can change that as needed) is via voice command. Honza's not dumb. He had a 3.7 GPA with AP math and physics. The Problems: Since all of his input is via voice command, he is concerned that the predominance of special characters in programming will require vast amount of verbose commands. Does anyone know of any well done voice input system specifically designed for programmers? I'm thinking about something that might be modal--e.g. you say "Python input" and it goes into a macro mode for doing class definitions, etc. Given all of the RSI in programmer-land there's got to be something out there. What OS(es) does it run on? I am planning on teaching him Python, which is my preferred language for programming and teaching. Are there any applications / whatevers that are written in Python and would be a particularly good match for engaging him mentally while supporting his disability? One of his expressed interests is in stock investing, but that not might be a good starting point for a brand-new programmer. There are a lot of environments (Flash, JavaScript, etc) that are not particularly friendly to people with accessibility challenges. I vaguely remember (but cannot find) a research project that basically created an overlay system on top of a screen environment and then allowed macro command construction on top of the screen image. If we can get/train this system, we may be able to remove many hurdles to using the net. I am particularly interested in finding open source Python-based robotics and robotic prostheses projects so that he can simultaneously learn advanced programming concepts while learning to solve some of his own immediate problems. I've done a ton of googling on this, but I know there things I'm missing. I'm asking the SO community to step up to the plate here. I know this group has the answers, so let me hear them! Overwhelm me with the opportunities that any of us might have/need to still program after such a life-changing event.

  Read the article

• Why not .NET-style delegates rather than closures in Java?

  - by h2g2java

  OK, this is going to be my beating a dying horse for the 3rd time. However, this question is different from my earlier two about closures/delegates, which asks about plans for delegates and what are the projected specs and implementation for closures. This question is about - why is the Java community struggling to define 3 different types of closures when we could simply steal the whole concept of delegates lock, stock and barrel from our beloved and friendly neighbour - Microsoft. There are two non-technical conclusions I would be very tempted to jump into: The Java community should hold up its pride, at the cost of needing to go thro convoluted efforts, by not succumbing to borrowing any Microsoft concepts or otherwise vindicate Microsoft's brilliance. Delegates is a Microsoft patented technology. Alright, besides the above two possibilities, Q1. Is there any weakness or inadequacy in msft-styled delegates that the three (or more) forms of closures would be addressing? Q2. I am asking this while shifting between java and c# and it intrigues me that c# delegates does exactly what I needed. Are there features that would be implemented in closures that are not currently available in C# delegates? If so what are they because I cannot see what I need more than what C# delegates has adequately provided me? Q3. I know that one of the concerns about implementing closures/delegates in java is the reduction of orthogonality of the language, where more than one way is exposed to perform a particular task. Is it worth the level convolution and time spent to avoid delegates just to ensure java retains its level of orthogonality? In SQL, we know that it is advisable to break orthogonality by frequently adequately satisfying only the 2nd normal form. Why can't java be subjected to reduction of orthogonality and OO-ness for the sake of simplicity? Q4. The architecture of JVM is technically constrained from implementing .NET-styled delegates. If this reason WERE (subjunctive to emphasize unlikelihood) true, then why can't the three closures proposals be hidden behind a simple delegate keyword or annotation: if we don't like to use @delegate, we could use @method. I cannot see how delegate statement format is more complex than the three closure proposals.

  Read the article

• Enable real fixed positioning on Samsung Android browsers

  - by Mr. Shiny and New ??

  The Android browser, since 2.2, supports fixed positioning, at least under certain circumstances such as when scaling is turned off. I have a simple HTML file with no JS, but the fixed positioning on three Samsung phones I've tried is simply wrong. Instead of true fixed positioning, the header scrolls out of view then pops back into place after the scrolling is done. This doesn't happen on the Android SDK emulator for any configuration I've tested (2.2, 2.3, 2.3 x86, 4.0.4). It also doesn't happen when using the WebView in an app on the Samsung phones: in those cases the positioning works as expected. Is there a way to make the Samsung Android "stock" browser use real fixed positioning? I've tested: 1. Samsung Galaxy 551, Android 2.2 2. Samsung Galaxy S, Android 2.3 3. Samsung Galaxy S II, Android 2.3 Sample code: <html> <head> <meta name="viewport" content="initial-scale=1.0,maximum-scale=1.0,user-scalable=no,width=device-width,height=device-height"> <style> h1 { position: fixed; top: 0; left: 0; height: 32px; background-color: #CDCDCD; color: black; font-size: 32px; line-height: 32px; padding: 2px; width: 100%; margin: 0;} p { margin-top: 36px; } </style> </head> <body> <h1>Header</h1> <p>Long text goes here</p> </body> </html> The expected behaviour is that the grey header fills the top of the screen and stays put no matter how much you scroll. On Samsung Android browsers it seems to scroll out of view then pop back into place once the scrolling is done, as if the fixed-positioning is being simulated using Javascript, which it isn't. Edit Judging by the comments and "answers" it seems that maybe I wasn't clear on what I need. I am looking for a meta tag or css rule/hack or javascript toggle which turns off Samsung's broken fixed-positioning and turns on the Android browser's working fixed-positioning. I am not looking for a Javascript solution that adds broken fixed-positioning to a browser that has no support whatsoever; the Samsung fixed-positioning does that already, it just looks stupid.

  Read the article

• Easiest Way To Get Started In Dot Net

  - by Avery Payne

  Ok, so the initial search in StackOverflow shows nothing related for this question. So here it goes: Let's pretend for a moment that you're just getting started in a career in computer programming. Let's say that, for whatever reason, you decide to use the .Net framework as a basis for your programming. Let's also say that you've been exposed to some programming background, but not one in .Net, so it seems foreign to you at first. And lastly, you don't have the benefit of 25 years of exposure to the Win32 API, which explains why it seems so foreign to you when you start looking at it. So the questions are: What is a comprehensive overview of what .Net is? It appears to be a combination of a runtime environment, a set of languages, a common set of libraries, and perhaps a few other things...so it's about as clear as mud. Specifically, what are the key components to .Net? What is the easiest way to understand .Net programming with regard to available APIs? Which language would best suit beginning programming out of the "stock" languages that Microsoft has to offer? (C++, C#, VB, etc.) What are some differences between .Net programming and programming in a procedural language (aka Pascal, Modula, etc.) What are some differences between .Net programming and programming in a "traditional" object-oriented language? (aka Smalltalk, Java, Python, Ruby, etc.) As I currently understand it, the CLR provides a foundation for all of the other languages to run on. What are some of the inherent limitations of the CLR? Given the enormous amount of API to cover, would it even be worth learning a .Net language (using the Microsoft APIs) given that you would not have prior exposure to Win32 programming? Let's say you write a for-profit program with .Net. Can you resell the program without running afoul of licensing issues? Let's say you write a gratis (free) program with .Net. Can you offer the program to the public under a "free" license (GPL, BSD, Artistic, etc.) without running afoul of licensing issues? Thank you in advance for your patience.

  Read the article

• Personal Project - Next practical language/tech to learn

  - by Paul Nathan

  I'm working on a personal project doing some finance analysis. It's a totally new field for me, and I'm really having fun with it so far, plus working in the high-level language arena is a great break from my embedded systems daytime work. I have a MySQL backend on a non-local server with a pile of stock data. My task now is to do some analysis of the stocks and produce something approximating a useful result. There are a couple technical difficulties. (1) I have a lot of records. To be precise, I believe I'm near 100K records right now, and this number grows by 6.1K each weekday. I need to create a way to rummage through these fields and do data analysis - based on a given computation, go look at this other set. Fine and dandy, nothing too outre. But this means I could really use a straightforward API for talking to MySQL. (2) Ideally, it runs on OS X 10.4.11. No Windows/Linux machine at home. (3) I can use PHP, C++, Perl, etc. I even have an R installation. I'm pretty flexible with stuff, so long as it runs on OS X. (Lots of options here, pick water, H20, or dihydrogen monoxide ;-) ) (4)Lack of hassle. While I like clever and fun ways of doing things, I'm trying to get some analysis done, not spend ten hours doing installation work and scratching my head figuring out a theoretical syntax question needed to spout out "hello world". What's the question? I'd like to dig into something different than my usual PHP/C++/C toolset. I'm looking for recommendations for languages/technologies that will assist me and meet the above requirements. In particular, I've heard a lot of buzz about F# and Python on SO. I've used CLISP for small problems before, and kinda liked it. I'm seeking opinions about those in particular. edit:since I rent the DB server and have a limited amount of CPU time online, I'm trying to do the analysis on a local machine.

  Read the article

• Grails Liferay portlet not invoking action

  - by RJ Regenold

  I am trying to create a simple portlet for Liferay 5.2.2 using Grails 1.2.1 with the grails-portlets 0.7 and grails-portlets-liferay 0.2 plugins. I created and deployed a stock portlet (just updated title, description, etc...). It deploys correctly and the view renders correctly. However, when I submit the default form that is in view.gsp it never hits the actionView function. Here are the relevant code bits: SearchPortlet.groovy class SearchPortlet { def title = 'Search' def description = ''' A simple search portlet. ''' def displayName = 'Search' def supports = ['text/html':['view', 'edit', 'help']] // Liferay server specific configurations def liferay_display_category = 'Category' def actionView = { println "In action view" } def renderView = { println "In render view" //TODO Define render phase. Return the map of the variables bound to the view ['mykey':'myvalue'] } ... } view.gsp <%@ taglib uri="http://java.sun.com/portlet" prefix="portlet" %> <div> <h1>View Page</h1> The map returned by renderView is passed in. Value of mykey: ${mykey} <form action="${portletResponse.createActionURL()}"> <input type="submit" value="Submit"/> </form> </div> The tomcat terminal prints In render view whenever I view the portlet, and after I press the submit button. It never prints the In action view statement. Any ideas? Update I turned on logging and this is what I see whenever I click the submit button in the portlet: [localhost].[/gportlet] - servletPath=/Search, pathInfo=/invoke, queryString=null, name=null [localhost].[/gportlet] - Path Based Include portlets.GrailsDispatcherPortlet - DispatcherPortlet with name 'Search' received render request portlets.GrailsDispatcherPortlet - Bound render request context to thread: com.liferay.portlet.RenderRequestImpl@7a158e portlets.GrailsDispatcherPortlet - Testing handler map [org.codehaus.grails.portlets.GrailsPortletHandlerMapping@1f06283] in DispatcherPortlet with name 'Search' portlets.GrailsDispatcherPortlet - Testing handler adapter [org.codehaus.grails.portlets.GrailsPortletHandlerAdapter@74f72b] portlets.GrailsPortletHandlerAdapter - portlet.handleMinimised not set, proceeding with normal render portlet.SearchPortlet - In render view portlets.GrailsPortletHandlerAdapter - Couldn't resolve action view /search/null.gsp portlets.GrailsPortletHandlerAdapter - Trying to render mode view /search/view.gsp portlets.GrailsDispatcherPortlet - Setting portlet response content type to view-determined type [text/html;charset=ISO-8859-1] [localhost].[/gportlet] - servletPath=/WEB-INF/servlet/view, pathInfo=null, queryString=null, name=null [localhost].[/gportlet] - Path Based Include portlets.GrailsDispatcherPortlet - Cleared thread-bound render request context: com.liferay.portlet.RenderRequestImpl@7a158e portlets.GrailsDispatcherPortlet - Successfully completed request The fourth line in that log snippet says Bound render request..., which I don't understand because the action in the form that is in the portlet is to the action url. I would've thought that should be an action request.

  Read the article

• How to designing a generic databse whos layout may change over time?

  - by mawg

  Here's a tricky one - how do I programatically create and interrogate a database who's contents I can't really foresee? I am implementing a generic input form system. The user can create PHP forms with a WYSIWYG layout and use them for any purpose he wishes. He can also query the input. So, we have three stages: a form is designed and generated. This is a one-off procedure, although the form can be edited later. This designs the database. someone or several people make use of the form - say for daily sales reports, stock keeping, payroll, etc. Their input to the forms is written to the database. others, maybe management, can query the database and generate reports. Since these forms are generic, I can't predict the database structure - other than to say that it will reflect HTML form fields and consist of a the data input from collection of edit boxes, memos, radio buttons and the like. Questions and remarks: A) how can I best structure the database, in terms of tables and columns? What about primary keys? My first thought was to use the control name to identify each column, then I realized that the user can edit the form and rename, so that maybe "name" becomes "employee" or "wages" becomes ":salary". I am leaning towards a unique number for each. B) how best to key the rows? I was thinking of a timestamp to allow me to query and a column for the row Id from A) C) I have to handle column rename/insert/delete. Foe deletion, I am unsure whether to delete the data from the database. Even if the user is not inputting it from the form any more he may wish to query what was previously entered. Or there may be some legal requirements to retain the data. Any gotchas in column rename/insert/delete? D) For the querying, I can have my PHP interrogate the database to get column names and generate a form with a list where each entry has a database column name, a checkbox to say if it should be used in the query and, based on column type, some selection criteria. That ought to be enough to build searches like "position = 'senior salesman' and salary 50k". E) I probably have to generate some fancy charts - graphs, histograms, pie charts, etc for query results of numerical data over time. I need to find some good FOSS PHP for this. F) What else have I forgotten? This all seems very tricky to me, but I am database n00b - maybe it is simple to you gurus?

  Read the article

• How to customize android analog clock widget through configuration screen

  - by michJ

  I'm trying to develop my own analog clock widget on the home screen. It's based on the stock ICS analog clock widget, but when added to the homescreen, my widget opens a configuration screen first. On this screen you can choose the color you want the clock to be (through a colorpicker dialog). You also see a preview of the clock in the chosen color on this screen. (See picture). My problem is changing the color of the widget on the home screen to the chosen color (when you hit the apply button). I have three .png files that I use for the dial, hour hand and minute hand. I color them using this code in my widgetconfig class: Drawable dial = getResources().getDrawable(R.drawable.clockbackground); dial.setColorFilter(color, PorterDuff.Mode.MULTIPLY); //hour Drawable hour = getResources().getDrawable(R.drawable.hourhand); hour.setColorFilter(color, PorterDuff.Mode.MULTIPLY); //minute Drawable min = getResources().getDrawable(R.drawable.minutehand); min.setColorFilter(color, PorterDuff.Mode.MULTIPLY); // clock AnalogClock clockpreview = (AnalogClock) findViewById(R.id.ACconfig); clockpreview.setBackgroundDrawable(dial); This works fine because I can find the AnalogClock since it's in the layout xml file of the configuration screen, which I set in the OnCreate() through setContentView(). The problem is that for the clock widget on my screen I have to use RemoteViews. So I tried setting the new background of the clock widget through RemoteViews. But RemoteViews seems too limited to do this. I need something like setTextViewText() but then for the background of my analog clock widget, like for example: RemoteViews views = new RemoteViews(context.getPackageName(), R.layout.clockwidget); views.setAnalogClockBackgroundDrawable(dial); The clock widget background seems sort of unchangeable. How can I recolor my clockwidget on homescreen in widgetconfig class? There must be a way because it seems so easy to do at first... My project consists of the widget config class and clockwidget class, widgetconfig.xml, clockwidget.xml, and widget_info.xml (for appwidgetprovider).

  Read the article

• working on lists in python

  - by owca

  I'm trying to make a small modification to django lfs project, that will allow me to deactivate products with no stocks. Unfortunatelly I'm just beginning to learn python, so I have big trouble with its syntax. That's what I'm trying to do. I'm using method 'has_variants' which returns true if product has any. Then I'm building a list from variants for this product. Next for every product in this list (I've called it 'set') I check it's stock and set bool variable 'inactive' to true if product has no stocks and to false if there are any. Finally if 'inactive' is false I'm setting self.active to 0. Code fails in line with: set[] = s How to correct it ? def deactivate(self): """If there are no stocks, deactivate the product. Used in last step of checkout. """ if self.has_variants(): for s in self.variants.filter(active=True): set[] = s for var in set: if var.get_stock_amount() == 0: inactive = True else: inactive = False else: if self.get_stock_amount() == 0: inactive = True if inactive: self.active = False return 0 error log : Traceback (most recent call last): File "manage.py", line 11, in <module> execute_manager(settings) File "/home/purplecow/rails/purpledev/site-packages/django/core/management/__i nit__.py", line 362, in execute_manager utility.execute() File "/home/purplecow/rails/purpledev/site-packages/django/core/management/__i nit__.py", line 303, in execute self.fetch_command(subcommand).run_from_argv(self.argv) File "/home/purplecow/rails/purpledev/site-packages/django/core/management/bas e.py", line 195, in run_from_argv self.execute(*args, **options.__dict__) File "/home/purplecow/rails/purpledev/site-packages/django/core/management/bas e.py", line 213, in execute translation.activate('en-us') File "/home/purplecow/rails/purpledev/site-packages/django/utils/translation/_ _init__.py", line 73, in activate return real_activate(language) File "/home/purplecow/rails/purpledev/site-packages/django/utils/translation/_ _init__.py", line 43, in delayed_loader return g['real_%s' % caller](*args, **kwargs) File "/home/purplecow/rails/purpledev/site-packages/django/utils/translation/t rans_real.py", line 205, in activate _active[currentThread()] = translation(language) File "/home/purplecow/rails/purpledev/site-packages/django/utils/translation/t rans_real.py", line 194, in translation default_translation = _fetch(settings.LANGUAGE_CODE) File "/home/purplecow/rails/purpledev/site-packages/django/utils/translation/t rans_real.py", line 180, in _fetch app = import_module(appname) File "/home/purplecow/rails/purpledev/site-packages/django/utils/importlib.py" , line 35, in import_module __import__(name) File "/home/purplecow/rails/purpledev/lfs/caching/__init__.py", line 1, in <mo dule> from listeners import * File "/home/purplecow/rails/purpledev/lfs/caching/listeners.py", line 10, in < module> from lfs.cart.models import Cart File "/home/purplecow/rails/purpledev/lfs/cart/models.py", line 8, in <module> from lfs.catalog.models import Product File "/home/purplecow/rails/purpledev/lfs/catalog/__init__.py", line 1, in <mo dule> from listeners import * File "/home/purplecow/rails/purpledev/lfs/catalog/listeners.py", line 5, in <m odule> from lfs.catalog.models import PropertyGroup File "/home/purplecow/rails/purpledev/lfs/catalog/models.py", line 589 set[] = s ^ SyntaxError: invalid syntax

  Read the article

• NO FBML is working in iframe in facebook using PHP (ie or ff or anywhere else!)

  - by Cyprus106

  I have tried for three days now and gotten nowhere on this.... I absolutely can not get any "fb:" code to render anything! I've tried the exact code in the sandbox and it works fine. I've read through every search result I could find and gotten nowhere... I'm using a standard xd_receiver page, and in the body there's this line: < script src="http://static.ak.connect.facebook.com/js/api_lib/v0.4/XdCommReceiver.js" type="text/javascript"></script> Here's my index page. It's basically the stock facebook example code.... <?php require_once 'facebook-platform/php/facebook.php'; //Authentication Keys $appapikey = 'MY_KEY'; // obviously this is my real key $appsecret = 'MY_SECRET'; // same thing $facebook = new Facebook($appapikey, $appsecret); $user_id = $facebook->require_login(); ?> <html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" xmlns:fb="http://www.facebook.com/2008/fbml"> <head></head> <body> <script src="http://static.ak.connect.facebook.com/js/api_lib/v0.4/FeatureLoader.js.php" type="text/javascript"></script> <? echo "<p>Hello, <fb:name uid=\"$user_id\" useyou=\"false\"></fb:name>!</p>"; ?> <script type="text/javascript"> FB_RequireFeatures(["XFBML"], function(){ FB.Facebook.init("<?php echo $appapikey; ?>", "xd_receiver.htm"); }); </script> </body> </html> oddly enough, when I put this code below where it echos the logged in user's name, it does show the id numbers of friends. But again, it won't render their names <?php friends.get API method echo "<p>Friends:"; $friends = $facebook->api_client->friends_get(); $friends = array_slice($friends, 0, 25); foreach ($friends as $friend) { echo "<br>".$friend." - <fb:name uid=\".$user_id.\" useyou=\"false\"></fb:name>"; } echo "</p>"; ?> Here's my settings: Canvas Callback URL http://www.my-actual-website.com/test/ Canvas URL http://apps.facebook.com/gogre_testapp/ FBML/iframe iframe Application Type Website Post-Remove URL http://www.my-actual-website.com/test/ Post-Authorize URL http://www.my-actual-website.com/test/ Please, somebody help me out! I've been trying unsuccessfully for days

  Read the article

• What is causing this SQL 2005 Primary Key Deadlock between two real-time bulk upserts?

  - by skimania

  Here's the scenario: I've got a table called MarketDataCurrent (MDC) that has live updating stock prices. I've got one process called 'LiveFeed' which reads prices streaming from the wire, queues up inserts, and uses a 'bulk upload to temp table then insert/update to MDC table.' (BulkUpsert) I've got another process which then reads this data, computes other data, and then saves the results back into the same table, using a similar BulkUpsert stored proc. Thirdly, there are a multitude of users running a C# Gui polling the MDC table and reading updates from it. Now, during the day when the data is changing rapidly, things run pretty smoothly, but then, after market hours, we've recently started seeing an increasing number of Deadlock exceptions coming out of the database, nowadays we see 10-20 a day. The imporant thing to note here is that these happen when the values are NOT changing. Here's all the relevant info: Table Def: CREATE TABLE [dbo].[MarketDataCurrent]( [MDID] [int] NOT NULL, [LastUpdate] [datetime] NOT NULL, [Value] [float] NOT NULL, [Source] [varchar](20) NULL, CONSTRAINT [PK_MarketDataCurrent] PRIMARY KEY CLUSTERED ( [MDID] ASC )WITH (PAD_INDEX = OFF, STATISTICS_NORECOMPUTE = OFF, IGNORE_DUP_KEY = OFF, ALLOW_ROW_LOCKS = ON, ALLOW_PAGE_LOCKS = ON) ON [PRIMARY] ) ON [PRIMARY] - stackoverflow wont let me post images until my reputation goes up to 10, so i'll add them as soon as you bump me up, hopefully as a result of this question. ![alt text][1] [1]: http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4049/4690759452_6b94ff7b34.jpg I've got a Sql Profiler Trace Running, catching the deadlocks, and here's what all the graphs look like. stackoverflow wont let me post images until my reputation goes up to 10, so i'll add them as soon as you bump me up, hopefully as a result of this question. ![alt text][2] [2]: http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4035/4690125231_78d84c9e15_b.jpg Process 258 is called the following 'BulkUpsert' stored proc, repeatedly, while 73 is calling the next one: ALTER proc [dbo].[MarketDataCurrent_BulkUpload] @updateTime datetime, @source varchar(10) as begin transaction update c with (rowlock) set LastUpdate = getdate(), Value = t.Value, Source = @source from MarketDataCurrent c INNER JOIN #MDTUP t ON c.MDID = t.mdid where c.lastUpdate < @updateTime and c.mdid not in (select mdid from MarketData where LiveFeedTicker is not null and PriceSource like 'LiveFeed.%') and c.value <> t.value insert into MarketDataCurrent with (rowlock) select MDID, getdate(), Value, @source from #MDTUP where mdid not in (select mdid from MarketDataCurrent with (nolock)) and mdid not in (select mdid from MarketData where LiveFeedTicker is not null and PriceSource like 'LiveFeed.%') commit And the other one: ALTER PROCEDURE [dbo].[MarketDataCurrent_LiveFeedUpload] AS begin transaction -- Update existing mdid UPDATE c WITH (ROWLOCK) SET LastUpdate = t.LastUpdate, Value = t.Value, Source = t.Source FROM MarketDataCurrent c INNER JOIN #TEMPTABLE2 t ON c.MDID = t.mdid; -- Insert new MDID INSERT INTO MarketDataCurrent with (ROWLOCK) SELECT * FROM #TEMPTABLE2 WHERE MDID NOT IN (SELECT MDID FROM MarketDataCurrent with (NOLOCK)) -- Clean up the temp table DELETE #TEMPTABLE2 commit To clarify, those Temp Tables are being created by the C# code on the same connection and are populated using the C# SqlBulkCopy class. To me it looks like it's deadlocking on the PK of the table, so I tried removing that PK and switching to a Unique Constraint instead but that increased the number of deadlocks 10-fold. I'm totally lost as to what to do about this situation and am open to just about any suggestion. HELP!!

  Read the article

• How to store result of drag and drop as a image

  - by Jimmy

  I want to take the screenshot of the result of drag and drop, but I don't know how to do. Actually, I found 2 javascript and using HTML5 such as html2canvas and canvas2image. I am now combining them together, but it's still meet some problem with the canvas2image. Please help me solve this problem if you have same experience, thank you a lot. Please help me, I've been stock here for days. Drag and drop code. <script> $(function() { $( "#draggable" ).draggable(); $( "#draggable2" ).draggable(); $( "#droppable" ).droppable({ hoverClass: "ui-state-active", drop: function( event, ui ) { $( this ) .addClass( "ui-state-highlight" ) .find( "p" ) .html( "Dropped!" ); } }); }); </script> Image generation code <script> window.onload = function() { function convertCanvas(strType) { if (strType == "JPEG") var oImg = Canvas2Image.saveAsJPEG(oCanvas, true); if (!oImg) { alert("Sorry, this browser is not capable of saving " + strType + " files!"); return false; } oImg.id = "canvasimage"; oImg.style.border = oCanvas.style.border; oCanvas.parentNode.replaceChild(oImg, oCanvas); } function convertHtml(strType) { $('body').html2canvas(); var queue = html2canvas.Parse(); var canvas = html2canvas.Renderer(queue,{elements:{length:1}}); var img = canvas.toDataURL(); convertCanvas(strType); window.open(img); } document.getElementById("html2canvasbtn").onclick = function() { convertHtml("JPEG"); } } </script> HTML code <body> <h3>Picture:</h3> <div id="draggable"> <img src='http://1.gravatar.com/avatar/1ea64135b09e00ab80fa7596fafbd340? s=50&d=identicon&r=R'> </div> <div id="draggable2"> <img src='http://0.gravatar.com/avatar/2647a7d4b4a7052d66d524701432273b?s=50&d=identicon&r=G'> </div> <div id="dCanvas"> <canvas id="droppable" width="500" height="500" style="border: 2px solid gray" class="ui-widget-header" /> </div> <input type="button" id="bGenImage" value="Generate Image" /> <div id="dOutput"></div> </body>

  Read the article

• Which programming language to choose? (for a specific problem/domain, details inside)

  - by Bijan

  I am building a trading portfolio management system that is responsible for production, optimization, and simulation of non-high frequency trading portfolios (dealing with 1min or 3min bars of data, not tick data). I plan on employing Amazon web services to take on the entire load of the application. I have four choices that I am considering as language. a) Java b) C++ c) C# d) Python Here is the scope of the extremes of the project scope. This isn't how it will be, maybe ever, but it's within the scope of the requirements: Weekly simulation of 10,000,000 trading systems. (Each trading system is expected to have its own data mining methods, including feature selection algorithms which are extremely computationally-expensive. Imagine 500-5000 features using wrappers. These are not run often by any means, but it's still a consideration) Real-time production of portfolio w/ 100,000 trading strategies Taking in 1 min or 3 min data from every stock/futures market around the globe (approx 100,000) Portfolio optimization of portfolios with up to 100,000 strategies. (rather intensive algorithm) Speed is a concern, but I believe that Java can handle the load. I just want to make sure that Java CAN handle the above requirements comfortably. I don't want to do the project in C++, but I will if it's required. The reason C# is on there is because I thought it was a good alternative to Java, even though I don't like Windows at all and would prefer Java if all things are the same. Python - I've read somethings on PyPy and pyscho that claim python can be optimized with JIT compiling to run at near C-like speeds.... That's pretty much the only reason it is on this list, besides that fact that Python is a great language and would probably be the most enjoyable language to code in, which is not a factor at all for this project, but a perk. To sum up: - real time production - weekly simulations of a large number of systems - weekly/monthly optimizations of portfolios - large numbers of connections to collect data from There is no dealing with millisecond or even second based trades. The only consideration is if Java can possibly deal with this kind of load when spread out of a necessary amount of EC2 servers. Thank you guys so much for your wisdom.

  Read the article

• java instanceof not finding method

  - by Razvan N

  I have a problem with java instanceof. I have a class called Employee and several others that extend this one, for example - Manager. I also created another class,EmployeeStockPlan, where I wanted to test if instanceof is finding which object I am using. But when I am calling a method from the new class, I have this error: The method grantStock(Manager) is undefined for the type Loader. Sorry, I am somehow new to some thing in java, I hope I am not asking dumb questions. The Employee class: package com.example.domain; public class Employee { private int empId; private String name; private String ssn; private double salary; public Employee(int empId, String name, String ssn, double salary) { // constructor // method; this.empId = empId; this.name = name; this.ssn = ssn; this.salary = salary; } public void setName(String newName) { if (newName != null) { this.name = newName; } } public void raiseSalary(double increase) { this.salary += increase; } public String getName() { return name; } public double getSalary() { return salary; } public String getDetails() { return "Employee id: " + empId + "\n" + "Employee name: " + name; } } The Manager class: package com.example.domain; public class Manager extends Employee { private String deptName; public Manager(int empId, String name, String ssn, double salary, String dept) { super(empId, name, ssn, salary); this.deptName = dept; } public String getDeptName() { return deptName; } public String getDetails() { return super.getDetails() + "\n" + "Department: " + deptName; } } The EmployeeStockPlan class: package com.example.domain; public class EmployeeStockPlan { public void grantStock(Employee e) { // nothing calculated, just simulating; System.out.println("This is an employee!"); if (e instanceof Manager) { // process Manager stock grant System.out.println("This is a manager!"); } else { // error - instance of Engineer? System.out.println("Not an engineer!"); } return; } } The main class: EmployeeStockPlan esp = new EmployeeStockPlan(); Manager m = new Manager (12421, "Manager1", "111-4254-521", 2430, "Marketing1"); grantStock(m);

  Read the article

• Is there a way to keep track of the ordering of items in a dictionary?

  - by Corpsekicker

  I have a Dictionary<Guid, ElementViewModel>. (ElementViewModel is our own complex type.) I add items to the dictionary with a stock standard items.Add(Guid.NewGuid, new ElementViewModel() { /*setters go here*/ });, At a later stage I remove some or all of these items. A simplistic view of my ElementViewModel is this: class ElementViewModel { Guid Id { get; set; } string Name { get; set; } int SequenceNo { get; set; } } It may be significant to mention that the SequenceNos are compacted within the collection after adding, in case other operations like moving and copying took place. {1, 5, 6} - {1, 2, 3} A simplistic view of my remove operation is: public void RemoveElementViewModel(IEnumerable<ElementViewModel> elementsToDelete) { foreach (var elementViewModel in elementsToDelete) items.Remove(elementViewModel.Id); CompactSequenceNumbers(); } I will illustrate the problem with an example: I add 3 items to the dictionary: var newGuid = Guid.NewGuid(); items.Add(newGuid, new MineLayoutElementViewModel { Id = newGuid, SequenceNo = 1, Name = "Element 1" }); newGuid = Guid.NewGuid(); items.Add(newGuid, new MineLayoutElementViewModel { Id = newGuid, SequenceNo = 2, Name = "Element 2" }); newGuid = Guid.NewGuid(); items.Add(newGuid, new MineLayoutElementViewModel { Id = newGuid, SequenceNo = 3, Name = "Element 3" }); I remove 2 items RemoveElementViewModel(new List<ElementViewModel> { item2, item3 }); //imagine I had them cached somewhere. Now I want to add 2 other items: newGuid = Guid.NewGuid(); items.Add(newGuid, new MineLayoutElementViewModel { Id = newGuid, SequenceNo = 2, Name = "Element 2, Part 2" }); newGuid = Guid.NewGuid(); items.Add(newGuid, new MineLayoutElementViewModel { Id = newGuid, SequenceNo = 3, Name = "Element 3, Part 2" }); On evaluation of the dictionary at this point, I expected the order of items to be "Element 1", "Element 2, Part 2", "Element 3, Part 2" but it is actually in the following order: "Element 1", "Element 3, Part 2", "Element 2, Part 2" I rely on the order of these items to be a certain way. Why is it not as expected and what can I do about it?

  Read the article

< Previous Page | 78 79 80 81 82 83 84 85 86 87 88  | Next Page >