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• What are the most common AI systems implemented in Tower Defense Games

  - by the_Dan

  I'm currently in the middle of researching on the various types of AI techniques used in tower defense type games. If someone could be help me in understanding the different types of techniques and their associated advantages. Using Google I already found several techniques. Random Map traversal Path finding e.g. Cost based Traversing Algorithms i.e. A* I have already found a great answer to this type of question with the below link, but I feel that this answer is tailored to FPS. If anyone could add to this and make it specific to tower defense games then I would be truly great-full. How is AI most commonly implemented in popular games? Example of such games would be: Radiant Defense Plant Vs Zombies - Not truly Intelligent, but there must be an AI system used right? Field Runners Edit: After further research I found an interesting book that may be useful: http://www.amazon.com/dp/0123747317/?tag=stackoverfl08-20

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• Magento Checkout options

  - by graham barnes

  Hi I want to add some options to my magento, lets say i print on clothing, a customer buys some t-shirts, shirts and jackets from me, it totals to £60+ VAT on the checkout area where i signup and not before I need to add an option where I can add a text box and upload option, can i do this? I ideally then want to add some pricing options if the user has chosen to add some branding to a product or multiple products e.g. if the branding was on the top right of the shirt it will cost £5.00, if on the back it costs £7.00 etc all if possible to be done via the admincp. I also want an option so when they upload their logo for the first time they are charged a one off charge, like a setup fee but If the customer has allready sent in there logo then no charge applies. thanks Graham

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• Ceská obchodní banka, a.s. Upgrades to Oracle Database 11g On Time, On Budget and without Disrupting Business Operations

  - by jgelhaus

  You want the new features of the latest release, but upgrading a database is one of those things DBAs can "lose sleep" over.  Ceská obchodní banka, a.s."CSOB" needed to upgrade its production systems in the Czech Republic and Slovakia that supported 90 key applications for its retail, corporate, internet, and ATM services from Oracle Database 9i to Oracle Database 11g with simultaneous migration from Alpha processors/OpenVMS-based hardware to a Power7, AIX system. Oracle Consulting helped to complete the upgrade within schedule and budget, while meeting tight restrictions on downtime. Knowledge transfer by Oracle Consulting to the bank’s IT team has improved self-sufficiency in support and maintenance while the technical and advisory services of Oracle Consulting Expert Services continue to optimize performance and availability while lowering cost of ownership. Read how CSOB maximized the value of its investment in Oracle Database technology with an upgrade to Oracle Database 11g.

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• Why not AJAX'ify entire websites?

  - by Anonymous -

  Is there any solid reasoning as to why sites shouldn't be developed with ajax functionality that loads major parts of each part (assuming there are elements like the header, navigation etc that remain the same)? Surely it would be less resource-intensive since the server wouldn't have to serve content that appears on every page, benefiting both the host and end-user. Answer the question taking into consideration: The sites javascript behaviour degrades gracefully in every instance For my question I'm talking about new sites where this behaviour could be implemented rather from the off, so it doesn't technically cost any money - we're not returning to a finished product to implement it.

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• More Collateral to drive Remarketer Activity

  - by martin.morganti(at)oracle.com

  Over the last few months we have added a range of marketing materials to the Remarketer Level pages including an extensive set of Marketing Kits to support the Solution Kits previously available. As part of the continuing program, we have just added some additional training for Remarketers at no cost. In addition to the Oracle 1-Click Technology Products Guided Learning Path which explains about the program and how to position the products, we have added Oracle Database 11g 1-Click Technology Sales Guided Learning Path. This Learning path allows Remarketers to get access to more detailed training on the Oracle 11G database and so develop their understanding of the opportunities they could be benefiting from today, by reselling the 1-click products. This is in direct response to requests to make more training available to the Remarketers, so take the opportunity to let your Remarketer customers and prospects know about this additional training and how they can Jump Start a resell business with Oracle today with No Fees, No Barriers and No Excuses.

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• How to Identify Which Hardware Component is Failing in Your Computer

  - by Chris Hoffman

  Concluding that your computer has a hardware problem is just the first step. If you’re dealing with a hardware issue and not a software issue, the next step is determining what hardware problem you’re actually dealing with. If you purchased a laptop or pre-built desktop PC and it’s still under warranty, you don’t need to care about this. Have the manufacturer fix the PC for you — figuring it out is their problem. If you’ve built your own PC or you want to fix a computer that’s out of warranty, this is something you’ll need to do on your own. Blue Screen 101: Search for the Error Message This may seem like obvious advice, but searching for information about a blue screen’s error message can help immensely. Most blue screens of death you’ll encounter on modern versions of Windows will likely be caused by hardware failures. The blue screen of death often displays information about the driver that crashed or the type of error it encountered. For example, let’s say you encounter a blue screen that identified “NV4_disp.dll” as the driver that caused the blue screen. A quick Google search will reveal that this is the driver for NVIDIA graphics cards, so you now have somewhere to start. It’s possible that your graphics card is failing if you encounter such an error message. Check Hard Drive SMART Status Hard drives have a built in S.M.A.R.T. (Self-Monitoring, Analysis, and Reporting Technology) feature. The idea is that the hard drive monitors itself and will notice if it starts to fail, providing you with some advance notice before the drive fails completely. This isn’t perfect, so your hard drive may fail even if SMART says everything is okay. If you see any sort of “SMART error” message, your hard drive is failing. You can use SMART analysis tools to view the SMART health status information your hard drives are reporting. Test Your RAM RAM failure can result in a variety of problems. If the computer writes data to RAM and the RAM returns different data because it’s malfunctioning, you may see application crashes, blue screens, and file system corruption. To test your memory and see if it’s working properly, use Windows’ built-in Memory Diagnostic tool. The Memory Diagnostic tool will write data to every sector of your RAM and read it back afterwards, ensuring that all your RAM is working properly. Check Heat Levels How hot is is inside your computer? Overheating can rsult in blue screens, crashes, and abrupt shut downs. Your computer may be overheating because you’re in a very hot location, it’s ventilated poorly, a fan has stopped inside your computer, or it’s full of dust. Your computer monitors its own internal temperatures and you can access this information. It’s generally available in your computer’s BIOS, but you can also view it with system information utilities such as SpeedFan or Speccy. Check your computer’s recommended temperature level and ensure it’s within the appropriate range. If your computer is overheating, you may see problems only when you’re doing something demanding, such as playing a game that stresses your CPU and graphics card. Be sure to keep an eye on how hot your computer gets when it performs these demanding tasks, not only when it’s idle. Stress Test Your CPU You can use a utility like Prime95 to stress test your CPU. Such a utility will fore your computer’s CPU to perform calculations without allowing it to rest, working it hard and generating heat. If your CPU is becoming too hot, you’ll start to see errors or system crashes. Overclockers use Prime95 to stress test their overclock settings — if Prime95 experiences errors, they throttle back on their overclocks to ensure the CPU runs cooler and more stable. It’s a good way to check if your CPU is stable under load. Stress Test Your Graphics Card Your graphics card can also be stress tested. For example, if your graphics driver crashes while playing games, the games themselves crash, or you see odd graphical corruption, you can run a graphics benchmark utility like 3DMark. The benchmark will stress your graphics card and, if it’s overheating or failing under load, you’ll see graphical problems, crashes, or blue screens while running the benchmark. If the benchmark seems to work fine but you have issues playing a certain game, it may just be a problem with that game. Swap it Out Not every hardware problem is easy to diagnose. If you have a bad motherboard or power supply, their problems may only manifest through occasional odd issues with other components. It’s hard to tell if these components are causing problems unless you replace them completely. Ultimately, the best way to determine whether a component is faulty is to swap it out. For example, if you think your graphics card may be causing your computer to blue screen, pull the graphics card out of your computer and swap in a new graphics card. If everything is working well, it’s likely that your previous graphics card was bad. This isn’t easy for people who don’t have boxes of components sitting around, but it’s the ideal way to troubleshoot. Troubleshooting is all about trial and error, and swapping components out allows you to pin down which component is actually causing the problem through a process of elimination. This isn’t a complete guide to everything that could likely go wrong and how to identify it — someone could write a full textbook on identifying failing components and still not cover everything. But the tips above should give you some places to start dealing with the more common problems. Image Credit: Justin Marty on Flickr     

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• Can the overuse of custom taglibs disrupt the outsourcing of html designers?

  - by Renato Gama

  Yesterday me and a friend were talking about the overuse of custom taglibs! We create taglibs for everything! We create taglibs in order to wrap jQuery UI elements (tabs, button, etc), and other plugins elements as well. We often wrap them together in a single component. We use taglibs in a point that we almost have no pure html within the body tag. Our question is: is this a healthy habit??? Imagine two situations: 1) We hire an html designer and have the cost of a month for him to learn all this stuff. 2) We want to outsource the html development but no company would get our taglib library to learn, OR it become more expensive. We love taglibs as its been a lovely shortcut for javascipt development as we write it only once. What would be the best practices in this sense, and what would you suggest? We are looking for a future-proof solution (or an argument that agrees with ours).

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• Roll Your Own Passive 3D Movie System with Dual Projectors

  - by Jason Fitzpatrick

  If you’d like to enjoy 3D movies with passive polarized glasses for less than $50,000 (the average price of a passive 3D projector), this DIY setup brings the price down to a more accessible level. Courtesy of 3D movie and theater enthusiast Jahun, this guide details how you can achieve passive 3D projection using two radically less expensive projectors, cheap polarized filters, and some software. The project won’t be free-as-in-beer but with some careful shopping the bill will ring up at the thousands instead of tens-of-thousands of dollars. Hit up the link below to see how he pulled off miming a $50,000 projector for less than a tenth the cost. Passive Projection [via Hack A Day] How to Get Pro Features in Windows Home Versions with Third Party Tools HTG Explains: Is ReadyBoost Worth Using? HTG Explains: What The Windows Event Viewer Is and How You Can Use It

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• Easing the Journey to the Private Cloud with Oracle Consulting

  - by MichaelM-Oracle

  By Sanjai Marimadaiah, Senior Director, Strategy & Business Development – Cloud Solutions, Oracle Consulting Services Business leaders are now leading the charge on how their firms can profit from cloud solutions. Agility and innovation are becoming the primary drivers of the business case for the cloud, even more than the anticipated cost savings. Leaders need to find the right strategy and optimize the use of cloud-based applications across their enterprise-computing infrastructure. The Problem – Current State With prevalent IT practices, many organizations find that they run multiple IT solutions serving similar business needs. This has led to the proliferation of technology stacks, for example: Oracle 10g on Sun T4 running Solaris 9; Oracle 11g on Exadata running Linux; or Oracle 12c on commodity x86 servers. This variance has a huge impact on an organization’s agility and expenses, and requires IT professionals with varied skills as well as on-going training for different systems and tools. Fortunately there is a practical business strategy to overcome this unneeded redundancy. Thus begins a journey to the right cloud computing solution. The Solution – Cloud Services from Oracle Consulting Services (OCS) Oracle Consulting Services (OCS ) works closely with our clients as trusted advisors to proactively respond to business needs and IT concerns. OCS understands that making the transition to cloud solutions begins with a strategic conversation, based on its deep expertise for successfully completing private cloud service engagements with several companies. For a journey to the cloud, Oracle Consulting Services leads the client through four phases– standardization, consolidation, service delivery, and enterprise cloud – to achieve optimal returns. Phase 1 - Standardization Oracle Consulting Services (OCS) works with clients to evaluate their business requirements and propose a set of standard solutions stacks for various IT solutions. This is an opportune time to evaluate cloud ready solutions, such as Oracle 12c, Oracle Exadata, and the Oracle Database Appliance (ODA). The OCS consultants, together with the delivery team, then turn to upgrading and migrating existing solution stacks to standardized offerings. OCS has the expertise and tools to complete this stage in a fraction of the time required by other IT services companies. Clients quickly realize cost savings in tools, processes, and type/number of resources required. This standardization also improves agility of the IT organizations and their abilities to respond to the needs of various business units. Phase 2 - Consolidation During the consolidation phase, OCS consultants programmatically consolidate hundreds of databases into a smaller number of servers to improve utilization, reduce floor space, and optimize maintenance costs. Consolidation helps clients realize huge savings in CapEx investments and shrink OpEx costs. The use of engineered systems, such as Oracle Exadata, greatly reduces the client’s risk of moving to a new solution stack. OCS recommends clients to pursue Phase 1 (Standardization) and Phase 2 (Consolidation) simultaneously to reduce the overall time, effort, and expense of the cloud journey. Phase 3 - Service Delivery Once a client is on a path of standardization and consolidation, OCS consultants create Service Catalogues based on the SLAs requirements and the criticality of the solutions. The number and types of Service Catalogues (Platinum, Gold, Silver, Bronze, etc.) vary from client to client. OCS consultants also implement a variety of value-added cloud solutions, including monitoring, metering, and charge-back solutions. At this stage, clients are able to achieve a high level of understanding in their cloud journey. Their IT organizations are operating efficiently and are more agile in responding to the needs of business units. Phase 4 - Enterprise Cloud In the final phase of the cloud journey, the economics of the IT organizations change. Business units can request services on-demand; applications can be deployed and consumed on a pay-as-you-go model. OCS has the expertise and capabilities to establish processes, programs, and solutions required for IT organizations to transform how they interact with business units. The Promise of Cloud Solutions Depending the size and complexity of their business model, some clients are able to abbreviate some phases of their cloud journey. Cloud solutions are still evolving and there is rapid pace of innovation to transform how IT organizations operate. The lesson is clear. Cloud solutions hold a lot of promise for business agility. Business leaders can now leverage an additional set of capabilities and services. They can ramp up their pace of innovation. With cloud maturity, they can compete more effectively in their respective markets. But there are certainly challenges ahead. A skilled consulting services partner can play a pivotal role as a trusted advisor in the successful adoption of cloud solutions. Oracle Consulting Services has expertise and a portfolio of services to help clients succeed on their journey to the cloud.

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• RightNow CX @ OpenWorld: What to Experience

  - by Tony Berk

  We want to welcome our RightNow CX customers to Oracle OpenWorld next week. Get ready for a great week and a whole new experience! For a high level overview of what is going on during the week, please review these previous posts: Is There a Cloud Over OpenWorld? and What to "CRM" in San Francisco? CRM Highlights for OpenWorld '12. Also, don't forget you can add on the Customer Experience Summit @ OpenWorld to make your week even more complete and get involved with the Experience Revolution! Below is a highlight of only some of the RightNow related sessions at OpenWorld. Please use OpenWorld Schedule Builder or check the OpenWorld Content Catalog for all of the session details and any time or location changes. Tip: Pre-enrolled session registrants via Schedule Builder are allowed into the session rooms before anyone else, so Schedule Builder will guarantee you a seat. Many of the sessions below will likely be at capacity. No better way to start off than hearing where Oracle RightNow is going! Oracle RightNow CX Cloud Service Vision and Roadmap (CON9764) - Oct 1, 10:45 AM. Oracle RightNow CX Cloud Service combines Web, social, and contact center experiences for a unified, cross-channel service solution in the cloud, enabling organizations to increase sales and adoption, build trust, strengthen relationships, and reduce costs and effort. Come to this session to hear from David Vap and his team of Oracle experts about where the product is going and how Oracle is committed to accelerating the pace of innovation and value to its customers. Interested in the Cloud and want to know why some leading CIOs are moving to the cloud? You can hear first hand from CIOs from Emerson, Intuit and Overstock.com: CIOs and Governance in the Cloud (CON9767) - Oct 3, 11:45 AM.   And of course there are a number of sessions that drill down into more specific areas. Here are just a few: Deliver Outstanding Customer Experiences: Oracle RightNow Dynamic Agent Desktop Cloud Service (CON9771) - Oct 1, 4:45 PM. This session covers how companies have delivered exceptional customer experiences and how the Oracle RightNow Dynamic Agent Desktop Cloud Service roadmap will evolve in the future. The Oracle RightNow Contact Center Experience suite includes incident management, knowledge, guided processes, and other service capabilities to unify the customer experience across channels. Come learn about the powerful tools that enable even your junior agents to consistently provide outstanding service across all customer interaction channels. Self-Service in the Age of Data Intimacy (CON11516) - Oct 1, 3:15. Even though businesses are generating more and more data around their relationships and interactions with customers, very little of the information a business generates ends up available to the contact center and even less is made available to the online service experience. The generic one-size-fits-all approach that typifies most online service experiences ultimately fails to address all user needs, and that failure ultimately leads to the continued use of high-cost agent-assisted channels for low-value interactions. This session introduces Oracle RightNow Web Experience’s Virtual Assistant and discusses how you can deliver rich, engaging, highly personalized experiences with the quality of agent-assisted service at a much lower cost. Improve Chat Experiences: Best Practices for Chat Pilots and Deployments (CON11517) - Oct 1, 4:45 PM. Today’s organizations are challenged to grow revenue and retain customers with fewer resources, and many have turned to chat as an approach to improving the customer experience, increasing sales conversions, and reducing costs at the same time. From setting goals and metrics and training staff to customizing and tuning the solution, this session provides best practices and lessons learned from a broad set of implementations to help you get the most out of your chat solution. Differentiated Experience with Web Service (CON9770) - Oct 2, 1:15 PM. A reputation for excellent customer service can differentiate your brand and drive revenue. In this session, learn how to develop that reputation by transforming your online self-service into a highly interactive, branded customer experience. See live examples of how Oracle RightNow Web Experience has helped customers deliver on their Web service strategies. Unifying the Agent’s Engagement Console (CON11518) - Oct 2, 1:15 PM. Does your customer experience suffer because your agents are toggling between multiple tools? Do your agent productivity and morale suffer as well? Come to this session to learn how Oracle RightNow CX Cloud Service seamlessly unifies these disparate systems into a single engagement console. Regardless of channel, powerful adaptive tools consistently guide agents across contextually aware personalized workflows. Great agent experiences drive great customer experiences. Oracle RightNow CX Cloud Service and the Oracle Customer Experience Portfolio (CON9775) - Oct 3, 10:15 AM. This session covers how Oracle’s integrated suite of customer experience (CX) products fits with the Oracle CX portfolio of products (Oracle Fusion Customer Relationship Management; the Oracle ATG, Oracle Endeca, and Oracle Knowledge product families; and Oracle Business Intelligence) to increase revenues, strengthen customer relationships, and reduce costs across the entire end-to-end customer lifecycle for companies that sell to consumers and those that sell to businesses. Greater Insights from Customer Engagements (CON9773) Oct 4, 12:45 PM. In this session, hear how to leverage service interaction insights, customer feedback, and segmented service engagements to improve the customer experience. Discover how customers, such as J&P Cycles, learn and take action based on business insights gained through their customer engagements. Again, these are just some of the sessions, so check out the Content Catalog for details on Knowledge Management, Customization, Integration and more in the Oracle Develop stream for Customer Experience. Be sure to visit the Oracle DEMOgrounds in the Moscone West Exhibit Hall. If this is your first OpenWorld, welcome! If you are returning, hi again and enjoy!

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• Establishing relationships with unsolicited recruiters

  - by Michael

  Several times each year, I receive unsolicited introductions from tech recruiters, usually via LinkedIn and usually local firms. I am not currently looking for a new job. Is it advisable to establish a relationship with one or more recruiters when I'm not interested in finding new work, so that they have my resume on file? Here's another way I approach the question: My plumber was first hired at the point of need: I had a plumbing problem, looked up a few of them, and evaluated and hired based on their demeanor and cost estimates. I established a relationship with a general attorney, on the other hand, well in advance of ever actually needing services so that if or when services are needed he already knows enough about me to begin work. Should I approach recruiters like I approached my plumber or my lawyer? A separate discussion, I suppose, is whether or not the type of recruiters who troll LinkedIn for clients are generally helpful or not. Edit: I have never worked with a recruiter before, and therefore have little idea what to expect.

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• How To Log Into The Desktop, Add a Start Menu, and Disable Hot Corners in Windows 8

  - by Chris Hoffman

  If you don’t have a touchscreen computer and spend all your time on the desktop, Windows 8’s new interface can seem intrusive. Microsoft won’t allow you to disable the new interface, but Classic Shell provides the options Microsoft didn’t. In addition to providing a Start button, Classic Shell can take you straight to the desktop when you log in and disable the hot corners that activate the charms and metro app switcher. There are other programs that do this, but Classic Shell is free and open-source. Many of the alternatives, such as Start8 and RetroUI, are commercial apps that cost money. We’ve covered Classic Shell in the past, but it’s come a long way since then. How Hackers Can Disguise Malicious Programs With Fake File Extensions Can Dust Actually Damage My Computer? What To Do If You Get a Virus on Your Computer

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• Webinar: Integrated Sales & Marketing - An Impossible Dream?

  - by charles.knapp

  Are you making the most of the latest B2B marketing thinking? Are your marketing tactics, your outbound email campaigns and your SEO generating enough of the prospects and leads that your sales teams need? Are your sales and marketing functions aligned and working together with optimised results? In this Webinar with MarketingWeek Magazine, find out how: - To ensure your marketers create and deliver consistently effective, and targeted campaigns - You can triple the customer intelligence your marketers gather, ensuring your sales teams are better informed and qualified than ever before - Generate up to 200% growth in lead volume and start measuring marketing effectiveness against increase in sales and size of an average deal - And hear how BPI OnDemand has delivered integrated sales & marketing across industries, with results such as 100% ROI on system cost for Heal's after just one campaign

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• Announcing the Winnipeg Code Camp!

  - by D'Arcy Lussier

  Alright, the event website will be up this weekend, but I wanted to get the word out sooner than later. For the third year, we’re holding the Winnipeg Code Camp! When: Saturday, February 26th Where: Red River College, Princess Street Campus Cost: FREE!!! Continental Breakfast and Hot Lunch Provided! We’re going to have four rooms worth of sessions going on like last year, so lots of great sessions and great content. To register for the event (we need to know numbers for ordering the food), please do so here: http://www.eventbrite.com/event/1180632303 If you’re interested in speaking at the Code Camp, please contact me at darcy.lussier at gmail.com. Note that we have only 20 slots for the day, so contact me sooner than later! D

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• Using YouTube as a CDN

  - by Syed

  Why isn't YouTube used as a CDN for video and audio files? Through YouTube's api and developer tools, it would be possible to post all media files to YouTube from a CMS and then make a call to them when needed. This seems like it's within YouTube's TOS, it's a cost-effective way to store, retrieve, and distribute media files, and it could also make for easy monetization. I ask because I'm working on a new project for a public radio station. I can't figure out the real downside to this sort of an implementation.

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• Computer Networks UNISA - Chap 14 &ndash; Insuring Integrity &amp; Availability

  - by MarkPearl

  After reading this section you should be able to Identify the characteristics of a network that keep data safe from loss or damage Protect an enterprise-wide network from viruses Explain network and system level fault tolerance techniques Discuss issues related to network backup and recovery strategies Describe the components of a useful disaster recovery plan and the options for disaster contingencies What are integrity and availability? Integrity – the soundness of a networks programs, data, services, devices, and connections Availability – How consistently and reliably a file or system can be accessed by authorized personnel A number of phenomena can compromise both integrity and availability including… security breaches natural disasters malicious intruders power flaws human error users etc Although you cannot predict every type of vulnerability, you can take measures to guard against the most damaging events. The following are some guidelines… Allow only network administrators to create or modify NOS and application system users. Monitor the network for unauthorized access or changes Record authorized system changes in a change management system’ Install redundant components Perform regular health checks on the network Check system performance, error logs, and the system log book regularly Keep backups Implement and enforce security and disaster recovery policies These are just some of the basics… Malware Malware refers to any program or piece of code designed to intrude upon or harm a system or its resources. Types of Malware… Boot sector viruses Macro viruses File infector viruses Worms Trojan Horse Network Viruses Bots Malware characteristics Some common characteristics of Malware include… Encryption Stealth Polymorphism Time dependence Malware Protection There are various tools available to protect you from malware called anti-malware software. These monitor your system for indications that a program is performing potential malware operations. A number of techniques are used to detect malware including… Signature Scanning Integrity Checking Monitoring unexpected file changes or virus like behaviours It is important to decide where anti-malware tools will be installed and find a balance between performance and protection. There are several general purpose malware policies that can be implemented to protect your network including… Every compute in an organization should be equipped with malware detection and cleaning software that regularly runs Users should not be allowed to alter or disable the anti-malware software Users should know what to do in case the anti-malware program detects a malware virus Users should be prohibited from installing any unauthorized software on their systems System wide alerts should be issued to network users notifying them if a serious malware virus has been detected. Fault Tolerance Besides guarding against malware, another key factor in maintaining the availability and integrity of data is fault tolerance. Fault tolerance is the ability for a system to continue performing despite an unexpected hardware or software malfunction. Fault tolerance can be realized in varying degrees, the optimal level of fault tolerance for a system depends on how critical its services and files are to productivity. Generally the more fault tolerant the system, the more expensive it is. The following describe some of the areas that need to be considered for fault tolerance. Environment (Temperature and humidity) Power Topology and Connectivity Servers Storage Power Typical power flaws include Surges – a brief increase in voltage due to lightening strikes, solar flares or some idiot at City Power Noise – Fluctuation in voltage levels caused by other devices on the network or electromagnetic interference Brownout – A sag in voltage for just a moment Blackout – A complete power loss The are various alternate power sources to consider including UPS’s and Generators. UPS’s are found in two categories… Standby UPS – provides continuous power when mains goes down (brief period of switching over) Online UPS – is online all the time and the device receives power from the UPS all the time (the UPS is charged continuously) Servers There are various techniques for fault tolerance with servers. Server mirroring is an option where one device or component duplicates the activities of another. It is generally an expensive process. Clustering is a fault tolerance technique that links multiple servers together to appear as a single server. They share processing and storage responsibilities and if one unit in the cluster goes down, another unit can be brought in to replace it. Storage There are various techniques available including the following… RAID Arrays NAS (Storage (Network Attached Storage) SANs (Storage Area Networks) Data Backup A backup is a copy of data or program files created for archiving or safekeeping. Many different options for backups exist with various media including… These vary in cost and speed. Optical Media Tape Backup External Disk Drives Network Backups Backup Strategy After selecting the appropriate tool for performing your servers backup, devise a backup strategy to guide you through performing reliable backups that provide maximum data protection. Questions that should be answered include… What data must be backed up At what time of day or night will the backups occur How will you verify the accuracy of the backups Where and for how long will backup media be stored Who will take responsibility for ensuring that backups occurred How long will you save backups Where will backup and recovery documentation be stored Different backup methods provide varying levels of certainty and corresponding labour cost. There are also different ways to determine which files should be backed up including… Full backup – all data on all servers is copied to storage media Incremental backup – Only data that has changed since the last full or incremental backup is copied to a storage medium Differential backup – Only data that has changed since the last backup is coped to a storage medium Disaster Recovery Disaster recovery is the process of restoring your critical functionality and data after an enterprise wide outage has occurred. A disaster recovery plan is for extreme scenarios (i.e. fire, line fault, etc). A cold site is a place were the computers, devices, and connectivity necessary to rebuild a network exist but they are not appropriately configured. A warm site is a place where the computers, devices, and connectivity necessary to rebuild a network exists with some appropriately configured devices. A hot site is a place where the computers, devices, and connectivity necessary to rebuild a network exists and all are appropriately configured.

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• Payback Is The Coupon King

  - by Troy Kitch

  PAYBACK GmbH operates the largest marketing and couponing platforms in the world—with more than 50 million subscribers in Germany, Poland, India, Italy, and Mexico.  The Security Challenge Payback handles millions of requests for customer loyalty coupons and card-related transactions per day under tight latency constraints—with up to 1,000 attributes or more for each PAYBACK subscriber. Among the many challenges they solved using Oracle, they had to ensure that storage of sensitive data complied with the company’s stringent privacy standards aimed at protecting customer and purchase information from unintended disclosure. Oracle Advanced Security The company deployed Oracle Advanced Security to achieve reliable, cost-effective data protection for back-up files and gain the ability to transparently encrypt data transfers. By using Oracle Advanced Security, organizations can comply with privacy and regulatory mandates that require encrypting and redacting (display masking) application data, such as credit cards, social security numbers, or personally identifiable information (PII). Learn more about how PAYBACK uses Oracle.

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• Triangle Strips and Tangent Space Normal Mapping

  - by Koarl

  Short: Do triangle strips and Tangent Space Normal mapping go together? According to quite a lot of tutorials on bump mapping, it seems common practice to derive tangent space matrices in a vertex program and transform the light direction vector(s) to tangent space and then pass them on to a fragment program. However, if one was using triangle strips or index buffers, it is a given that the vertex buffer contains vertices that sit at border edges and would thus require more than one normal to derive tangent space matrices to interpolate between in fragment programs. Is there any reasonable way to not have duplicate vertices in your buffer and still use tangent space normal mapping? Which one do you think is better: Having normal and tangent encoded in the assets and just optimize the geometry handling to alleviate the cost of duplicate vertices or using triangle strips and computing normals/tangents completely at run time? Thinking about it, the more reasonable answer seems to be the first one, but why might my professor still be fussing about triangle strips when it seems so obvious?

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• DDD and filtering

  - by tikhop

  I am developing an app in ddd maner. So I have a complex domain model. Suppose I have a Fare object and Airline. Each Airline should contain several or much more Fares. My UI should represent Model (only small part of complex model) as a list of Airline, when the user select the Airline, I must show the list of Fares. User can filtering the Fares (by travel time, cost, etc.). What is the appropriate place for filtering Fares and Airlines? I am assuming that I should do it in ViewModel. Like: My domain model has wrapped with Service Layer - UI works with ViewModel - ViewModel obtain data from Service Layer filtering it and create DTO objects for UI. Or I'm wrong?

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• Part 1 - Load Testing In The Cloud

  - by Tarun Arora

  Azure is fascinating, but even more fascinating is the marriage of Azure and TFS! Introduction Recently a client I worked for had 2 major business critical applications being delivered, with very little time budgeted for Performance testing, we immediately hit a bottleneck when the performance testing phase started, the in house infrastructure team could not support the hardware requirements in the short notice. It was suggested that the performance testing be performed on one of the QA environments which was a fraction of the production environment. This didn’t seem right, the team decided to turn to the cloud. The team took advantage of the elasticity offered by Azure, starting with a single test agent which was provisioned and ready for use with in 30 minutes the team scaled up to 17 test agents to perform a very comprehensive performance testing cycle. Issues were identified and resolved but the highlight was that the cost of running the ‘test rig’ proved to be less than if hosted on premise by the infrastructure team. Thank you for taking the time out to read this blog post, in the series of posts, I’ll try and cover the start to end of everything you need to know to use Azure to build your Test Rig in the cloud. But Why Azure? I have my own Data Centre… If the environment is provisioned in your own datacentre, - No matter what level of service agreement you may have with your infrastructure team there will be down time when the environment is patched - How fast can you scale up or down the environments (keeping the enterprise processes in mind) Administration, Cost, Flexibility and Scalability are the areas you would want to think around when taking the decision between your own Data Centre and Azure! How is Microsoft's Public Cloud Offering different from Amazon’s Public Cloud Offering? Microsoft's offering of the Cloud is a hybrid of Platform as a Service (PaaS) and Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) which distinguishes Microsoft's offering from other providers such as Amazon (Amazon only offers IaaS). PaaS – Platform as a Service IaaS – Infrastructure as a Service Fills the needs of those who want to build and run custom applications as services. Similar to traditional hosting, where a business will use the hosted environment as a logical extension of the on-premises datacentre. A service provider offers a pre-configured, virtualized application server environment to which applications can be deployed by the development staff. Since the service providers manage the hardware (patching, upgrades and so forth), as well as application server uptime, the involvement of IT pros is minimized. On-demand scalability combined with hardware and application server management relieves developers from infrastructure concerns and allows them to focus on building applications. The servers (physical and virtual) are rented on an as-needed basis, and the IT professionals who manage the infrastructure have full control of the software configuration. This kind of flexibility increases the complexity of the IT environment, as customer IT professionals need to maintain the servers as though they are on-premises. The maintenance activities may include patching and upgrades of the OS and the application server, load balancing, failover clustering of database servers, backup and restoration, and any other activities that mitigate the risks of hardware and software failures.   The biggest advantage with PaaS is that you do not have to worry about maintaining the environment, you can focus all your time in solving the business problems with your solution rather than worrying about maintaining the environment. If you decide to use a VM Role on Azure, you are asking for IaaS, more on this later. A nice blog post here on the difference between Saas, PaaS and IaaS. Now that we are convinced why we should be turning to the cloud and why in specific Azure, let’s discuss about the Test Rig. The Load Test Rig – Topology Now the moment of truth, Of course a big part of getting value from cloud computing is identifying the most adequate workloads to take to the cloud, so I’ve decided to try to make a Load Testing rig where the Agents are running on Windows Azure.   I’ll talk you through the above Topology, - User: User kick starts the load test run from the developer workstation on premise. This passes the request to the Test Controller. - Test Controller: The Test Controller is on premise connected to the same domain as the developer workstation. As soon as the Test Controller receives the request it makes use of the Windows Azure Connect service to orchestrate the test responsibilities to all the Test Agents. The Windows Azure Connect endpoint software must be active on all Azure instances and on the Controller machine as well. This allows IP connectivity between them and, given that the firewall is properly configured, allows the Controller to send work loads to the agents. In parallel, the Controller will collect the performance data from the agents, using the traditional WMI mechanisms. - Test Agents: The Test Agents are on the Windows Azure Public Cloud, as soon as the test controller issues instructions to the test agents, the test agents start executing the load tests. The HTTP requests are issued against the web server on premise, the results are captured by the test agents. And finally the results are passed over to the controller. - Servers: The Web Server and DB Server are hosted on premise in the datacentre, this is usually the case with business critical applications, you probably want to manage them your self. Recap and What’s next? So, in the introduction in the series of blog posts on Load Testing in the cloud I highlighted why creating a test rig in the cloud is a good idea, what advantages does Windows Azure offer and the Test Rig topology that I will be using. I would also like to mention that i stumbled upon this [Video] on Azure in a nutshell, great watch if you are new to Windows Azure. In the next post I intend to start setting up the Load Test Environment and discuss pricing with respect to test agent machine types that will be used in the test rig. Hope you enjoyed this post, If you have any recommendations on things that I should consider or any questions or feedback, feel free to add to this blog post. Remember to subscribe to http://feeds.feedburner.com/TarunArora.  See you in Part II.   Share this post : CodeProject

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• Live Webcast, Dec. 6: Enterprise Clouds with Oracle VM

  - by Monica Kumar

  Mark your calendar! On Tuesday, Dec. 6th at 9am PT, we are hosting a live webcast with Oracle VM experts. Enterprise Clouds with Oracle VM Tuesday, Dec. 6 at 9 AM US PT The ability to create a cloud leveraging public or private infrastructure has been hampered by the lack of availability of practical, cost-effective choices for server virtualization. In this session, you will learn how Oracle provides a single virtualization solution for your entire infrastructure, and how Oracle Enterprise Manager and Oracle Virtual Assembly Builder help you manage Oracle Applications across the cloud. Also find out how virtualization was leveraged to transform IT for Oracle University and support more than 350,00 students in more than 40,000 classes each year. Those lessons have paved the path to private cloud computing inside Oracle. Speakers: Adam Hawley, Senior Director of Product Management, Oracle Dan Herrup, Principal Systems Engineer, Oracle Corporate Citizenship Register Now.

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• Are There Realistic/Useful Solutions for Source Control for Ladder Logic Programs

  - by Steven A. Lowe

  Version control for ladder logic (LL) programs for programmable logic controllers (PLCs) seems to be virtually non-existent. It may be because LL is a visual language and tends to be stored in binary files, or it may be because source code control hasn't "caught on" in process control engineering circles - or perhaps my Google-Fu is weak tonight. Do you know of any realistic and useful solutions for version control for such systems? Definitions: realistic = changes to the programs are tracked by user and subject to reversion and merges useful = the system integrates with visual LL designers, is not limited to LL from a single PLC manufacturer, and does not cost a ridiculous amount of money? Note: I have heard of people using SVN or Mercurial et al to track the binary files, but I don't think the diff/merge capabilities would display readable differences.

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• Brand New Oracle WebLogic 12c Online Launch Event, December 1, 10am PT

  - by B Shashikumar

  The brand new WebLogic 12c will be launched on December 1st with a 2-hour global webcast highlighting salient capabilities and benefits and featuring Hasan Rizvi, SVP, Oracle Fusion Middleware and Java. For the more techie types, the 2nd hour will be a developer focused discussion including multiple demos and live Q&A. Please join us, with your fellow IT managers, architects, and developers, to hear how the new release of Oracle WebLogic Server is: Designed to help you seamlessly move into the public or private cloud with an open, standards-based platform Built to drive higher value for your current infrastructure and significantly reduce development time and cost Enhanced with transformational platforms and technologies such as Java EE 6, Oracle’s Active GridLink for RAC, Oracle Traffic Director, and Oracle Virtual Assembly Builder   

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• A plan to study ASP.NET + C# + SQL + SQL Server [closed]

  - by ali saleem

  Possible Duplicates: Should I be a professional in C# programming in order to build good web applications using ASP.NET? Is there a combination of language and database that is both great to use and free/cheap? C# for web development? or C# as general purpose programming? ASP.NET MVC book for absolute beginners Will it cost me a lot if I chose ASP.NET and IIS? Is it possible to use MySQL in ASP.NET? Best books to start with ASP.NET MVC / C# and Visual Studio Is it enough for me to learn the above technologies to become a professional web developer? If so then how can I learn them? together or to start with C# for example at first? If there is another thing I should learn please tell me about it.

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• Dynamic Dijkstra

  - by Dani

  I need dynamic dijkstra algorithm that can update itself when edge's cost is changed without a full recalculation. Full recalculation is not an option. I've tryed to "brew" my own implemantion with no success. I've also tryed to find on the Internet but found nothing. A link to an article explaining the algorithm or even it's name will be good. Edit: Thanks everyone for answering. I managed to make algorithm of my own that runs in O(V+E) time, if anyone wishes to know the algorithm just say so and I will post it.

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