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• If unexpected database changes cause you problems – we can help!

  - by Chris Smith

  Have you ever been surprised by an unexpected difference between you database environments? Have you ever found that your Staging database is not the same as your Production database, even though it was the week before? Has an emergency hotfix suddenly appeared in Production over the weekend without your knowledge? Has your client secretly added a couple of indices to their local version of the database to aid performance? Worse still, has a developer ever accidently run a SQL script against the wrong database without noticing their mistake? If you’ve answered “Yes” to any of the above questions then you’ve suffered from ‘drift’. Database drift is where the state of a database (schema, particularly) has moved away from its expected or official state over time. The upshot is that the database is in an unknown or poorly-understood state. Even if these unexpected changes are not destructive, drift can be a big problem when it’s time to release a new version of the database. A deployment to a target database in an unexpected state can error and fail, potentially delaying a vital, time-sensitive update. A big issue with drift is that it can be hard to spot and it can be even harder to determine its provenance. So, before you can deal with an issue caused by drift, you’ll need to know exactly what change has been made, who made it, when they made it and why they made it. Those questions can take a lot of effort to answer. Then you actually need to decide what to do. Do you rollback the change because it was bad? Retrospectively apply it to the Staging environment because it is a required change? Or script the change into version control to get it back in line with your process? Red Gate’s Database Delivery Team have been talking to DBAs, database consultants and database developers to explore the problem of drift. We’ve started to get a really good idea of how big a problem it can be and what database professionals need to know and do, in order to deal with it.  It’s fair to say, we’re pretty excited at the prospect of creating a tool that will really help and we’ve got some great feedback on our initial ideas (see image below).   We’re now well underway with the development of our new drift-spotting product – SQL Lighthouse – and we hope to have a beta release out towards the end of July. What we really need is your help to shape the product into a great tool. So, if database drift is a problem that you’d like help solving and are interested in finding out more about our product, join our mailing list to register your interest in trying out the beta release. Subscribe to our mailing list

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• Wacom Bamboo CTH460L issues in Ubuntu 10.04

  - by Robert Smith

  I recently bought a Wacom Bamboo Pen & Touch CTH460L. I installed doctormo PPA, however, the pen functionality didn't work and the touch was very glitchy (when I touched it, it immediately double clicked and began to drag elements in the screen). I tried to configure it using the wacom-utility package in the Synaptic Package Manager (version 1.21-1) but that didn't work either. Then I followed this post (#621, written by aaaalex), and after some problems trying to restart Ubuntu (graphics related problems), the pen works fine (it could be better, though) but the touch functionality doesn't work anymore. Currently I have installed xserver-xorg-input-wacom (1:0.10.11-0ubuntu7), wacom-dkms (0.8.10.2-1ubuntu1) and wacom-utility. The Wacom Utility only displays an "options" field under "Wacom BambooPT 2FG 4X5" but no other option to configure it. What is the correct way to get this tablet working on Ubuntu 10.04?. By the way, currently I can't start Ubuntu properly when the tablet is connected (in that case, Ubuntu start in low graphics mode). I need to connect it later.

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• update-java-alternatives vs update-alternatives --config java

  - by Stan Smith

  Thanks in advance from this Ubuntu noob... On Ubuntu 12.04 LTS I have installed Sun's JDK7, Eclipse, and the Arduino IDE. I want the Arduino to use OpenJDK 6 and want Eclipse to use Sun's JDK 7. From my understanding I need to manually choose which Java to use before running each application. This led me to the 'update-java-alternatives -l' command... when I run this I only see the following: java-1.6.0-openjdk-amd64 1061 /usr/lib/jvm/java-1.6.0-openjdk-amd64 ...but when I run 'update-alternatives --config java' I see the following: *0 /usr/lib/jvm/java-6-openjdk-amd64/jre/bin/java auto mode 1 /usr/lib/jvm/java-6-openjdk-amd64/jre/bin/java manual mode 2 /usr/lib/jvm/jdk1.7.0/bin/java manual mode 3 /usr/lib/jvm/jre1.7.0/bin/java manual mode I don't understand why the update-java-alternatives doesn't display the same 3 options. I also don't understand how to switch between OpenJDK6 and JDK7. Can someone please explain how I can go about using the OpenJDK6 for Arduino development and Sun JDK7 for Eclipse/Android development? Thank you in advance for any assistance or feedback you can offer. Stan

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• Is there a snippets program that allows for tab entry of variables across the mac?

  - by Jeremy Smith

  I love Sublime Text editor and the ability to create code snippets like so: <snippet> <content><![CDATA[\$("${1:selector}").${2:method}]]></content> <tabTrigger>jq</tabTrigger> </snippet> This allows me to type jq[tab] and then have it expand to $("selector").method where I am able to tab through the string 'selector' and 'method' in order to change them. But what I'd really like to do is use this same snippet when working in Chrome Dev Tools, so I was looking for a mac snippets program that could support this. However, the three programs that I looked at (Keyboard Maestro, Snippets, CodeBox) don't support the ability to tab through to highlight predetermined strings and change them. Does anyone know of an app that will do this?

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• PrairieDevCon &ndash; Slide Decks

  - by Dylan Smith

  PrairieDevCon 2010 was an awesome time.  Learned a lot, and had some amazing conversations.  You guys even managed to convince me that NoSQL databases might actually be useful after all.   For those interested here’s my slide decks from my two sessions: Agile In Action Database Change Management With Visual Studio

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• How do developers verify that software requirement changes in one system do not violate a requirement of downstream software systems?

  - by Peter Smith

  In my work, I do requirements gathering, analysis and design of business solutions in addition to coding. There are multiple software systems and packages, and developers are expected to work on any of them, instead of being assigned to make changes to only 1 system or just a few systems. How developers ensure they have captured all of the necessary requirements and resolved any conflicting requirements? An example of this type of scenario: Bob the developer is asked to modify the problem ticket system for a hypothetical utility repair business. They contract with a local utility company to provide this service. The old system provides a mechanism for an external customer to create a ticket indicating a problem with utility service at a particular address. There is a scheduling system and an invoicing system that is dependent on this data. Bob's new project is to modify the ticket placement system to allow for multiple addresses to entered by a landlord or other end customer with multiple properties. The invoicing system bills per ticket, but should be modified to bill per address. What practices would help Bob discover that the invoicing system needs to be changed as well? How might Bob discover what other systems in his company might need to be changed in order to support the new changes\business model? Let's say there is a documented specification for each system involved, but there are many systems and Bob is not familiar with all of them. End of example. We're often in this scenario, and we do have design reviews but management places ultimate responsibility for any defects (business process or software process) on the developer who is doing the design and the work. Some organizations seem to be better at this than others. How do they manage to detect and solve conflicting or incomplete requirements across software systems? We currently have a lot of tribal knowledge and just a few developers who understand the entire business and software chain. This seems highly ineffective and leads to problems at the requirements level.

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• You got RDMA in my Python? You got Python in my RDMA!

  - by andy.grover

  Open Source Bridge is going to be great this year. While it attracts a different crowd than Linux-centric conferences, I couldn't help submitting a topic proposal anyways :)

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• Does the type of prior employers matter when applying for a new job?

  - by Peter Smith

  Is there a bias in industry regarding the kind of previous employers an applicant has had (Government contractors, researchers, small business, large corporations)? I'm currently working for a University as a generalist programmer and I like my job here. But I'm worried that if I had to switch jobs down the road and apply for a corporate job that my resume would be dismissed based on the fact that I'm working in academia.

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• Does Huawei E398 LTE Modem works with Netgear Router?

  - by Paul Smith

  I've been using a Netgear router sharing the signal through my Huawei E160 dongle, but following the speeds update and the device limit, it does not satisfy the demand. Through research, I've found that Huawei E398 is the latest and functional dongle so far. I'm going to update, but the confusion comes: Is it compatible for my Netgear router? Will it work? Any information will be appreciated. I found the unlocked E398 here.

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• The Changing Face of PASS

  - by Bill Graziano

  I’m starting my sixth year on the PASS Board.  I served two years as the Program Director, two years as the Vice-President of Marketing and I’m starting my second year as the Executive Vice-President of Finance.  There’s a pretty good chance that if PASS has done something you don’t like or is doing something you don’t like, that I’m involved in one way or another. Andy Leonard asked in a comment on his blog if the Board had ever reversed itself based on community input.  He asserted that it hadn’t.  I disagree.  I’m not going to try and list all the changes we make inside portfolios based on feedback from and meetings with the community.  I’m going to focus on major governance issues since I was elected to the Board. Management Company The first big change was our management company.  Our old management company had a standard approach to running a non-profit.  It worked well when PASS was launched.  Having a ready-made structure and process to run the organization enabled the organization to grow quickly.  As time went on we were limited in some of the things we wanted to do.  The more involved you were with PASS, the more you saw these limitations.  Key volunteers were regularly providing feedback that they wanted certain changes that were difficult for us to accomplish.  The Board at that time wanted changes that were difficult or impossible to accomplish under that structure. This was not a simple change.  Imagine a $2.5 million dollar company letting all its employees go on a Friday and starting with a new staff on Monday.  We also had a very narrow window to accomplish that so that we wouldn’t affect the Summit – our only source of revenue.  We spent the year after the change rebuilding processes and putting on the Summit in Denver.  That’s a concrete example of a huge change that PASS made to better serve its members.  And it was a change that many in the community were telling us we needed to make. Financials We heard regularly from our members that they wanted our financials posted.  Today on our web site you can find audited financials going back to 2004.  We publish our budget at the start of each year.  If you ask a question about the financials on the PASS site I do my best to answer it.  I’m also trying to do a better job answering financial questions posted in other locations.  (And yes, I know I owe a few of you some blog posts.) That’s another concrete example of a change that our members asked for that the Board agreed was a good decision. Minutes When I started on the Board the meeting minutes were very limited.  The minutes from a two day Board meeting might fit on one page.  I think we did the bare minimum we were legally required to do.  Today Board meeting minutes run from 5 to 12 pages and go into incredible detail on what we talk about.  There are certain topics that are NDA but where possible we try to list the topic we discussed but that the actual discussion was under NDA.  We also publish the agenda of Board meetings ahead of time. This is another specific example where input from the community influenced the decision.  It was certainly easier to have limited minutes but I think the extra effort helps our members understand what’s going on. Board Q&A At the 2009 Summit the Board held its first public Q&A with our members.  We’d always been available individually to answer questions.  There’s a benefit to getting us all in one room and asking the really hard questions to watch us squirm.  We learn what questions we don’t have good answers for.  We get to see how many people in the crowd look interested in the various questions and answers. I don’t recall the genesis of how this came about.  I’m fairly certain there was some community pressure though. Board Votes Until last November, the Board only reported the vote totals and not how individual Board members voted.  That was one of the topics at a great lunch I had with Tim Mitchell and Kendal van Dyke at the Summit.  That was also the topic of the first question asked at the Board Q&A by Kendal.  Kendal expressed his opposition to to anonymous votes clearly and passionately and without trying to paint anyone into a corner.  Less than 24 hours later the PASS Board voted to make individual votes public unless the topic was under NDA.  That’s another area where the Board decided to change based on feedback from our members. Summit Location While this isn’t actually a governance issue it is one of the more public decisions we make that has taken some public criticism.  There is a significant portion of our members that want the Summit near them.  There is a significant portion of our members that like the Summit in Seattle.  There is a significant portion of our members that think it should move around the country.  I was one that felt strongly that there were significant, tangible benefits to our attendees to being in Seattle every year.  I’m also one that has been swayed by some very compelling arguments that we need to have at least one outside Seattle and then revisit the decision.  I can’t tell you how the Board will vote but I know the opinion of our members weighs heavily on the decision. Elections And that brings us to the grand-daddy of all governance issues.  My thesis for this blog post is that the PASS Board has implemented policy changes in response to member feedback.  It isn’t to defend or criticize our election process.  It’s just to say that is has been under going continuous change since I’ve been on the Board.  I ran for the Board in the fall of 2005.  I don’t know much about what happened before then.  I was actively volunteering for PASS for four years prior to that as a chapter leader and on the program committee.  I don’t recall any complaints about elections but that doesn’t mean they didn’t occur.  The questions from the Nominating Committee (NomCom) were trivial and the selection process rudimentary (For example, “Tell us about your accomplishments”).  I don’t even remember who I ran against or how many other people ran.  I ran for the VP of Marketing in the fall of 2007.  I don’t recall any significant changes the Board made in the election process for that election.  I think a lot of the changes in 2007 came from us asking the management company to work on the election process.  I was expecting a similar set of puff ball questions from my previous election.  Boy, was I in for a shock.  The NomCom had found a much better set of questions and really made the interview portion difficult.  The questions were much more behavioral in nature.  I’d already written about my vision for PASS and my goals.  They wanted to know how I handled adversity, how I handled criticism, how I handled conflict, how I handled troublesome volunteers, how I motivated people and how I responded to motivation. And many, many other things. They grilled me for over an hour.  I’ve done a fair bit of technical sales in my time.  I feel I speak well under pressure addressing pointed questions.  This interview intentionally put me under pressure.  In addition to wanting to know about my interpersonal skills, my work experience, my volunteer experience and my supervisory experience they wanted to see how I’d do under pressure.  They wanted to see who would respond under pressure and who wouldn’t.  It was a bit of a shock. That was the first big change I remember in the election process.  I know there were other improvements around the process but none of them stick in my mind quite like the unexpected hour-long grilling. The next big change I remember was after the 2009 elections.  Andy Warren was unhappy with the election process and wanted to make some changes.  He worked with Hannes at HQ and they came up with a better set of processes.  I think Andy moved PASS in the right direction.  Nonetheless, after the 2010 election even more people were very publicly clamoring for changes to our election process.  In August of 2010 we had a choice to make.  There were numerous bloggers criticizing the Board and our upcoming election.  The easy change would be to announce that we were changing the process in a way that would satisfy our critics.  I believe that a knee-jerk response to criticism is seldom correct. Instead the Board spent August and September and October and November listening to the community.  I visited two SQLSaturdays and asked questions of everyone I could.  I attended chapter meetings and asked questions of as many people as they’d let me.  At Summit I made it a point to introduce myself to strangers and ask them about the election.  At every breakfast I’d sit down at a table full of strangers and ask about the election.  I’m happy to say that I left most tables arguing about the election.  Most days I managed to get 2 or 3 breakfasts in. I spent less time talking to people that had already written about the election.  They were already expressing their opinion.  I wanted to talk to people that hadn’t spoken up.  I wanted to know what the silent majority thought.  The Board all attended the Q&A session where our members expressed their concerns about a variety of issues including the election. The PASS Board also chose to create the Election Review Committee.  We wanted people from the community that had been involved with PASS to look at our election process with fresh eyes while listening to what the community had to say and give us some advice on how we could improve the process.  I’m a part of this as is Andy Warren.  None of the other members are on the Board.  I’ve sat in numerous calls and interviews with this group and attended an open meeting at the Summit.  We asked anyone that wanted to discuss the election to come speak with us.  The ERC held an open meeting at the Summit and invited anyone to attend.  There are forums on the ERC web site where we’ve invited people to participate.  The ERC has reached to key people involved in recent elections.  The years that I haven’t mentioned also saw minor improvements in the election process.  Off the top of my head I don’t recall what exact changes were made each year.  Specifically since the 2010 election we’ve gone out of our way to seek input from the community about the process.  I’m not sure what more we could have done to invite feedback from the community. I think to say that we haven’t “fixed” the election process isn’t a fair criticism at this time.  We haven’t rushed any changes through the process.  If you don’t see any changes in our election process in July or August then I think it’s fair to criticize us for ignoring the community or ask for an explanation for what we’ve done. In Summary Andy’s main point was that the PASS Board hasn’t changed in response to our members wishes.  I think I’ve shown that time and time again the PASS Board has changed in response to what our members want.  There are only two outstanding issues: Summit location and elections.  The 2013 Summit location hasn’t been decided yet.  Our work on the elections is also in progress.  And at every step in the election review we’ve gone out of our way to listen to the community and incorporate their feedback on the process. I also hope I’m not encouraging everyone that wants some change in the organization to organize a “blog rush” against the Board.  We take public suggestions very seriously but we also take the time to evaluate those suggestions and learn what the rest of our members think and make a measured decision.

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• GDL Presents: Women Techmakers with Diane Greene

  GDL Presents: Women Techmakers with Diane Greene Megan Smith co-hosts with Cloud Platform PM Lead Jessie Jiang. They will be exploring former VMWare CEO and current Google, Inc. board member Diane Greene's strategic thoughts about Cloud on a high-level, as well as the direction in which she sees the tech industry for women. Hosts: Megan Smith - Vice President, Google [x] | Jessie Jiang - Product Management Lead, Google Cloud Platform Guest: Diane Greene - Board of Directors, Google, Inc. From: GoogleDevelopers Views: 0 0 ratings Time: 01:00:00 More in Science & Technology

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• How to create per-vertex normals when reusing vertex data?

  - by Chris Smith

  I am displaying a cube using a vertex buffer object (gl.ELEMENT_ARRAY_BUFFER). This allows me to specify vertex indicies, rather than having duplicate vertexes. In the case of displaying a simple cube, this means I only need to have eight vertices total. Opposed to needing three vertices per triangle, times two triangles per face, times six faces. Sound correct so far? My question is, how do I now deal with vertex attribute data such as color, texture coordinates, and normals when reusing vertices using the vertex buffer object? If I am reusing the same vertex data in my indexed vertex buffer, how can I differentiate when vertex X is used as part of the cube's front face versus the cube's left face? In both cases I would like the surface normal and texture coordinates to be different. I understand I could average the surface normal, however I would like to render a cube. Also, this still doesn't work for texture coordinates. Is there a way to save memory using a vertex buffer object while being able to provide different vertex attribute data based on context? (Per-triangle would be idea.) Or should I just duplicate each vertex for each context in which it gets rendered. (So there is a one-to-one mapping between vertex, normal, color, etc.) Note: I'm using OpenGL ES.

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• Is it customary for software companies to forbid code authors from taking credit for their work? do code authors have a say?

  - by J Smith

  The company I work for has decided that the source code for a set of tools they make available to customers is also going to be made available to those customers. Since I am the author of that source code, and since many source code files have my name written in them as part of class declaration documentation comments, I've been asked to remove author information from the source code files, even though the license headers at the beginning of each source file make it clear that the company is the owner of the code. Since I'm relatively new to this industry I was wondering whether it's considered typical for companies that decide to make their source code available to third parties to not allow the code authors to take some amount of credit for their work, even when it's clear that the code author is not the owner of the code. Am I right in assuming that I don't have a say on the matter?

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• Should I add parameters to instance methods that use those instance fields as parameters?

  - by john smith optional

  I have an instance method that uses instance fields in its work. I can leave the method without that parameters as they're available to me, or I can add them to the parameter list, thus making my method more "generic" and not reliable on the class. On the other hand, additional parameters will be in parameters list. Which approach is preferable and why? Edit: at the moment I don't know if my method will be public or private. Edit2: clarification: both method and fields are instance level.

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• Qualcomm Gobi WWAN modem no longer appears in Network Manager

  - by Andy E

  Not sure what happened here. I installed Cinnamon on my Ubuntu 12.10 environment yesterday, rebooted when finished and everything was working fine. I even used my WWAN modem after my fixed line broadband went down. However, after starting my machine this morning and seeing that my fixed line is still having problems (intermittently), I clicked the network applet and my WWAN device wasn't listed. It's not in the main network manager window either. It is still present on the system, however: $ lsusb Bus 001 Device 003: ID 05ca:18b0 Ricoh Co., Ltd Sony Vaio Integrated Webcam Bus 001 Device 004: ID 05c6:9221 Qualcomm, Inc. Gobi Wireless Modem (QDL mode) Bus 002 Device 005: ID 04e8:6865 Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd Bus 002 Device 002: ID 0409:005a NEC Corp. HighSpeed Hub Bus 003 Device 002: ID 147e:1000 Upek Biometric Touchchip/Touchstrip Fingerprint Sensor Bus 008 Device 002: ID 044e:3017 Alps Electric Co., Ltd BCM2046 Bluetooth Device Debug output from modem-manager, refers to a device that is blacklisted: modem-manager[10186]: [1355478137.024491] [mm-manager.c:866] device_added(): (tty/ttyUSB0): port's parent device is blacklisted modem-manager[10186]: [1355478137.024607] [mm-manager.c:875] device_added(): (tty/ttyS0): port's parent platform driver is not whitelisted modem-manager[10186]: [1355478137.024700] [mm-manager.c:875] device_added(): (tty/ttyS1): port's parent platform driver is not whitelisted ... I couldn't see anything relevant in the debug output for network-manager, but I've created a paste for it just in case. In /lib/udev/rules.d/77-mm-qdl-device-blacklist.rules, I found the following line that matches the device IDs from the lsusb output: # Generic Gobi QDL device ATTRS{idVendor}=="05c6", ATTRS{idProduct}=="9221", ENV{ID_MM_DEVICE_IGNORE}="1" I tried commenting out the second line and restarting network-manager/modem-manager but it didn't help. I've no idea where to go from here, does anyone else have any ideas?

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• isometric drawing order with larger than single tile images - drawing order algorithm?

  - by Roger Smith

  I have an isometric map over which I place various images. Most images will fit over a single tile, but some images are slightly larger. For example, I have a bed of size 2x3 tiles. This creates a problem when drawing my objects to the screen as I get some tiles erroneously overlapping other tiles. The two solutions that I know of are either splitting the image into 1x1 tile segments or implementing my own draw order algorithm, for example by assigning each image a number. The image with number 1 is drawn first, then 2, 3 etc. Does anyone have advice on what I should do? It seems to me like splitting an isometric image is very non obvious. How do you decide which parts of the image are 'in' a particular tile? I can't afford to split up all of my images manually either. The draw order algorithm seems like a nicer choice but I am not sure if it's going to be easy to implement. I can't solve, in my head, how to deal with situations whereby you change the index of one image, which causes a knock on effect to many other images. If anyone has an resources/tutorials on this I would be most grateful.

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• How to run RCU from the command line

  - by Kevin Smith

  When I was trying to figure out how to run RCU on 64-bit Linux I found this post. It shows how to run RCU from the command line. It didn't actually work for me, so you can see my post on how to run RCU on 64-bit Linux. But, seeing how to run RCU from the command got me started thinking about running RCU from the command line to create the schema for WebCenter Content. That post got me part of the way there since it shows how run RCU silently from the command line, but to do this you need to know the name of the RCU component for WebCenter Content. I poked around in the RCU files and found the component name for WCC is CONTENTSERVER11. There is a contentserver11 directory in rcuHome/rcu/integration and when you look at the contentserver11.xml file you will see <RepositoryConfig COMP_ID="CONTENTSERVER11"> With the component name for WCC in hand I was able to use this command line to run RCU and create the schema for WCC. .../rcuHome/bin/rcu -silent -createRepository -databaseType ORACLE -connectString localhost:1521:orcl1 -dbUser sys -dbRole sysdba -schemaPrefix TEST -component CONTENTSERVER11 -f <rcu_passwords.txt To make the silent part work and not have it prompt you for the passwords needed (sys password and password for each schema) you use the -f option and specify a file containing the passwords, one per line, in the order the components are listed on the -component argument. Here is the output from rcu when I ran the above command. Processing command line ....Repository Creation Utility - Checking PrerequisitesChecking Global PrerequisitesRepository Creation Utility - Checking PrerequisitesChecking Component PrerequisitesRepository Creation Utility - Creating TablespacesValidating and Creating TablespacesRepository Creation Utility - CreateRepository Create in progress.Percent Complete: 0...Percent Complete: 100Repository Creation Utility: Create - Completion SummaryDatabase details:Host Name              : localhostPort                   : 1521Service Name           : ORCL1Connected As           : sysPrefix for (prefixable) Schema Owners : TESTRCU Logfile            : /u01/app/oracle/logdir.2012-09-26_07-53/rcu.logComponent schemas created:Component                            Status  LogfileOracle Content Server 11g - Complete Success /u01/app/oracle/logdir.2012-09-26_07-53/contentserver11.logRepository Creation Utility - Create : Operation Completed This works fine if you want to use the default tablespace sizes and options, but there does not seem to be a way to specify the tablespace options on the command line. You can specify the name of the tablespace and temp tablespace, but they must already exist in the database before running RCU. I guess you can always create the tablespaces first using your desired sizes and options and then run RCU and specify the tablespaces you created. When looking up the command line options in the RCU doc I found it has the list of components for each product that it supports. See Appendix B in the RCU User's Guide.

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• Computing a normal matrix in conjunction with gluLookAt

  - by Chris Smith

  I have a hand-rolled camera class that converts yaw, pitch, and roll angles into a forward, side, and up vector suitable for calling gluLookAt. Using this camera class I can modify the model-view matrix to move about the 3D world just fine. However, I am having trouble when using this camera class (and associated model-view matrix) when trying to perform directional lighting in my vertex shader. The problem is that the light direction, (0, 1, 0) for example, is relative to where the 'camera is looking' and not the actual world coordinates. (Or is this eye coordinates vs. model coordinates?) I would like the light direction to be unaffected by the camera's viewing direction. For example, when the camera is looking down the Z axis the ground is lit correctly. However, if I point the camera straight at the ground, then it goes dark. This is (I think) because the light direction is parallel with the camera's 'up' vector which is perpendicular with the ground's normal vector. I tried computing the normal matrix without taking the camera's model view into account, but then none of my objects were rotated correctly. Sorry if this sounds vague. I suspect there is a straight forward answer, but I'm not 100% clear on how the normal matrix should be used for transforming vertex normals in my vertex shader. For reference, here is pseudo code for my rendering loop: pMatrix = new Matrix(); pMatrix = makePerspective(...) mvMatrix = new Matrix() camera.apply(mvMatrix); // Calls gluLookAt // Move the object into position. mvMatrix.translatev(position); mvMatrix.rotatef(rotation.x, 1, 0, 0); mvMatrix.rotatef(rotation.y, 0, 1, 0); mvMatrix.rotatef(rotation.z, 0, 0, 1); var nMatrix = new Matrix(); nMatrix.set(mvMatrix.get().getInverse().getTranspose()); // Set vertex shader uniforms. gl.uniformMatrix4fv(shaderProgram.pMatrixUniform, false, new Float32Array(pMatrix.getFlattened())); gl.uniformMatrix4fv(shaderProgram.mvMatrixUniform, false, new Float32Array(mvMatrix.getFlattened())); gl.uniformMatrix4fv(shaderProgram.nMatrixUniform, false, new Float32Array(nMatrix.getFlattened())); // ... gl.drawElements(gl.TRIANGLES, this.vertexIndexBuffer.numItems, gl.UNSIGNED_SHORT, 0); And the corresponding vertex shader: // Attributes attribute vec3 aVertexPosition; attribute vec4 aVertexColor; attribute vec3 aVertexNormal; // Uniforms uniform mat4 uMVMatrix; uniform mat4 uNMatrix; uniform mat4 uPMatrix; // Varyings varying vec4 vColor; // Constants const vec3 LIGHT_DIRECTION = vec3(0, 1, 0); // Opposite direction of photons. const vec4 AMBIENT_COLOR = vec4 (0.2, 0.2, 0.2, 1.0); float ComputeLighting() { vec4 transformedNormal = vec4(aVertexNormal.xyz, 1.0); transformedNormal = uNMatrix * transformedNormal; float base = dot(normalize(transformedNormal.xyz), normalize(LIGHT_DIRECTION)); return max(base, 0.0); } void main(void) { gl_Position = uPMatrix * uMVMatrix * vec4(aVertexPosition, 1.0); float lightWeight = ComputeLighting(); vColor = vec4(aVertexColor.xyz * lightWeight, 1.0) + AMBIENT_COLOR; } Note that I am using WebGL, so if the anser is use glFixThisProblem(...) any pointers on how to re-implement that on WebGL if missing would be appreciated.

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• Solving Inbound Refinery PDF Conversion Issues, Part 1

  - by Kevin Smith

  Working with Inbound Refinery (IBR)  and PDF Conversion can be very frustrating. When everything is working smoothly you kind of forgot it is even there. Documents are cheeked into WebCenter Content (WCC), sent to IBR for conversion, converted to PDF, returned to WCC, and viola your Office documents have a nice PDF rendition available for viewing. Then a user checks in a bunch of password protected Word files, the conversions fail, your IBR queue starts backing up, users start calling asking why their document have not been released yet, and your spend a frustrating afternoon trying to recover and get things back running properly again. Password protected documents are one cause of PDF conversion failures, and I will cover those in a future blog post, but there are many other problems that can cause conversions to fail, especially when working with the WinNativeConverter and using the native applications, e.g. Word, to convert a document to PDF. There are other conversion options like PDFExportConverter which uses Oracle OutsideIn to convert documents directly to PDF without the need for the native applications. However, to get the best fidelity to the original document the native applications must be used. Many customers have tried PDFExportConverter, but have stayed with the native applications for conversion since the conversion results from PDFExportConverter were not as good as when the native applications are used. One problem I ran into recently, that at least has a easy solution, are Word documents that display a Show Repairs dialog when the document is opened. If you open the problem document yourself you will see this dialog. This will cause the conversion to time out. Any time the native application displays a dialog that requires user input the conversion will time out. The solution is to set add a setting for BulletProofOnCorruption to the registry for the user running Word on the IBR server. See this support note from Microsoft for details. The support note says to set the registry key under HKEY_CURRENT_USER, but since we are running IBR as a service the correct location is under HKEY_USERS\.DEFAULT. Also since in our environment we were using Office 2007, the correct registry key to use was: HKEY_USERS\.DEFAULT\Software\Microsoft\Office\11.0\Word\Options Once you have done this restart the IBR managed server and resubmit your problem document. It should now be converted successfully. For more details on IBR see the Oracle® WebCenter Content Administrator's Guide for Conversion.

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• How to Stress Test the Hard Drives in Your PC or Server

  - by Tim Smith

  You have the latest drives for your server.  You stacked the top-of-the line RAM in the system.  You run effective code for your system.  However, what throughput is your system capable of handling, and can you really trust the capabilities listed by hardware companies? How to Stress Test the Hard Drives in Your PC or Server How To Customize Your Android Lock Screen with WidgetLocker The Best Free Portable Apps for Your Flash Drive Toolkit

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• How do "custom software companies" deal with technical debt?

  - by andy

  What are "custom software companies"? By "custom software companies" I mean companies that make their money primarily from building custom, one off, bits of software. Example are agencies or middle-ware companies, or contractors/consultants like Redify. What's the opposite of "custom software companies"? The oposite of the above business model are companies that focus on long term products, whether they be deployable desktop/mobile apps, or SaaS software. A sure fire way to build up technical debt: I work for a company that attempts to focus on a suite of SaaS products. However, due to certain constraints we sometimes end up bending to the will of certain clients and we end building bits of custom software that can only be used for that client. This is a sure fire way to incur technical debt. Now we have a bit of software to maintain that adds nothing to our core product. If custom work is a sure fire way to build technical debt, how do agencies handle it? So that got me thinking. Companies who don't have a core product as the center of their business model, well they're always doing custom software work. How do they cope with the notion of technical debt? How does it not drive them into technical bankruptcy?

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• What are the 'must know' GDB commands?

  - by Chris Smith

  I'm starting to get the hang of GDB, but everything still feels much slower than when debugging in Eclipse or Visual Studio. Are there any GDB commands you find particularly useful/productive? My life became dramatically better when I discovered: list - Display source code near the current instruction But that is still pretty basic. (And unnecessary when running GDB from Emacs.) Is there any way to do things like setup a watch window? (Print and update the result of an expression every time execution stops.)

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• Rawr Code Clone Analysis&ndash;Part 0

  - by Dylan Smith

  Code Clone Analysis is a cool new feature in Visual Studio 11 (vNext).  It analyzes all the code in your solution and attempts to identify blocks of code that are similar, and thus candidates for refactoring to eliminate the duplication.  The power lies in the fact that the blocks of code don't need to be identical for Code Clone to identify them, it will report Exact, Strong, Medium and Weak matches indicating how similar the blocks of code in question are.   People that know me know that I'm anal enthusiastic about both writing clean code, and taking old crappy code and making it suck less. So the possibilities for this feature have me pretty excited if it works well - and thats a big if that I'm hoping to explore over the next few blog posts. I'm going to grab the Rawr source code from CodePlex (a World Of Warcraft gear calculator engine program), run Code Clone Analysis against it, then go through the results one-by-one and refactor where appropriate blogging along the way.  My goals with this blog series are twofold: Evaluate and demonstrate Code Clone Analysis Provide some concrete examples of refactoring code to eliminate duplication and improve the code-base Here are the initial results:   Code Clone Analysis has found: 129 Exact Matches 201 Strong Matches 300 Medium Matches 193 Weak Matches Also indicated is that there was a total of 45,181 potentially duplicated lines of code that could be eliminated through refactoring.  Considering the entire solution only has 109,763 lines of code, if true, the duplicates lines of code number is pretty significant. In the next post we’ll start examining some of the individual results and determine if they really do indicate a potential refactoring.

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• UML Class Diagram: Abstract or Interface?

  - by J Smith

  I am modeling a class diagram and have spotted an opportunity to simplify it slightly. What I want to know is, would this it be better to implement an abstract class or an interface? The scenario is this, I have the classes: Artist Genre Album Song All of which share the methods getName, setName, and getCount (playcount that is). Would it be best to create an abstract 'Music' class with the aforementioned abstract methods, or should I create an interface, since the classes that implement the interface have to include all of the interface's methods (I think, correct me if I'm wrong). I hope I've given enough detail, please ask questions if I haven't. Thanks!

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• Site migration and SEO impact

  - by John Smith

  I'd greatly appreciate a response on the following question relating to site migration and SEO impact. Here's some background on how my domain name and site is currently configured: My domain name provider has the following settings: host name @ is an A NAME record and points to IP address x.x.x.x host name www is an A NAME record and points to IP address x.x.x.x sub-domain host name new.example.com is an A NAME record and points to IP address x.x.x.x My hosting provider has the following settings: host record @ is an A NAME record and points to IP address x.x.x.x, folder home/public_html/old host record www is a C NAME record and points to example.com sub-domain host record new.example.com points to home/public_html/new I want to: point the domain (example.com AND www.example.com) to the content hosted under folder home/public_html/new, which is currently the content directory for new.example.com retire the content hosted under folder home/public_html/old retire the sub-domain host record new.example.com I believe the easiest method of doing this, is: removing the sub-domain host record new.example.com; and changing the following line in the .htaccess file in home/public_html from # Change 'subdirectory' to be the directory you will use for your main domain. RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !^/old/ to # Change 'subdirectory' to be the directory you will use for your main domain. RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !^/new/ But I don't understand how this will impact my SERP - ideally, I'd like it to remain the same. Research on this topic resulted in the following Google page, which was no help, and this related StackExchange question, which suggests that this should not affect my SERP (at least, not permanently). But I wanted to make certain with a more specific example, and hopefully contribute to the community at the same time. I'd appreciate any feedback on this. Is there a better/recommended method to migrate sites this way? Is there an SEO impact?

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