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  • when to introduce an application services tier in an n-tier application

    - by user20358
    I am developing a web based application whose primary objective is to fetch data from the database, display it on the UI, take in user inputs and write them back to the database. The application is not going to be doing any industrial strength algorithm crunching, but will be receiving a very high number of hits at peak times (described below) which will be changing thru the day. The layers are your typical Presentation, Business, Data. The data layer is taken care of by the database server. The business layer will contain the DAL component to access the database server over tcp. The choices I have to separate these layers into tiers are: The presentation and business layers can be either kept on the same tier. The presentation layer on a separate tier by itself and the business layer on a separate tier by itself. In the case of choice 2, the business layer will be accessed by the presentation layer using a WCF service either over http or tcp. I don't see any heavy processing being done on the Business layer, so I am leaning towards option 1 above. I also feel for the same reason, adding a new tier will only introduce the network latency. However, in terms of scalability in case I need to scale up or scale out, which is a better way to go? This application will need to be able to support up to 6 million users an hour. There will be a reasonable amount of data in each user session, storing user's preferences and other details. I will be using page level caching as well.

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  • Oracle on Oracle: Is that all?

    - by Darin Pendergraft
    On October 17th, I posted a short blog and a podcast interview with Chirag Andani, talking about how Oracle IT uses its own IDM products. Blog link here. In response, I received a comment from reader Jaime Cardoso ([email protected]) who posted: “- You could have talked about how by deploying Oracle's Open standards base technology you were able to integrate any new system in your infrastructure in days. - You could have talked about how by deploying federation you were enabling the business side to keep all their options open in terms of companies to buy and sell while maintaining perfect employee and customer's single view. - You could have talked about how you are now able to cut response times to your audit and security teams into 1/10th of your former times Instead you spent 6 minutes talking about single sign on and self provisioning? If I didn't knew your IDM offer so well I would now be wondering what its differences from Microsoft's offer was. Sorry for not giving a positive comment here but, please your IDM suite is very good and, you simply aren't promoting it well enough” So I decided to send Jaime a note asking him about his experience, and to get his perspective on what makes the Oracle products great. What I found out is that Jaime is a very experienced IDM Architect with several major projects under his belt. Darin Pendergraft: Can you tell me a bit about your experience? How long have you worked in IT, and what is your IDM experience? Jaime Cardoso: I started working in "serious" IT in 1998 when I became Netscape's technical specialist in Portugal. Netscape Portugal didn't exist so, I was working for their VAR here. Most of my work at the time was with Netscape's mail server and LDAP server. Since that time I've been bouncing between the system's side like Sun resellers, Solaris stuff and even worked with Sun's Engineering in the making of an Hierarchical Storage Product (Sun CIS if you know it) and the application's side, mostly in LDAP and IDM. Over the years I've been doing support, service delivery and pre-sales / architecture design of IDM solutions in most big customers in Portugal, to name a few projects: - The first European deployment of Sun Access Manager (SAPO – Portugal Telecom) - The identity repository of 5/5 of the Biggest Portuguese banks - The Portuguese government federation of services project DP: OK, in your blog response, you mentioned 3 topics: 1. Using Oracle's standards based architecture; (you) were able to integrate any new system in days: can you give an example? What systems, how long did it take, number of apps/users/accounts/roles etc. JC: It's relatively easy to design a user management strategy for a static environment, or if you simply assume that you're an <insert vendor here> shop and all your systems will bow to that vendor's will. We've all seen that path, the use of proprietary technologies in interoperability solutions but, then reality kicks in. As an ISP I recall that I made the technical decision to use Active Directory as a central authentication system for the entire IT infrastructure. Clients, systems, apps, everything was there. As a good part of the systems and apps were running on UNIX, then a connector became needed in order to have UNIX boxes to authenticate against AD. And, that strategy worked but, each new machine required the component to be installed, monitoring had to be made for that component and each new app had to be independently certified. A self care user portal was an ongoing project, AD access assumes the client is inside the domain, something the ISP's customers (and UNIX boxes) weren't nor had any intention of ever being. When the Windows 2008 rollout was done, Microsoft changed the Active Directory interface. The Windows administrators didn't have enough know-how about directories and the way systems outside the MS world behaved so, on the go live, things weren't properly tested and a general outage followed. Several hours and 1 roll back later, everything was back working. But, the ISP still had to change all of its applications to work with the new access methods and reset the effort spent on the self service user portal. To keep with the same strategy, they would also have to trust Microsoft not to change interfaces again. Simply by putting up an Oracle LDAP server in the middle and replicating the user info from the AD into LDAP, most of the problems went away. Even systems for which no AD connector existed had PAM in them so, integration was made at the OS level, fully supported by the OS supplier. Sun Identity Manager already had a self care portal, combined with a user workflow so, all the clearances had to be given before the account was created or updated. Adding a new system as a client for these authentication services was simply a new checkbox in the OS installer and, even True64 systems were, for the first time integrated also with a 5 minute work of a junior system admin. True, all the windows clients and MS apps still went to the AD for their authentication needs so, from the start everybody knew that they weren't 100% free of migration pains but, now they had a single point of problems to look at. If you're looking for numbers: - 500K directory entries (users) - 2-300 systems After the initial setup, I personally integrated about 20 systems / apps against LDAP in 1 day while being watched by the different IT teams. The internal IT staff did the rest. DP: 2. Using Federation allows the business to keep options open for buying and selling companies, and yet maintain a single view for both employee and customer. What do you mean by this? Can you give an example? JC: The market is dynamic. The company that's being bought today tomorrow will be sold again. Companies that spread on different markets may see the regulator forcing a sale of part of a company due to monopoly reasons and companies that are in multiple countries have to comply with different legislations. Our job, as IT architects, while addressing the customers and employees authentication services, is quite hard and, quite contrary. On one hand, we need to give access to all of our employees to the relevant systems, apps and resources and, we already have marketing talking with us trying to find out who's a customer of the bough company but not from ours to address. On the other hand, we have to do that and keep in mind we may have to break up all that effort and that different countries legislation may became a problem with a full integration plan. That's a job for user Federation. you don't want to be the one who's telling your President that he will sell that business unit without it's customer's database (making the deal worth a lot less) or that the buyer will take with him a copy of your entire customer's database. Federation enables you to start controlling permissions to users outside of your traditional authentication realm. So what if the people of that company you just bought are keeping their old logins? Do you want, because of that, to have a dedicated system for their expenses reports? And do you want to keep their sales (and pre-sales) people out of the loop in terms of your group's path? Control the information flow, establish a Federation trust circle and give access to your apps to users that haven't (yet?) been brought into your internal login systems. You can still see your users in a unified view, you obviously control if a user has access to any particular application, either that user is in your local database or stored in a directory on the other side of the world. DP: 3. Cut response times of audit and security teams to 1/10. Is this a real number? Can you give an example? JC: No, I don't have any backing for this number. One of the companies I did system Administration for has a SOX compliance policy in place (I remind you that I live in Portugal so, this definition of SOX may be somewhat different from what you're used to) and, every time the audit team says they'll do another audit, we have to negotiate with them the size of the sample and we spend about 15 man/days gathering all the required info they ask. I did some work with Sun's Identity auditor and, from what I've been seeing, Oracle's product is even better and, I've seen that most of the information they ask would have been provided in a few hours with the help of this tool. I do stand by what I said here but, to be honest, someone from Identity Auditor team would do a much better job than me explaining this time savings. Jaime is right: the Oracle IDM products have a lot of business value, and Oracle IT is using them for a lot more than I was able to cover in the short podcast that I posted. I want to thank Jaime for his comments and perspective. We want these blog posts to be informative and honest – so if you have feedback for the Oracle IDM team on any topic discussed here, please post your comments below.

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  • How To Make Hundreds of Complex Photo Edits in Seconds With Photoshop Actions

    - by Eric Z Goodnight
    Have a huge folder of images needing tweaks? A few hundred adjustments may seem like a big, time consuming job—but read one to see how Photoshop can do repetitive tasks automatically, even if you don’t know how to program! Photoshop Actions are a simple way to program simple routines in Photoshop, and are a great time saver, allowing you to re-perform tasks over and over, saving you minutes or hours, depending on the job you have to work on. See how any bunch of images and even some fairly complicated photo tweaking can be done automatically to even hundreds of images at once. When Can I use Photoshop Actions? Photoshop actions are a way of recording the tools, menus, and keys pressed while using the program. Each time you use a tool, adjust a color, or use the brush, it can be recorded and played back over any file Photoshop can open. While it isn’t perfect and can get very confused if not set up correctly, it can automate editing hundreds of images, saving you hours and hours if you have big jobs with complex edits. The image illustrated above is a template for a polaroid-style picture frame. If you had several hundred images, it would actually be a simple matter to use Photoshop Actions to create hundreds of new images inside the frame in almost no time at all. Let’s take a look at how a simple folder of images and some Image editing automation can turn lots of work into a simple and easy job. Creating a New Action Actions is a default part of the “Essentials” panel set Photoshop begins with as a default. If you can’t see the panel button under the “History” button, you can find Actions by going to Window > Actions or pressing Alt + F9. Click the in the Actions Panel, pictured in the previous illustration on the left. Choose to create a “New Set” in order to begin creating your own custom Actions. Name your action set whatever you want. Names are not relevant, you’ll simply want to make it obvious that you have created it. Click OK. Look back in the layers panel. You’ll see your new Set of actions has been added to the list. Click it to highlight it before going on. Click the again to create a “New Action” in your new set. If you care to name your action, go ahead. Name it after whatever it is you’re hoping to do—change the canvas size, tint all your pictures blue, send your image to the printer in high quality, or run multiple filters on images. The name is for your own usage, so do what suits you best. Note that you can simplify your process by creating shortcut keys for your actions. If you plan to do hundreds of edits with your actions, this might be a good idea. If you plan to record an action to use every time you use Photoshop, this might even be an invaluable step. When you create a new Action, Photoshop automatically begins recording everything you do. It does not record the time in between steps, but rather only the data from each step. So take your time when recording and make sure you create your actions the way you want them. The square button stops recording, and the circle button starts recording again. With these basics ready, we can take a look at a sample Action. Recording a Sample Action Photoshop will remember everything you input into it when it is recording, even specific photographs you open. So begin recording your action when your first photo is already open. Once your first image is open, click the record button. If you’re already recording, continue on. Using the File > Place command to insert the polaroid image can be easier for Actions to deal with. Photoshop can record with multiple open files, but it often gets confused when you try it. Keep your recordings as simple as possible to ensure your success. When the image is placed in, simply press enter to render it. Select your background layer in your layers panel. Your recording should be following along with no trouble. Double click this layer. Double clicking your background layer will create a new layer from it. Allow it to be renamed “Layer 0” and press OK. Move the “polaroid” layer to the bottom by selecting it and dragging it down below “Layer 0” in the layers panel. Right click “Layer 0” and select “Create Clipping Mask.” The JPG image is cropped to the layer below it. Coincidentally, all actions described here are being recorded perfectly, and are reproducible. Cursor actions, like the eraser, brush, or bucket fill don’t record well, because the computer uses your mouse movements and coordinates, which may need to change from photo to photo. Click the to set your Photograph layer to a “Screen” blending mode. This will make the image disappear when it runs over the white parts of the polaroid image. With your image layer (Layer 0) still selected, navigate to Edit > Transform > Scale. You can use the mouse to resize your Layer 0, but Actions work better with absolute numbers. Visit the Width and Height adjustments in the top options panel. Click the chain icon to link them together, and adjust them numerically. Depending on your needs, you may need to use more or less than 30%. Your image will resize to your specifications. Press enter to render, or click the check box in the top right of your application. + Click on your bottom layer, or “polaroid” in this case. This creates a selection of the bottom layer. Navigate to Image > Crop in order to crop down to your bottom layer selection Your image is now resized to your bottommost layer, and Photoshop is still recording to that effect. For additional effect, we can navigate to Image > Image Rotation > Arbitrary to rotate our image by a small tilt. Choosing 3 degrees clockwise , we click OK to render our choice. Our image is rotated, and this step is recorded. Photoshop will even record when you save your files. With your recording still going, find File > Save As. You can easily tell Photoshop to save in a new folder, other than the one you have been working in, so that your files aren’t overwritten. Navigate to any folder you wish, but do not change the filename. If you change the filename, Photoshop will record that name, and save all your images under whatever you type. However, you can change your filetype without recording an absolute filename. Use the pulldown tab and select a different filetype—in this instance, PNG. Simply click “Save” to create a new PNG based on your actions. Photoshop will record the destination and the change in filetype. If you didn’t edit the name of your file, it will always use the variable filename of any image you open. (This is very important if you want to edit hundreds of images at once!) Click File > Close or the red “X” in the corner to close your filetype. Photoshop can record that as well. Since we have already saved our image as a JPG, click “NO” to not overwrite your original image. Photoshop will also record your choice of “NO” for subsequent images. In your Actions panel, click the stop button to complete your action. You can always click the record button to add more steps later, if you want. This is how your new action looks with its steps expanded. Curious how to put it into effect? Read on to see how simple it is to use that recording you just made. Editing Lots of Images with Your New Action Open a large number of images—as many as you care to work with. Your action should work immediately with every image on screen, although you may have to test and re-record, depending on how you did. Actions don’t require any programming knowledge, but often can get confused or work in a counter-intuitive way. Record your action until it is perfect. If it works once without errors, it’s likely to work again and again! Find the “Play” button in your Actions Panel. With your custom action selected, click “Play” and your routine will edit, save, and close each file for you. Keep bashing “Play” for each open file, and it will keep saving and creating new files until you run out of work you need to do. And in mere moments, a complicated stack of work is done. Photoshop actions can be very complicated, far beyond what is illustrated here, and can even be combined with scripts and other actions, creating automated creation of potentially very complex files, or applying filters to an entire portfolio of digital photos. Have questions or comments concerning Graphics, Photos, Filetypes, or Photoshop? Send your questions to [email protected], and they may be featured in a future How-To Geek Graphics article. Image Credits: All images copyright Stephanie Pragnell and author Eric Z Goodnight, protected under Creative Commons. Latest Features How-To Geek ETC How To Make Hundreds of Complex Photo Edits in Seconds With Photoshop Actions How to Enable User-Specific Wireless Networks in Windows 7 How to Use Google Chrome as Your Default PDF Reader (the Easy Way) How To Remove People and Objects From Photographs In Photoshop Ask How-To Geek: How Can I Monitor My Bandwidth Usage? Internet Explorer 9 RC Now Available: Here’s the Most Interesting New Stuff Smart Taskbar Is a Thumb Friendly Android Task Launcher Comix is an Awesome Comics Archive Viewer for Linux Get the MakeUseOf eBook Guide to Speeding Up Windows for Free Need Tech Support? Call the Star Wars Help Desk! [Video Classic] Reclaim Vertical UI Space by Adding a Toolbar to the Left or Right Side of Firefox Androidify Turns You into an Android-style Avatar

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  • Why are some seasoned ASP.NET developers defecting to Ruby on Rails?

    - by Tony_Henrich
    Once a while I hear some known ASP.NET developer declaring that they quit developing in .NET and moving to Ruby using Ruby in Rails. The problem is they don't mention exactly the reasons. They use words like RoR is 'easier', 'better' & 'faster'. That really doesn't say much to me. Anyone care to do faithful comparison using code samples, case studies ..etc or from personal experience in using both? Try to convince me to throw away all my years of learning C#, the .NET Framework using a powerful IDE (Visual Studio). Does RoR save you hours a week in development time? What are the major pain points in .NET that compels one to move away from it? This question is NOT about a pure RoR vs ASP.NET (MVC) comparison. It's about the compelling technical reasons (getting bored does not count!) to switch over after using a platform for several years and start with a new language and platform. (prefer this to be a wiki)

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  • Have programmers at your work not taken up or been averse to an offer of a second monitor?

    - by Chris Knight
    I'm putting together a business case for the developers in my company to get a second monitor. After my own experiences and research, this seems a no-brainer to me in terms of increasing productivity and morale/happiness. One question which has niggled me is if I should be pushing to get all developers onto a second monitor or let folk opt-in (i.e. they get one if they want one). Thoughts on this are welcome, but my specific question relates to a snippet on this site: But when the IT manager at Thibeault's company asked other employees if they wanted dual monitors last year, few jumped at the offer. Blinded by my own pre-judgement, this surprised me. Has anyone else experienced this? I fully appreciate that some people prefer a single larger monitor, but my general experience of researching the web suggests that most programmers prefer a dual (or more) setup. I'm guessing this should be tempered with the thought that those developers who contribute to such discussions might not be considered your average developer who might not care one way or the other. Anyway, if you have experienced the above have you tried to sell the concept of dual monitors to the masses? If everyone just got 2 monitors regardless if they wanted it or not, were there adverse reactions or negative effects? UPDATE: The developers are on a mixture of 17", 22", or 24" single monitors. The desks should be able to accommodate dual 22" monitors as I am proposing, though this will take some getting used to I imagine.

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  • Is Joel Test really a good gauging tool?

    - by henry
    I just learned about Joel Test. I have been computer programmer for 22 years, but somehow never heard about it before. I consider my best job so far to be this small investment managing company with 30 employees and only 3 people in IT department. I am no longer with them but I had being working there for 5 years – my longest streak with any given company. To my surprise they scored extremely poor on Joel Test. The only two questions I would answer “yes” are #4: Do you have a bug database? And #9: Do you use the best tools money can buy? Everything else is either “sometimes” or straight “no”. Here is what I liked about the company however: a) Good pay, they bragged about it to my face and I bragged about it to their face, so it was almost like a family environment. b) I always knew big picture. When writing a code to solve particular problem there were no ambiguity about the business nature of that problem. Even though we did not always had written specs we could ask business users a question anytime, often yelling it across the floor. I could even talk to executives any time I felt like doing it: no appointment necessary. c) Immediate feedback. Once we implement a solution and make business users happy they immediately let us know that, we (programmers) become heroes of the moment. d) No red tape. I could always buy any tools I deem necessary, and design solutions the way my professional judgment dictates. e) Flexibility. If I had mid-day dental appointment that is near my house rather than near the office, I would send email to the company: "FYI: I work from home today". As long as one of 3 IT guys was on the floor (to help traders in case their monitors go dark) they did not care where 2 others are. So the question thus becomes how valuable Joel Test is? Why bother with it?

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  • Having a problem with texturing vertices in WebGL, think parameters are off in the image?

    - by mathacka
    I'm having a problem texturing a simple rectangle in my WebGL program, I have the parameters set as follows: gl.texImage2D(gl.TEXTURE_2D, 0, gl.RGBA, gl.RGBA, gl.UNSIGNED_BYTE, textureImage); I'm using this image: On the properties of this image it says it's 32 bit depth, so that should take care of the gl.UNSIGNED_BYTE, and I've tried both gl.RGBA and gl.RGB to see if it's not reading the transparency. It is a 32x32 pixel image, so it's power of 2. And I've tried almost all the combinations of formats and types, but I'm not sure if this is the answer or not. I'm getting these two errors in the chrome console: INVALID_VALUE: texImage2D: invalid image (index):101 WebGL: drawArrays: texture bound to texture unit 0 is not renderable. It maybe non-power-of-2 and have incompatible texture filtering or is not 'texture complete'. Or the texture is Float or Half Float type with linear filtering while OES_float_linear or OES_half_float_linear extension is not enabled. the drawArrays function is simply: "gl.drawArrays(gl.TRIANGLES, 0, 6);" using 6 vertices to make a rectangle.

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  • How do I choose a package format for Linux software distribution?

    - by Ian C.
    We have a Java-based application that, to date, we've been distributing as a tarball with instructions for deploying. It's mostly self-contained so deployment is fairly straight-forward: Untar on the disk you'd like it to live on; Make sure Java is in your path and a suitable distro and version; Verify ownership and group on all the files Start up the server processes with our start script If the user wants to get in to start-on-boot stuff with SysV we have some written instructions and a template init file for it in our tarball. We'd like to make this installation process a little more seamless; take care of the permissions and the init script deployment. We're also going to start bundling our own JRE with the application so that we're mostly free of external dependencies. The question we're faced with now is: how do we pick a package format for distribution? Is RPM the standard? Can all package management tools deal with it now? Our clients primarily run RHEL and CentOS, but we do have some using SuSE and even Debian. If we can pick a distro-agnostic format we'd prefer that. What about a self-extracting shell script? Something akin to how Java is distributed. If we're dependency-free would the self-extracting script be sufficient? What features or conveniences would we lose out on going with the script versus a proper package format meant for use by a package manager?

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  • Recommended main loop style

    - by Frootmig-H
    I've just begun attempting an FPS with JMonkeyEngine, but I'm currently stuck as to the best way to implement the main loop - especially with regards to non-instantaneous user actions. By that, I mean things like reloading a weapon. The user starts the action, and it continues for a while with an animation and some sound, and when it completes, game state updates. (I should mention that it's not technically a loop, it's an update method, called as often as possible. Is that different? Me no understand terminology). So, far I've considered : Animation driven Player presses reload Start reload animation If user stars another action, abort animation, start new action. When the animation_complete event is received (JMonkeyEngine provides this), update ammo counters. Event driven Player presses reload Start reload animation Queue up a out-of-thread method to be called at time t + (duration of reload animation) If user starts another action, cancel both animation and queued method. When queued method executes, update ammo. This avoids relying on the animation event (JMonkeyEngine has a particular quirk), but brings in the possibility of thread problems. 'Blocking' (not sure of the correct term) Player presses reload Start reloading animation reloading = true reloadedStartTime = now while (reloading && ((now - reloadingStartTime) < reloadingDuration)) { If user starts another action, break and cancel reloading. } Update ammo counters reloading = false My main concern is that actions can interrupt each other. Reloading can be interrupted by firing, or by dropping or changing weapon, crouching can be interrupted by running, etc. What's the recommended way to handle this? What are the advantages and disadvantages of each method? I'm leaning towards event-driven, even though it requires more care; failing that, blocking.

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  • Which tools you use for development in your company?…Please be exact [closed]

    - by predrag.music
    If you are a professional php/(my/postgre/?)sql/? developer and working in a professional team ... I would like to know which tools you use for development in your company. I do not care which tool is better or worse, but "which tools you use", if it is not a TOP SECRET :) For example, these are just some of the tools i/we use (first those used most (in general)): Pen, paper lots of cofee, cola ... let me think ... mmmm ... yeah more cofee :) All kinds of books (a lots of books) OS: Win / MacOS X Server: Hosted (CentOS )/ At work Mac OS X Dev server: XAMPP / MAMP / LAMP Editor: Notepad++ IDE: Netbeans / Zend Studio / Eclipse Version Control System: Mercurial / SVN FTP: Filezilla mostly / ... Passwords: KeePass js / ajax: jQuery / pure js / jQuery UI Framework:CI / Zend / pure php Database: MySQL / Other ORM: Framework layer db (Not an ORM I know but...) / Doctrine (2) / no ORM Debugging: Xdebug (PHP) / firebug (ajax/js/html/css/...) / framework profiler (stuff) / ... (x) Dreaming: About... Thinking: Not about chaos in ? direction .... n Anything else that comes to mind n+1 Zilion other stuff i know but i can't remember ... 8 some other stuff i (don't) remember i forgot, give up, delete, lost, said to myself never again, i haven't had time stuff, have on computer stuff but can't find or don't even know i have it on my computer at least 2-3 or more times, stuff I said to myself i'll check later and never checked again for all sort of "perfectly justified" reasons (time, memory, wife :), whatever,...), ... what is the reason i'm asking this?:) 8 and beyond looking forward to see a lot of answers ?

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  • Google Updates Picasa Web Albums; Emphasis on Sharing and Showcasing

    - by ETC
    Google has dusted off the Picasa Web interface and updated it with an emphasis on highlighting your photos and the photos of those you’re interested in. The new interface gives you speedy access to all the new photos you’ve uploaded and all the photos your friends, family, and others you’re following are sharing. Mixed in with that are popular photos from talented photographers across the service. It’s a nice change from the previously dull web interface and a definite step towards capturing some of the social power photo sharing site Flickr wields. Hit up the link below to read more. Showcasing Photos From People You Care About [The Official Google Photos Blog] Latest Features How-To Geek ETC Learn To Adjust Contrast Like a Pro in Photoshop, GIMP, and Paint.NET Have You Ever Wondered How Your Operating System Got Its Name? Should You Delete Windows 7 Service Pack Backup Files to Save Space? What Can Super Mario Teach Us About Graphics Technology? Windows 7 Service Pack 1 is Released: But Should You Install It? How To Make Hundreds of Complex Photo Edits in Seconds With Photoshop Actions Add a “Textmate Style” Lightweight Text Editor with Dropbox Syncing to Chrome and Iron Is the Forcefield Really On or Not? [Star Wars Parody Video] Google Updates Picasa Web Albums; Emphasis on Sharing and Showcasing Uwall.tv Turns YouTube into a Video Jukebox Early Morning Sunrise at the Beach Wallpaper Data Networks Visualized via Light Paintings [Video]

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  • How do I prevent skype from starting another instance when it's already running?

    - by con-f-use
    Just a little unnecessary annoyance to fix here: Suppose you have Skype for Ubuntu running. You accidentally click on the launcher again. The way it is now, Skype starts a second instance, which promptly tells you it can't log in. There is another instance already running. To make things worse: On the next regular start of Skype it you will have to re-enter your saved password, due to the "Sign in failure". I thought this would be fixed soon but neither Canonical nor Microsoft care enough. The annoyance continues to exist for the last three updates at least. So in an approach to provide a workaround I will post what I've done to prevent this behaviour. Maybe it's useful for some of you. Maybe it will rise awareness and cause a fix. I'm happy for any better solution btw. and that's the real purpose of my question. Usually I don't answer them myself. So doesn anyone know of a better solution to fix dual instancing of Skype?

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  • Set Up Anti-Brick Protection to Safeguard and Supercharge Your Wii

    - by Jason Fitzpatrick
    We’ve shown you how to hack your Wii for homebrew software, emulators, and DVD playback, now it’s time to safeguard your Wii against bricking and fix some annoyances—like that stupid “Press A” health screen. The thing about console modding and jailbreaking—save for the rare company like Amazon that doesn’t seem to care—is companies will play a game of cat and mouse to try and knock modded console out of commission, undo your awesome mods, or even brick your device. Although extreme moves like bricktacular-updates are rare once you modify your device you have to be vigilante in protecting it against updates that could hurt your sweet setup. Today we’re going to walk you through hardening your Wii and giving it the best brick protection available Latest Features How-To Geek ETC The 50 Best Registry Hacks that Make Windows Better The How-To Geek Holiday Gift Guide (Geeky Stuff We Like) LCD? LED? Plasma? The How-To Geek Guide to HDTV Technology The How-To Geek Guide to Learning Photoshop, Part 8: Filters Improve Digital Photography by Calibrating Your Monitor Our Favorite Tech: What We’re Thankful For at How-To Geek Snowy Christmas House Personas Theme for Firefox The Mystic Underground Tunnel Wallpaper Ubunchu! – The Ubuntu Manga Available in Multiple Languages Breathe New Life into Your PlayStation 2 Peripherals by Hooking Them Up to Your Computer Move the Window Control Buttons to the Left Side in Windows Fun and Colorful Firefox Theme for Windows 7

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  • Exploring MDS Explorer by Mark Nelson

    - by JuergenKress
    Recently, I posted about my colleague Olivier’s MDS Explorer tool, which is a great way to get a look inside your MDS repository. I have been playing around with it a little bit, nothing much really, just some cosmetic stuff, but you might like to take a look at it. I made it format the documents nicely with proper indentation, and with line numbers and a nicer editor. It also will warn you if you are about to open a large document so that you know it has not crashed, but that you just have to be patient. And I added some icons and stuff. There is even a nice Dora the Explorer picture hiding in there for those who care to look for it . Read the full article here. SOA & BPM Partner Community For regular information on Oracle SOA Suite become a member in the SOA & BPM Partner Community for registration please visit  www.oracle.com/goto/emea/soa (OPN account required) If you need support with your account please contact the Oracle Partner Business Center. Blog Twitter LinkedIn Mix Forum Technorati Tags: MDS Explorerer,IDM,SOA Community,Oracle SOA,Oracle BPM,BPM,Community,OPN,Jürgen Kress,Mark Nelson

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  • Resolution Independence in libGDX

    - by ashes999
    How do I make my libGDX game resolution/density independent? Is there a way to specify image sizes as "absolute" regardless of the underlying density? I'm making a very simple kids game; just a bunch of sprites displayed on-screen, and some text for menus (options menu primarily). What I want to know is: how do I make my sprites/fonts resolution independent? (I have wrapped them in my own classes to make things easier.) Since it's a simple kids game, I don't need to worry about the "playable area" of the game; I want to use as much of the screen space as possible. What I'm doing right now, which seems super incorrect, is to simply create images suitable for large resolutions, and then scale down (or rarely, up) to fit the screen size. This seems to work okay (in the desktop version), even with linear mapping on my textures, but the smaller resolutions look ugly. Also, this seems to fly in the face of Android's "device independent pixels" (DPs). Or maybe I'm missing something and libGDX already takes care of this somehow? What's the best way to tackle this? I found this link; is this a good way of solving the problem?: http://www.dandeliongamestudio.com/2011/09/12/android-fragmentation-density-independent-pixel-dip/ It mentions how to control the images, but it doesn't mention how to specify font/image sizes regardless of density.

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  • CRM On Demand Performance Tips - Live Web Session on April 20, 2010

    - by Cheryl
    The CRM On Demand Customer Care specialists have another live Web session coming up - this one is about performance - issues, tips, and considerations. This is a part of their Web series, where they pick topics that they hear a lot of questions or concerns about from customers and run live (and free) 1-hour Web sessions about them. Here are the details for this event: Event Title: CRM On Demand Performance Brandon (Hank) Henrie will present some of the top CRM On Demand performance questions and issues that customers raise and some tips and tricks that you can use to avoid them. He will point out good resources that can help and tips for logging performance-related service requests, when all else fails. Date: April 20, 2010 Time: 10:00 am (UTC-07:00 Arizona) How to join: 1. Dial 1-866-682-4770 to access the conference line. 2. Enter the conference code - 6241996 and press # 3. Follow the instructions to record your name and press # 4. Enter the meeting passcode - 1212 and press # 5. Follow the instructions below to join the web portion of the conference. The Web Conference Go to the Oracle Web Conference site: https://strtc.oracle.com Prior to the event: Click the New User button then run the New User Test. (If you have difficulties installing the web conference software try downloading the conference software from the test status window and installing manually.) To join the event: 1. Enter the conference information In the Join Conference box: Conference ID: 6566623 Your Name 2. Click the Join Conference button. Watch for announcements of future sessions on different topics. And, let us know what you think!

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  • Red Dot Scope Makes Sighting In Long Lenses a Snap

    - by Jason Fitzpatrick
    If you’ve ever used a high power lens, you know how tricky it can be to sight a distant subject as the field of view through the lens is so tiny. This hack takes care of that problem by using a zero-magnification red dot rifle scope. Chris Malcolm enjoys photographing birds and other wildlife with high power lenses. The problem, when shooting with huge 500mm lens and other high power lenses, is that they’re practically telescopes and acquiring a fast moving target like a bird using a through-the-lens technique is very tricky. Malcolm’s solution hinges on mounting a zero-magnification red dot rifle scope in parallel with the lens. His mock up is a bit unpolished (although we can understand not wanting to run out and buy a brand new black scope just for the experiment) but works great to get him on target. Hit up the link below to read more about his build, how be created the rail mount for the scope, and why he opted to mount it to the barrel of the lens and not the hot shoe mount on the camera. 500mm Reflex Lens with Red Dot Sight [via DIY Photography] Make Your Own Windows 8 Start Button with Zero Memory Usage Reader Request: How To Repair Blurry Photos HTG Explains: What Can You Find in an Email Header?

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  • Setting user's group and umask has no effect

    - by Andrew Vit
    I'm trying to allow my "deploy" user to have access to files created by www-data: I added "deploy" to the www-data group. I set umask to 002. When I run the following commands, I'm not seeing the result I expect: deploy@ubuntu-lucid-32-generic:/var/www$ groups www-data adm dialout cdrom plugdev lpadmin sambashare admin deploy sysadmin deploy@ubuntu-lucid-32-generic:/var/www$ newgrp www-data deploy@ubuntu-lucid-32-generic:/var/www$ umask 0002 deploy@ubuntu-lucid-32-generic:/var/www$ mkdir test deploy@ubuntu-lucid-32-generic:/var/www$ ls -la test total 0 drwxr-xr-x 1 deploy deploy 68 Nov 7 20:37 . drwxr-xr-x 1 deploy deploy 476 Nov 7 20:37 .. I see that: The folder doesn't belong to the www-data group. The folder permissions don't have group-write (775). Note that the /var/www directory is owned by the deploy user: drwxr-xr-x 1 deploy deploy 510 Nov 7 20:45 . How can I give www-data selective access to directories? Or, how to share the /var/www directory with my deploy user: I don't care who owns it, as long as I can write to it, and so can www-data. (Ideally I would set up a directory with SGID access for www-data.)

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  • EVENT RECAP: Oracle Health Sciences Conference

    - by cwarticki
    Monaco served as an intense location for this year's Oracle Health Sciences User Group conference.  It was a "Grand Prix" event with nearly 200 attendees from all over the world.  In a country famous for high performance race cars, luxury super yachts and lifestyles of the rich & famous, the conference was very Ellison-esque. I think the Superyachts were being paired with Exadata. The OSHUG staff were fantastic . Robin and Taylor (pictured left) from Drohan Management took care of all the details and were wonderful to get to know. I met with some real Oracle loyalists.  Stan Sachar,  I.T. Manager for Westat, and the Focus Group co-chair for Admin Configuration Mgmt (ACM).  Westat was an early adopter of Oracle Clinical for clinical trial projects with installations in 1997-98.  I had a chance to talk with Stan during the reception and he is an Oracle advocate and evangelist. He's invested in his career in using Oracle products. (Stan Sachar pictured right with Dick Wolnick from Oracle, on left) I also met with Mirco Becker from Grunenthal Gmbh.  He's been working with the Argus product for over 6 years.  He's a big user of Oracle Support. Mirco attended my support best practices session and was actively engaged and asked several questions.  He's excited to adopt those best practices and work more efficiently and effectively with Support. Finally, I thank the many who attended my session.  I admit, the beautiful weather and view of the ocean was a distraction, but nonetheless my mission was to provide you with all the necessary support resources for Health Sciences users. You will find a copy of my presentation on the OSHUG website. Bon Voyage Monaco.  Thanks for the memories.  I'll see everyone next year, in Miami. -Chris WartickiGlobal Customer Management

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  • Is there any reason not to go directly from client-side Javascript to a database?

    - by Chris Smith
    So, let's say I'm going to build a Stack Exchange clone and I decide to use something like CouchDB as my backend store. If I use their built-in authentication and database-level authorization, is there any reason not to allow the client-side Javascript to write directly to the publicly available CouchDB server? Since this is basically a CRUD application and the business logic consists of "Only the author can edit their post" I don't see much of a need to have a layer between the client-side stuff and the database. I would simply use validation on the CouchDB side to make sure someone isn't putting in garbage data and make sure that permissions are set properly so that users can only read their own _user data. The rendering would be done client-side by something like AngularJS. In essence you could just have a CouchDB server and a bunch of "static" pages and you're good to go. You wouldn't need any kind of server-side processing, just something that could serve up the HTML pages. Opening my database up to the world seems wrong, but in this scenario I can't think of why as long as permissions are set properly. It goes against my instinct as a web developer, but I can't think of a good reason. So, why is this a bad idea? EDIT: Looks like there is a similar discussion here: Writing Web "server less" applications EDIT: Awesome discussion so far, and I appreciate everyone's feedback! I feel like I should add a few generic assumptions instead of calling out CouchDB and AngularJS specifically. So let's assume that: The database can authenticate users directly from its hidden store All database communication would happen over SSL Data validation can (but maybe shouldn't?) be handled by the database The only authorization we care about other than admin functions is someone only being allowed to edit their own post We're perfectly fine with everyone being able to read all data (EXCEPT user records which may contain password hashes) Administrative functions would be restricted by database authorization No one can add themselves to an administrator role The database is relatively easy to scale There is little to no true business logic; this is a basic CRUD app

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  • Which algorithms/data structures should I "recognize" and know by name?

    - by Earlz
    I'd like to consider myself a fairly experienced programmer. I've been programming for over 5 years now. My weak point though is terminology. I'm self-taught, so while I know how to program, I don't know some of the more formal aspects of computer science. So, what are practical algorithms/data structures that I could recognize and know by name? Note, I'm not asking for a book recommendation about implementing algorithms. I don't care about implementing them, I just want to be able to recognize when an algorithm/data structure would be a good solution to a problem. I'm asking more for a list of algorithms/data structures that I should "recognize". For instance, I know the solution to a problem like this: You manage a set of lockers labeled 0-999. People come to you to rent the locker and then come back to return the locker key. How would you build a piece of software to manage knowing which lockers are free and which are in used? The solution, would be a queue or stack. What I'm looking for are things like "in what situation should a B-Tree be used -- What search algorithm should be used here" etc. And maybe a quick introduction of how the more complex(but commonly used) data structures/algorithms work. I tried looking at Wikipedia's list of data structures and algorithms but I think that's a bit overkill. So I'm looking more for what are the essential things I should recognize?

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  • What should I expect from a system engineer university career

    - by Trufa
    I'm starting tomorrow a series of interviews to decide which university should I choose to get a degree in System Engineer. I know this is a serious university but I would like to get some feedback about what should I expect or "demand" from the university. My experience in the technology field is (obviously) limited and would like to be aware of what should I to be aware if the university might be good or not. Specially in following fields: Infrastructure: what are the essentials? big pluses? Theoretical vs Practical: how practical should it be? what is a "good" mix? Programming languages, frameworks, etc: Which are the ideal for learning? Most demand? Latest technologies: What should they be teaching right know to "prove" they are up to date. Qualification system: What exam methods do you think are ideal for this kind of degree, good ol' Q&A, multiple choice, projects, a fair mix? What other points do you think I should care about? What isn't important? Thanks in advance. I realize this is might be a very subjective topic so I tried to make it as specific and on topic as I could but any recommendations are of course welcome. I also understand that none of this questions will guarantee this will be a good university but it might give me another reference as to which should I choose when the moment comes.

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  • Continual Professional Development - proving new skills to non-technical employers

    - by Tom
    Background I work in a non-IT based company, as a professional software developer, building a large scale internal database system. I am fortunate to have a fairly senior position within the company, and have been working here for around 4 years. Often I get asked by management "how do you learn new things?". To be honest, I don't know how to answer this. Over the last 6 months, I've really gotten my teeth into some new techniques and technologies to make my level of coding far better and hopefully improve the quality of the software. Even if it's just refreshing my skills on things I've learnt already. Like last week I dived into some complex XLinq and TPL code (.net). Nothing revolutionary, but I feel like I am a bit better than before. Question The question is, how do I prove this to my employer? It'd be nice to be able to put this on paper. Possibilities I could: Keep a journal of what I've learnt - keeping the technical bits in (nobody would understand or care, but it's better than them being omitted) ???? (I've run out of ideas already) Any ideas? Thanks, Tom

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  • When are Getters and Setters Justified

    - by Winston Ewert
    Getters and setters are often criticized as being not proper OO. On the other hand most OO code I've seen has extensive getters and setters. When are getters and setters justified? Do you try to avoid using them? Are they overused in general? If your favorite language has properties (mine does) then such things are also considered getters and setters for this question. They are same thing from an OO methodology perspective. They just have nicer syntax. Sources for Getter/Setter Criticism (some taken from comments to give them better visibility): http://www.javaworld.com/javaworld/jw-09-2003/jw-0905-toolbox.html http://typicalprogrammer.com/?p=23 http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?AccessorsAreEvil http://www.darronschall.com/weblog/2005/03/no-brain-getter-and-setters.cfm http://www.adam-bien.com/roller/abien/entry/encapsulation_violation_with_getters_and To state the criticism simply: Getters and Setters allow you to manipulate the internal state of objects from outside of the object. This violates encapsulation. Only the object itself should care about its internal state. And an example Procedural version of code. struct Fridge { int cheese; } void go_shopping(Fridge fridge) { fridge.cheese += 5; } Mutator version of code: class Fridge { int cheese; void set_cheese(int _cheese) { cheese = _cheese; } int get_cheese() { return cheese; } } void go_shopping(Fridge fridge) { fridge.set_cheese(fridge.get_cheese() + 5); } The getters and setters made the code much more complicated without affording proper encapsulation. Because the internal state is accessible to other objects we don't gain a whole lot by adding these getters and setters. The question has been previously discussed on Stack Overflow: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/565095/java-are-getters-and-setters-evil http://stackoverflow.com/questions/996179

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  • Generalized Ajax function [migrated]

    - by TecBrat
    Not sure if this question will be considered "off topic". If it is, I'll remove it, but: I hadn't see this yet so I wrote it and would like to know if this is a good approach to it. Would anyone care to offer improvements to it, or point me to an example of where someone else has already written it better? function clwAjaxCall(path,method,data,asynch) { var xmlhttp; if (window.XMLHttpRequest) {// code for IE7+, Firefox, Chrome, Opera, Safari xmlhttp=new XMLHttpRequest(); } else {// code for IE6, IE5 xmlhttp=new ActiveXObject("Microsoft.XMLHTTP"); } if(asynch) { xmlhttp.onreadystatechange=function() { if (xmlhttp.readyState==4 && xmlhttp.status==200) { //alert(xmlhttp.responseText); //var newaction=xmlhttp.responseText; //alert('Action becomes '+newaction); return xmlhttp.responseText; } } } if(method=='GET'){path=path+"/?"+data;} xmlhttp.open(method,path,asynch); if(method=='GET'){xmlhttp.send();}else{xmlhttp.send(data);} if (!asynch){return xmlhttp.responseText;} } I then called it like Just Testing <script type="text/javascript" src="/mypath/js/clwAjaxCall.js"></script> <script type="text/javascript"> document.write("<br>More Testing"); document.write(clwAjaxCall("http://www.mysite.com",'GET',"var=val",false)); </script>

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