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  • Cannot boot into system after deleting partition

    - by Clayton
    Okay...so this was kind of a stupid thing for me to do now that I think back on it. I was experiencing a ton of lag and not as much memory that I could use after installing Ubuntu 12.04. So after remembering I had installed multiple server versions of Ubuntu 12.04 by mistake, I went into Disk Management and proceeded to delete each and every one. Everything went fine. Up until this week, I have not experienced any problems. But starting yesterday I began to get lag just as I had before, and nothing fixed the problem. I decided to remove the Ubuntu partition, since I was also experiencing a visual error when given the option to select one to boot(the screen doesn't come up at all, and I recieved a monitor resolution error instead, but could still access both Windows and Ubuntu via arrow keys). After deleting the Ubuntu partition, so that I could see if running just Windows would fix the problem, I proceeded with what I was doing, installing a few programs that were not tied to my prediciment in any way. Upon rebooting my desktop, however, I recieved the following error: error: unknown filesystem. grub rescue> Hoping I could boot into Ubuntu via a pendrive and possibly backup my important files and wipe the hard drive to start fresh, I installed Ubuntu 13.04, but even that does not boot. Instead, I get this message on a terminal screen: SYSLINUX 4.06. EDD 4.06-pre1 Copyright (C) 1994-2011 H. Peter Anvin et al ERROR: No configuration file found No DEFAULT or UI configuration directive found! boot: So more or less, my desktop is screwed. I need to be able to get to the files inside because of my job as an artist, as well as retrieve my documents for my stories stored on Windows. Once I can succeed in solving this once and for all, I know for a fact I will stick to Ubuntu only, and install what is required to be able to run any Windows applications I used to use or need to use. I would rather not reformat the hard drive, and if I need to, it is a last resort. And I doubt I can use a Windows Recovery Disk to get my files back, as my mom has thrown out a lot of the installation disks and paperwork I would need to even follow through with that. :\ Keep in mind that I am a novice/newbie when it comes to Linux, but am hoping ot become better at it as time goes by. I appreciate any help you guys can give me. This will probably be the last time I attempt to do anything that could risk the well-being of my PC. (I've also looked through various questions on the site and tested a lot of the solutions. None seem to have worked.)

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  • Ubuntu Install 11.10 doesn't recognize Windows 7 installation with new HDD

    - by arlendo
    Replaced my crashed HDD with a Seagate 2TB Sata (bought from a company who pulled it from a working computer, OS unknown) and did a fresh install of Windows 7. Windows shows 100MB boot partition (bootable NTFS) and 200GB Windows partition (NTFS), the rest is unallocated. Win7 Disk Management says the partitioning type is Master Boot Record. Win7 boots and runs fine. Ubuntu 11.10 Install procedes to Allocate Drive Space screen and should say This computer currently has Windows 7 on it. What would you like to do? Instead, it says something like Install doesn't detect any existing OS on this computer. When I click on Something else, the partition table shows only the unallocated space of 1.8TB. Ubuntu Disk Utility says Partitioning: Master Boot Record, but GParted Live says Partition Table: gpt. It was my original intention to have the Windows boot partition and application partition, then install Ubuntu 11.10 using boot, root, swap, and home partitions, and maybe another partition just for data (mostly photos). Currently, I would be happy if I could just get Ubuntu installed along with Win7. I am aware of the MBR limits of 3 Primary partitions and 1 Extended partition. I suspect that my new HDD is partitioned for GPT and that is why Ubuntu can't see the Win7 installation. Am I on the right track? I was going to use Windows Disk Management to convert GPT to MBR but I only have the one drive on my AMD-64 mini-computer and it says I have to empty the drive of all partitions before I can access the Convert command. And I can't find any bootable software that would allow me to do that conversion. Here is the result of sudo fdisk -l: ubuntu@ubuntu:~$ sudo fdisk -l WARNING: GPT (GUID Partition Table) detected on '/dev/sda'! The util fdisk doesn't support GPT. Use GNU Parted. Disk /dev/sda: 2000.4 GB, 2000398934016 bytes 224 heads, 19 sectors/track, 918004 cylinders, total 3907029168 sectors Units = sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes Disk identifier: 0xd4a68c18 Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System /dev/sda1 * 2048 206847 102400 7 HPFS/NTFS/exFAT /dev/sda2 206848 419637247 209715200 7 HPFS/NTFS/exFAT ubuntu@ubuntu:~$ Keep in mind that I'm a definite newbie to screwing around with the inner workings of Ubuntu. I previously had Ubuntu 10.04 running with Vista and I don't remember even having to partition anything that wasn't automatic in the install. Thanks for taking a look here. My Win7 is running fine but I miss my Ubuntu.

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  • Archbeat Link-O-Rama Top 10 Facebook Faves for October 20-26, 2013

    - by OTN ArchBeat
    What are the 4,460 fans of the OTN ArchBeat Facebook Page talking about? The list below represents the Top 10 most popular articles, blog posts, and other content from across the community. Enterprise Grade Deployment Considerations for Oracle Identity Manager AD Connector | Firdaus Fraz Oracle Fusion Middleware solution architect Firdaus Fraz illustrates provides best practice recommendations for setting up an enterprise deployment environment for the OIM connector for Microsoft Active Directory. A Roadmap for SOA Development and Delivery | Mark Nelson Do you know the way to S-O-A? Mark Nelson does. His latest blog post, part of an ongoing series, will help to keep you from getting lost along the way. The road ahead for WebLogic 12c | Edwin Biemond Oracle ACE Edwin Biemond shares his thoughts on announced new features in Oracle WebLogic 12.1.3 & 12.1.4 and compares those upcoming releases to Oracle WebLogic 12.1.2. Oracle GoldenGate 12c - New Release, New Features | Michael Rainey Rittman Mead's Michael Rainey takes you on guided tour through the GoldenGate 12c features that "are relevant to data warehouse and data migration work we typically see in the business intelligence world." Reproducing WebLogic Stuck Threads with ADF CreateInsert Operation and ORDER BY Clause | Andrejus Baranovsikis Another post from Oracle ACE Director Andrejus Baranovsikis on dealing with WebLogic Stuck Threads. This one includes a test case application you can download. The Impact of SaaS - The Times They Are A-Changin' | Floyd Teter Oracle ACE Director Floyd Teter shares some truly interesting insight gained in conversations with three Fortune 500 CIOs. Configure Oracle Identity Manager AD/LDAP Authentication | Arda Eralp A step-by-step how-to from a member of the Fusion Middleware Applications Consultancy team. Java-Powered Robot Named NAO Wows Crowds | Tori Wieldt Tori Wieldt interviews a robot and human. Updated ODI Statement of Direction | Robert Schweighardt Heads up Oracle Data Integrator fans! A new product statement of direction document is available, offering "an overview of the strategic product plans for Oracle’s data integration products for bulk data movement and transformation, specifically Oracle Data Integrator (ODI) and Oracle Warehouse Builder (OWB)." Oracle BI Apps 11.1.1.7.1 – GoldenGate Integration - Part 2: Setup and Configuration | Michael Rainey Michael Rainey continues his series with another technical article for you GoldenGate fans. Thought for the Day "Intuition will tell the thinking mind where to look next." — Jonas Salk, American medical researcher and virologist (October 28, 1914 – June 23, 1995) Source: brainyquote.com

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  • Will polishing my current project be a better learning experience than starting a new one?

    - by Alejandro Cámara
    I started programming many years ago. Now I'm trying to make games. I have read many recommendations to start cloning some well known games like galaga, tetris, arkanoid, etc. I have also read that I should go for the whole game (including menus, sound, score, etc.). Yesterday I finished the first complete version of my arkanoid clone. But it is far from over. I can still work on it for months (I program as a hobby in my free time) implementing a screen resolution switcher, remap of the control keys, power-ups falling from broken bricks, and a huge etc. But I do not want to be forever learning how to clone ONE game. I have the urge to get to the next clone in order to apply some design ideas I have come upon while developing this arkanoid clone (at the same time I am reading the GoF book and much source code from Ludum Dare 21 game contest). So the question is: Should I keep improving the arkanoid clone until it has all the features the original game had? or should I move to the next clone (there are almost infinite games to clone) and start mending the things I did wrong with the previous clone? This can be a very subjective question, so please restrain the answers to the most effective way to learn how to make my own games (not cloning someone ideas). Thank you! CLARIFICATION In order to clarify what I have implemented I make this list: Features implemented: Bouncing capabilities (the ball bounces on walls, on bricks, and on the bar). Sounds when bouncing on bricks and the bar, and when the player wins or loses. Basic title menu (new game and exit only). Also in-game menu and win/lose menus. Only three levels, but the map system is so easy I do not think it will teach me much (am I wrong?). Features not-implemented: Power-ups when breaking the bricks. Complex bricks (with more than one "hit point" and invincible). Better graphics (I am not really good at it). Programming polishing (use more intensively the design patterns). Here's a link to its (minimal) webpage: http://blog.acamara.es/piperine/ I kind of feel ashamed to show it, so please do not hit me too hard :-) My question was related to the not-implemented features. I wondered what was the fastest (optimal) path to learn. 1) implement the not-implemented features in this project which is getting big, or 2) make a new game which probably will teach me those lessons and new ones. ANSWER I choose @ashes999 answer because, in my case, I think I should polish more and try to "ship" the game. I think all the other answers are also important to bear in mind, so if you came here having the same question, before taking a rush decision read all the discussion. Thank you all!

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  • State / Screen management in Entity Component Systems

    - by David Lively
    My entity/component system is happily humming along and, despite some performance concerns I initially had, everything is working fine. However, I've realized that I missed a crucial point when starting this thing: how do you handle different screens? At the moment, I have a GameManager class which owns a component manager and entity manager. When I create an entity, the entity manager assigns it an ID and makes sure it's tracked. When I modify the components that are assigned to an entity. an UpdateEntity method is called, which alerts each of the systems that they may need to add or remove the entity from their respective entity lists. A problem with this is that the collection of entities operated on by each system is determined solely by the individual Systems, typically based on a "required component" filter. (An entity has to have a Renderable component to be rendered, for instance.) In this situation, I can't just keep collections of entities per screen and only Update/Draw those collections. They'd have to either be added and removed depending on their applicability to the current screen, which would cause their associated components to be removed, or enable/disable entities in a group per screen to hide what's not supposed to be visible. These approaches seem like really, really crappy kludges. What's a good way to handle this? A pretty straightforward way that comes to mind is to create a separate GameManager (which in my implementation owns all of the systems, entities, etc.) per screen, which means that everything outside of the device context would be duplicated. That's bothersome because some things are always visible, or I might want to continue to display the game under a translucent menu window. Another option would be to add a "layer" key to the GameManager class, which could be checked against a displayable layer stack held by the game manager. *System.Draw() would be called for each active layer, in the required order as determined by the stack. When the systems request an iterator for their respective entity collections, it would be pre-filtered to a (cached) set of those entities that participate in the active layer. Those collections could be updated from the same UpdateEntity event that's already used to maintain each system's entity collections. Still, kinda feels like a hack. If I've coded myself into a corner, feel free to throw tomatoes as long as they're labeled with a helpful suggestion. Hooray for learning curves.

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  • Kicking off the ODI12c Blog Series

    - by Madhu Nair
    Normal 0 false false false EN-US ZH-TW X-NONE MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 It is always exciting to talk about a new release, especially one as significant as the newly released Oracle Data Integrator 12c (ODI12c). Why? Because it is packed with features that addresses many requirements for the user community. If you missed sneak previews at this year's Oracle Open World sessions, do not despair. Because over the coming weeks the ODI12c team of developers and consultants will be sharing their perspective on key features, experiences and best practices for ODI12c right here through a series of blogs. Before diving into feature details in subsequent blogs it helps to understand the overall themes that went into developing ODI12c. Let the Productivity Flow: Let us face it. Designing for developer user experience is always top of mind to any enterprise software. ODI12c addresses this through the introduction of declarative flow based mappings (the topic of our next ODI blog by the way!!). Reusability has been addressed though the introduction of reusable mappings cutting down development times for repeated logics. An enhanced debugger makes life easy for complex granular debugging scenarios. Unique repository IDs now allow you to manage multiple repositories. Performance is Paramount: Another major area of focus for ODI12c is performance. Increased parallelism (like the multiple target table load feature), reduced session overheads and ability to customize loads plans through physical views all empower the user to tune run times for extreme performances. mapping showing multiple target load physical representation allowing users to choose execution options Integrating it all: This release is not just about ODI12c as a standalone product. Closer integration with Oracle GoldenGate now brings Change Data Capture (CDC) capabilities into ODI12c. Oracle Warehouse Builder (OWB) jobs can now be executed and monitored from within ODI12c. And ODI12c is fast becoming the de facto standard for Oracle Applications that need data integration in their solutions. The best example being the latest release of the Oracle BI Applications technology. Even as we bring you in-depth write-ups about the features there are some great previews and resources that are already out there. Like this super entry by beta partner Rittman Mead Consulting and this ODI12c Key Features White Paper. You can download ODI12c here (this post helps). The best though is the upcoming Executive Webcast featuring customers and executives who have seen and conceived the product. Don’t miss it!

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  • Suggestions for connecting .NET WPF GUI with Java SE Server aoo

    - by Sam Goldberg
    BACKGROUND We are building a Java (SE) trading application which will be monitoring market data and sending trade messages based on the market data, and also on user defined configuration parameters. We are planning to provide the user with a thin client, built in .NET (WPF) for managing the parameters, controlling the server behavior, and viewing the current state of the trading. The client doesn't need real-time updates; it will instead update the view once every few seconds (or whatever interval is configured by the user). The client has about 6 different operations it needs to perform with the server, for example: CRUD with configuration parameters query subset of the data receive updates of current positions from server It is possible that most of the different operations (except for receiving data) are just different flavors of managing the configuration parameters, but it's too early in our analysis for us to be sure. To connect the client with the server, we have been considering using: SOAP Web Service RESTful service building a custom TCP/IP based API (text or xml) (least preferred - but we use this approach with other applications we have) As best as I understand, pros and cons of the different web service flavors are: SOAP pro: totally automated in .NET (and Java), modifying server side interface require no code changes in communication layer, just running refresh on Web Service reference to regenerate the classes. con: more overhead in the communication layer sending more text, etc. We're not using J2EE container so maybe doesn't work so well with J2SE REST pro: lighter weight, less data. Has good .NET and Java support. (I don't have any real experience with this, so don't know what other benefits it has.) con: client will not be automatically aware if there are any new operations or properties added (?), so communication layer needs to be updated by developer if server interface changes. con: (both approaches) Server cannot really push updates to the client at regular intervals (?) (However, we won't mind if client polls the server to get updates.) QUESTION What are your opinions on the above options or suggestions for other ways to connect the 2 parts? (Ideally, we don't want to put much work into the communication layer, because it's not the significant part of the application so the more off-the-shelf and automated the better.)

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  • Simple method for reliably detecting code in text?

    - by Jeff Atwood
    GMail has this feature where it will warn you if you try to send an email that it thinks might have an attachment. Because GMail detected the string see the attached in the email, but no actual attachment, it warns me with an OK / Cancel dialog when I click the Send button. We have a related problem on Stack Overflow. That is, when a user enters a post like this one: my problem is I need to change the database but I don't won't to create a new connection. example: DataSet dsMasterInfo = new DataSet(); Database db = DatabaseFactory.CreateDatabase("ConnectionString"); DbCommand dbCommand = db.GetStoredProcCommand("uspGetMasterName"); This user did not format their code as code! That is, they didn't indent by 4 spaces per Markdown, or use the code button (or the keyboard shortcut ctrl+k) which does that for them. Thus, our system is accreting a lot of edits where people have to go in and manually format code for people that are somehow unable to figure this out. This leads to a lot of bellyaching. We've improved the editor help several times, but short of driving over to the user's house and pressing the correct buttons on their keyboard for them, we're at a loss to see what to do next. That's why we are considering a Google GMail style warning: Did you mean to post code? You wrote stuff that we think looks like code, but you didn't format it as code by indenting 4 spaces, using the toolbar code button or the ctrl+k code formatting command. However, presenting this warning requires us to detect the presence of what we think is unformatted code in a question. What is a simple, semi-reliable way of doing this? Per Markdown, code is always indented by 4 spaces or within backticks, so anything correctly formatted can be discarded from the check immediately. This is only a warning and it will only apply to low-reputation users asking their first questions (or providing their first answers), so some false positives are OK, so long as they are about 5% or less. Questions on Stack Overflow can be in any language, though we can realistically limit our check to, say, the "big ten" languages. Per the tags page that would be C#, Java, PHP, JavaScript, Objective-C, C, C++, Python, Ruby. Use the Stack Overflow creative commons data dump to audit your potential solution (or just pick a few questions in the top 10 tags on Stack Overflow) and see how it does. Pseudocode is fine, but we use c# if you want to be extra friendly. The simpler the better (so long as it works). KISS! If your solution requires us to attempt to compile posts in 10 different compilers, or an army of people to manually train a bayesian inference engine, that's ... not exactly what we had in mind.

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  • Random thoughts on Monday

    - by user10760339
    I know that it has been a long time since my last post, just though that I would update you my latest thoughts of Governance. I just recently completed an executive round table series on EA and Cloud in Singapore, Indonesia and Malaysia. The response was phenomenal. The key point of the session was that Enterprise is the key enabler of innovation - All companies want to drive to be market leaders, EA can lay the foundation for the path to deliver that at innovation. When it comes to innovation, I see two distinct types: (a) Passive innovation is where a company creates innovation thought increments improvement over time. A great example is when airlines went from paper tickets to electronic ticket. Next logical progression is to do the same with boarding passes. There are a lot of examples to choose from, thought the thing to keep in mind, is that passive innovation will only keep you in the lead, it won’t allow you to create new markets or jump from #3 to #1 in one go. For that we need another type of innovation. (b) Disruptive innovation is where you create market where none existed before. Thought very difficult to do and requires significant investment in research, product and software development and not least of all, visionary thinking and timing, if done correctly, can turn the world on it’s ear. A great example is Apple iTunes. Some might say that this is incremental innovation, but only in one aspect, the downloading of music. Other then that, it’s all disruptive innovation. Being able to buy a single song rather then the album fundamentally changed the way we get out music. Behind all of these types of innovation is Enterprise Architecture. EA creates the infrastructure foundation, then delivery systems and the end-user experience to deliver this innovation. At Oracle, we are driving that EA innovation with our private cloud offerings from “bolt-to-glass” as I like to say. For more on what Oracle has to offer in EA and cloud, have a look at Cloud Computing | Oracle and Enterprise Architecture - OracleI am working on new material that I will be posting in a couple of weeks, so check back regularly for new updates or feel free to subscript for updates.

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  • links for 2011-03-17

    - by Bob Rhubart
    Siba Prasad: Oracle Database on Amazon RDSg Siba Prasad share an analysis of the pros and cons. (tags: oracle database cloud amazon) LIVE WEBCAST March 24 2pm PT- Why Switch from Red Hat and SUSE Linux to Oracle Linux? (Oracle's Linux Blog) Featuring Oracle's Monica Kumar, Sr.Director of Linux, Oracle VM and MySQL and Avi Miller, Principal Sales Consultant, Linux and Virtualization. (tags: oracle linux) Webcast: IBM SOA vs. Oracle SOA, March 24, 1pm ET / 10am PT Maneesh Joshi and Bruce Tierney guide you to a solid understanding of the differences between the Oracle and IBM approach to comprehensive SOA. (tags: oracle soa bpm) Finding the Right Solution to Source and Manage Your Contractors (PeopleSoft Apps Strategy) "Talent has become a primary competitive advantage for most organizations. Contingent labor offers talent on flexible terms; it offers the ability to scale up operations, close skill gaps, and manage risk in the process of delivering services." - Mark Rosenberg (tags: oracle peoplesoft enterprisearchitecture) Oracle Business Intelligence Customers: Have Your Voice Heard in the "2011Wisdom of the Crowds Business Intelligence Market Survey" (BI & Analytics Pulse) "The Wisdom of the Crowds survey combines social media, crowd sourcing, and good old fashioned market research to provide vendors and customers alike an unvarnished and insightful snap shot of what's top of mind with business intelligence professionals." (tags: oracle businessintelligence) Martin Bach: Troubleshooting Grid Infrastructure startup Martin Bach hunts down the problem that caused one of his blades to reboot after an EXT3 journal error. (tags: oracle grid rac) Oracle WebCenter: Social Networking & Collaboration (Oracle Enterprise 2.0 Blog) Kelley Ruppel with information on "how the new release of Oracle WebCenter provides unprecedented Social Networking and Collaboration." (tags: oracle webcenter enterprise2.0 collaboration) VirtaThon: 100% Virtual Java/Oracle/MySQL Conference! | Bex Huff "The goal is simple," says Oracle ACE Director Bex Huff. "Because it's all online, the conference is very cheap. Pricing is not yet announced... but it should be around $300. Also, unlike other conferences, every speaker gets paid a small fee depending on the popularity of his or her session." (tags: oracle oracleace java mysqql) Griffiths Waite Blog: BPM 11g PS3 GW's Ian Heathcock shares a link to "a most interesting article on Oracle's recent release discussing the new features and how PS3 adds value  to the whole SOA message." (tags: oracle soa) The Buttso Blathers: Tutorial: JSF 2.0 and JPA 2.0 with WebLogic Server using NetBeans Should you take application architecture advice from a man named Buttso? In this case, yes. (tags: oracle jsf jpa weblogic) Setting-up a High Available Tuned SOA Environment Middleware Magic (tags: ping.fm) How to Configure Weblogic Messaging Bridge with JBoss Middleware Magic (tags: ping.fm Weblogic JBoss) Richard Veryard on Architecture: Emergent Architecture (tags: ping.fm entarch emergence)

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  • How does rc job work / order of (contradicting) "start on ..." and "stop on ..." stanzas

    - by Binarus
    Hi, I just can't understand how Upstart's rc job definition in Natty 11.04 works. To illustrate the problem, here is the definition (empty lines and comments are left out): start on runlevel [0123456] stop on runlevel [!$RUNLEVEL] export RUNLEVEL export PREVLEVEL console output env INIT_VERBOSE task exec /etc/init.d/rc $RUNLEVEL Let's suppose we currently are in runlevel 2 and the rc job is stopped (that is exactly the situation after booting my box and logging in via SSH). Now, let's assume that the system switches to runlevel 3, for example due to a command like "telinit 3" given by root. What will happen to the rc job? Obviously, the rc job will be started since it is currently stopped and the event runlevel 3 is matching the start events. But from now on, things are unclear to me: According to the manual $RUNLEVEL evaluates to the new runlevel when the job is started (that means 3 in our example). Therefore, the next stanza "stop on runlevel [!$RUNLEVEL]" translates to "stop on runlevel [!3]"; that means we have a first stanza which will trigger the job, but the second stanza will never stop the job and seems to be useless. Since I know that the Ubuntu / Upstart people won't do useless things, I must be heavily misunderstanding something. I would be grateful for any explanation. While trying to understand this, an additional question came to my mind. If I had contradicting start and stop triggers, for example start on foo stop on foo what would happen? I swear I never will do that, but I am nevertheless very interested in how Upstart handles that on the theoretical level. Thank you very much! Editing the question as a reaction on geekosaur's first answer: I can see the parallelism, but it is not that easy (at least, not to me). Let's assume the job aurrently is still running, and a new runlevel event comes in (of course, the new runlevel is different from the current one). Then, the following should happen: 1) The job is single instance. That means that "start on ..." won't be triggered since the job is currently running; $RUNLEVEL is not touched. 2) "stop on ..." will be triggered since the new runlevel is different from $RUNLEVEL, so the job will be aborted. 3) Now, the job is stopped and waiting. I can't see how it is restarted with the new runlevel. AFAIK, initctl emits events only once, so "start on ..." won't be triggered and the new runlevel won't be entered. I know that I still misunderstanding something, and I am grateful for explanations. Thank you very much!

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  • What are the arguments against parsing the Cthulhu way?

    - by smarmy53
    I have been assigned the task of implementing a Domain Specific Language for a tool that may become quite important for the company. The language is simple but not trivial, it already allows nested loops, string concatenation, etc. and it is practically sure that other constructs will be added as the project advances. I know by experience that writing a lexer/parser by hand -unless the grammar is trivial- is a time consuming and error prone process. So I was left with two options: a parser generator à la yacc or a combinator library like Parsec. The former was good as well but I picked the latter for various reasons, and implemented the solution in a functional language. The result is pretty spectacular to my eyes, the code is very concise, elegant and readable/fluent. I concede it may look a bit weird if you never programmed in anything other than java/c#, but then this would be true of anything not written in java/c#. At some point however, I've been literally attacked by a co-worker. After a quick glance at my screen he declared that the code is uncomprehensible and that I should not reinvent parsing but just use a stack and String.Split like everybody does. He made a lot of noise, and I could not convince him, partially because I've been taken by surprise and had no clear explanation, partially because his opinion was immutable (no pun intended). I even offered to explain him the language, but to no avail. I'm positive the discussion is going to re-surface in front of management, so I'm preparing some solid arguments. These are the first few reasons that come to my mind to avoid a String.Split-based solution: you need lot of ifs to handle special cases and things quickly spiral out of control lots of hardcoded array indexes makes maintenance painful extremely difficult to handle things like a function call as a method argument (ex. add( (add a, b), c) very difficult to provide meaningful error messages in case of syntax errors (very likely to happen) I'm all for simplicity, clarity and avoiding unnecessary smart-cryptic stuff, but I also believe it's a mistake to dumb down every part of the codebase so that even a burger flipper can understand it. It's the same argument I hear for not using interfaces, not adopting separation of concerns, copying-pasting code around, etc. A minimum of technical competence and willingness to learn is required to work on a software project after all. (I won't use this argument as it will probably sound offensive, and starting a war is not going to help anybody) What are your favorite arguments against parsing the Cthulhu way?* *of course if you can convince me he's right I'll be perfectly happy as well

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  • Mobile Shopping Alerts

    - by David Dorf
    Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:11.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-ascii-font-family:Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-fareast; mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;} It’s been popular to offer coupons when people check-in to a store, because you’re catching them at the best possible time – they’re presumably in a shopping state-of-mind, and they’re at your store.  But wouldn’t it be even better to catch the people walking by your store and entice them to visit?  That’s the concept of geo-fences.  When people enter a geographic zone, they are sent a relevant text message alerting them about something nearby. I wrote about Placecast doing this for The North Face, noting that the messages were a unique combination of both offers and useful information about outdoor activities. After creating a program with European carrier O2, Placecast recently entered into an agreement to provide similar services to AT&T customers.  The ShopAlerts program allows AT&T customers in Chicago, Los Angeles, New York City, and San Francisco opt-in to receive these messages.  The program will be expanded nationwide as early as this summer. It’s a much better model for customers (and Placecast) to sign-up once with the carrier instead of each individual retailer, but I hope the messages aren’t restricted to advertising.  I really the like the idea of providing other information, such as nearby special events, races, and perhaps even things to avoid like construction.

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  • In a multidisciplinary team, how much should each member's skills overlap?

    - by spade78
    I've been working in embedded software development for this small startup and our team is pretty small: about 3-4 people. We're responsible for all engineering which involves an RF device controlled by an embedded microcontroller that connects to a PC host which runs some sort of data collection and analysis software. I have come to develop these two guidelines when I work with my colleagues: Define a clear separation of responsibilities and make sure each person's contribution to the final product doesn't overlap. Don't assume your colleagues know everything about their responsibilities. I assume there is some sort of technology that I will need to be competent at to properly interface with the work of my colleagues. The first point is pretty easy for us. I do firmware, one guy does the RF, another does the PC software, and the last does the DSP work. Nothing overlaps in terms of two people's work being mixed into the final product. For that to happen, one guy has to hand off work to another guy who will vet it and integrate it himself. The second point is the heart of my question. I've learned the hard way not to trust the knowledge of my colleagues absolutley no matter how many years experience they claim to have. At least not until they've demonstrated it to me a couple of times. So given that whenever I develop a piece of firmware, if it interfaces with some technology that I don't know then I'll try to learn it and develop a piece of test code that helps me understand what they're doing. That way if my piece of the product comes into conflict with another piece then I have some knowledge about possible causes. For example, the PC guy has started implementing his GUI's in .NET WPF (C#) and using LibUSBdotNET for USB access. So I've been learning C# and the .NET USB library that he uses and I build a little console app to help me understand how that USB library works. Now all this takes extra time and energy but I feel it's justified as it gives me a foothold to confront integration problems. Also I like learning this new stuff so I don't mind. On the other hand I can see how this can turn into a time synch for work that won't make it into the final product and may never turn into a problem. So how much experience/skills overlap do you expect in your teammates relative to your own skills? Does this issue go away as the teams get bigger and more diverse?

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  • How do you manage extensibility in your multi-tenant systems?

    - by Brian MacKay
    I've got a few big web based multi-tenant products now, and very soon I can see that there will be a lot of customizations that are tenant specific. An extra field here or there, maybe an extra page or some extra logic in the middle of a workflow - that sort of thing. Some of these customizations can be rolled into the core product, and that's great. Some of them are highly specific and would get in everyone else's way. I have a few ideas in mind for managing this, but none of them seem to scale well. The obvious solution is to introduce a ton of client-level settings, allowing various 'features' to be enabled on per-client basis. The downside with that, of course, is massive complexity and clutter. You could introduce a truly huge number of settings, and over time various types of logic (presentation, business) could get way out of hand. Then there's the problem of client-specific fields, which begs for something cleaner than just adding a bunch of nullable fields to the existing tables. So what are people doing to manage this? Force.com seems to be the master of extensibility; obviously they've created a platform from the ground up that is super extensible. You can add on to almost anything with their web-based UI. FogBugz did something similiar where they created a robust plugin model that, come to think of it, might have actually been inspired by Force. I know they spent a lot of time and money on it and if I'm not mistaken the intention was to actually use it internally for future product development. Sounds like the kind of thing I could be tempted to build but probably shouldn't. :) Is a massive investment in pluggable architecture the only way to go? How are you managing these problems, and what kind of results are you seeing? EDIT: It does look as though FogBugz handled the problem by building a fairly robust platform and then using that to put together their screens. To extend it you create a DLL containing classes that implement interfaces like ISearchScreenGridColumn, and that becomes a module. I'm sure it was tremendously expensive to build considering that they have a large of devs and they worked on it for months, plus their surface area is perhaps 5% of the size of my application. Right now I am seriously wondering if Force.com is the right way to handle this. And I am a hard core ASP.Net guy, so this is a strange position to find myself in.

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  • F# Objects &ndash; Integrating with the other .Net Languages &ndash; Part 1

    - by MarkPearl
    In the next few blog posts I am going to explore objects in F#. Up to now, my dabbling in F# has really been a few liners and while I haven’t reached the point where F# is my language of preference – I am already seeing the benefits of the language when solving certain types of programming problems. For me I believe that the F# language will be used in a silo like architecture and that the real benefit of having F# under your belt is so that you can solve problems that F# lends itself towards and then interact with other .Net languages in doing the rest. When I was still very new to the F# language I did the following post covering how to get F# & C# to talk to each other. Today I am going to use a similar approach to demonstrate the structure of F# objects when inter-operating with other languages. Lets start with an empty F# class … type Person() = class end   Very simple, and all we really have done is declared an object that has nothing in it. We could if we wanted to make an object that takes a constructor with parameters… the code for this would look something like this… type Person =     {         Firstname : string         Lastname : string     }   What’s interesting about this syntax is when you try and interop with this object from another .Net language like C# - you would see the following…   Not only has a constructor been created that accepts two parameters, but Firstname and Lastname are also exposed on the object. Now it’s important to keep in mind that value holders in F# are immutable by default, so you would not be able to change the value of Firstname after the construction of the object – in C# terms it has been set to readonly. One could however explicitly state that the value holders were mutable, which would then allow you to change the values after the actual creation of the object. type Person = { mutable Firstname : string mutable Lastname : string }   Something that bugged me for a while was what if I wanted to have an F# object that requires values in its constructor, but does not expose them as part of the object. After bashing my head for a few moments I came up with the following syntax – which achieves this result. type Person(Firstname : string, Lastname : string) = member v.Fullname = Firstname + " " + Lastname What I haven’t figured out yet is what is the difference between the () & {} brackets when declaring an object.

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  • Where Are You on the Visualization Maturity Curve?

    - by Celine Beck
    The old phrase “A picture is worth a thousand words” is as true now as ever. Providing the right users with access to the right product data, at the right time, can provide significant benefits to a business. This is especially evident with increasing technical and product complexities, elongated supply chains, and growing pressure to bring innovative products to market faster. With this in mind, it is easy to understand why visualization is an integral part of any successful product lifecycle management (PLM) strategy. At a bare minimum, knowledge workers use multiple individual documents of different formats and structure, and leverage visualization solutions to access information; but the real value of visualization can be fully reaped when it is connected to enterprise applications like PLM and tied to the appropriate business context. The picture below illustrates this visualization maturity curve, as we presented during the last Oracle Open World and the transformational effect that visualization can have on PLM processes and performance (check out the post about AutoVue Key Highlights from Oracle Open World 2012 for more information). Organizations are likely to see greater positive impact on business performance when visualization is connected to enterprise systems, allowing access to information coming from multiple sources, such as PLM, supply chain management (SCM) and enterprise resource planning (ERP). This allows organizations to reach higher levels of collaboration and optimize decision-making capacity as users can benefit from in-context access to visual information. For instance, within a PLM system, a design engineer can access a product assembly and review digital annotations added by other users specific to the engineering change request he is reviewing rather than all historical annotations. The last stage on the curve is what we call augmented business visualization (ABV).  ABV is an innovative framework which lets structured data (from Oracle’s Agile PLM for instance) interact with unstructured data (documents, design, 3D models, etc). With this new level of integration, information coming from multiple sources can be presented in a highly visual fashion; color displays can be used in order to identify parts with specific characteristics (for example pending quality issues) and you can take actions directly from within the context of documents and designs, maximizing user productivity. Those who had the chance to attend our PLM session during Oracle Open World already got a sneak peek of our latest augmented business visualization for Oracle’s Agile PLM. The solution generated a lot of wows. Stephen Porter, CEO at Zero Wait State, indicated in a post entitled “The PLM State: the Manhattan Project-Oracle’s Next Big Secret Weapon” that “this kind of synergy between visualization and PLM could qualify as a powerful weapon differentiating Agile PLM from other solutions.” If you are interested in learning more about ABV for Oracle’s Agile PLM and hear about real examples of usage of visualization at all stages of the visualization maturity curve, don’t miss our Visual Decision Making to Optimize New Product Development and Introduction session during the Oracle Value Chain Summit (Feb. 4-6, 2013, San Francisco). We look forward to seeing you there!

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  • Using ASP.NET Membership Provider with an ACL

    - by geekrutherford
    Up until recently one of my applications has used the membership provider within ASP.NET exclusively. However, it has been proposed that while the currently defined roles are beneficial, security needs to be more granular to restrict both access to certain pages and functionality present within a given page.   Unfortunately, the role based security ASP.NET gives you out of the box falls down in this area. This is not due to a lack of foresight by Microsoft, but rather it was simply not designed for implementing both role based security and any inherent ACL you may define within these roles. Mind you some would say an ACL is independent of the role to which a user belongs and is assigned to the user directly.   The application mentioned here has it's own User object (which encapsulates the membership provider user object as a property) and SQL Server table to store extended information not present in the aspnet_users table. While I could have modified the aspnet membership schema to suit the applications needs, it seemed smarter to simply create a separate table with a foreign key back to the aspnet_users table.   Since I have a separate object to store extended user information, I simply created an ACL object and expose it as a property of my user object.   This is all well and good, but it does not help in regards to the SiteMapProvider and restricting access at the page level based on the users ACL.   The straightforward answer would be to develop some code within the databound event for the menu that checks the page title and has hardcoded logic that dictates a user must have certain permissions turned on. The problem with this approach is that it's HARDCODED!!! If you need to change access to a page you'd need to do a build and go through your normal deployment process....ugh!!!   An alternative method, albeit not perfect, is to utilize the resourceKey property on the SiteMapNodes in the SiteMap file with the name of the required permission to view the page. Within the databound event for your menu you iterate the SiteMapNodes in the menus SiteMapProvider looking for a match at the page level based on title. When a match is detected, you have a switch/case on the SiteMapNodes resourceKey (the name of the ACL permission required). The case for the resourceKey ensures the users ACL permission is turned on and viola!!!   This is noteably not perfect in that it is using the resourceKey in a manner other than intended.  Since the application is not localized, using it in the manner described it not an issue.   Below is a sample SiteMap file with the resourceKey used as the ACL permission identifier:     Below is the ItemDataBound event. This application uses the Telerik Menu control:

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  • Move Data into the grid for scalable, predictable response times

    - by JuergenKress
    CloudTran is pleased to introduce the availability of the CloudTran Transaction and Persistence Manager for creating scalable, reliable data services on the Oracle Coherence In-Memory Data Grid (IMDG). Use of IMDG architectures has been key to handling today’s web-scale loads because it eliminates database latency by storing important and frequently access data in memory instead of on disk. The CloudTran product lets developers easily use an IMDG for full ACID-compliant transactions without having to be concerned about the location or spread of data. The system has its own implementation of fast, scalable distributed transactions that does NOT depend on XA protocols but still guarantees all ACID properties. Plus, CloudTran asynchronously replicates data going into the IMDG to back-end datastores and back-up data centers, again ensuring ACID properties. CloudTran can be accessed through Java Persistence API (JPA via TopLink Grid) and now, through a new Low-Level API, or LLAPI. This is ideal for use in SOA applications that need data reliability, high availability, performance, and scalability. It is still in its limited beta release, the LLAPI gives developers the ability to use standard put/remove logic available in Coherence and then wrap logic with simple Spring annotations or XML+AspectJ to start transactions. An important feature of LLAPI is the ability to join transactions. This is a common outcome for SOA applications that need to reduce network traffic by aggregating data into single cache entries and then doing SOA service processing in the node holding the data. This results in the need to orchestrate transaction processing across multiple service calls. CloudTran has the capability to handle these “multi-client” transactions at speed with no loss in ACID properties. Developing software around an IMDG like Oracle Coherence is an important choice for today’s web-scale applications and services. But this introduces new architectural considerations to maintain scalability in light of increased network loads and data movement. Without using CloudTran, developers are faced with an incredibly difficult task to ensure data reliability, availability, performance, and scalability when working with an IMDG. Working with highly distributed data that is entirely volatile while stored in memory presents numerous edge cases where failures can result in data loss. The CloudTran product takes care of all of this, leaving developers with the confidence and peace of mind that all data is processed correctly. For those interested in evaluating the CloudTran product and IMDGs, take a look at this link for more information: http://www.CloudTran.com/downloadAPI.ph , or send your questions to [email protected]. 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: CloudTran,data grid,M,SOA Community,Oracle SOA,Oracle BPM,BPM,Community,OPN,Jürgen Kress

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  • Upstart: How does rc job work / order of (contradicting) "start on ..." and "stop on ..." stanzas

    - by Binarus
    Hi, I just can't understand how Upstart's rc job definition in Natty 11.04 works. To illustrate the problem, here is the definition (empty lines and comments are left out): start on runlevel [0123456] stop on runlevel [!$RUNLEVEL] export RUNLEVEL export PREVLEVEL console output env INIT_VERBOSE task exec /etc/init.d/rc $RUNLEVEL Let's suppose we currently are in runlevel 2 and the rc job is stopped (that is exactly the situation after booting my box and logging in via SSH). Now, let's assume that the system switches to runlevel 3, for example due to a command like "telinit 3" given by root. What will happen to the rc job? Obviously, the rc job will be started since it is currently stopped and the event runlevel 3 is matching the start events. But from now on, things are unclear to me: According to the manual $RUNLEVEL evaluates to the new runlevel when the job is started (that means 3 in our example). Therefore, the next stanza "stop on runlevel [!$RUNLEVEL]" translates to "stop on runlevel [!3]"; that means we have a first stanza which will trigger the job, but the second stanza will never stop the job and seems to be useless. Since I know that the Ubuntu / Upstart people won't do useless things, I must be heavily misunderstanding something. I would be grateful for any explanation. While trying to understand this, an additional question came to my mind. If I had contradicting start and stop triggers, for example start on foo stop on foo what would happen? I swear I never will do that, but I am nevertheless very interested in how Upstart handles that on the theoretical level. Thank you very much! Editing the question as a reaction on geekosaur's first answer: I can see the parallelism, but it is not that easy (at least, not to me). Let's assume the job aurrently is still running, and a new runlevel event comes in (of course, the new runlevel is different from the current one). Then, the following should happen: 1) The job is single instance. That means that "start on ..." won't be triggered since the job is currently running; $RUNLEVEL is not touched. 2) "stop on ..." will be triggered since the new runlevel is different from $RUNLEVEL, so the job will be aborted. 3) Now, the job is stopped and waiting. I can't see how it is restarted with the new runlevel. AFAIK, initctl emits events only once, so "start on ..." won't be triggered and the new runlevel won't be entered. I know that I still misunderstanding something, and I am grateful for explanations. Thank you very much!

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  • My Graduate Experience at Oracle by Mayuri Khinvasara

    - by david.talamelli
    My experience at Oracle. I still vividly remember the day, when my name was announced in the campus hiring list of Oracle at my college. I was proud of myself but at the same time, I was getting goose bumps!!! A new world had arrived before me and the anxiousness of whether I could survive it or not had gripped me. Nervous about moving into an unknown city, I came to visit Hyderabad with my father. One look at the Oracle Campus and I felt some kind of magnetism pulling me towards it. And then, I joined Oracle in June 2009, with a lot of apprehensions in my mind. The HR Rep made us really comfortable in the first week itself. I met so many new people, managers, HR folks and most importantly 20 other Campus Hires like me. Then we had our team bonding sessions, team parties etc. I didn’t realize when the transition from campus to corporate happened. And I had started loving it. The confidence the HR Reps gave us and the bonding our managers imbibed in us, made us all ready for the new life ahead. Then started the rigorous training sessions, the excitement about our new work, new cubicles, new desktops, our first business cards, our first conference call and so on. I made new friends which were now my extended family, the freedom and courage of living alone. I was enjoying all that. As I was getting totally immersed into my regular work schedule I started getting to know the innumerable Oracle products, their functionalities, implementations and realizing the brand that Oracle is. Work pressure started increasing and so did the challenges to understand and deliver. I Didn’t realize how days and soon months passed by. Then came a golden chance to visit the Oracle Headquarters in US for 45 days training in November 2009. Once again, the excitement was enormous about the counter team-mates in HQ, the trainings ahead, the US work culture and my stay there. I felt so privileged for the company I was working. Boarding an international flight for the first time and visiting famous US cities which I had just seen in movies, was now a reality. It was a totally amazing experience. Work pressure kept me really busy, with learning new things every day, the immense satisfaction of delivering something, the nightmares of debugging a mistake, only to realize how silly it was.  I was enjoying the process. Soon a year passed by. I had transformed into this corporate software professional, I couldn’t believe I could be. Today, I complete 1 year and 8 months at Oracle and continue to look forward to the enriching experience I will have here. Truly one of the Top Companies in the World. Mayuri Khinvasara

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  • Oracle Service Cloud May 2014 Release – Focus on your driving by JP Saunders

    - by Tuula Fai
    The next time you’re twiddling dials on your car’s dashboard to get the air to blow in the right direction, and the right song to play on the stereo, while pulling on the wires to charge your phone and punching in passwords to re-sync your hands-free headset to take a call, consider this… Does having a better dashboard UI in your car improve your driving performance? The Tesla car has one of the most modern and intuitive dashboards in any commercial car today. It is actually based on the design of a smart phone, which can download apps and updates directly from the cloud.  The 17” touchscreen, Lynx-based dashboard totally integrates all channels and devices, allowing the driver to focus on the smooth driving and power of this luxury (toy) car.  What the folks at Tesla didn't do was avoid the complexity of our needs. Instead, they streamlined them. And, while we might not all be able to afford a Tesla, their approach demonstrates that a modern UI approach can ultimately make a positive difference in our lives and businesses.  This is why the productivity and effectiveness of a Modern Contact Center is many times greater than that of a traditional contact center. Agents in a Modern Contact Center get to focus on the task at hand, the customer engagement, rather than stumbling their way through Lego blocks of complexity.  The Oracle Service Cloud is a modern approach to customer service that empowers your agents to achieve greater focus on improving your operational and strategic success through streamlined business processes.  Here are some of the recent May 2014 release highlights to the Oracle Service Cloud: Performance Enhanced Desktop UI A modern agent desktop interface that optimizes clumsy tasks, logins, screens and workflows and is optimized for agent and system performance. Improvements include performance for drag-and-drop configurable views, saved searches, and improved caching for high-speed performance even during disconnected or slow internet access.  Customer Experience Routing A streamlined automatic way to connect the right customer need to the best agent skills, based on multidimensional variables such as product skills, language skills, workload, call volume to optimize the connection and resolution experience. On-The-Go Mobile Improvements to the Agent mobile app that extend connectivity to websites, and customer surveys that are mobile-ready and rendered for any device, and ensure the customer’s voice is captured while the insight is still top of mind.  Infused Social Engagement Enhancements to infused social capabilities allow agents to respond in social threads directly from within the agent desktop, with the information becoming part of the incident record for automatic actions (such as replay or escalate) triggered off the response. Front-End Siebel Contact Center The market leading online Web Customer Self-Service interface from the Oracle Service Cloud, is now out-of-the-box ready for Oracle Siebel customers. Deploy a new online web self-service interface in a matter of weeks to have customers self-serve and self-solve answers, with escalated incidents routed directly into the Oracle Siebel Contact Center. For more information on the latest enhancements for the Oracle Service Cloud, please see the Oracle Service Cloud May 2014 Capabilities and Benefits. Related blogs: Oracle Service Cloud Feb 2014

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  • What is required for a scope in an injection framework?

    - by johncarl
    Working with libraries like Seam, Guice and Spring I have become accustomed to dealing with variables within a scope. These libraries give you a handful of scopes and allow you to define your own. This is a very handy pattern for dealing with variable lifecycles and dependency injection. I have been trying to identify where scoping is the proper solution, or where another solution is more appropriate (context variable, singleton, etc). I have found that if the scope lifecycle is not well defined it is very difficult and often failure prone to manage injections in this way. I have searched on this topic but have found little discussion on the pattern. Is there some good articles discussing where to use scoping and what are required/suggested prerequisites for scoping? I interested in both reference discussion or your view on what is required or suggested for a proper scope implementation. Keep in mind that I am referring to scoping as a general idea, this includes things like globally scoped singletons, request or session scoped web variable, conversation scopes, and others. Edit: Some simple background on custom scopes: Google Guice custom scope Some definitions relevant to above: “scoping” - A set of requirements that define what objects get injected at what time. A simple example of this is Thread scope, based on a ThreadLocal. This scope would inject a variable based on what thread instantiated the class. Here's an example of this: “context variable” - A repository passed from one object to another holding relevant variables. Much like scoping this is a more brute force way of accessing variables based on the calling code. Example: methodOne(Context context){ methodTwo(context); } methodTwo(Context context){ ... //same context as method one, if called from method one } “globally scoped singleton” - Following the singleton pattern, there is one object per application instance. This applies to scopes because there is a basic lifecycle to this object: there is only one of these objects instantiated. Here's an example of a JSR330 Singleton scoped object: @Singleton public void SingletonExample{ ... } usage: public class One { @Inject SingeltonExample example1; } public class Two { @Inject SingeltonExample example2; } After instantiation: one.example1 == two.example2 //true;

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  • Software monetization that is not evil

    - by t0x1n
    I have a free open-source project with around 800K downloads to date. I've been contacted by some monetization companies from time to time and turned them down, since I didn't want toolbar malware associated with my software. I was wondering however, is there a non-evil way to monetize software ? Here are the options as I know them: Add a donation button. I don't feel comfortable with that as I really don't need "donations" - I'm paid quite well. Donating users may feel entitled to support etc. (see the second to last bullet) Add ads inside your application. In the web that may be acceptable, but in a desktop program it looks incredibly lame. Charge a small amount for each download. This model works well in the mobile world, but I suspect no one will go for it on the desktop. It doesn't mix well with open source, though I suppose I could charge only for the binaries (most users won't go to the hassle of compiling the sources). People may expect support etc. after having explicitly paid (see next bullet). Make money off a service / community / support associated with the program. This is one route I definitely don't want to take, I don't want any sort of hassle beyond coding. I assure you, the program is top notch (albeit simple) and I'm not aware of any bugs as of yet (there are support forums and blog comments where users may report them). It is also very simple, documented, and discoverable so I do think I have a case for supplying it "as is". Add affiliate suggestions to your installer. If you use a monetization company, you lose control over what they propose. Unless you can establish some sort of strong trust with the company to supply quality suggestions (I sincerely doubt it), I can't have that. Choosing your own affiliate (e.g. directly suggesting Google Toolbar) is possibly the only viable solution to my mind. Problem is, where do I find a solid affiliate that could actually give value to the user rather than infect his computer with crapware? I thought maybe Babylon (not the toolbar of course, I hate toolbars)?

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  • What can I do to make sure my code gets maintained in a developer light environment?

    - by asjohnson
    I am a contract data analyst, so I bounce between jobs every 3-6 months, which I find to be a good fit for me, but it leads to some problems when it comes to coding. I mostly do statistics (I've asked a similar question on cross validated, but the answers there are not relevant here), but I have also found out that the business world loves excel and loves copying and pasting the same thing over and over again even more. This led me to learn how to write VBA scripts and then VB.NET programs to automate as many of these reports as I can. I am certain my programs are not the most elegant, but I put a good bit of effort into making sure they work under as many cases as I can test, I add in exceptions and try to code so the program can handle changes in the files that it processes, but there is a limit, if you remove a huge portion of the data, there is a good chance my program is going to trip up, which I accept will inevitably happen. Usually a pretty minor change in the code fixes the problem and I do try and comment my code and make it readable under the assumption that some other person will have to read it some day. My problem is that I generally get put on teams of folks with essentially no experience with programming (like VBA would be a huge stretch for anyone I work directly with). I am wondering what I should be doing as the person that wrote the code to do my best to keep it maintained. I have two approaches in mind (outlined next), but would be very happy to get any advice. Solution 1: Find the more tech savvy coworkers and run them through the programs and what basic changes can be made. Honestly automating excel is about as easy as it can get when it comes to programming, so I feel like I could teach someone the basics of maintaining it pretty quick. Solution 2: Get in touch with the IT department and show them what is going on and maybe they will be able to help. The problem here is that the IT department is constantly swamped (as I'm sure many of you know) and I feel like kind of a jerk for dumping more things on them. I do leave my personal email address with places and am willing to answer quick questions via email, but I view the need for more exhaustive maintenance as something of an inevitability and would like to make sure I do my due diligence to make sure it gets done. I imagine some combination of the two approaches outlined there, but is there any kind of heads up I should give IT? I feel like I would be annoyed if I started getting requests to fix a program that I had never seen from some random guy that is no longer there.

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