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  • Keep the images downloaded in the listview during scrolling

    - by Paveliko
    I'm developing my first app and have been reading a LOT here. I've been trying to find a solution for the following issue for over a week with no luck. I have an Adapter that extends ArrayAdapter to show image and 3 lines of text in each row. Inside the getView I assign relevant information for the TextViews and use ImageLoader class to download image and assign it to the ImageView. Everything works great! I have 4.5 rows visible on my screen (out of total of 20). When I scroll down for the first time the images continue to download and be assigned in right order to the list. BUT when I scroll back the list looses all the images and start redrawing them again (0.5-1 sec per image) in correct order. From what I've been reading it's the standard list performance but I want to change it. I want that, once the image was downloaded, it will be "sticked" to the list for the whole session of the current window. Just like in Contacts list or in the Market. It is only 20 images (6-9kb each). Hope I managed to explain myself.

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  • Are we in demand?

    - by dotnetdev
    I was made redundant in the end of November. This wasn't because I lacked required skills (although I'm a youngster and in career levels a junior dev - though I knew a lot more than was called for in my job). Anyway, I was laid off due to the whole recession/credit crunch thing going on. I worked for a small company and money got tight and I had to go. I haven't made a thread about this but I have seen threads about others being laid off and experiencing a similar fate. This leads me to the question: What is the job market like for developers? Are we in demand? I ask this question on a global level, but I live in London UK (in case anyone comes across this thread from the same area). I am a .NET dev but my secondary skillset is Flex (actionscript too) and Java, which my personal portfolio is made with. I hope to be strong enough in this to do this commercially, with a few more months of practise. Then I will have more jobs applicable to me. Unfortunately, I use agencies and sites like Jobserve/Monster.com but no new jobs are ever posted on there so when you apply to all the relevant jobs, then what? Whatsmore, a lot of companies are putting a freeze on recruitment. Thanks

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  • Security of Flex for payment website

    - by Mario
    So, it's been about 3 years since I wrote and went live with my company's main internet facing website. Originally written in php, I've since just been making minor changes here and there to progress the site as we've needed to. I've wanted to rewrite it from the ground up in the last year or so and now, we want to add some major features so this is a perfect time. The website in question is as close to a banking website as you'd get (without being a bank; sorry for the obscurity, but the less info I can give out, the better). For the rewrite, I want to separate the presentation layer from the processing layer as much as I can. I want the end user to be stuck in a box and not be able to get out so to speak (this is all because of PCI complacency, being PEN tested every 3 months, etc...) So, being probed every 3 months has increasingly made me nervous. We haven't failed yet and there hasen't been a breach yet, but I want to make sure I continue to pass (as much as I can anyways) So, I'm considering rewriting the presentation layer in Adobe Flex and do all the processing in PHP (effectively IMO, separating presentation from processing) - I would do all my normal form validation in flex (as opposed to javascript or php) and do my reads and writes to the db via php. My questions are: I know Flash has something like 99% market penetration - do people find this to be true? Has anyone seen on their own sites being in flash that someone couldn't access it? Flash in general has come under alot of attacks about security and the like - i know this. I would use a swf encryptor - disable debugging (which i got snagged on once on a different application), continue to use https and any other means i can think of. At the end of the day, everyone knows if someone wants in to the data bad enough, their going to find a ways in; i just wanna make it as difficult for them as i can. Any thoughts are appreciated. -Mario

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  • trying to reenter IT field after a break of over 5 years

    - by josephj1989
    Hello I have had some misfortune in life - I was unwell and had to stay out of work for an extended period of about 5 years.Before that I used to work as an Oracle/Oracle Ebusiness suite consultant (I was charging very good contract rates). But now I am fully recovered ,feeling sharper than ever. But there arent many opportunities in my areas of expertise in a small market like New Zealand and the long absence is no help either. So for the last 5 months I have been training myself in C# ,ASP .NET,WEB technologies like HTML,JQuery,CSS and also SQL Server.I had some previous experience with JAVA and VB .NET (few months). But I am fully confident of my abilities and believe I can hit the ground running given a chance.I used to be an expert with SQL and C language and these skills are portable to SQL Server and C#. Another problem I face is my age- I am over 50. What is your opinion - Am I doing the right thing. Can I get back into an IT career-I am willing to start all over again at a junior level, I am really facing a crisis in my life.

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  • Are there really safe and legal resources for sound effects to use in applications?

    - by mystify
    For those who want to opt for "close" immediately: Great user interfaces need great sound effects, right? User interfaces are programmed by programmers, right? So this is a programming question, ok? I had a very hard time to find good and legal sound resources. I am not looking for free sounds. Proper licensing is absolutely crucial, and I don't want to get sued by multibilliondollar music companies, hollywood sound studios and their highly overpaid lawyers. They cry about people downloading their stuff in file sharing sites but when someone comes and wants to really license stuff, the market is so empty like an open and unwatched gold mine. Trust me, whatever I type into google, I always end up getting sort of opaque and strange music libraries that do charge money, but refuse to provide proper licensing evidence to the licensee. When you pay money and they only count how many files you downloaded, that can never be a valid license, nor any evidence for you that you did license the sounds. Imagine that contributor suing you and you say: "I licensed it at xy", and his lawyer just smiles: "Show me proof, mofo!". So you loose a million dollars, or 1 for every downloaded app. Congrats. But that's the way all those "hey we're the worlds largest sound effect library" libraries are doing it. It's really annoying. And I hope someone here is able to point out a sound effects ressource which is A) big B) used by professinals C) has a reasonable pricing and licensing model D) provides the licensee with proper legal evidence about licensed sounds You know, I'm not from the US and typically you US folks are the ones who invent the cool stuff on the net, and maybe I just missed a new great start up. So?

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  • Should Wordpress be used to create a real estate listing site?

    - by John
    I have a real estate agent client who wants a website to list the properties he's selling. Although there are great 3rd party web apps out there that do this, he adamantly demands that I recreate a simple and custom website for him. I can do this quickly with a php framework like Code Igniter that comes with MVC, data access objects and data bind controllers. The database would be straightforward: t_page: generic content pages t_property: for each property on the market, has fields like address, price, #of bed rooms etc.. However, the client has heard many great things about Wordpress, and strongly advises that I build his real estate site with it. I've only used Wordpress to create blogs and relatively straightforward websites. SO I dont know how effective it is as a real estate property content management system or how effective it is for users to search for real estate properties based on attributes such as "# of bedrooms, square footage, is basement finished etc..." So my question is, is it a good idea to build a real estate agent website with Wordpress? Or should I try harder to convince him to build it with web framework like Code Igniter?

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  • Does IE6 Really not Allow Me to set width/height from left/right/top/bottom???

    - by viatropos
    Building a site super quick and having it work on all my Mac browsers, I thought I'd take a gander on a friends old dell laptop with Windows XP and IE6. Nothing looks remotely correct. It's because I used lots of left/right/top/bottom (constraint) declarations to size elements proportionally to their parent's size (I didn't use percent sizes because the percents refer to the parent's size before margins and padding are applied, left/right/top/bottom refer to them after with position:absolute. I'm asking about that here :)). I've read lots these past few weeks on how horrible IE6 (and IE) is in general, but because of all the reasons people say to support it (large market share and the fear of installing better software), and because half the people in the company we're building a site for use IE6 (getting them to upgrade to Chrome slowly but surely), I thought if I could just get IE6 to render my constraints, that might help. So I am messing around with simple layouts here, and they work fine in my latest versions of Firefox, Safari, Chrome, and Opera, but IE6 is basically saying: If you haven't set a width or height on me, I'm assuming it's zero. But position:absolute; left:0px; right:0px; top:0px; bottom:0px; on a container that's width:1000px; height:1000px; should be the same as setting width:1000px; height:1000px on the child, no? Taking a quick look at the source for this, why won't IE6 render the constraint based absolutely positioned AND SIZED elements? (note: I will be messing around with that file for a while) Thanks

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  • Upgraded Eclipse. Every app force closes

    - by user1309500
    I would be really grateful for some urgent advice:- I was merrily building my apps (using eclipse) for Android platform 2.2. Everything all working lovely and ready to upload to the marketplace. I thought I would try to install Google Play Licensing and in the process, I was told to download the LVL but that was not available in my SDK download list - and I read I had to updrage my SDK and ADT to the latest. So I did, I now have: ADT 17.0.0 along with ANDROID DDMS, hierarchy viewer and Traceview at 17.0.0 with Eclipse IDE 1.4.2 And I also upgraded my SDK Android 2.2 stuff to the latest. Now:- I have no errors in my app workplaces on Eclipse. But now when I run the apps, they build but force close straight away upon loading. This includes the app I was working on (and working perfectly before) and all the other apps I have ever made. Every app now force closes and I dont know what to do. Been up all night and was ready to upload them to the market place... :( Any help!? Thanks! Please!

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  • Cannot pull correct data from a Javascript array into an HTML form

    - by Isaac
    I am trying to return the description value of the corresponding author name and book title(that are typed in the text boxes). The problem is that the first description displays in the text area no matter what. <h1>Bookland</h1> <div id="bookinfo"> Author name: <input type="text" id="authorname" name="authorname"></input><br /> Book Title: <input type="text" id="booktitle" name="booktitle"></input><br /> <input type="button" value="Find book" id="find"></input> <input type="button" value="Clear Info" id="clear"></input><br /> <textarea rows="15" cols="30" id="destin"></textarea> </div> JavaScript: var bookarray = [{Author: "Thomas Mann", Title: "Death in Venice", Description: "One of the most famous literary works of the twentieth century, this novella embodies" + "themes that preoccupied Thomas Mann in much of his work:" + "the duality of art and life, the presence of death and disintegration in the midst of existence," + "the connection between love and suffering and the conflict between the artist and his inner self." }, {Author: "James Joyce", Title: "A portrait of the artist as a young man", Description: "This work displays an unusually perceptive view of British society in the early 20th century." + "It is a social comedy set in Florence, Italy, and Surrey, England." + "Its heroine, Lucy Honeychurch, struggling against straitlaced Victorian attitudes of arrogance, narroe mindedness and sobbery, falls in love - while on holiday in Italy - with the socially unsuitable George Emerson." }, {Author: "E. M. Forster", Title: "A room with a view", Description: "This book is a fictional re-creation of the Irish writer'sown life and early environment." + "The experiences of the novel's young hero,unfold in astonishingly vivid scenes that seem freshly recalled from life" + "and provide a powerful portrait of the coming of age of a young man ofunusual intelligence, sensitivity and character. " }, {Author: "Isabel Allende", Title: "The house of spirits", Description: "Allende describes the life of three generations of a prominent family in Chile and skillfully combines with this all the main historical events of the time, up until Pinochet's dictatorship." }, {Author: "Isabel Allende", Title: "Of love and shadows", Description: "The whole world of Irene Beltran, a young reporter in Chile at the time of the dictatorship, is destroyed when" + "she discovers a series of killings carried out by government soldiers." + "With the help of a photographer, Francisco Leal, and risking her life, she tries to come up with evidence against the dictatorship." }] function searchbook(){ for(i=0; i &lt; bookarray.length; i++){ if ((document.getElementById("authorname").value &amp; document.getElementById("booktitle").value ) == (bookarray[i].Author &amp; bookarray[i].Title)){ document.getElementById("destin").value =bookarray[i].Description return bookarray[i].Description } else { return "Not Found!" } } } document.getElementById("find").addEventListener("click", searchbook, false)

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  • Business Owners - What Remote Desktop Solution Do You Use To Service Your Clients PCs?

    - by Sootah
    Howdy fellow computer geeks, I am the owner of a local computer repair business that primarily services its clients on-site. On the occasions that we do service the machines in the office we generally have one of our techs pick the computer up while they are out and about and bring it back with them. Only rarely will we require the customer to bring us the computer themselves. In order to reduce costs, be much more efficient, and potentially expand our market far beyond what would be feasible with travel required; I am looking at ways that we can service our clients remotely whenever possible. What we're in need of is a solid remote desktop application that will be incredibly easy for our customers to connect to, as well as be robust enough that we don't need the client babysitting the computer during the entire repair. Ideally I would like to use a web-based solution so that we don't have to walk the customers through installing, connecting, and configuring it over the phone. This would be unacceptable because of the level of service they are used to. Effectively we'd want them to be able to just go to a URL, enter a PIN or something, and then they are connected and ready to rumble. (Obviously the option to just email them a link that'd do all this for them would be what we'd be aiming for) Along with the ease of use factor, we would need the product to not require any further intervention on the part of the client after we have connected. Nobody is going to be happy if we have to call them every 15 minutes so they can reconnect to us every time we reboot - so auto-reconnect is an absolute must. The only product I know of right now that does any of this is LogMeIn Rescue. It allows unattended access, the applet is lightweight and installs quickly, and the customer can either enter a PIN on the site or just click a link emailed to them in order to connect. The only real downside I see to LogMeIn Rescue is that it's $120.00/month per technician. While we'd ultimately end up saving far more than that per month just in fuel costs alone, I'd like to explore any other options out there that I may not have come across. So - Are there any equally good products out there? If so what are they, why do you recommend them, how have you been utilizing them yourself, and what do they cost? Thanks in advance for your help! -Sootah

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  • What Remote Desktop Solution Do You Use To Service Your Clients' PCs? [closed]

    - by Sootah
    Possible Duplicate: What’s the best Remote Desktop Application? I am the owner of a local computer repair business that primarily services its clients on-site. On the occasions that we do service the machines in the office we generally have one of our techs pick the computer up while they are out and about and bring it back with them. Only rarely will we require the customer to bring us the computer themselves. In order to reduce costs, be much more efficient, and potentially expand our market far beyond what would be feasible with travel required; I am looking at ways that we can service our clients remotely whenever possible. What we're in need of is a solid remote desktop application that will be incredibly easy for our customers to connect to, as well as be robust enough that we don't need the client babysitting the computer during the entire repair. Ideally I would like to use a web-based solution so that we don't have to walk the customers through installing, connecting, and configuring it over the phone. This would be unacceptable because of the level of service they are used to. Effectively we'd want them to be able to just go to a URL, enter a PIN or something, and then they are connected and ready to rumble. (Obviously the option to just email them a link that'd do all this for them would be what we'd be aiming for) Along with the ease of use factor, we would need the product to not require any further intervention on the part of the client after we have connected. Nobody is going to be happy if we have to call them every 15 minutes so they can reconnect to us every time we reboot - so auto-reconnect is an absolute must. The only product I know of right now that does any of this is LogMeIn Rescue. It allows unattended access, the applet is lightweight and installs quickly, and the customer can either enter a PIN on the site or just click a link emailed to them in order to connect. The only real downside I see to LogMeIn Rescue is that it's $120.00/month per technician. While we'd ultimately end up saving far more than that per month just in fuel costs alone, I'd like to explore any other options out there that I may not have come across. Are there any equally good products out there? If so what are they, why do you recommend them, how have you been utilizing them yourself, and what do they cost?

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  • How to optimize my PageRank calculation?

    - by asmaier
    In the book Programming Collective Intelligence I found the following function to compute the PageRank: def calculatepagerank(self,iterations=20): # clear out the current PageRank tables self.con.execute("drop table if exists pagerank") self.con.execute("create table pagerank(urlid primary key,score)") self.con.execute("create index prankidx on pagerank(urlid)") # initialize every url with a PageRank of 1.0 self.con.execute("insert into pagerank select rowid,1.0 from urllist") self.dbcommit() for i in range(iterations): print "Iteration %d" % i for (urlid,) in self.con.execute("select rowid from urllist"): pr=0.15 # Loop through all the pages that link to this one for (linker,) in self.con.execute("select distinct fromid from link where toid=%d" % urlid): # Get the PageRank of the linker linkingpr=self.con.execute("select score from pagerank where urlid=%d" % linker).fetchone()[0] # Get the total number of links from the linker linkingcount=self.con.execute("select count(*) from link where fromid=%d" % linker).fetchone()[0] pr+=0.85*(linkingpr/linkingcount) self.con.execute("update pagerank set score=%f where urlid=%d" % (pr,urlid)) self.dbcommit() However, this function is very slow, because of all the SQL queries in every iteration >>> import cProfile >>> cProfile.run("crawler.calculatepagerank()") 2262510 function calls in 136.006 CPU seconds Ordered by: standard name ncalls tottime percall cumtime percall filename:lineno(function) 1 0.000 0.000 136.006 136.006 <string>:1(<module>) 1 20.826 20.826 136.006 136.006 searchengine.py:179(calculatepagerank) 21 0.000 0.000 0.528 0.025 searchengine.py:27(dbcommit) 21 0.528 0.025 0.528 0.025 {method 'commit' of 'sqlite3.Connecti 1 0.000 0.000 0.000 0.000 {method 'disable' of '_lsprof.Profiler 1339864 112.602 0.000 112.602 0.000 {method 'execute' of 'sqlite3.Connec 922600 2.050 0.000 2.050 0.000 {method 'fetchone' of 'sqlite3.Cursor' 1 0.000 0.000 0.000 0.000 {range} So I optimized the function and came up with this: def calculatepagerank2(self,iterations=20): # clear out the current PageRank tables self.con.execute("drop table if exists pagerank") self.con.execute("create table pagerank(urlid primary key,score)") self.con.execute("create index prankidx on pagerank(urlid)") # initialize every url with a PageRank of 1.0 self.con.execute("insert into pagerank select rowid,1.0 from urllist") self.dbcommit() inlinks={} numoutlinks={} pagerank={} for (urlid,) in self.con.execute("select rowid from urllist"): inlinks[urlid]=[] numoutlinks[urlid]=0 # Initialize pagerank vector with 1.0 pagerank[urlid]=1.0 # Loop through all the pages that link to this one for (inlink,) in self.con.execute("select distinct fromid from link where toid=%d" % urlid): inlinks[urlid].append(inlink) # get number of outgoing links from a page numoutlinks[urlid]=self.con.execute("select count(*) from link where fromid=%d" % urlid).fetchone()[0] for i in range(iterations): print "Iteration %d" % i for urlid in pagerank: pr=0.15 for link in inlinks[urlid]: linkpr=pagerank[link] linkcount=numoutlinks[link] pr+=0.85*(linkpr/linkcount) pagerank[urlid]=pr for urlid in pagerank: self.con.execute("update pagerank set score=%f where urlid=%d" % (pagerank[urlid],urlid)) self.dbcommit() This function is 20 times faster (but uses a lot more memory for all the temporary dictionaries) because it avoids the unnecessary SQL queries in every iteration: >>> cProfile.run("crawler.calculatepagerank2()") 64802 function calls in 6.950 CPU seconds Ordered by: standard name ncalls tottime percall cumtime percall filename:lineno(function) 1 0.004 0.004 6.950 6.950 <string>:1(<module>) 1 1.004 1.004 6.946 6.946 searchengine.py:207(calculatepagerank2 2 0.000 0.000 0.104 0.052 searchengine.py:27(dbcommit) 23065 0.012 0.000 0.012 0.000 {meth 'append' of 'list' objects} 2 0.104 0.052 0.104 0.052 {meth 'commit' of 'sqlite3.Connection 1 0.000 0.000 0.000 0.000 {meth 'disable' of '_lsprof.Profiler' 31298 5.809 0.000 5.809 0.000 {meth 'execute' of 'sqlite3.Connectio 10431 0.018 0.000 0.018 0.000 {method 'fetchone' of 'sqlite3.Cursor' 1 0.000 0.000 0.000 0.000 {range} But is it possible to further reduce the number of SQL queries to speed up the function even more?

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  • Dojo extending dojo.dnd.Source, move not happening. Ideas?

    - by Soulhuntre
    Hey all, Ok... I have a simple dojo page with the bare essentials. Three UL's with some LI's in them. The idea si to allow drag-n-drop among them but if any UL goes empty due to the last item being dragged out, I will put up a message to the user to gie them some instructions. In order to do that, I wanted to extend the dojo.dnd.Source dijit and add some intelligence. It seemed easy enough. To keep things simple (I am loading Dojo from a CDN) I am simply declating my extension as opposed to doing full on module load. The declaration function is here... function declare_mockupSmartDndUl(){ dojo.require("dojo.dnd.Source"); dojo.provide("mockup.SmartDndUl"); dojo.declare("mockup.SmartDndUl", dojo.dnd.Source, { markupFactory: function(params, node){ //params._skipStartup = true; return new mockup.SmartDndUl(node, params); }, onDndDrop: function(source, nodes, copy){ console.debug('onDndDrop!'); if(this == source){ // reordering items console.debug('moving items from us'); // DO SOMETHING HERE }else{ // moving items to us console.debug('moving items to us'); // DO SOMETHING HERE } console.debug('this = ' + this ); console.debug('source = ' + source ); console.debug('nodes = ' + nodes); console.debug('copy = ' + copy); return dojo.dnd.Source.prototype.onDndDrop.call(this, source, nodes, copy); } }); } I have a init function to use this to decorate the lists... dojo.addOnLoad(function(){ declare_mockupSmartDndUl(); if(dojo.byId('list1')){ //new mockup.SmartDndUl(dojo.byId('list1')); new dojo.dnd.Source(dojo.byId('list1')); } if(dojo.byId('list2')){ new mockup.SmartDndUl(dojo.byId('list2')); //new dojo.dnd.Source(dojo.byId('list2')); } if(dojo.byId('list3')){ new mockup.SmartDndUl(dojo.byId('list3')); //new dojo.dnd.Source(dojo.byId('list3')); } }); It is fine as far as it goes, you will notice I left "list1" as a standard dojo dnd source for testing. The problem is this - list1 will happily accept items from lists 2 & 3 who will move or copy as apprriate. However lists 2 & 3 refuce to accept items from list1. It is as if the DND operation is being cancelled, but the debugger does show the dojo.dnd.Source.prototype.onDndDrop.call happening, and the paramaters do look ok to me. Now, the documentation here is really weak, so the example I took some of this from may be way out of date (I am using 1.4). Can anyone fill me in on what might be the issue with my extension dijit? Thanks!

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  • How to quickly acquire and process real time screen output

    - by Akusete
    I am trying to write a program to play a full screen PC game for fun (as an experiment in Computer Vision and Artificial Intelligence). For this experiment I am assuming the game has no underlying API for AI players (nor is the source available) so I intend to process the visual information rendered by the game on the screen. The game runs in full screen mode on a win32 system (direct-X I assume). Currently I am using the win32 functions #include <windows.h> #include <cvaux.h> class Screen { public: HWND windowHandle; HDC windowContext; HBITMAP buffer; HDC bufferContext; CvSize size; uchar* bytes; int channels; Screen () { windowHandle = GetDesktopWindow(); windowContext = GetWindowDC (windowHandle); size = cvSize (GetDeviceCaps (windowContext, HORZRES), GetDeviceCaps (windowContext, VERTRES)); buffer = CreateCompatibleBitmap (windowContext, size.width, size.height); bufferContext = CreateCompatibleDC (windowContext); SelectObject (bufferContext, buffer); channels = 4; bytes = new uchar[size.width * size.height * channels]; } ~Screen () { ReleaseDC(windowHandle, windowContext); DeleteDC(bufferContext); DeleteObject(buffer); delete[] bytes; } void CaptureScreen (IplImage* img) { BitBlt(bufferContext, 0, 0, size.width, size.height, windowContext, 0, 0, SRCCOPY); int n = size.width * size.height; int imgChannels = img->nChannels; GetBitmapBits (buffer, n * channels, bytes); uchar* src = bytes; uchar* dest = (uchar*) img->imageData; uchar* end = dest + n * imgChannels; while (dest < end) { dest[0] = src[0]; dest[1] = src[1]; dest[2] = src[2]; dest += imgChannels; src += channels; } } The rate at which I can process frames using this approach is much to slow. Is there a better way to acquire screen frames?

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  • Contract developer trying to get outsourcing contract with current client.

    - by Mike
    I work for a major bank as a contract software developer. I've been there a few months, and without exception this place has the worst software practices I've ever seen. The software my team makes has no formal testing, terrible code (not reusable, hard to read, etc), minimal documentation, no defined development process and an absolutely sickening amount of waste due to bureaucratic overhead. Part of my contract is to maintain a group of thousands of very poorly written batch jobs. When one of the jobs fails (read: crashes), it's a developers job to look at the source, figure out what's wrong, fix it, and check it in. There is no quality assurance process or auditing of the results whatsoever. Once the developer says "it works" a manager signs off and it goes into production. What's disturbing is that these jobs essentially grab market data and put it into a third-party risk management system, which provides the bank with critical intelligence. I've discovered the disturbing truth that this has been happening since the 90s and nobody really has evidence the system is getting the correct data! Without going into details, an issue arose on Friday that was so horrible I actually stormed out of the place. I was ready to quit, but I decided to just get out to calm my nerves and possibly go back Monday. I've been reflecting today on how to handle this. I have realized that, in probably less than 6 months, I could (with 2 other developers) remake a large component of this system. The new system would provide them with, as primary benefits, a maintainable codebase less prone to error and a solid QA framework. To do it properly I would have to be outside the bank, the internal bureaucracy is just too much. And moreover, I think a bank is fundamentally not a place that can make good software. This is my plan. Write a report explaining in depth all the problems with their current system Explain why their software practices fail and generate a tremendous amount of error and waste. Use this as the basis for claiming the project must be developed externally. Write a high level development plan, including what resources I will require Hand 1,2,3 to my manager, hopefully he passes it up the chain. Worst case he fires me, but this isn't so bad. Convinced Executive decides to award my company a contract for the new system I have 8 years experience as a software contractor and have delivered my share of successful software products, but all working in-house for small/medium sized companies. When I read this over, I think I have a dynamite plan. But since this is the first time doing something this bold so I have my doubts. My question is, is this a good idea? If you think not, please spare no detail.

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  • What are some of the best wireless routers for a price-conscious home power-user?

    - by Alain
    I'm extremely dissatisfied with the 'popular' choice for routers in homes and small offices. They are expensive (upwards of 60$), lack a great deal of useful configuration options, and seem to need to be restarted quite often. (Linksys comes to mind). I've been on the market for a good router lately, and slowly collecting a set of requirements I feel good routers should meet. Maximum number of TCP/IP connections. - This isn't something I see any routers advertise, but in terms of supporting torrent applications, I've been screwed by routers that support less than 20 here. From what I understand a fairly standard number is 200, but there are not so expensive routers that support thousands. Router configuration menu - Most have standard menu's that let you set up basic things like your wireless network encryption settings, uPnP, and maybe even DMZ (demilitarized zones). An absolute requirement for me, however, are routers with good enough firmware to support: Explicit Port forwarding Assigning static local ips to specific mac addresses, or at least Port forwarding by MAC address Port, IP and MAC filtering Dynamic DNS service for home users who want to set up a server but have a dynamic IP Traffic shaping (ideally) - giving priority to packets from certain machines or over certain ports. Strong wireless signal - If getting a reliable signal requires me to be so close to the router that I can connect an Ethernet cable, it's not good enough. As many Ethernet ports as possible. - Because I want to be able to switch from console gaming to PC gaming without visiting my router. So far, the best thing I've stumbled upon (in the bargain bin at staples) was a 20$ retail plus router. It was meant to be the cheapest alternative until I could find something better to purchase online, but I was actually blown away by the firmware capabilities. It supports defining reserved bandwidth for certain network traffic, dynamic DNS, reserving local IPs for specific MAC addresses, etc. At 2 am when my roommate is killing our Internet with their torrents, I can limit their bandwidth without outright blacklisting them. I have, however, met serious limitations when it comes to network traffic between local machines. It claims a 300Mbps connection, but I have trouble streaming videos from my PC to my console or other laptops wirelessly. It has a meltdown and needs to be reset once in a while (no more than a couple times a month), and it's got a 200 connection limit. There 4 Ethernet ports in the back but I'm pretty sure the first doesn't work. So some great answers to this question would be: Any metrics you use to compare routers, and requirements you have for new candidates. The best routers you've found for supporting home servers, file management systems, high volume torrent traffic, good price/feature ratio, etc. Good configuration advice (aside from 'use Ethernet whenever possible') Thanks for your feedback and experiences!

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  • Experienced developer trying to get outsourcing contract with current client.

    - by Mike
    I work for a major bank as a contract software developer. I've been there a few months, and without exception this place has the worst software practices I've ever seen. The software my team makes has no formal testing, terrible code (not reusable, hard to read, etc), minimal documentation, no defined development process and an absolutely sickening amount of waste due to bureaucratic overhead. Part of my contract is to maintain a group of thousands of very poorly written batch jobs. When one of the jobs fails (read: crashes), it's a developers job to look at the source, figure out what's wrong, fix it, and check it in. There is no quality assurance process or auditing of the results whatsoever. Once the developer says "it works" a manager signs off and it goes into production. What's disturbing is that these jobs essentially grab market data and put it into a third-party risk management system, which provides the bank with critical intelligence. I've discovered the disturbing truth that this has been happening since the 90s and nobody really has evidence the system is getting the correct data! Without going into details, an issue arose on Friday that was so horrible I actually stormed out of the place. I was ready to quit, but I decided to just get out to calm my nerves and possibly go back Monday. I've been reflecting today on how to handle this. I have realized that, in probably less than 6 months, I could (with 2 other developers) remake a large component of this system. The new system would provide them with, as primary benefits, a maintainable codebase less prone to error and a solid QA framework. To do it properly I would have to be outside the bank, the internal bureaucracy is just too much. And moreover, I think a bank is fundamentally not a place that can make good software. This is my plan. Write a report explaining in depth all the problems with their current system Explain why their software practices fail and generate a tremendous amount of error and waste. Use this as the basis for claiming the project must be developed externally. Write a high level development plan, including what resources I will require Hand 1,2,3 to my manager, hopefully he passes it up the chain. Worst case he fires me, but this isn't so bad. Convinced Executive decides to award my company a contract for the new system I have 8 years experience as a software contractor and have delivered my share of successful software products, but all working in-house for small/medium sized companies. When I read this over, I think I have a dynamite plan. But since this is the first time doing something this bold so I have my doubts. My question is, is this a good idea? If you think not, please spare no detail.

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  • PL/SQL pre-compile and Code Quality checks in an automatted build environment?

    - by Lars Corneliussen
    We build software using Hudson and Maven. We have C#, java and last, but not least PL/SQL sources (sprocs, packages, DDL, crud) For C# and Java we do unit tests and code analysis, but we don't really know the health of our PL/SQL sources before we actually publish them to the target database. Requirements There are a couple of things we wan't to test in the following priority: Are the sources valid, hence "compilable"? For packages, with respect to a certain database, would they compile? Code Quality: Do we have code flaws like duplicates, too complex methods or other violations to a defined set of rules? Also, the tool must run head-less (commandline, ant, ...) we wan't to do analysis on a partial code base (changed sources only) Tools We did a little research and found the following tools that could potencially help: Cast Application Intelligence Platform (AIP): Seems to be a server that grasps information about "anything". Couldn't find a console version that would export in readable format. Toad for Oracle: The Professional version is said to include something called Xpert validates a set of rules against a code base. Sonar + PL/SQL-Plugin: Uses Toad for Oracle to display code-health the sonar-way. This is for browsing the current state of the code base. Semantic Designs DMSToolkit: Quite general analysis of source code base. Commandline available? Semantic Designs Clones Detector: Detects clones. But also via command line? Fortify Source Code Analyzer: Seems to be focussed on security issues. But maybe it is extensible? more... So far, Toad for Oracle together with Sonar seems to be an elegant solution. But may be we are missing something here? Any ideas? Other products? Experiences? Related Questions on SO: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/531430/any-static-code-analysis-tools-for-stored-procedures http://stackoverflow.com/questions/839707/any-code-quality-tool-for-pl-sql http://stackoverflow.com/questions/956104/is-there-a-static-analysis-tool-for-python-ruby-sql-cobol-perl-and-pl-sql

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  • What are the types and inner workings of a query optimizer?

    - by Frank Developer
    As I understand it, most query optimizers are cost-based. Some can be influenced by hints like FIRST_ROWS(). Others are tailored for OLAP. Is it possible to know more detailed logic about how Informix IDS and SE's optimizers decide what's the best route for processing a query, other than SET EXPLAIN? Is there any documentation which illustrates the ranking of SELECT statements? I would imagine that "SELECT col FROM table WHERE ROWID = n" ranks 1st. What are the rest of them?.. If I'm not mistaking, Informix's ROWID is a SERIAL(INT) which allows for a max. of 2GB nrows, or maybe it uses INT9 for TB's nrows?.. However, I think Oracle uses HEX values for ROWID. Too bad ROWID can't be oftenly used, since a rows ROWID can change. So maybe ROWID is used by the optimizer as a counter? Perhaps, it could be used for implementing the query progress idea I mentioned in my "Begin viewing query results before query completes" question? For some reason, I feel it wouldn't be that difficult to report a query's progress while being processed, perhaps at the expense of some slight overhead, but it would be nice to know ahead of time: A "Google-like" estimate of how many rows meet a query's criteria, display it's progress every 100, 200, 500 or 1,000 rows, give users the ability to cancel it at anytime and start displaying the qualifying rows as they are being put into the current list, while it continues searching?.. This is just one example, perhaps we could think other neat/useful features, the ingridients are more or less there. Perhaps we could fine-tune each query with more granularity than currently available? OLTP queries tend to be mostly static and pre-defined. The "what-if's" are more OLAP, so let's try to add more control and intelligence to it? So, therefore, being able to more precisely control, not "hint-influence" a query is what's needed and therefore it would be necessary to know how the optimizers logic is programmed. We can then have Dynamic SELECT and other statements for specific situations! Maybe even tell IDS to read blocks of indexes nodes at-a-time instead of one-by-one, etc. etc.

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  • How do I print out objects in an array in python?

    - by Jonathan
    I'm writing a code which performs a k-means clustering on a set of data. I'm actually using the code from a book called collective intelligence by O'Reilly. Everything works, but in his code he uses the command line and i want to write everything in notepad++. As a reference his line is >>>kclust=clusters.kcluster(data,k=10) >>>[rownames[r] for r in k[0]] Here is my code: from PIL import Image,ImageDraw def readfile(filename): lines=[line for line in file(filename)] # First line is the column titles colnames=lines[0].strip( ).split('\t')[1:] rownames=[] data=[] for line in lines[1:]: p=line.strip( ).split('\t') # First column in each row is the rowname rownames.append(p[0]) # The data for this row is the remainder of the row data.append([float(x) for x in p[1:]]) return rownames,colnames,data from math import sqrt def pearson(v1,v2): # Simple sums sum1=sum(v1) sum2=sum(v2) # Sums of the squares sum1Sq=sum([pow(v,2) for v in v1]) sum2Sq=sum([pow(v,2) for v in v2]) # Sum of the products pSum=sum([v1[i]*v2[i] for i in range(len(v1))]) # Calculate r (Pearson score) num=pSum-(sum1*sum2/len(v1)) den=sqrt((sum1Sq-pow(sum1,2)/len(v1))*(sum2Sq-pow(sum2,2)/len(v1))) if den==0: return 0 return 1.0-num/den class bicluster: def __init__(self,vec,left=None,right=None,distance=0.0,id=None): self.left=left self.right=right self.vec=vec self.id=id self.distance=distance def hcluster(rows,distance=pearson): distances={} currentclustid=-1 # Clusters are initially just the rows clust=[bicluster(rows[i],id=i) for i in range(len(rows))] while len(clust)>1: lowestpair=(0,1) closest=distance(clust[0].vec,clust[1].vec) # loop through every pair looking for the smallest distance for i in range(len(clust)): for j in range(i+1,len(clust)): # distances is the cache of distance calculations if (clust[i].id,clust[j].id) not in distances: distances[(clust[i].id,clust[j].id)]=distance(clust[i].vec,clust[j].vec) #print 'i' #print i #print #print 'j' #print j #print d=distances[(clust[i].id,clust[j].id)] if d<closest: closest=d lowestpair=(i,j) # calculate the average of the two clusters mergevec=[ (clust[lowestpair[0]].vec[i]+clust[lowestpair[1]].vec[i])/2.0 for i in range(len(clust[0].vec))] # create the new cluster newcluster=bicluster(mergevec,left=clust[lowestpair[0]], right=clust[lowestpair[1]], distance=closest,id=currentclustid) # cluster ids that weren't in the original set are negative currentclustid-=1 del clust[lowestpair[1]] del clust[lowestpair[0]] clust.append(newcluster) return clust[0] def kcluster(rows,distance=pearson,k=4): # Determine the minimum and maximum values for each point ranges=[(min([row[i] for row in rows]),max([row[i] for row in rows])) for i in range(len(rows[0]))] # Create k randomly placed centroids clusters=[[random.random( )*(ranges[i][1]-ranges[i][0])+ranges[i][0] for i in range(len(rows[0]))] for j in range(k)] lastmatches=None for t in range(100): print 'Iteration %d' % t bestmatches=[[] for i in range(k)] # Find which centroid is the closest for each row for j in range(len(rows)): row=rows[j] bestmatch=0 for i in range(k): d=distance(clusters[i],row) if d<distance(clusters[bestmatch],row): bestmatch=i bestmatches[bestmatch].append(j) # If the results are the same as last time, this is complete if bestmatches==lastmatches: break lastmatches=bestmatches # Move the centroids to the average of their members for i in range(k): avgs=[0.0]*len(rows[0]) if len(bestmatches[i])>0: for rowid in bestmatches[i]: for m in range(len(rows[rowid])): avgs[m]+=rows[rowid][m] for j in range(len(avgs)): avgs[j]/=len(bestmatches[i]) clusters[i]=avgs return bestmatches

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  • I want to virtualize my workstation (Tier 1), Looking for Bare Metal Hypervisor for consumer grade components

    - by Chase Florell
    I find myself in this similar bind at least once a year. The bind whereby I'm either upgrading a motherboard, or an OS hard drive. It drives me crazy to have to reinstall Windows, Visual Studio, all my addins, reconfigure my settings etc... every single time. I have a layout and I like and I want to stick with it. My question is... Is there a Bare Metal Hypervisor on the market that will enable me to virtualize my consumer grade workstation? I really want to avoid Host/Client virtualization. Bare Metal is definitely a better way to go for my needs. Is this a good approach, or am I going to suffer some other undesirable side effects by doing this? Clarification My machine has very limited purposes. My primary use is Visual Studio 2010 Professional where I develop ASP.NET MVC Web Applications. The second piece of software that I use (that's system intensive) is Photoshop CS3. Beyond that, my applications are limited to Outlook, Internet Explorer, Firefox, Opera, Chrome, LinqPad, and various other (small) apps. Beyond this, I'm considering working on a node.js project and might run ubuntu on the same hypervisor if possible. System Specs: Gigabyte Motherboard Intel i7 920 12 GB Ram basic 500GB 7200RPM HDD for OS 4 VelociRaptors in Raid 1/0 for build disk Dual GTS250 (512MB) Graphics cards (non SLI) for quad monitors On a side note I also wouldn't be opposed to an alternative suggestion if the limitations are too great. I could install the ESXi (or Zen Server) on my box, and build a separate "thin client" to RDP into the virtual machine. It appears as though RDP supports dual monitors. Edit (Dec 9, 2011) It's been nearly a year since I first asked this question. Since then, there have been a lot of great strides in Hypervisor technology... AND MokaFive is now released for corporate use. I'd love to dig into this question a little more and find out if there is a solid BareMetal Hypervisor for workstations running consumer grade components (IE: not Dell, HP, Lenovo, Etc).

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  • How to reliably categorize HTTP sessions in proxy to corresponding browser' windows/tabs user is viewing?

    - by Jehonathan
    I was using the Fiddler core .Net library as a local proxy to record the user activity in web. However I ended up with a problem which seems dirty to solve. I have a web browser say Google Chrome, and the user opened like 10 different tabs each with different web URLs. The problem is that the proxy records all the HTTP session initiated by each pages separately, causing me to figure out using my intelligence the tab which the corresponding HTTP session belonged to. I understand that this is because of the stateless nature of HTTP protocol. However I am just wondering is there an easy way to do this? I ended up with below c# code for that in Fiddler. Still its not a reliable solution due to the heuristics. This is a modification of the sample project bundled with Fiddler core for .NET 4. Basically what it does is filtering HTTP sessions initiated in last few seconds to find the first request or switching to another page made by the same tab in browser. It almost works, but not seems to be a universal solution. Fiddler.FiddlerApplication.AfterSessionComplete += delegate(Fiddler.Session oS) { //exclude other HTTP methods if (oS.oRequest.headers.HTTPMethod == "GET" || oS.oRequest.headers.HTTPMethod == "POST") //exclude other HTTP Status codes if (oS.oResponse.headers.HTTPResponseStatus == "200 OK" || oS.oResponse.headers.HTTPResponseStatus == "304 Not Modified") { //exclude other MIME responses (allow only text/html) var accept = oS.oRequest.headers.FindAll("Accept"); if (accept != null) { if(accept.Count>0) if (accept[0].Value.Contains("text/html")) { //exclude AJAX if (!oS.oRequest.headers.Exists("X-Requested-With")) { //find the referer for this request var referer = oS.oRequest.headers.FindAll("Referer"); //if no referer then assume this as a new request and display the same if(referer!=null) { //if no referer then assume this as a new request and display the same if (referer.Count > 0) { //lock the sessions Monitor.Enter(oAllSessions); //filter further using the response if (oS.oResponse.MIMEType == string.Empty || oS.oResponse.MIMEType == "text/html") //get all previous sessions with the same process ID this session request if(oAllSessions.FindAll(a=>a.LocalProcessID == oS.LocalProcessID) //get all previous sessions within last second (assuming the new tab opened initiated multiple sessions other than parent) .FindAll(z => (z.Timers.ClientBeginRequest > oS.Timers.ClientBeginRequest.AddSeconds(-1))) //get all previous sessions that belongs to the same port of the current session .FindAll(b=>b.port == oS.port ).FindAll(c=>c.clientIP ==oS.clientIP) //get all previus sessions with the same referrer URL of the current session .FindAll(y => referer[0].Value.Equals(y.fullUrl)) //get all previous sessions with the same host name of the current session .FindAll(m=>m.hostname==oS.hostname).Count==0 ) //if count ==0 that means this is the parent request Console.WriteLine(oS.fullUrl); //unlock sessions Monitor.Exit(oAllSessions); } else Console.WriteLine(oS.fullUrl); } else Console.WriteLine(oS.fullUrl); Console.WriteLine(); } } } } };

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  • If Nvidia Shield can stream a game via wifi, why can I not do the same via ethernet to any other PC?

    - by Enigma
    I think it absurd that a wireless game streaming solution is the *first to hit the market when a 1000mbps+ Ethernet connection would accomplish the same feat with roughly 6x the available bandwidth. I can only assume that there must be some reason behind this or a limitation preventing this, but what? 150mbps wifi is in no way superior to a 1000mbps LAN connection aside from well wireless mobility. Not only that but I have a secondary laptop and desktop which should by hardware comparison completely outperform anything the Tegra in the Nvidia Shield can do. Is this all just a marketing scheme to force people to buy the shield for the streaming benefit? Chief among these is that NVIDIA’s Shield handheld game console will be getting a microconsole-like mode, dubbed “Shield Console Mode”, that will allow the handheld to be converted into a more traditional TV-connected console. In console mode Shield can be controlled with a Bluetooth controller, and in accordance with the higher resolution of TVs will accept 1080p game streaming from a suitably equipped PC, versus 720p in handheld mode. With that said 1080p streaming will require additional bandwidth, and while 720p can be done over WiFi NVIDIA will be requiring a hardline GigE connection for 1080p streaming (note that Shield doesn’t have Ethernet, so this is presumably being done over USB). Streaming aside, in console mode Shield will also support its traditional local gaming/application functionality. - http://www.anandtech.com/show/7435/nvidia-consolidates-game-streaming-tech-under-gamestream-brand-announces-shield-console-mode ^ This is not acceptable for me for a number of reasons not to mention the ridiculousness of having a little screen+controller unit sitting there while using a secondary controller and screen instead. That kind of redundant absurdity exemplifies how wrong of a solution that is. They need a second product for this solution without the screen or controller for it to make sense... at which point your just buying a little computer that does what most other larger computers do better. All that is required, by my understanding, is the ability to decode H.264 video compression and transmit control/feedback so by any logical comparison, one (Nvidia especially) should have no difficulty in creating an application for PC's (win32/64 environment) that does the exact same thing their android app does. I have 2 video cards capable of streaming (encoding) H.264 so by right they must be capable of decoding it I would think. I haven't found anything stating plans to allow non-shield owners to do this. Can a third party create this software or does it hinge on some limitation that only Nvidia can overcome? (*) - perhaps this isn't the first but afaik it is the first complete package.

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  • actionscript 2.0 input text box

    - by user1769760
    So, here's what I'm trying to do, and I, frankly, believe it should be obvious, but I can't figure it out. I am creating a very simple Artificial Intelligence simulation. And in this simulation there's an input box at the bottom of the screen (called "input" exactly). "input" has a variable in its properties that is called "inbox" (exactly). Using a key listener the script calls up a function when the enter button is pressed. This function has 2 if statements and an else statement which dictate the responses of the AI (named "nistra"). The problem is this, When I type in what I want to say, and hit enter, it always uses the second response ("lockpick" in the code below). I have tried variations on the code but I still don't see the solution. I believe the problem is that the "typein" variable holds all the format information from the text box as well as the variable, but I could be wrong, that information is in here as well, underneath the code itself. Any help I can get would be greatly appreciated. var typein = ""; //copies the text from inbox into here, this is what nistra responds to var inbox = ""; //this is where the text from the input text box goes var respond = ""; //nistra's responses go here my_listener = new Object(); // key listener my_listener.onKeyDown = function() { if(Key.isDown(13)) //enter button pressed { typein = inbox; // moves inbox into typein nistraresponse(); // calles nistra's responses } //code = Key.getCode(); //trace ("Key pressed = " + code); } Key.addListener(my_listener); // key listener ends here nistraresponse = function() // nistra's responses { trace(typein); // trace out what "typein" holds if(typein = "Hello") // if you type in "Hello" { respond = "Hello, How are you?"; } if(typein = "lockpick") // if you type in "lockpick" { respond = "Affirmative"; } else // anything else { respond = "I do not understand the command, please rephrase"; } cntxtID = setInterval(clearnistra, 5000); // calls the function that clears out nistra's response box so that her responses don't just sit there } clearnistra = function() // clears her respond box { respond = ""; clearInterval(cntxtID); } // "typein" traces out the following <TEXTFORMAT LEADING="2"><P ALIGN="CENTER"><FONT FACE="Times New Roman" SIZE="20" COLOR="#FF0000" LETTERSPACING="0" KERNING="0">test</FONT></P></TEXTFORMAT>

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  • Google Rules for Retail

    - by David Dorf
    In the book What Would Google Do?, Jeff Jarvis outlines ten "Google Rules" that define how Google acts.  These rules help define how Web 2.0 businesses operate today and into the future.  While there's a chapter in the book on applying these rules to the retail industry, it wasn't very in-depth.  So I've decided to more directly apply the rules to retail, along with some notable examples of success.  The table below shows Jeff's Google Rule, some Industry Examples, and New Retailer Rules that I created. Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 /* 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-top:0in; mso-para-margin-right:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:10.0pt; mso-para-margin-left:0in; line-height:115%; 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;} table.MsoTableGrid {mso-style-name:"Table Grid"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-priority:59; mso-style-unhide:no; border:solid black 1.0pt; mso-border-themecolor:text1; mso-border-alt:solid black .5pt; mso-border-themecolor:text1; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-border-insideh:.5pt solid black; mso-border-insideh-themecolor:text1; mso-border-insidev:.5pt solid black; mso-border-insidev-themecolor:text1; 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-hansi-font-family:Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin;} Google Rule Industry Examples New Retailer Rule New Relationship Your worst customer is your friend; you best customer is your partner Newegg.com lets manufacturers respond to customer comments that are critical of the product, and their EggXpert site lets customers help other customers. Listen to what your customers are saying about you.  Convert the critics to fans and the fans to influencers. New Architecture Join a network; be a platform Tesco and BestBuy released APIs for their product catalogs so third-parties could create new applications. Become a destination for information. New Publicness Life is public, so is business Zappos and WholeFoods founders are prolific tweeters/bloggers, sharing their opinions and connecting to customers.  It's not always pretty, but it's genuine. Be transparent.  Share both your successes and failures with your customers. New Society Elegant organization Wet Seal helps their customers assemble outfits and show them off to each other.  Barnes & Noble has a community site that includes a bookclub. Communities of your customers already exist, so help them organize better. New Economy Mass market is dead; long live the mass of niches lululemon found a niche for yoga inspired athletic wear.  Threadless uses crowd-sourcing to design short-runs of T-shirts. Serve small markets with niche products. New Business Reality Decide what business you're in When Lowes realized catering to women brought the men along, their sales increased. Customers want experiences to go with the products they buy. New Attitude Trust the people and listen In 2008 Starbucks launched MyStartbucksIdea to solicit ideas from their customers. Use social networks as additional data points for making better merchandising decisions. New Ethic Be honest and transparent; don't be evil Target is giving away reusable shopping bags for Earth Day.  Kohl's has outfitted 67 stores with solar arrays. Being green earns customers' respect and lowers costs too. New Speed Life is live H&M and Zara keep up with fashion trends. Be prepared to pounce on you customers' fickle interests. New Imperatives Encourage, enable and protect innovation 1-800-Flowers was the first do sales in Facebook and an early adopter of mobile commerce.  The Sears Personal Shopper mobile app finds products based on a photo. Give your staff permission to fail so innovation won't be stifled. Jeff will be a keynote speaker at Crosstalk, our upcoming annual user conference, so I'm looking forward to hearing more of his perspective on retail and the new economy.

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