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  • Loose component cables causing HDMI video problems

    - by jwir3
    I'm not sure this is the correct forum, but I'll ask anyway. I have an A/V setup at home that has something like the following: Five Components (actually a few more, like a CD player, but they don't really relate to this question): Older Pioneer Receiver Digital Set Top Box Sony BluRay Player Samsung Plasma TV Speakers The reason for the receiver is so that all the sound can go through the speakers, rather than some going to the TV speakers and some to the external speakers. They are connected as follows: Digital Set Top Box connects via component video to Samsung TV directly via Component 2 (audio goes to Older Pioneer Receiver). Sony BluRay player is connected via HDMI 1 to TV, but audio goes to the receiver. Now, the problem I'm having is that when I have the digital set top box connected, there are times when the Netflix or Hulu streams I watch through the Sony BluRay player (it's connected to a router for internet access) will lose video. What I mean by this is that the sound of the episode will keep playing, but the screen will go black. If I jiggle the component cables, it will often come back. If I disconnect the component cables, it will always come back. I've noticed that one of the connections (the red component cable) doesn't like to sit very well in the component socket in the back of the digital set top box. It seems like there is a bad connection here, but it doesn't seem like this should be affecting the HDMI input at all. What I've noticed, though, is that when I disconnect the digital set top box completely (i.e. remove the component cable from the back of the TV), the problem seems to resolve itself. I'm not talking about actually removing the cable physically, because I thought perhaps the cables were mashing against one another, and possibly jiggling each other loose. To correct this possible problem, I took the component cable completely out of the cable ties it was in in the back of my entertainment center, as well as pulled the digital set top box out from the entertainment center altogether. It's now connected directly to the TV, without any other cables touching it to cause some kind of weird interference or just physical pulling on the cable. Same problem. If, however, I disconnect the component cable and just leave it sitting behind the TV, then the problem goes away. So, my question is this - what could be causing this? Is it a case where it's an improperly shielded component cable that's causing interference with the HDMI input, or something that's wrong with the TV? It's an intermittent problem, so it's difficult to track down. The TV isn't that old, so it's probably still under warranty. I'm just wondering if there is something else I can do that might reduce this problem without having to haul a massive television set out of my house to get repaired/replaced.

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  • How to give wife emergency access to logins, passwords, etc.?

    - by Torben Gundtofte-Bruun
    I'm the digital guru in my household. My wife is good with email and forum websites but she trusts me with all our important digital stuff -- such as online banking and other things that require passwords, but also family photos and the plethora of other digital things in a modern home. We discuss relevant actions but it's always me that executes the actions. If I should get "hit by a bus" then my wife would be thoroughly stranded -- she would have no idea what digital stuff is where on our computer, how to access it, what online accounts we have, and their login credentials are. It would also leave my many public appearances (personal websites, email accounts, social networks, etc.) unresolved. To complicate things, I'm one of those people who don't use password as my password everywhere; I use a mix of SuperGenPass and LastPass, and also two-factor authentication whenever possible. I don't have much hope that she would find her way through a written explanation of all that in a stressful situation. I could just tell her that she should ask my tech-savvy twin brother and then entrust him with my LastPass master passphrase. I feel that would have a high chance of success, but it's inelegant and leaves my wife without control of the information. How can I ensure that my wife has access to my digital remains?

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  • When spliting MP4s with ffmpeg how do I include metadata?

    - by Josh
    I have a few MP4s that i want to upload to my flickr account but they have a maximum size of 500mb as mine is only about 550 i was planing to simply split them in half then upload them, but i want to make sure all the meta data is included but it does not seem to be. I have tried each of the following with no luck, (at the end of this post i have the original and the new ffprobe outputs): ffmpeg -ss 00:00:00.00 -t 00:04:19.35 -i SANY0069.MP4 -acodec copy -vcodec copy -map_metadata 0:0 SANY0069A.MP4 ffmpeg -ss 00:00:00.00 -t 00:04:19.35 -i SANY0069.MP4 -acodec copy -vcodec copy -map_meta_data SANY0069.MP4:SANY0069A.MP4 SANY0069A.MP4 with the this one I manually produced the individual meta tags that i took from this command ffmpeg -i SANY0069A.MP4 -f ffmetadata meta.txt ffmpeg -ss 00:00:00.00 -t 00:04:19.35 -i SANY0069.MP4 -acodec copy -vcodec copy -metadata major_brand="mp42" -metadata minor_version="1" -metadata compatible_brands="mp42avc1" -metadata creation_time="2012-09-29 09:05:50" -metadata comment="SANYO DIGITAL CAMERA CA9" -metadata comment-eng="SANYO DIGITAL CAMERA CA9" SANY0069A.MP4 using the output of the former command i also tried this: ffmpeg -ss 00:00:00.00 -t 00:04:19.35 -i SANY0069.MP4 -acodec copy -vcodec copy -f ffmetadata -i meta.txt SANY0069A.MP4 Output: sample output from my first command: ffmpeg -ss 00:00:00.00 -t 00:04:19.35 -i SANY0069.MP4 -acodec copy -vcodec copy -map_metadata 0:0 SANY0069A.MP4 ffmpeg version 0.8.12, Copyright (c) 2000-2011 the FFmpeg developers built on Jun 13 2012 09:57:38 with gcc 4.6.3 20120306 (Red Hat 4.6.3-2) configuration: --prefix=/usr --bindir=/usr/bin --datadir=/usr/share/ffmpeg --incdir=/usr/include/ffmpeg --libdir=/usr/lib64 --mandir=/usr/share/man --arch=x86_64 --extra-cflags='-O2 -g -pipe -Wall -Wp,-D_FORTIFY_SOURCE=2 -fexceptions -fstack-protector --param=ssp-buffer-size=4 -m64 -mtune=generic' --enable-bzlib --enable-libcelt --enable-libdc1394 --enable-libdirac --enable-libfreetype --enable-libgsm --enable-libmp3lame --enable-libopenjpeg --enable-librtmp --enable-libschroedinger --enable-libspeex --enable-libtheora --enable-libvorbis --enable-libvpx --enable-libx264 --enable-libxvid --enable-x11grab --enable-avfilter --enable-postproc --enable-pthreads --disable-static --enable-shared --enable-gpl --disable-debug --disable-stripping --shlibdir=/usr/lib64 --enable-runtime-cpudetect libavutil 51. 9. 1 / 51. 9. 1 libavcodec 53. 8. 0 / 53. 8. 0 libavformat 53. 5. 0 / 53. 5. 0 libavdevice 53. 1. 1 / 53. 1. 1 libavfilter 2. 23. 0 / 2. 23. 0 libswscale 2. 0. 0 / 2. 0. 0 libpostproc 51. 2. 0 / 51. 2. 0 Input #0, mov,mp4,m4a,3gp,3g2,mj2, from 'SANY0069.MP4': Metadata: major_brand : mp42 minor_version : 1 compatible_brands: mp42avc1 creation_time : 2012-09-29 09:05:50 comment : SANYO DIGITAL CAMERA CA9 comment-eng : SANYO DIGITAL CAMERA CA9 Duration: 00:08:38.71, start: 0.000000, bitrate: 9142 kb/s Stream #0.0(eng): Video: h264 (Constrained Baseline), yuv420p, 1280x720 [PAR 1:1 DAR 16:9], 9007 kb/s, 29.97 fps, 29.97 tbr, 30k tbn, 59.94 tbc Metadata: creation_time : 2012-09-29 09:05:50 Stream #0.1(eng): Audio: aac, 48000 Hz, stereo, s16, 127 kb/s Metadata: creation_time : 2012-09-29 09:05:50 File 'SANY0069A.MP4' already exists. Overwrite ? [y/N] y Output #0, mp4, to 'SANY0069A.MP4': Metadata: major_brand : mp42 minor_version : 1 compatible_brands: mp42avc1 creation_time : 2012-09-29 09:05:50 comment : SANYO DIGITAL CAMERA CA9 comment-eng : SANYO DIGITAL CAMERA CA9 encoder : Lavf53.5.0 Stream #0.0(eng): Video: libx264, yuv420p, 1280x720 [PAR 1:1 DAR 16:9], q=2-31, 9007 kb/s, 30k tbn, 29.97 tbc Metadata: creation_time : 2012-09-29 09:05:50 Stream #0.1(eng): Audio: aac, 48000 Hz, stereo, 127 kb/s Metadata: creation_time : 2012-09-29 09:05:50 Stream mapping: Stream #0.0 -> #0.0 Stream #0.1 -> #0.1 Press [q] to stop, [?] for help frame= 7773 fps=4644 q=-1.0 Lsize= 289607kB time=00:04:19.35 bitrate=9147.4kbits/s video:285416kB audio:4033kB global headers:0kB muxing overhead 0.054571% and finaly, when i compare the ffprobe of the original and the first split part i get the 2 following outputs: original ffprobe version 0.8.12, Copyright (c) 2007-2011 the FFmpeg developers built on Jun 13 2012 09:57:38 with gcc 4.6.3 20120306 (Red Hat 4.6.3-2) configuration: --prefix=/usr --bindir=/usr/bin --datadir=/usr/share/ffmpeg --incdir=/usr/include/ffmpeg --libdir=/usr/lib64 --mandir=/usr/share/man --arch=x86_64 --extra-cflags='-O2 -g -pipe -Wall -Wp,-D_FORTIFY_SOURCE=2 -fexceptions -fstack-protector --param=ssp-buffer-size=4 -m64 -mtune=generic' --enable-bzlib --enable-libcelt --enable-libdc1394 --enable-libdirac --enable-libfreetype --enable-libgsm --enable-libmp3lame --enable-libopenjpeg --enable-librtmp --enable-libschroedinger --enable-libspeex --enable-libtheora --enable-libvorbis --enable-libvpx --enable-libx264 --enable-libxvid --enable-x11grab --enable-avfilter --enable-postproc --enable-pthreads --disable-static --enable-shared --enable-gpl --disable-debug --disable-stripping --shlibdir=/usr/lib64 --enable-runtime-cpudetect libavutil 51. 9. 1 / 51. 9. 1 libavcodec 53. 8. 0 / 53. 8. 0 libavformat 53. 5. 0 / 53. 5. 0 libavdevice 53. 1. 1 / 53. 1. 1 libavfilter 2. 23. 0 / 2. 23. 0 libswscale 2. 0. 0 / 2. 0. 0 libpostproc 51. 2. 0 / 51. 2. 0 Input #0, mov,mp4,m4a,3gp,3g2,mj2, from 'SANY0069.MP4': Metadata: major_brand : mp42 minor_version : 1 compatible_brands: mp42avc1 creation_time : 2012-09-29 09:05:50 comment : SANYO DIGITAL CAMERA CA9 comment-eng : SANYO DIGITAL CAMERA CA9 Duration: 00:08:38.71, start: 0.000000, bitrate: 9142 kb/s Stream #0.0(eng): Video: h264 (Constrained Baseline), yuv420p, 1280x720 [PAR 1:1 DAR 16:9], 9007 kb/s, 29.97 fps, 29.97 tbr, 30k tbn, 59.94 tbc Metadata: creation_time : 2012-09-29 09:05:50 Stream #0.1(eng): Audio: aac, 48000 Hz, stereo, s16, 127 kb/s Metadata: creation_time : 2012-09-29 09:05:50 Split ffprobe version 0.8.12, Copyright (c) 2007-2011 the FFmpeg developers built on Jun 13 2012 09:57:38 with gcc 4.6.3 20120306 (Red Hat 4.6.3-2) configuration: --prefix=/usr --bindir=/usr/bin --datadir=/usr/share/ffmpeg --incdir=/usr/include/ffmpeg --libdir=/usr/lib64 --mandir=/usr/share/man --arch=x86_64 --extra-cflags='-O2 -g -pipe -Wall -Wp,-D_FORTIFY_SOURCE=2 -fexceptions -fstack-protector --param=ssp-buffer-size=4 -m64 -mtune=generic' --enable-bzlib --enable-libcelt --enable-libdc1394 --enable-libdirac --enable-libfreetype --enable-libgsm --enable-libmp3lame --enable-libopenjpeg --enable-librtmp --enable-libschroedinger --enable-libspeex --enable-libtheora --enable-libvorbis --enable-libvpx --enable-libx264 --enable-libxvid --enable-x11grab --enable-avfilter --enable-postproc --enable-pthreads --disable-static --enable-shared --enable-gpl --disable-debug --disable-stripping --shlibdir=/usr/lib64 --enable-runtime-cpudetect libavutil 51. 9. 1 / 51. 9. 1 libavcodec 53. 8. 0 / 53. 8. 0 libavformat 53. 5. 0 / 53. 5. 0 libavdevice 53. 1. 1 / 53. 1. 1 libavfilter 2. 23. 0 / 2. 23. 0 libswscale 2. 0. 0 / 2. 0. 0 libpostproc 51. 2. 0 / 51. 2. 0 Input #0, mov,mp4,m4a,3gp,3g2,mj2, from 'SANY0069A.MP4': Metadata: major_brand : isom minor_version : 512 compatible_brands: isomiso2avc1mp41 creation_time : 1970-01-01 00:00:00 encoder : Lavf53.5.0 comment : SANYO DIGITAL CAMERA CA9 Duration: 00:04:19.37, start: 0.000000, bitrate: 9146 kb/s Stream #0.0(eng): Video: h264 (Constrained Baseline), yuv420p, 1280x720 [PAR 1:1 DAR 16:9], 9015 kb/s, 29.97 fps, 29.97 tbr, 30k tbn, 59.94 tbc Metadata: creation_time : 1970-01-01 00:00:00 Stream #0.1(eng): Audio: aac, 48000 Hz, stereo, s16, 127 kb/s Metadata: creation_time : 1970-01-01 00:00:00 I know this is incredibly long but its actually a quite simple question. I thought it would be best to provide as much detail as possible. any advice here would be great, Thanks

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  • #1 O’Reilly eBook for 2010

    - by Jan Goyvaerts
    The year-end issue of O’Reilly’s author newsletter discussed the trends O’Reilly has been seeing the past few years, and their predictions for 2011. The key trend is that digital is now more than ever poised to take over print: Our digitally distributed products have grown from 18.36% of our publishing mix in 2009 to 28.09% of our mix in 2010. What is more impressive is that our digitally distributed products have produced more than double the revenue that has been lost with the decline of print. I think this is important because some say that digital cannibalizes print products. Our data indicates the contrary, as print is declining much more slowly than digital is growing. I think we may be seeing developers purchasing a print book, and then purchasing the electronic editions to search and copying code from, as the incremental cost for digital is more than reasonable. My own book seems to be leading this trend. Thanks to everyone who purchased it! And the five bestselling O’Reilly ebook products for 2010: 1) Regular Expressions Cookbook, 2) jQuery Cookbook, 3) Learning Python, 4) HTML5: Up and Running, and 5) JavaScript Cookbook. I think it’s interesting that the top five ebooks are code-intensive books. They’re great products for search and code reuse. It’s also interesting that none of the top 5 ebooks made the top 5 of print books.

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  • hdmi AC-3 audio broke after upgrading from 11.10 to 12.04.3

    - by Jim LastName
    I just updated my MythBuntu 11.10 to 12.04.3. Now, when I try to play 5.1 content (ripped DVD), my TV (and receiver) plays a "chattering" sound. I check my receiver and the digital dolby light isn't on--it's in PCM mode. So, either the audio is getting sent as AC-3, but the TV and receiver think it's PCM or the AC-3 audio got converted to multichannel PCM and they can't handle it. My setup: hdmi cable from htpc to TV. TV has an s/pdif output to my receiver. I know TV sends AC-3 audio out correctly because I see digital dolby light come on when I view a digital TV channel and PCM come on when I view an old analog channel. I can connect s/pdif from my htpc to my receiver and the digital dolby light comes on and it can decode the audio just fine. It's just not sending it right over hdmi. Now for some hints to the issue: I noticed in MythTV audio setup when I select alsa:hdmi.... the description only lists 2 channel PCM audio capability. speaker-test -Dhdmi:PCH -c6 errors about a bad channel count (only -c2 works). Finally, I tried vlc and it does the same chattering sound. These all make me think this isn't a MythTV issue, it's something lower than that. I think the best way to troubleshoot this is to start at the drivers and check each layer, one at a time all the way to alsa. I just don't know what the layers are and how to do it. So, I need to find some audio troubleshooting guide to assist me. Or, if one doesn't exist, I'd appreciate some steps. Thanks much, Jim

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  • The Freemium-Premium Puzzle

    The more time I spend thinking about the value of information, the more I found that digitalizing information significantly changed the 'information markets', potentially in an irreversible manner. The graph at the bottom outlines my current view. The existing business models tend to be the same in the digital and analogue information world, i.e. revenue is derived from a combination of consumers' payments and advertisement. Even monetizing 'meta-information' such as search engines isn't new. Just think of the once popular 'Who'sWho'. What really changed is the price-value ratio. The curve is pushed down, closer to the axis. You pay less for the same, or often even get more for less. If you recall the capabilities I described in relevance of information you will see that there are many additional features available for digital content compared to analogue content. I think this is a good 'blue ocean strategy' by combining existing capabilities in a new way. (Kim W.C. & Mauborgne, R. (2005) Blue Ocean Strategies. Boston: Harvard Business School Publishing.). In addition the different channels of digital information distribution significantly change the value of information. I will touch on this in one of my next blogs. Right now, many information providers started to offer 'freemium' content through digital channels, hoping to get a premium for the 'full' content. No freemium seems to take them out of business, because they are apparently no longer visible in today's most relevant channels of information consumption. But, the more freemium is provided, the lower the premium gets; a truly puzzling situation. To make it worse, channel providers increasingly regard information as a value adding and differentiating activity. Maybe new types of exclusive, strategic alliances will solve the puzzle, introducing new types of 'gate-keepers', which - to me - somehow does not match the spirit of the WWW and the generation Y's perception of information consumption and exchange.

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  • SAS: add comment to lst ouput file

    - by Dan
    In SAS, How do I add comments to my .LST output file. Like adding a comment saying "This is the output for tbl_TestMacro:" right before doing a proc print? So that my output file will read: This is the output for tbl_TestMacro: Obs field1 field2 1 6 8 2 6 9 3 7 0 4 7 1 Instead of just: Obs field1 field2 1 6 8 2 6 9 3 7 0 4 7 1 Thanks, Dan

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  • Access Router after logging into VPN

    - by Dan
    I access my linksys router through its webserver (192.168.1.1 into a web browser), but can no longer access it once I log into my work vpn. Is there a way I can still get at my router and change the settings? Or do I first have to disconnect from the VPN first? Thanks, Dan

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  • Google Chrome Interferes with Copy and Paste in Excel

    - by Dan
    I have got a following problem: Copy (Ctrl+C) and Paste (Ctrl+V) function in Excel 2010 does not work (or acts weirdly) is I have Google Chrome opened at the same time. This issue is Excel-specific meaning that in Word or Powerpoint copy/paste works fine. It is also Chrome- and CoolNovo-specific as the copy/paste in Excel does not interfere with other internet browsers. Any suggestions? Cheers, Dan

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  • SSL certificate: suggestions for choosing the CA [closed]

    - by dan
    Hi all. I am running a public web application. I would like to get a SSL certificate from a CA. Have you got any suggestions or a CA that you are happy of using (or the opposite)? What are the things I should be careful about? My requirements are: _ it must be recognized by all browsers (desktop and mobile) _ it must be not too expensive (up to 60$/year) Can I get something good with that money? Thanks, Dan

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  • GNU-Screen still has only old groups for my username.

    - by Dan
    I was recently added to a group on the unix server. My active screen session has not been update to the new groups: $groups A B C D $screen -r $groups A B C Without closing my screen session is there a way for me to use my new privileges in the screen session? Or if not, is there at least a way I can save all of the different directories each of the tabs are on? Thanks, Dan

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  • Oracle Australia Supports MS Sydney to Gong Ride by Chris Sainsbury

    - by user769227
    What is the Sydney to Gong Ride? The Gong Ride is a one of a kind fundraising event. You can pedal 90 km from Sydney to Wollongong on any day of the year but it's only on the first Sunday of November that you'll experience the camaraderie, fellowship, unity, safey, scenery and sense of achievement for pedalling in support of people living with MS. Well done to the 22 members of the Oracle Sydney to Gong ride on Sunday 6 November. For many, this was the first time riding over distance – officially a 90km event, by GPS about 84km. The event started in Sydney Park, Newtown. We left in a few separate groups between 6.30 and 7.30am – and finished with times between 2 hours 45 mins and 6 hours. With 10,000 riders there was a lot of congestion at the start but that soon thinned out as we left Sydney. It was a great spring day for the event but at 34 degrees it was getting pretty warm once we left the shade of the Royal National Park and carried on over the Sea Cliff bridge and down the coast road towards Wollongong. Unfortunately Dan managed to get himself a facial scrub when someone clipped his front wheel on the descent from Bald Hill lookout. No major incidents thankfully and Dan soldiered on. Most importantly everyone had a good time (even Dan) and we raised $5,800 for Multiple Sclerosis Australia. In total more than $3.7m was raised for this good cause.

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  • Lending epub files for limited time to users

    - by JP Hellemons
    I am looking for components to build a digital library who lends people epub (ebooks) for about a week. It's like a digital version of the offline old public library. Now I have found several flash (pdf) file streaming solutions. But that would require an active internet link. And like the public library, you are able to take your books to the beach or pool on holiday abroad where you have no connection. So streaming is no option. The other file restriction method I have found was DRM, but that would require a really expensive license of Adobe Content Server 4 which is not suitable for my little hobby project. But it seems that adobe content server and Adobe Digital Editions is the only option at the moment. Or are there open source alternatives?

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  • HTG Explains: Photography with Film-Based Cameras

    - by Eric Z Goodnight
    We’ve become reliant on digital cameras since they are so easy to use. But have you ever wondered how film-based photography works? Read on to increase your photographic knowledge—or to develop an new appreciation for your point and click camera. Film-based cameras, to some, are a relic of the past. Simply an old technology made obsolete by the new and improved. But to many, film is an artisan’s material, and a photographic experience no digital system could hope to ever recreate. While many photographers, professional and amateur will swear by the quality of both film-based or digital cameras—the fact remains that film is still a valid way to take great photographs, and a fascinating way to learn more about how photography works.  HTG Explains: Photography with Film-Based CamerasHow to Clean Your Dirty Smartphone (Without Breaking Something)What is a Histogram, and How Can I Use it to Improve My Photos?

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  • The Island of Lost Apple Products

    - by Jason Fitzpatrick
    While Apple has has a mountain of commercial successes, every once in awhile the crew in Cupertino strikes out. Here are some of the less successful and prematurely retired Apple products from the last two decades. Courtesy of Wired, we find nine of the least favorably received products in the Apple portfolio. Pictured here, the QuickTake Camera: Life Span: 1994 – 1997 Back in 1994, Apple was actually at the forefront of digital photography. The QuickTake Camera’s photos (640 x 480 at 0.3 megapixels) were borderline unusable for anything other than your Geocities homepage. But technology has to start somewhere. Still, Apple killed the line after just three years. And while the iPhone and other smartphones have replaced most people’s digital cameras, Apple could have had a reaped the benefits of the digital point-and-shoot salad years. 6 Ways Windows 8 Is More Secure Than Windows 7 HTG Explains: Why It’s Good That Your Computer’s RAM Is Full 10 Awesome Improvements For Desktop Users in Windows 8

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  • 7-Eleven Mobile App Powered by Oracle SOA Suite

    - by Bruce Tierney
    When you slurp that Slurpee, do you ever think about the sub 100 millisecond processing of 20 million 7-Eleven digital transactions ever day supported by Oracle SOA Suite?  Maybe next time.  Check out this impressive video of Ronald Clanton, 7-Eleven's Digital Guest Experience Program Manager, describing how 7-Eleven provides a consistent view across all the end points of over 10,000 stores and their digital entities by using Oracle SOA Suite on Oracle Exalogic.  Managed by Oracle Enterprise Manager, they were able to provision their "Rapid-Fire" Middleware as a Service (MWaaS) in only "10 minutes" and deliver on time and complete testing ahead of schedule. So what are you waiting for?  Download your Slurpee App to get your free Pillsbury Cinnamon pastry and enjoy your contribution to the 20 million messages/day.   When your done, take picture of your tongue...red or blue?  Watch the video here:

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  • Why is an Add method required for { } initialization?

    - by Dan Tao
    To use initialization syntax like this: var contacts = new ContactList { { "Dan", "dan[email protected]" }, { "Eric", "[email protected]" } }; ...my understanding is that my ContactList type would need to define an Add method that takes two string parameters: public void Add(string name, string email); What's a bit confusing to me about this is that the { } initializer syntax seems most useful when creating read-only or fixed-size collections. After all it is meant to mimic the initialization syntax for an array, right? (OK, so arrays are not read-only; but they are fixed size.) And naturally it can only be used when the collection's contents are known (at least the number of elements) at compile-time. So it would almost seem that the main requirement for using this collection initializer syntax (having an Add method and therefore a mutable collection) is at odds with the typical case in which it would be most useful. I'm sure I haven't put as much thought into this matter as the C# design team; it just seems that there could have been different rules for this syntax that would have meshed better with its typical usage scenarios. Am I way off base here? Is the desire to use the { } syntax to initialize fixed-size collections not as common as I think? What other factors might have influenced the formulation of the requirements for this syntax that I'm simply not thinking of?

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  • Smart Help with UPK

    - by [email protected]
    A short lesson on how awesome Smart Help is. In Oracle UPK speak, there are targeted and non-targeted applications. Targeted applications are Oracle EBS, PeopleSoft, Siebel, JD Edwards, SAP and a few others. Non-targeted applications are either custom built or other third party off the shelf applications. For most targeted applications you'll see better object recognition (during recording) and also Help Integration for that application. Help integration means that someone technical modifies the help link in your application to call up the UPK content that has been created. If you have seen this presented before, this is usually where the term context sensitive help is mentioned and the Do It mode shows off. The fact that UPK builds context sensitive help for its targeted applications automatically is awesome enough, but there is a whole new world out there and it's called "custom and\or third party apps." For the purposes of Smart Help and this discussion, I'm talking about the browser based applications. How does UPK support these apps? It used to be that you had to have your vendor try to modify the Help link to point to UPK or if your company had control over the applications configuration menus, then you get someone on your team to modify this for you. But as you start to use UPK for more than one, two or three applications, the administration of this starts to become daunting. Multiple administrators, multiple player packages, multiple call points, multiple break points, help doesn't always work the same way for every application (picture the black white infomercial with an IT person trying to configure a bunch of wires or something funny like that). Introducing Smart Help! (in color of course, new IT person, probably wearing a blue shirt and smiling). Smart help eliminates the need to configure multiple browser help integration points, and adds a icon to the users browser itself. You're using your browser to read this now correct? Look up at the icons on your browser, you have the home link icon, print icon, maybe an RSS feed icon. Smart Help is icon that gets added to the users browser just like the others. When you click it, it first recognizes which application you're in and then finds the UPK created material for you and returns the best possible match, for (hold on to your seat now) both targeted and non-targeted applications (browser based applications). But wait, there's more. It does this automatically! You don't have to do anything! All you have to do is record content, UPK and Smart Help do the rest! This technology is not new. There are customers out there today that use this for as many as six applications! The real hero here is SMART MATCH. Smart match is the technology that's used to determine which application you're in and where you are when you click on Smart Help. We'll save that for a one-on-one conversation. Like most other awesome features of UPK, it ships with the product. All you have to do is turn it on. To learn more about Smart Help, Smart Match, Targeted and Non-Targeted applications, contact your UPK Sales Consultant or me directly at dan[email protected]

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  • Need help with testdisk output

    - by dan
    I had (note the past tense) an ubuntu 12.04 system with separate partitions for the base and /home directories. It started acting wonky, so I decided to do a reinstall with 12.10, intending just to do a reinstall to the base partition. After several seconds, I realize that the installer was repartitioning the drive and reinstalling, so I pulled the power cord. I'm now trying to recover as much as I can with testdisk, but it seems that testdisk is finding 100 unique partitions when I run it - they mostly tend to be HFS+ or solaris /home (which I think is just an ext4; I've never had solaris on the machine). I've pasted an abbreviated version of the testdisk output below (first ~100 lines, and then ~100 lines from the middle of the output). Is there a way to combine or recreate the partitions and then data recovery, or some other way maximize what I can recover (ideally as much of the file system as possible)? I really only care about what was in the /home directory - I'd rather not use photorec since I don't have another 2 TB HD lying around to recover to. Thanks, Dan Mon Dec 10 06:03:00 2012 Command line: TestDisk TestDisk 6.13, Data Recovery Utility, November 2011 Christophe GRENIER <[email protected]> http://www.cgsecurity.org OS: Linux, kernel 3.2.34-std312-amd64 (#2 SMP Sat Nov 17 08:06:32 UTC 2012) x86_64 Compiler: GCC 4.4 Compilation date: 2012-11-27T22:44:52 ext2fs lib: 1.42.6, ntfs lib: libntfs-3g, reiserfs lib: 0.3.1-rc8, ewf lib: none /dev/sda: LBA, HPA, LBA48, DCO support /dev/sda: size 3907029168 sectors /dev/sda: user_max 3907029168 sectors /dev/sda: native_max 3907029168 sectors Warning: can't get size for Disk /dev/mapper/control - 0 B - CHS 1 1 1, sector size=512 /dev/sr0 is not an ATA disk Hard disk list Disk /dev/sda - 2000 GB / 1863 GiB - CHS 243201 255 63, sector size=512 - WDC WD20EARS-00J2GB0, S/N:WD-WCAYY0075071, FW:80.00A80 Disk /dev/sdb - 1013 MB / 967 MiB - CHS 1014 32 61, sector size=512 - Generic Flash Disk, FW:8.07 Disk /dev/sr0 - 367 MB / 350 MiB - CHS 179470 1 1 (RO), sector size=2048 - PLDS DVD+/-RW DH-16AAS, FW:JD12 Partition table type (auto): Intel Disk /dev/sda - 2000 GB / 1863 GiB - WDC WD20EARS-00J2GB0 Partition table type: EFI GPT Analyse Disk /dev/sda - 2000 GB / 1863 GiB - CHS 243201 255 63 Current partition structure: Bad GPT partition, invalid signature. search_part() Disk /dev/sda - 2000 GB / 1863 GiB - CHS 243201 255 63 recover_EXT2: s_block_group_nr=0/14880, s_mnt_count=5/4294967295, s_blocks_per_group=32768, s_inodes_per_group=8192 recover_EXT2: s_blocksize=4096 recover_EXT2: s_blocks_count 487593984 recover_EXT2: part_size 3900751872 MS Data 2048 3900753919 3900751872 EXT4 Large file Sparse superblock, 1997 GB / 1860 GiB Linux Swap 3900755968 3907028975 6273008 SWAP2 version 1, 3211 MB / 3062 MiB Results P MS Data 2048 3900753919 3900751872 EXT4 Large file Sparse superblock, 1997 GB / 1860 GiB P Linux Swap 3900755968 3907028975 6273008 SWAP2 version 1, 3211 MB / 3062 MiB interface_write() 1 P MS Data 2048 3900753919 3900751872 2 P Linux Swap 3900755968 3907028975 6273008 search_part() Disk /dev/sda - 2000 GB / 1863 GiB - CHS 243201 255 63 recover_EXT2: s_block_group_nr=0/14880, s_mnt_count=5/4294967295, s_blocks_per_group=32768, s_inodes_per_group=8192 recover_EXT2: s_blocksize=4096 recover_EXT2: s_blocks_count 487593984 recover_EXT2: part_size 3900751872 MS Data 2048 3900753919 3900751872 EXT4 Large file Sparse superblock, 1997 GB / 1860 GiB block_group_nr 1 recover_EXT2: "e2fsck -b 32768 -B 4096 device" may be needed recover_EXT2: s_block_group_nr=1/14880, s_mnt_count=0/4294967295, s_blocks_per_group=32768, s_inodes_per_group=8192 recover_EXT2: s_blocksize=4096 recover_EXT2: s_blocks_count 487593984 recover_EXT2: part_size 3900751872 MS Data 2046 3900753917 3900751872 EXT4 Large file Sparse superblock Backup superblock, 1997 GB / 1860 GiB block_group_nr 1 recover_EXT2: "e2fsck -b 32768 -B 4096 device" may be needed recover_EXT2: s_block_group_nr=1/14880, s_mnt_count=0/4294967295, s_blocks_per_group=32768, s_inodes_per_group=8192 recover_EXT2: s_blocksize=4096 recover_EXT2: s_blocks_count 487593984 recover_EXT2: part_size 3900751872 MS Data 2048 3900753919 3900751872 EXT4 Large file Sparse superblock Backup superblock, 1997 GB / 1860 GiB block_group_nr 1 recover_EXT2: "e2fsck -b 32768 -B 4096 device" may be needed recover_EXT2: s_block_group_nr=1/14584, s_mnt_count=0/27, s_blocks_per_group=32768, s_inodes_per_group=8192 recover_EXT2: s_blocksize=4096 recover_EXT2: s_blocks_count 477915164 recover_EXT2: part_size 3823321312 MS Data 4094 3823325405 3823321312 EXT4 Large file Sparse superblock Backup superblock, 1957 GB / 1823 GiB block_group_nr 1 ....snip...... MS Data 2046 3900753917 3900751872 EXT4 Large file Sparse superblock Backup superblock, 1997 GB / 1860 GiB MS Data 2048 3900753919 3900751872 EXT4 Large file Sparse superblock, 1997 GB / 1860 GiB MS Data 4094 3823325405 3823321312 EXT4 Large file Sparse superblock Backup superblock, 1957 GB / 1823 GiB MS Data 4096 3823325407 3823321312 EXT4 Large file Sparse superblock Backup superblock, 1957 GB / 1823 GiB MS Data 7028840 7033383 4544 FAT12, 2326 KB / 2272 KiB Mac HFS 67856948 67862179 5232 HFS+ found using backup sector!, 2678 KB / 2616 KiB Mac HFS 67862176 67867407 5232 HFS+, 2678 KB / 2616 KiB Mac HFS 67862244 67867475 5232 HFS+ found using backup sector!, 2678 KB / 2616 KiB Mac HFS 67867404 67872635 5232 HFS+, 2678 KB / 2616 KiB Mac HFS 67867472 67872703 5232 HFS+, 2678 KB / 2616 KiB Mac HFS 67872700 67877931 5232 HFS+, 2678 KB / 2616 KiB Mac HFS 67937834 67948067 10234 [EasyInstall_OSX] HFS found using backup sector!, 5239 KB / 5117 KiB Mac HFS 67938012 67948155 10144 HFS+ found using backup sector!, 5193 KB / 5072 KiB Mac HFS 67948064 67958297 10234 [EasyInstall_OSX] HFS, 5239 KB / 5117 KiB Mac HFS 67948070 67958303 10234 [EasyInstall_OSX] HFS found using backup sector!, 5239 KB / 5117 KiB Mac HFS 67948152 67958295 10144 HFS+, 5193 KB / 5072 KiB Mac HFS 67958292 67968435 10144 HFS+, 5193 KB / 5072 KiB Mac HFS 67958300 67968533 10234 [EasyInstall_OSX] HFS, 5239 KB / 5117 KiB Mac HFS 67992596 67997827 5232 HFS+ found using backup sector!, 2678 KB / 2616 KiB Mac HFS 67997824 68003055 5232 HFS+, 2678 KB / 2616 KiB Mac HFS 67997892 68003123 5232 HFS+ found using backup sector!, 2678 KB / 2616 KiB Mac HFS 68003052 68008283 5232 HFS+, 2678 KB / 2616 KiB Mac HFS 68003120 68008351 5232 HFS+, 2678 KB / 2616 KiB Mac HFS 68008348 68013579 5232 HFS+, 2678 KB / 2616 KiB Solaris /home 84429840 123499141 39069302 UFS1, 20 GB / 18 GiB Solaris /home 84429952 123499253 39069302 UFS1, 20 GB / 18 GiB Solaris /home 84493136 123562437 39069302 UFS1, 20 GB / 18 GiB Solaris /home 84493248 123562549 39069302 UFS1, 20 GB / 18 GiB Solaris /home 84566088 123635389 39069302 UFS1, 20 GB / 18 GiB Solaris /home 84566200 123635501 39069302 UFS1, 20 GB / 18 GiB Solaris /home 84571232 123640533 39069302 UFS1, 20 GB / 18 GiB Solaris /home 84571344 123640645 39069302 UFS1, 20 GB / 18 GiB Solaris /home 84659952 123729253 39069302 UFS1, 20 GB / 18 GiB Solaris /home 84660064 123729365 39069302 UFS1, 20 GB / 18 GiB Solaris /home 84690504 123759805 39069302 UFS1, 20 GB / 18 GiB Solaris /home 84690616 123759917 39069302 UFS1, 20 GB / 18 GiB Solaris /home 84700424 123769725 39069302 UFS1, 20 GB / 18 GiB Solaris /home 84700536 123769837 39069302 UFS1, 20 GB / 18 GiB Solaris /home 84797720 123867021 39069302 UFS1, 20 GB / 18 GiB Solaris /home 84797832 123867133 39069302 UFS1, 20 GB / 18 GiB Solaris /home 84812544 123881845 39069302 UFS1, 20 GB / 18 GiB Solaris /home 84812656 123881957 39069302 UFS1, 20 GB / 18 GiB Solaris /home 84824552 123893853 39069302 UFS1, 20 GB / 18 GiB Solaris /home 84824664 123893965 39069302 UFS1, 20 GB / 18 GiB Solaris /home 84847528 123916829 39069302 UFS1, 20 GB / 18 GiB Solaris /home 84847640 123916941 39069302 UFS1, 20 GB / 18 GiB Solaris /home 84886840 123956141 39069302 UFS1, 20 GB / 18 GiB Solaris /home 84886952 123956253 39069302 UFS1, 20 GB / 18 GiB Solaris /home 84945488 124014789 39069302 UFS1, 20 GB / 18 GiB Solaris /home 84945600 124014901 39069302 UFS1, 20 GB / 18 GiB Solaris /home 84957992 124027293 39069302 UFS1, 20 GB / 18 GiB Solaris /home 84958104 124027405 39069302 UFS1, 20 GB / 18 GiB Solaris /home 84962240 124031541 39069302 UFS1, 20 GB / 18 GiB Solaris /home 84962352 124031653 39069302 UFS1, 20 GB / 18 GiB Solaris /home 84977168 124046469 39069302 UFS1, 20 GB / 18 GiB Solaris /home 84977280 124046581 39069302 UFS1, 20 GB / 18 GiB MS Data 174395467 178483851 4088385 ..... snip (it keeps going on for quite a while)

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  • Oracle BI and XS Energy Drinks – Don’t Miss the Amway Presentation!

    - by Michelle Kimihira
    By Maria Forney Amway is a global leader in the direct sales industry with $10.9B in annual sales in more than 100 countries and territories. The company has implemented a global BI framework that provides accurate, consistent, and timely insights to support global, regional and local analytical research, business planning, performance measurement and assessment. Oracle BI EE is used by 1500 employees across Amway sales, marketing, finance, and supply chain business units as well as Amway affiliates in Europe, Russia, South Africa, Japan, Australia, Latin America, Malaysia, Vietnam, and Indonesia. Last week, I spoke with Lead Data Analyst with Amway Global Sales, Dan Arganbright, and IT Manager with Amway BI Competency Center, Mike Olson, about their upcoming presentation at Oracle OpenWorld in San Francisco. Scheduled during a prime speaking slot on Monday, October 1 at 12:15pm in Moscone West, 2007, Dan and Mike will discuss their experience building Amway’s Distributor Consulting solution, powered by Oracle BI EE. You can find more information here. As background, Amway offers people an opportunity to own their own businesses and consumers exclusive products in health and wellness, beauty and home care.  The Amway internal Sales organization is charged with consulting leadership-level Distributors to help them with data insights and ultimately grow their business. Until recently, this was a resource-intense process of gathering and formatting data. In some markets, it took over 40 hours to collect the data and produce the analysis needed for one consultation session. Amway began its global BI journey in 2006 and since then the company has migrated from having multiple technology providers and integration points to an integrated strategic vendor approach. Today, the company has standardized on Oracle technology for BI.  Amway has achieved cost savings through the retirement of redundant technology platforms. In addition, Mike’s organization has led the charge to align disparate BI organizations into a BI Competency Center.  The following diagram highlights the simplicity of the standardized architecture of Amway today. Dubbed Distributor Consulting, Amway has developed a BI solution using the Oracle technology stack to help Distributor leaders grow their businesses. The Distributor Consulting solution provides over 40 metrics for Sales staff to provide data-driven insights on the Distributors and organizations they support.  Using Oracle BI EE, Exadata, and Oracle Data Integrator, Amway provides customized and personalized business intelligence, and the Oracle BI EE dashboards were developed by the Amway Sales organization, which demonstrates business empowerment of the technology. Amway is also leveraging the power of BI to drive business growth in all of its markets.  A new set of Distributor Segmentation metrics are enabling a better understanding of distributor behaviors. A Global Scorecard that Amway developed provides key metrics at a market and global level for executive-level discussions. Product Analysis teams can now highlight repeat purchase rates, product penetration and the success of CRM campaigns. In the words of Dan and Mike, the addition of Exadata 11 months ago has been “a game changer.”  Amway has been able to dramatically reduce complexity, improve performance and increase business productivity and cost savings. For example, the number of indexes on the global data warehouse was reduced from more than 1,000 to less than 20.  Pulling data for the highest level distributors or the largest markets in the company now can be done in minutes instead of hours.  As a result, IT has shifted from performance tuning and keeping the system operational to higher-value business-focused activities. •       “The distributors that have been introduced to the BI reports have found them extremely helpful. Because they have never had this kind of information before, when they were presented with the reports, they wanted to take action immediately!”  -     Sales Development Manager in Latin America Without giving away more, the Amway case study presentation will be one of the unique customer sessions at OpenWorld this year. Speakers Dan Arganbright and Mike Olson have planned an interactive and entertaining session on Monday October 1 at 12:15pm in Moscone West, 2007. I’ll see you there!

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  • Oracle BI and XS Energy Drinks – Don’t Miss the Amway Presentation!

    - by Maria Forney
    Amway is a global leader in the direct sales industry with $10.9B in annual sales in more than 100 countries and territories. The company has implemented a global BI framework that provides accurate, consistent, and timely insights to support global, regional and local analytical research, business planning, performance measurement and assessment. Oracle BI EE is used by 1500 employees across Amway sales, marketing, finance, and supply chain business units as well as Amway affiliates in Europe, Russia, South Africa, Japan, Australia, Latin America, Malaysia, Vietnam, and Indonesia. Last week, I spoke with Lead Data Analyst with Amway Global Sales, Dan Arganbright, and IT Manager with Amway BI Competency Center, Mike Olson, about their upcoming presentation at Oracle OpenWorld in San Francisco. Scheduled during a prime speaking slot on Monday, October 1 at 12:15pm in Moscone West, 2007, Dan and Mike will discuss their experience building Amway’s Distributor Consulting solution, powered by Oracle BI EE. You can find more information here. As background, Amway offers people an opportunity to own their own businesses and consumers exclusive products in health and wellness, beauty and home care.  The Amway internal Sales organization is charged with consulting leadership-level Distributors to help them with data insights and ultimately grow their business. Until recently, this was a resource-intense process of gathering and formatting data. In some markets, it took over 40 hours to collect the data and produce the analysis needed for one consultation session. Amway began its global BI journey in 2006 and since then the company has migrated from having multiple technology providers and integration points to an integrated strategic vendor approach. Today, the company has standardized on Oracle technology for BI.  Amway has achieved cost savings through the retirement of redundant technology platforms. In addition, Mike’s organization has led the charge to align disparate BI organizations into a BI Competency Center.  The following diagram highlights the simplicity of the standardized architecture of Amway today. Dubbed Distributor Consulting, Amway has developed a BI solution using the Oracle technology stack to help Distributor leaders grow their businesses. The Distributor Consulting solution provides over 40 metrics for Sales staff to provide data-driven insights on the Distributors and organizations they support.  Using Oracle BI EE, Exadata, and Oracle Data Integrator, Amway provides customized and personalized business intelligence, and the Oracle BI EE dashboards were developed by the Amway Sales organization, which demonstrates business empowerment of the technology. Amway is also leveraging the power of BI to drive business growth in all of its markets.  A new set of Distributor Segmentation metrics are enabling a better understanding of distributor behaviors. A Global Scorecard that Amway developed provides key metrics at a market and global level for executive-level discussions. Product Analysis teams can now highlight repeat purchase rates, product penetration and the success of CRM campaigns. In the words of Dan and Mike, the addition of Exadata 11 months ago has been “a game changer.”  Amway has been able to dramatically reduce complexity, improve performance and increase business productivity and cost savings. For example, the number of indexes on the global data warehouse was reduced from more than 1,000 to less than 20.  Pulling data for the highest level distributors or the largest markets in the company now can be done in minutes instead of hours.  As a result, IT has shifted from performance tuning and keeping the system operational to higher-value business-focused activities. •       “The distributors that have been introduced to the BI reports have found them extremely helpful. Because they have never had this kind of information before, when they were presented with the reports, they wanted to take action immediately!”  -     Sales Development Manager in Latin America Without giving away more, the Amway case study presentation will be one of the unique customer sessions at OpenWorld this year. Speakers Dan Arganbright and Mike Olson have planned an interactive and entertaining session on Monday October 1 at 12:15pm in Moscone West, 2007. I’ll see you there!

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  • DBA Best Practices - A Blog Series: Episode 2 - Password Lists

    - by Argenis
      Digital World, Digital Locks One of the biggest digital assets that any company has is its secrets. These include passwords, key rings, certificates, and any other digital asset used to protect another asset from tampering or unauthorized access. As a DBA, you are very likely to manage some of these assets for your company - and your employer trusts you with keeping them safe. Probably one of the most important of these assets are passwords. As you well know, the can be used anywhere: for service accounts, credentials, proxies, linked servers, DTS/SSIS packages, symmetrical keys, private keys, etc., etc. Have you given some thought to what you're doing to keep these passwords safe? Are you backing them up somewhere? Who else besides you can access them? Good-Ol’ Post-It Notes Under Your Keyboard If you have a password-protected Excel sheet for your passwords, I have bad news for you: Excel's level of encryption is good for your grandma's budget spreadsheet, not for a list of enterprise passwords. I will try to summarize the main point of this best practice in one sentence: You should keep your passwords on an encrypted, access and version-controlled, backed-up, well-known shared location that every DBA on your team is aware of, and maintain copies of this password "database" on your DBA's workstations. Now I have to break down that statement to you: - Encrypted: what’s the point of saving your passwords on a file that any Windows admin with enough privileges can read? - Access controlled: This one is pretty much self-explanatory. - Version controlled: Passwords change (and I’m really hoping you do change them) and version control would allow you to track what a previous password was if the utility you’ve chosen doesn’t handle that for you. - Backed-up: You want a safe copy of the password list to be kept offline, preferably in long term storage, with relative ease of restoring. - Well-known shared location: This is critical for teams: what good is a password list if only one person in the team knows where it is? I have seen multiple examples of this that work well. They all start with an encrypted database. Certainly you could leverage SQL Server's native encryption solutions like cell encryption for this. I have found such implementations to be impractical, for the most part. Enter The World Of Utilities There are a myriad of open source/free software solutions to help you here. One of my favorites is KeePass, which creates encrypted files that can be saved to a network share, Sharepoint, etc. KeePass has UIs for most operating systems, including Windows, MacOS, iOS, Android and Windows Phone. Other solutions I've used before worth mentioning include PasswordSafe and 1Password, with the latter one being a paid solution – but wildly popular in mobile devices. There are, of course, even more "enterprise-level" solutions available from 3rd party vendors. The truth is that most of the customers that I work with don't need that level of protection of their digital assets, and something like a KeePass database on Sharepoint suits them very well. What are you doing to safeguard your passwords? Leave a comment below, and join the discussion! Cheers, -Argenis

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  • The new direction of the gaming industry

    - by raccoon_tim
    Just recently I read a great blog post by David Darling, the founder of Codemasters: http://www.develop-online.net/blog/347/Jurassic-consoles-could-become-extinct. In the blog post he talks about how traditional retail games are experiencing a downfall thanks to the increasing popularity of digital distribution. I personally think of retail games as being relics of the past. It does not really make much sense to still keep distributing boxed games when the same game can be elegantly downloaded and updated over the air through a digital distribution channel. The world is not all rainbows, however. One big issue with mixing digital distribution with boxed retail games is that resellers will not condone you selling your game for 10€ digitally while their selling the same game for 70€. The only way to get around this issue is to move to full digital distribution. This has the added benefit of minimizing piracy as the game can be tightly bound to the service you downloaded the game from. Many players are, however, complaining about not being able to play the games offline. Having games tightly bound to the internet is a problem when games are bought from a retailer as we tend to expect that once we have the product we can use it anywhere because we physically own it. The truth is that we don’t actually own the product. Instead, the typical EULA actually states that we only have a license to use the product. We’re not, for instance, allowed to disassemble the product, which the owner is indeed permitted to do. Digital distribution allows us to provide games as services, instead of selling them as standalone products. This means that for a service to work you have to be connected to the internet but you still have the same rights to use the product. It’s really straightforward; if you downloaded a client from the internet you are expected to have an internet connection so you’re able to connect to the server. A game distributed digitally that is built using a client-server architecture has the added benefit of allowing you to play anywhere as long as you have the client installed and you are able to log in with your user information. Your save games can be backed up and your game can continue anywhere. Another development we’re seeing in the gaming industry is the increasing popularity of free-to-play games. These are games that let you play for free but allow you to boost your gaming experience with real world money. The nature of these games is that players are constantly rewarded with new content and the game can evolve according to their way of playing and their wishes can be incorporated into the product. Free-to-play games can quickly gain a large player basis and monetization is done by providing players valuable things to buy making their gaming experience more fun. I am personally very excited about free-to-play games as it’s possible to start building the game together with your players and there is no need to work on the game for 5 years from start to finish and only then see if it’s actually something the players like. This is a typical problem with big movie-like retail games and recent news about Radical Entertainment practically closing its doors paints a clear picture of what can happen when the risk does not pay off: http://news.teamxbox.com/xbox/25874/Prototype-Developer-Radical-Entertainment-Closes/.

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