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• Employee Engagement Q&A with John Brunswick

  - by Kellsey Ruppel

  As we are focusing this week on Employee Engagement, I recently sat down with industry expert and thought leader John Brunswick on the topic. Here is the Q&A dialogue we shared.  Q: How do you effectively engage employees to drive business value?A: Motivation, both extrinsic and intrinsic, combined with the relevancy of various channels to support it.  Beyond chaining business strategies like compensation models within an organization, engagement ultimately is most successful when driven by employee's motivations.  Business value derived from engagement through technical capabilities can be objectively measured through metrics like the rate and accuracy of problem solving for a given business function or frequency of innovation created.  Providing employees performing "knowledge work" with capabilities that allow them to perform work with a higher degree of accuracy in the same or ideally less time, adds value for that individual and in turn, drives their level of engagement to drive business value. Q: Organizations with high levels of employee engagement outperform the total stock market index by 22%. Can you comment on why you think this might be? A: Alignment through shared purpose.  Zappos is an excellent example of a culture that arguably has higher than average levels of employee engagement and it permeates every aspect of their organization – embodied externally through their customer experience.  I recently made my first purchase with them and it was obvious through their web experience, visual design, communication style, customer service and attention to detail down to green packaging, that they have an amazingly strong shared purpose.  The Zappos.com ‘About page’ outlines their "Family Core Values", the first three being "Deliver WOW Through Service, Embrace and Drive Change & Create Fun and A Little Weirdness" – all reflected externally in my interaction with them.  Strong shared purpose enables higher product and service experience, equating to a dedicated customer base, repeat purchases and expanded marketshare. Q: Have you seen any trends in the market regarding employee engagement? A: Some companies now see offering a form of social engagement similar to Facebook and LinkedIn as standard communication infrastructure like email or instant messaging.  Originally offered as standalone tools, the value is now seen when these capabilities are offered in an integrated fashion in the context of business entities.  An emerging area of focus is around employee activities related to their organization on external social platforms, implicitly creating external communities with employees acting on behalf of the brand and interacting with each other (e.g. Twitter).  Companies have reached a formal understand that this now established communication medium requires strategies allowing employees to engage.  I have personally met colleagues from Oracle, like Oracle User Experience Director Ultan O'Broin (@ultan), via Twitter before meeting first through internal channels. Q: Employee engagement is important, but what about engaging customers and partners? A: The last few years we have witnessed an interesting evolution from the novelty of self-service to expectations of "intelligent" self-service.  From a consumer standpoint, engagement can end up being a key differentiator, especially in mature markets.  Customers that perform some level of interaction with a brand develop greater affinity for the brand and have a greater probability of acting as an advocate.  As organizations move toward a model of deeper engagement, they must ensure that their business is positioned to support deeper relationships, offering potentially greater transparency. From a partner standpoint greater engagement can lead to new types of business opportunities, much in the way that Amazon.com offers a unified shopping experience that can potentially span various vendors.  This same model can be extended to blending services and product delivery models, based on a closeness not easily possible before increased capability of engagement mechanisms. Q: What types of solutions are available to successfully deliver employee engagement? A: Solutions enabling higher levels of engagement do so on the basis of relevancy.  This relevancy is generally supported by aspects of content management, social collaboration, business intelligence, portal and process management technologies.  These technologies can help deliver an experience tailored to a given role or process within an organization that applies equally to work that is structured or unstructured, appearing in the form of functionality as simple as an online employee directory search, knowledge communities supported by social collaboration, as well as more feature rich business intelligence dashboards and portals. Looking to learn more about how to effectively engage your employees? Check out this webcast, or read more from John Brunswick. 

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• A tale from a Stalker

  - by Peter Larsson

  Today I thought I should write something about a stalker I've got. Don't get me wrong, I have way more fans than stalkers, but this stalker is particular persistent towards me. It all started when I wrote about Relational Division with Sets late last year(http://weblogs.sqlteam.com/peterl/archive/2010/07/02/Proper-Relational-Division-With-Sets.aspx) and no matter what he tried, he didn't get a better performing query than me. But this I didn't click until later into this conversation. He must have saved himself for 9 months before posting to me again. Well... Some days ago I get an email from someone I thought i didn't know. Here is his first email Hi, I want a proper solution for achievement the result. The solution must be standard query, means no using as any native code like TOP clause, also the query should run in SQL Server 2000 (no CTE use). We have a table with consecutive keys (nbr) that is not exact sequence. We need bringing all values related with nearest key in the current key row. See the DDL: CREATE TABLE Nums(nbr INTEGER NOT NULL PRIMARY KEY, val INTEGER NOT NULL); INSERT INTO Nums(nbr, val) VALUES (1, 0),(5, 7),(9, 4); See the Result: pre_nbr     pre_val     nbr         val         nxt_nbr     nxt_val ----------- ----------- ----------- ----------- ----------- ----------- NULL        NULL        1           0           5           7 1           0           5           7           9           4 5           7           9           4           NULL        NULL The goal is suggesting most elegant solution. I would like see your best solution first, after that I will send my best (if not same with yours)   Notice there is no name, no please or nothing polite asking for my help. So, on the top of my head I sent him two solutions, following the rule "Work on SQL Server 2000 and only standard non-native code".     -- Peso 1 SELECT               pre_nbr,                              (                                                           SELECT               x.val                                                           FROM                dbo.Nums AS x                                                           WHERE              x.nbr = d.pre_nbr                              ) AS pre_val,                              d.nbr,                              d.val,                              d.nxt_nbr,                              (                                                           SELECT               x.val                                                           FROM                dbo.Nums AS x                                                           WHERE              x.nbr = d.nxt_nbr                              ) AS nxt_val FROM                (                                                           SELECT               (                                                                                                                     SELECT               MAX(x.nbr) AS nbr                                                                                                                     FROM                dbo.Nums AS x                                                                                                                     WHERE              x.nbr < n.nbr                                                                                        ) AS pre_nbr,                                                                                        n.nbr,                                                                                        n.val,                                                                                        (                                                                                                                     SELECT               MIN(x.nbr) AS nbr                                                                                                                     FROM                dbo.Nums AS x                                                                                                                     WHERE              x.nbr > n.nbr                                                                                        ) AS nxt_nbr                                                           FROM                dbo.Nums AS n                              ) AS d -- Peso 2 CREATE TABLE #Temp                                                         (                                                                                        ID INT IDENTITY(1, 1) PRIMARY KEY,                                                                                        nbr INT,                                                                                        val INT                                                           )   INSERT                                            #Temp                                                           (                                                                                        nbr,                                                                                        val                                                           ) SELECT                                            nbr,                                                           val FROM                                             dbo.Nums ORDER BY         nbr   SELECT                                            pre.nbr AS pre_nbr,                                                           pre.val AS pre_val,                                                           t.nbr,                                                           t.val,                                                           nxt.nbr AS nxt_nbr,                                                           nxt.val AS nxt_val FROM                                             #Temp AS pre RIGHT JOIN      #Temp AS t ON t.ID = pre.ID + 1 LEFT JOIN         #Temp AS nxt ON nxt.ID = t.ID + 1   DROP TABLE    #Temp Notice there are no indexes on #Temp table yet. And here is where the conversation derailed. First I got this response back Now my solutions: --My 1st Slt SELECT T2.*, T1.*, T3.*   FROM Nums AS T1        LEFT JOIN Nums AS T2          ON T2.nbr = (SELECT MAX(nbr)                         FROM Nums                        WHERE nbr < T1.nbr)        LEFT JOIN Nums AS T3          ON T3.nbr = (SELECT MIN(nbr)                         FROM Nums                        WHERE nbr > T1.nbr); --My 2nd Slt SELECT MAX(CASE WHEN N1.nbr > N2.nbr THEN N2.nbr ELSE NULL END) AS pre_nbr,        (SELECT val FROM Nums WHERE nbr = MAX(CASE WHEN N1.nbr > N2.nbr THEN N2.nbr ELSE NULL END)) AS pre_val,        N1.nbr AS cur_nbr, N1.val AS cur_val,        MIN(CASE WHEN N1.nbr < N2.nbr THEN N2.nbr ELSE NULL END) AS nxt_nbr,        (SELECT val FROM Nums WHERE nbr = MIN(CASE WHEN N1.nbr < N2.nbr THEN N2.nbr ELSE NULL END)) AS nxt_val   FROM Nums AS N1,        Nums AS N2  GROUP BY N1.nbr, N1.val;   /* My 1st Slt Table 'Nums'. Scan count 7, logical reads 14 My 2nd Slt Table 'Nums'. Scan count 4, logical reads 23 Peso 1 Table 'Nums'. Scan count 9, logical reads 28 Peso 2 Table '#Temp'. Scan count 0, logical reads 7 Table 'Nums'. Scan count 1, logical reads 2 Table '#Temp'. Scan count 3, logical reads 16 */  To this, I emailed him back asking for a scalability test What if you try with a Nums table with 100,000 rows? His response to that started to get nasty.  I have to say Peso 2 is not acceptable. As I said before the solution must be standard, ORDER BY is not part of standard SELECT. Try this without ORDER BY:  Truncate Table Nums INSERT INTO Nums (nbr, val) VALUES (1, 0),(9,4), (5, 7)  So now we have new rules. No ORDER BY because it's not standard SQL! Of course I asked him  Why do you have that idea? ORDER BY is not standard? To this, his replies went stranger and stranger Standard Select = Set-based (no any cursor) It’s free to know, just refer to Advanced SQL Programming by Celko or mail to him if you accept comments from him. What the stalker probably doesn't know, is that I and Mr Celko occasionally are involved in some conversation and thus we exchange emails. I don't know if this reference to Mr Celko was made to intimidate me either. So I answered him, still polite, this What do you mean? The SELECT itself has a ”cursor under the hood”. Now the stalker gets rude  But however I mean the solution must no containing any order by, top... No problem, I do not like Peso 2, it’s very non-intelligent and elementary. Yes, Peso 2 is elementary but most performing queries are... And now is the time where I started to feel the stalker really wanted to achieve something else, so I wrote to him So what is your goal? Have a query that performs well, or a query that is super-portable? My Peso 2 outperforms any of your code with a factor of 100 when using more than 100,000 rows. While I awaited his answer, I posted him this query Ok, here is another one -- Peso 3 SELECT             MAX(CASE WHEN d = 1 THEN nbr ELSE NULL END) AS pre_nbr,                    MAX(CASE WHEN d = 1 THEN val ELSE NULL END) AS pre_val,                    MAX(CASE WHEN d = 0 THEN nbr ELSE NULL END) AS nbr,                    MAX(CASE WHEN d = 0 THEN val ELSE NULL END) AS val,                    MAX(CASE WHEN d = -1 THEN nbr ELSE NULL END) AS nxt_nbr,                    MAX(CASE WHEN d = -1 THEN val ELSE NULL END) AS nxt_val FROM               (                              SELECT    nbr,                                        val,                                        ROW_NUMBER() OVER (ORDER BY nbr) AS SeqID                              FROM      dbo.Nums                    ) AS s CROSS JOIN         (                              VALUES    (-1),                                        (0),                                        (1)                    ) AS x(d) GROUP BY           SeqID + x.d HAVING             COUNT(*) > 1 And here is the stats Table 'Nums'. Scan count 1, logical reads 2, physical reads 0, read-ahead reads 0, lob logical reads 0, lob physical reads 0, lob read-ahead reads 0. It beats the hell out of your queries…. Now I finally got a response from my stalker and now I also clicked who he was. This is his reponse Why you post my original method with a bit change under you name? I do not like it. See: http://www.sqlservercentral.com/Forums/Topic468501-362-14.aspx ;WITH C AS ( SELECT seq_nbr, k,        DENSE_RANK() OVER(ORDER BY seq_nbr ASC) + k AS grp_fct   FROM [Sample]         CROSS JOIN         (VALUES (-1), (0), (1)         ) AS D(k) ) SELECT MIN(seq_nbr) AS pre_value,        MAX(CASE WHEN k = 0 THEN seq_nbr END) AS current_value,        MAX(seq_nbr) AS next_value   FROM C GROUP BY grp_fct HAVING min(seq_nbr) < max(seq_nbr); These posts: Posted Tuesday, April 12, 2011 10:04 AM Posted Tuesday, April 12, 2011 1:22 PM Why post a solution where will not work in SQL Server 2000? Wait a minute! His own solution is using both a CTE and a ranking function so his query will not work on SQL Server 2000! Bummer... The reference to "Me not like" are my exact words in a previous topic on SQLTeam.com and when I remembered the phrasing, I also knew who he was. See this topic http://www.sqlteam.com/forums/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=159262 where he writes a query and posts it under my name, as if I wrote it. So I answered him this (less polite). Like I keep track of all topics in the whole world… J So you think you are the only one coming up with this idea? Besides, “M S solution” doesn’t work.   This is the result I get pre_value        current_value                             next_value 1                           1                           5 1                           5                           9 5                           9                           9   And I did nothing like you did here, where you posted a solution which you “thought” I should write http://www.sqlteam.com/forums/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=159262 So why are you yourself using ranking function when this was not allowed per your original email, and no cte? You use CTE in your link above, which do not work in SQL Server 2000. All this makes no sense to me, other than you are trying your best to once in a lifetime create a better performing query than me? After a few hours I get this email back. I don't fully understand it, but it's probably a language barrier. >>Like I keep track of all topics in the whole world… J So you think you are the only one coming up with this idea?<< You right, but do not think you are the first creator of this.   >>Besides, “M S Solution” doesn’t work. This is the result I get <<   Why you get so unimportant mistake? See this post to correct it: Posted 4/12/2011 8:22:23 PM >> So why are you yourself using ranking function when this was not allowed per your original email, and no cte? You use CTE in your link above, which do not work in SQL Server 2000. <<  Again, why you get some unimportant incompatibility? You offer that solution for current goals not me  >> All this makes no sense to me, other than you are trying your best to once in a lifetime create a better performing query than me? <<  No, I only wanted to know who you will solve it. Now I know you do not have a special solution. No problem. No problem for me either. So I just answered him I am not the first, and you are not the first to come up with this idea. So what is your problem? I am pretty sure other people have come up with the same idea before us. I used this technique all the way back to 2007, see http://www.sqlteam.com/forums/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=93911 Let's see if he returns...  He did! >> So what is your problem? << Nothing Thanks for all replies; maybe we have some competitions in future, maybe. Also I like you but you do not attend it. Your behavior with me is not friendly. Not any meeting… Regards //Peso

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• A bounce-rate attack to manipulate SEO ?

  - by Denis Volovik

  This is a question to experienced people that might help us shed some light on the issue. We noticed a very strange behavior on our site, in Google Analytics. Some dude from Finland, namely, from Kouvola city is hitting one of our pages - only one page on our site, 'bout a hundred times per day, all with an average bounce rate of 90%+... This is causing our overall bounce rate to go up by 1 to 3% per day... which is very disturbing.. since we're trying to do our best in order to keep it as low as possible. And obviously having it jumped from ~24% to 27%, just because of that crazy dude is not making us happy at all... We tried implementing a geo-targeted script in order to catch this particular visitor and deliver him a juicy message, and it seemed like it helped in the beginning, it has stopped for a day or two, but now he's back... The geo-targeted script was also logging all IP addresses for page requests originating from Finland in order to find out more details and (in order to block them on the server level, later).. but thing is, it was all mainly cable or DSL connections with various, but not constantly repeating IPs... we are all wondering what is he up to really ? I think that this page should be kept updated with ideas on how to combat this and perhaps someone could also shed light on what it might be ? What is the reason for doing this "bounce-rate attack", as I call it? There was a similar question asked on stackoverflow earlier, with no meaningful answer - here - How to stop bounce rate manipulation.

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• SQL Server PowerShell Provider follows the Version of PowerShell on the Host and other errata

  - by BuckWoody

  There may be some misunderstanding on how the PowerShell Provider for SQL Server works. I’ve written an article or two explaining that you can use PowerShell with SQL Server, without having the SQL Server 2008 (or higher) provider around. After all, PowerShell just uses .NET, and SQL Server “Server Management Objects” or SMO listen to that interface as well. In SQL Server 2008 and higher we created a “MiniShell” for PowerShell that gives you the ability to treat a SQL Server Instance as a drive (called a “Provider” or path or drive) and a few commands (called command-lets). Using these two simple constructs you can move around SQL Server quickly and work with the objects it holds. I read the other day where someone stated that we had “re-compiled” PowerShell, so that you would have version 1.0 from SQL Server and 2.0 on your new server. Not so! Drop to a SQLPS prompt and a PowerShell prompt and type this in each: $PSVersionTable They should return the same value. You can think of a MiniShell as simply a compiled “profile” that gives you those providers and command-lets automatically – that’s all. In fact, you can load the SMO libraries yourself without the SQL Server 2008 Provider anywhere in sight. I do this all the time, since the MiniShell also has other restrictions. Also remember that if you run a PowerShell script as a SQL Agent Job step type (in 2008 and higher) that you’re running under the context of the account that starts Agent – I think most folks know this, but it’s good to keep in mind. There’s a re-written section of Books Online that goes over working with this very nicely – also covers the question “How to I connect to another server using the SQL Server PowerShell Provider” (hint: It’s just CD) and “How do I load all the SMO stuff if I don’t want to use the Provider” and more. Be sure and check out the note at the bottom that explains the firewall exceptions you’ll need to enable to CD to that remote server. Here’s that link: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc281947.aspx Share this post: email it! | bookmark it! | digg it! | reddit! | kick it! | live it!

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• virtual host setup: can't access wordpress site without www

  - by two7s_clash

  I would like to access my site both with and without using the www. Currently it only works with. Leaving out the www just goes to a blank page. Also, wp-admin just loads a blank page too. I have set an A record for mysite.com and www.mysite.com, both pointing to my static Bitnami IP. I also have a subdomain mapped to another directory that is working just fine (conference.mysite.com and www.conference.mysite.com). I'm using a Bitnami stack on an AWS EC2 micro instance. Here is my httpd.conf: ServerRoot "/opt/bitnami/apache2" Listen 80 LoadModule authn_file_module modules/mod_authn_file.so blah blah blah.... LoadModule php5_module modules/libphp5.so <IfModule !mpm_netware_module> <IfModule !mpm_winnt_module> User daemon Group daemon </IfModule> </IfModule> ServerAdmin [email protected] ServerName localhost:80 DocumentRoot "/opt/bitnami/apps/wordpress1/htdocs/" <Directory /> Options FollowSymLinks AllowOverride None Order deny,allow Allow from all </Directory> <Directory "/opt/bitnami/apps/wordpress1/htdocs/"> Options Indexes MultiViews +FollowSymLinks LanguagePriority en AllowOverride All Order allow,deny Allow from all </Directory> <IfModule dir_module> DirectoryIndex index.html index.php </IfModule> <FilesMatch "^\\.ht"> Order allow,deny Deny from all Satisfy All </FilesMatch> ErrorLog "logs/error_log" LogLevel warn <IfModule log_config_module> LogFormat "%h %l %u %t \\"%r\\" %>s %b \\"%{Referer}i\\" \\"%{User-Agent}i\\"" combined LogFormat "%h %l %u %t \\"%r\\" %>s %b" common <IfModule logio_module> LogFormat "%h %l %u %t \\"%r\\" %>s %b \\"%{Referer}i\\" \\"%{User-Agent}i\\" %I %O" combinedio </IfModule> CustomLog "logs/access_log" common </IfModule> <IfModule alias_module> ScriptAlias /cgi-bin/ "/opt/bitnami/apache2/cgi-bin/" </IfModule> <Directory "/opt/bitnami/apache2/cgi-bin"> AllowOverride None Options None Order allow,deny Allow from all </Directory> DefaultType text/plain <IfModule mime_module> TypesConfig conf/mime.types AddType application/x-compress .Z AddType application/x-gzip .gz .tgz </IfModule> Include conf/extra/httpd-mpm.conf <IfModule ssl_module> SSLRandomSeed startup builtin SSLRandomSeed connect builtin </IfModule> AddType application/x-httpd-php .php .phtml LoadModule wsgi_module modules/mod_wsgi.so WSGIPythonHome /opt/bitnami/python ServerSignature Off ServerTokens Prod AddType application/x-httpd-php .php PHPIniDir "/opt/bitnami/php/etc" Include "/opt/bitnami/apps/phpmyadmin/conf/phpmyadmin.conf" ExtendedStatus On <Location /server-status> SetHandler server-status Order Deny,Allow Deny from all Allow from localhost </Location> Include "/opt/bitnami/apache2/conf/bitnami/httpd.conf" Include "/opt/bitnami/apps/virtualhost.conf" Here is my virtual hosts file: NameVirtualHost *:80 <VirtualHost *:80> ServerAdmin xx DocumentRoot "/opt/bitnami/apps/wordpress1/htdocs" ServerName mbird.com ServerAlias www.mbird.com ErrorLog "logs/wordpress-error_log" CustomLog "logs/wordpress-access_log" common </VirtualHost> <Directory "/opt/bitnami/apps/wordpress1/htdocs"> Options Indexes MultiViews +FollowSymLinks AllowOverride All Order allow,deny Allow from all </Directory> ### WordPress conference.mbird.com configuration ### <VirtualHost *:80> ServerAdmin [email protected] DocumentRoot "/opt/bitnami/apps/wordpress/htdocs" ServerName conference.mbird.com ServerAlias www.conference.mbird.com ErrorLog "logs/confwordpress-error_log" CustomLog "logs/confwordpress-access_log" common </VirtualHost> <Directory "/opt/bitnami/apps/wordpress/htdocs"> Options Indexes MultiViews +FollowSymLinks AllowOverride All Order allow,deny Allow from all </Directory> ###

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• Keep chrome extensions icons permanently ordered

  - by nrhine1

  I like to have the extensions like Gmail Checker and Google Voice checker closest to my eyes, therefore closer to the url bar. I have tried disabling and enabling extensions to order them correctly, but once I close chrome, they appear in a different order (always the same undesirable "different" order). Is there a way to prevent them from rearranging themselves? Thanks

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• Unit testing in Django

  - by acjohnson55

  I'm really struggling to write effective unit tests for a large Django project. I have reasonably good test coverage, but I've come to realize that the tests I've been writing are definitely integration/acceptance tests, not unit tests at all, and I have critical portions of my application that are not being tested effectively. I want to fix this ASAP. Here's my problem. My schema is deeply relational, and heavily time-oriented, giving my model object high internal coupling and lots of state. Many of my model methods query based on time intervals, and I've got a lot of auto_now_add going on in timestamped fields. So take a method that looks like this for example: def summary(self, startTime=None, endTime=None): # ... logic to assign a proper start and end time # if none was provided, probably using datetime.now() objects = self.related_model_set.manager_method.filter(...) return sum(object.key_method(startTime, endTime) for object in objects) How does one approach testing something like this? Here's where I am so far. It occurs to me that the unit testing objective should be given some mocked behavior by key_method on its arguments, is summary correctly filtering/aggregating to produce a correct result? Mocking datetime.now() is straightforward enough, but how can I mock out the rest of the behavior? I could use fixtures, but I've heard pros and cons of using fixtures for building my data (poor maintainability being a con that hits home for me). I could also setup my data through the ORM, but that can be limiting, because then I have to create related objects as well. And the ORM doesn't let you mess with auto_now_add fields manually. Mocking the ORM is another option, but not only is it tricky to mock deeply nested ORM methods, but the logic in the ORM code gets mocked out of the test, and mocking seems to make the test really dependent on the internals and dependencies of the function-under-test. The toughest nuts to crack seem to be the functions like this, that sit on a few layers of models and lower-level functions and are very dependent on the time, even though these functions may not be super complicated. My overall problem is that no matter how I seem to slice it, my tests are looking way more complex than the functions they are testing.

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• Pong Collision Help in C# w/ XNA

  - by Ramses Brown

  Edit: My goal is to have it function like this: Ball hits 1st Quarter = rebounds higher (aka Y++) Ball hits 2nd Quarter = rebounds higher (using random value) Ball hits 3rd Quarter = rebounds lower (using random value) Ball hits 4th Quarter = rebounds lower (aka Y--) I'm currently using Rectangle Collision for my collision detection, and it's worked. Now I wish to expand it. Instead of it simply detecting whether or not the paddle/ball intersect, I want to make it so that it can determine what section of the paddle gets hit. I wanted it in 4 parts, with each having a different reaction to impact. My first thought is to base it on the Ball's Y position compared to the Paddle's Y position. But since I want it in 4 parts, I don't know how to do that. So it's essentially be if (ball.Y > Paddle.Y) { PaddleSection1 == true; } Except modified so that instead of being top half/bottom half, it's 1st Quarter, etc.

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• Encrypting your SQL Server Passwords in Powershell

  - by laerte

  A couple of months ago, a friend of mine who is now bewitched by the seemingly supernatural abilities of Powershell (+1 for the team) asked me what, initially, appeared to be a trivial question: "Laerte, I do not have the luxury of being able to work with my SQL servers through Windows Authentication, and I need a way to automatically pass my username and password. How would you suggest I do this?" Given that I knew he, like me, was using the SQLPSX modules (an open source project created by Chad Miller; a fantastic library of reusable functions and PowerShell scripts), I merrily replied, "Simply pass the Username and Password in SQLPSX functions". He rather pointed responded: "My friend, I might as well pass: Username-'Me'-password 'NowEverybodyKnowsMyPassword'" As I do have the pleasure of working with Windows Authentication, I had not really thought this situation though yet (and thank goodness I only revealed my temporary ignorance to a friend, and the embarrassment was minimized). After discussing this puzzle with Chad Miller, he showed me some code for saving passwords on SQL Server Tables, which he had demo'd in his Powershell ETL session at Tampa SQL Saturday (and you can download the scripts from here). The solution seemed to be pretty much ready to go, so I showed it to my Authentication-impoverished friend, only to discover that we were only half-way there: "That's almost what I want, but the details need to be stored in my local txt file, together with the names of the servers that I'll actually use the Powershell scripts on. Something like: Server1,UserName,Password Server2,UserName,Password" I thought about it for just a few milliseconds (Ha! Of course I'm not telling you how long it actually took me, I have to do my own marketing, after all) and the solution was finally ready. First , we have to download Library-StringCripto (with many thanks to Steven Hystad), which is composed of two functions: One for encryption and other for decryption, both of which are used to manage the password. If you want to know more about the library, you can see more details in the help functions. Next, we have to create a txt file with your encrypted passwords:$ServerName = "Server1" $UserName = "Login1" $Password = "Senha1" $PasswordToEncrypt = "YourPassword" $UserNameEncrypt = Write-EncryptedString -inputstring $UserName -Password $PasswordToEncrypt $PasswordEncrypt = Write-EncryptedString -inputstring $Password -Password $PasswordToEncrypt "$($Servername),$($UserNameEncrypt),$($PasswordEncrypt)" | Out-File c:\temp\ServersSecurePassword.txt -Append $ServerName = "Server2" $UserName = "Login2" $Password = "senha2" $PasswordToEncrypt = "YourPassword" $UserNameEncrypt = Write-EncryptedString -inputstring $UserName -Password $PasswordToEncrypt $PasswordEncrypt = Write-EncryptedString -inputstring $Password -Password $PasswordToEncrypt "$($Servername),$($UserNameEncrypt),$($PasswordEncrypt)" | Out-File c:\temp\ ServersSecurePassword.txt -Append .And in the c:\temp\ServersSecurePassword.txt file which we've just created, you will find your Username and Password, all neatly encrypted. Let's take a look at what the txt looks like: .and in case you're wondering, Server names, Usernames and Passwords are all separated by commas. Decryption is actually much more simple:Read-EncryptedString -InputString $EncryptString -password "YourPassword" (Just remember that the Password you're trying to decrypt must be exactly the same as the encrypted phrase.) Finally, just to show you how smooth this solution is, let's say I want to use the Invoke-DBMaint function from SQLPSX to perform a checkdb on a system database: it's just a case of split, decrypt and be happy!Get-Content c:\temp\ServerSecurePassword.txt | foreach { [array] $Split = ($_).split(",") Invoke-DBMaint -server $($Split[0]) -UserName (Read-EncryptedString -InputString $Split[1] -password "YourPassword" ) -Password (Read-EncryptedString -InputString $Split[2] -password "YourPassword" ) -Databases "SYSTEM" -Action "CHECK_DB" -ReportOn c:\Temp } This is why I love Powershell.

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• Developing an ELO like point system for a multiplayer gaming site

  - by Alejandro Piad

  I'm currently working on a gaming site where users will submit virtual players for different games, like Chess, Nash, Backgammon, Go, etc. The idea is that users don't compete themselves, but through their virtual players. There will be leagues, tournaments, and other competition formats. The question is which would be a good rating system for users in this environment. Take into account that every user may have many different virtual players playing in many different games. As a general guideline I would like to guarantee the following properties: Users who have a lot of mediocre players should not score higher than users with a few very good players. A user with a high rating should not be penalized if he adds a new bad player, until he has had enough time to improve his player. Users who don't play often should not score higher than users who play every day. Thanks in advance.

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• Is Infiniband going to get squeezed by iWARP and external QPI?

  - by andy.grover

  The Inquirer certainly thinks so.However, I'm not so sure it makes sense to compare Infiniband to an as-yet-unannounced optical external QPI. QPI is currently a processor interconnect. CPUs, RAM, and devices connected by it are conceptually part of the same machine -- they run a single OS, for example. They are both "networks" or "fabrics" but they have very different design trade-offs.Another widely-used bus in the system is closer to Infiniband than QPI -- PCI Express. Isn't it more likely that PCIe could take on IB? There are companies already who have solutions that use external PCI Express for cluster interconnect, but these have not gained significant market share. Why would QPI, a technology whose sweet spot is even further from Infiniband's than PCIe, be able to challenge Infiniband? It's hard to speculate without much information, but right now it doesn't seem likely to me.The other prediction made in the article is that Intel's 10GbE iWARP card could squeeze IB on the low end, due to its greater compatibility and lower cost.It's definitely never a good idea to bet against Ethernet when it comes to mass-market, commodity networking. Ethernet will win. 10GbE will win. But, there are now two competing ways to implement the low-latency RDMA Verbs interface on top of Ethernet. iWARP is essentially RDMA over TCP/IP over Ethernet. The new alternative is IBoE (Infiniband over Ethernet, aka RoCEE, aka "Rocky"). This encapsulates the IB packet protocol directly in the Ethernet frame. It loses the layer 3 routability of iWARP, but better maintains software compatibility with existing apps that use IB, and is simpler to implement in both software and hardware. iWARP has a substantial head start, but I believe that IBoE silicon will eventually be cheaper, and more likely to be implemented in commodity Ethernet hardware.I think IBoE is going to take low-end market share from traditional IB, but I think this is a situation IB hardware vendors have no problem accepting. Commoditized IBoE NICs invite greater use of RDMA features, and when higher performance is needed, customers can upgrade to "real" IB, maintaining IB's justification for higher prices. (IB max interconnect speeds have historically been 2-4x higher than Ethernet, and I don't see that changing.)(ObDisclosure: My current employer now sells IB hardware. I previously also worked at Intel. My opinions are my own, duh.)

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• FlasCC requirements and limitations?

  - by Arthur Wulf White

  It is now available for download. It says you need twice* as many bits as I have. Why would you need more bits to compile code? Does that mean you need more bits to run flash games writtes with flasCC Did anyone try it out and happens to know the answers? http://gaming.adobe.com/technologies/flascc/ Minimum system requirements Flash Player 11 or higher Flex SDK 4.6 or higher Java Virtual Machine (64-bit) Windows Microsoft® Windows® 7 (64-bit edition) Cygwin (included) *This is meant as a joke. however I do own a 32-bit laptop and I am wondering why you need 64-bit. Afaik - You only need 64-bit if you want to run a system that has more than 4gigs of memory. Why would any flash game require more than 4 gigs of memory. The only system that is 64-bits and does not have 4gigs of memory that I can quickly recall is that hilarious Nintendo that came ages ago with a Motorola CPU.

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• Brother MFC 7220 Replacement Toner

  In years past, printers were solely for the purpose of making copies in the office. Today, printers come with many functions so many office functions can be done using the same equipment. The Brother... [Author: Ben Pate - Computers and Internet - March 31, 2010]

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• How to Programmatically Split and Manipulate Rows of Data From Excel

  - by Charlene

  I am hoping one of you will be able to help get me started on this issue. I need to create some sort of macro or VBA code to split and manipulate rows of data in Excel. For this example, we have 5 rows of data. The first 3 rows are item information for Order # 0000000000-00 and the last 2 rows are item information for order # 0000000000-01. I need one row ("HDR") for each order number, and one row ("ITM") for each product per order. I have included an example below showing the data I will receive and the desired outcome. Raw Data: order-id product-num date buyer-name product-name quantity-purchased 0000000000-00 10000000000000 5/29/2014 John Doe Product 0 1 0000000000-00 10000000000001 5/29/2014 John Doe Product 1 2 0000000000-00 10000000000002 5/29/2014 John Doe Product 2 1 0000000000-01 10000000000002 5/30/2014 Jane Doe Product 2 1 0000000000-01 10000000000003 5/30/2014 Jane Doe Product 3 1 Desired Outcome: HDR 0000000000-00 John Doe 5/29/2014 ITM 10000000000000 Product 0 1 ITM 10000000000001 Product 1 2 ITM 10000000000002 Product 2 1 HDR 0000000000-01 Jane Doe 5/30/2014 ITM 10000000000002 Product 2 1 ITM 10000000000003 Product 3 1 Any and all help would be much appreciated!!! Thank you.

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• Educause Top-Ten IT Issues - the most change in a decade or more

  - by user739873

  The Education IT Issue Panel has released the 2012 top-ten issues facing higher education IT leadership, and instead of the customary reshuffling of the same deck, the issues reflect much of the tumult and dynamism facing higher education generally.  I find it interesting (and encouraging) that at the top of this year's list is "Updating IT Professionals' Skills and Roles to Accommodate Emerging Technologies and Changing IT Management and Service Delivery Models."  This reflects, in my view, the realization that higher education IT must change in order to fully realize the potential for transforming the institution, and therefore it's people must learn new skills, understand and accept new ways of solving problems, and not be tied down by past practices or institutional inertia. What follows in the remaining 9 top issues all speak, in some form or fashion, to the need for dramatic change, but not just in the areas of "funding IT" (code for cost containment or reduction), but rather the need to increase effectiveness and efficiency of the institution through the use of technology—leveraging the wave of BYOD (Bring Your Own Device) to the institution's advantage, rather than viewing it as a threat and a problem to be contained. Although it's #10 of 10, IT Governance (and establishment and implementation of the governance model throughout the institution) is key to effectively acting upon many of the preceding issues in this year's list.  In the majority of cases, technology exists to meet the needs and requirements to effectively address many of the challenges outlined in top-ten issues list. Which brings me to my next point. Although I try not to sound too much like an Oracle commercial in these (all too infrequent) blog posts, I can't help but point out how much confluence there is between several of the top issues this year and what my colleagues and I have been evangelizing for some time. Starting from the bottom of the list up: 1) I'm gratified that research and the IT challenges it presents has made the cut.  Big Data (or Large Data as it's phased in the report) is rapidly going to overwhelm much of what exists today even at our most prepared and well-equipped research universities.  Combine large data with the significantly more stringent requirements around data preservation, archiving, sharing, curation, etc. coming from granting agencies like NSF, and you have the brewing storm that could result in a lot of "one-off" solutions to a problem that could very well be addressed collectively and "at scale."   2) Transformative effects of IT – while I see more and more examples of this, there is still much more that can be achieved. My experience tells me that culture (as the report indicates or at least poses the question) gets in the way more than technology not being up to task.  We spend too much time on "context" and not "core," and get lost in the weeds on the journey to truly transforming the institution with technology. 3) Analytics as a key element in improving various institutional outcomes.  In our work around Student Success, we see predictive "academic" analytics as essential to getting in front of the Student Success issue, regardless of how an institution or collections of institutions defines success.  Analytics must be part of the fabric of the key academic enterprise applications, not a bolt-on.  We will spend a significant amount of time on this topic during our semi-annual Education Industry Strategy Council meeting in Washington, D.C. later this month. 4) Cloud strategy for the broad range of applications in the academic enterprise.  Some of the recent work by Casey Green at the Campus Computing Survey would seem to indicate that there is movement in this area but mostly in what has been termed "below the campus" application areas such as collaboration tools, recruiting, and alumni relations.  It's time to get serious about sourcing elements of mature applications like student information systems, HR, Finance, etc. leveraging a model other than traditional on-campus custom. I've only selected a few areas of the list to highlight, but the unifying theme here (and this is where I run the risk of sounding like an Oracle commercial) is that these lofty goals cry out for partners that can bring economies of scale to bear on the problems married with a deep understanding of the nuances unique to higher education.  In a recent piece in Educause Review on Student Information Systems, the author points out that "best of breed is back". Unfortunately I am compelled to point out that best of breed is a large part of the reason we have made as little progress as we have as an industry in advancing some of the causes outlined above.  Don't confuse "integrated" and "full stack" for vendor lock-in.  The best-of-breed market forces that Ron points to ensure that solutions have to be "integratable" or they don't survive in the marketplace. However, by leveraging the efficiencies afforded by adopting solutions that are pre-integrated (and possibly metered out as a service) allows us to shed unnecessary costs – as difficult as these decisions are to make and to drive throughout the organization. Cole

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• Difference between IN and FIND_IN_SET

  - by Madhan ayyasamy

  Hi Friends,You may be confused with IN() and FIND_IN_SET() MYSQL functions. There are specific case/situation for both functions where to use which Mysql function. Look at below explanation about IN() and FIND_IN_SET()IN() : This function is used when you have a list of possible values and a single value in your database.Example: WHERE memberid IN (1,2,3)FIND_IN_SET() : This function is used where you have comma separated list of values stored in database and want to see if a certain value exists in that comma seperated list.Example: WHERE FIND_IN_SET( ‘table column name like id’, 'dynamic idlist' )

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• Change the sorting of "From:" mail accounts in Apple Mail

  - by Ted Sorensen

  I have 11 email accounts (work etc). When I'm creating a new message, the "from:" field is a dropdown list of my email accounts I wish to send the email from. They are in the order of how I setup my accounts initially, frustrating in hindsight, having not known how I create my accounts (what order) would be a convenience issue down the road. So, does anyone know how to modify the sort order of mail accounts?

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• Harnessing Business Events for Predictive Decision Making - part 1 / 3

  - by Sanjeev Sharma

  Businesses have long relied on data mining to elicit patterns and forecast future demand and supply trends. Improvements in computing hardware, specifically storage and compute capacity, have significantly enhanced the ability to store and analyze mountains of data in ever shrinking time-frames. Nevertheless, the reality is that data growth is outpacing storage capacity by a factor of two and computing power is still very much bounded by Moore's Law, doubling only every 18 months.Faced with this data explosion, businesses are exploring means to develop human brain-like capabilities in their decision systems (including BI and Analytics) to make sense of the data storm, in other words business events, in real-time and respond pro-actively rather than re-actively. It is more like having a little bit of the right information just a little bit before hand than having all of the right information after the fact. To appreciate this thought better let's first understand the workings of the human brain.Neuroscience research has revealed that the human brain is predictive in nature and that talent is nothing more than exceptional predictive ability. The cerebral-cortex, part of the human brain responsible for cognition, thought, language etc., comprises of five layers. The lowest layer in the hierarchy is responsible for sensory perception i.e. discrete, detail-oriented tasks whereas each of the above layers increasingly focused on assembling higher-order conceptual models. Information flows both up and down the layered memory hierarchy. This allows the conceptual mental-models to be refined over-time through experience and repetition. Secondly, and more importantly, the top-layers are able to prime the lower layers to anticipate certain events based on the existing mental-models thereby giving the brain a predictive ability. In a way the human brain develops a "memory of the future", some sort of an anticipatory thinking which let's it predict based on occurrence of events in real-time. A higher order of predictive ability stems from being able to recognize the lack of certain events. For instance, it is one thing to recognize the beats in a music track and another to detect beats that were missed, which involves a higher order predictive ability.Existing decision systems analyze historical data to identify patterns and use statistical forecasting techniques to drive planning. They are similar to the human-brain in that they employ business rules very much like mental-models to chunk and classify information. However unlike the human brain existing decision systems are unable to evolve these rules automatically (AI still best suited for highly specific tasks) and  predict the future based on real-time business events. Mistake me not,  existing decision systems remain vital to driving long-term and broader business planning. For instance, a telco will still rely on BI and Analytics software to plan promotions and optimize inventory but tap into business events enabled predictive insight to identify specifically which customers are likely to churn and engage with them pro-actively. In the next post, i will depict the technology components that enable businesses to harness real-time events and drive predictive decision making.

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• C-states and P-states : confounding factors for benchmarking

  - by Dave

  I was recently looking into a performance issue in the java.util.concurrent (JUC) fork-join pool framework related to particularly long latencies when trying to wake (unpark) threads in the pool. Eventually I tracked the issue down to the power & scaling governor and idle-state policies on x86. Briefly, P-states refer to the set of clock rates (speeds) at which a processor can run. C-states reflect the possible idle states. The deeper the C-state (higher numerical values) the less power the processor will draw, but the longer it takes the processor to respond and exit that sleep state on the next idle to non-idle transition. In some cases the latency can be worse than 100 microseconds. C0 is normal execution state, and P0 is "full speed" with higher Pn values reflecting reduced clock rates. C-states are P-states are orthogonal, although P-states only have meaning at C0. You could also think of the states as occupying a spectrum as follows : P0, P1, P2, Pn, C1, C2, ... Cn, where all the P-states are at C0. Our fork-join framework was calling unpark() to wake a thread from the pool, and that thread was being dispatched onto a processor at deep C-state, so we were observing rather impressive latencies between the time of the unpark and the time the thread actually resumed and was able to accept work. (I originally thought we were seeing situations where the wakee was preempting the waker, but that wasn't the case. I'll save that topic for a future blog entry). It's also worth pointing out that higher P-state values draw less power and there's usually some latency in ramping up the clock (P-states) in response to offered load. The issue of C-states and P-states isn't new and has been described at length elsewhere, but it may be new to Java programmers, adding a new confounding factor to benchmarking methodologies and procedures. To get stable results I'd recommend running at C0 and P0, particularly for server-side applications. As appropriate, disabling "turbo" mode may also be prudent. But it also makes sense to run with the system defaults to understand if your application exhibits any performance sensitivity to power management policies. The operating system power management sub-system typically control the P-state and C-states based on current and recent load. The scaling governor manages P-states. Operating systems often use adaptive policies that try to avoid deep C-states for some period if recent deep idle episodes proved to be very short and futile. This helps make the system more responsive under bursty or otherwise irregular load. But it also means the system is stateful and exhibits a memory effect, which can further complicate benchmarking. Forcing C0 + P0 should avoid this issue.

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• Should one comment differently in functional languages

  - by Tom Squires

  I'm just getting started with functional programming and I'm wondering the correct way to comment my code. It seems a little redundant to comment a short function as the names and signature already should tell you everything you need to know. Commenting larger functions also seems a little redundant since they are generally comprised of smaller self-descriptive functions. What is the correct way to comment a functional program? Should I use the same approach as in iterative programming?

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• What is an Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) System?

  In order to understand what an Enterprise Resource Planning System is let us look at a classic American kids snack, the Rice Krispy Treat if we conceptually view the treat as a company’s internal applications as a whole.  Furthermore we can view a company’s departmentalized software applications as the theoretical Rice Krispies in the treat. In addition, the Rice Krispies consist of a combination of ingredients that be broken down into data, user interfaces and business logic. Next, we have the margarine or butter that is used to help the marshmallows bind with the Rice Krispies; this role in our conceptual view is taken by a data source typically as a relational database management system. Finally we have the melted marshmallows which act as the ERP software that connects all of the individual departmental software applications in to one unified system that allows all user one unified system to interact with all of the individual dispersed systems. An example of this would be if a customer places an order with a telephone operator and once the orders is processed an employee in the shipping department can see the order ready for fulfillment on his order screen. The ERP acts a go between for various independent departmental systems so that they can integrate with one another.

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• Signed and unsigned, and how bit extension works

  - by hatorade

  unsigned short s; s = 0xffff; int i = s; How does the extension work here? 2 larger order bytes are added, but I'm confused whether 1's or 0's are extended there. This is probably platform dependent so let's focus on what Unix does. Would the two bigger order bytes of the int be filled with 1's or 0's, and why? Basically, does the computer know that s is unsigned, and correctly assign 0's to the higher order bits of the int? So i is now 0x0000ffff? Or since ints are default signed in unix does it take the signed bit from s (a 1) and copy that to the higher order bytes?

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• How Do Search Engines Rank Combined Keywords?

  - by Itai

  Suppose: A site that ranks very well (1st result) for something like 'best blue widget'. It also ranks very well (1st page) for 'blue widget'. It ranks not so well (2nd page) for 'widget'. Obviously, the number of monthly searches are much higher for 'widget' than for 'blue widget', which is still higher than for 'best blue widget'. Now the actual question: When creating new external links, how does each of the following anchor texts affect SEO for of these searches? widget blue widget best blue widget [HINT: The answer should be a 3x3 table] [NOTE: Assume the site is relevant for all these keyword combination]

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• Get 100 highest numbers from an infinite list

  - by Sachin Shanbhag

  One of my friend was asked this interview question - "There is a constant flow of numbers coming in from some infinite list of numbers out of which you need to maintain a datastructure as to return the top 100 highest numbers at any given point of time. Assume all the numbers are whole numbers only." This is simple, you need to keep a sorted list in descending order and keep a track on lowest number in that list. If new number obtained is greater than that lowest number then you have to remove that lowest number and insert the new number in sorted list as required. Then question was extended - "Can you make sure that the Order for insertion should be O(1)? Is it possible?" As far as I knew, even if you add a new number to list and sort it again using any sort algorithm, it would by best be O(logn) for quicksort (I think). So my friend told it was not possible. But he was not convinced, he asked to maintain any other data structure rather than a list. I thought of balanced Binary tree, but even there you will not get the insertion with order of 1. So the same question I have too now. Wanted to know if there is any such data structure which can do insertion in Order of 1 for above problem or it is not possible at all.

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• Codeigniter Controller function in a view [closed]

  - by Y2ok

  I'm using CodeIgniter and I have two controllers: Index controller that loads the website view Personal panel controller that will do all login, registration and personal panel functions. (Functions are loaded from models.) The problem is that I don't have any clue how to insert that controller in a view file or in the other controller file so that it would load when I press submit button for a form or if the session's loggedin is with value true.

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