Search Results

Search found 387 results on 16 pages for 'edward burns'.

Page 15/16 | < Previous Page | 11 12 13 14 15 16  | Next Page >

• MySQL Connect Keynotes and Presentations Available Online

  - by Bertrand Matthelié

  72 1024x768 Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0cm 5.4pt 0cm 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0cm; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:11.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-ascii-font-family:Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-fareast; mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;} Following the tremendous success of MySQL Connect, you can now watch some of the keynotes online: The State of the Dolphin – by Oracle Chief Corporate Architect Edward Screven and MySQL Vice President of Engineering Tomas Ulin 72 1024x768 Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0cm 5.4pt 0cm 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0cm; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:10.0pt; font-family:"Cambria","serif";} MySQL Perspectives – featuring power users of MySQL who share their experiences and perspectives: Jeremy Cole, DBA Team Manager, Twitter Daniel Austin, Chief Architect, PayPal Ash Kanagat, IT Director; and Shivinder Singh, Database Architect, Verizon Wireless You can also access slides from a number of MySQL Connect presentations in the Content Catalog. Missing ones will be added shortly (provided the speakers consented to it). Enjoy!

  Read the article

• Xbox 360 formatting for MP4 h.264?

  - by Kayle

  For the life of me, I can't get the Xbox 360 to recognize anything other than a WMV. It's full updated with Xbox Live and I even added all the Video apps (Zune, Netflix, etc) just to see if it would force some sort of codec update. I'm using handbrake, at the moment, to try and convert an mkv with subtitles. Handbrake burns the subtitles into the video for me, which is important. I can't figure out what is missing though, as the Xbox refuses to acknowledge my MP4s. Here's the VLC codec info output: As far as I can tell, this is EXACTLY what the xbox supports. I don't want to convert every video twice by throwing it through Windows Movie Maker just to get it to WMV. None of the converters mentions above output to WMV and I don't like WMV since it's not as universal as MP4. I've tried changing the container name manually to M4V, MOV, and AVI to see if I can trick the Xbox... no beans. The video displays perfectly in WMP, of course. If I convert it to WMV, suddenly it works fine. But I don't find this acceptable, as I know the Xbox is supposed to support other filetypes. If anyone knows why my Xbox won't play anything but WMVs, I would be very appreciative to know why! It's driving me nuts. The only other information I can think to include is that it's about 3 years old and of the cheapest variety (Xbox Arcade). I've added a hard drive, xbox live, and have thoroughly updated it. Maybe there's a specific video update I'm unaware of??

  Read the article

• Fedora-13 not detecting USB HDD enclosure (with HDD)

  - by Ramy

  I recently purchased this enclosure: http://www.amazon.com/Inland-2-5-Inc.../dp/B003SZ2Y12 and this HDD: http://www.amazon.com/Seagate-Barrac...3811667&sr=8-1 Now, I let my brother in law use the enclosure with his 160GB disk to back some stuff up. He then gave me that disk in my enclosure and I backed up my computer and my fiances computer. So...obviously, i had no problem mounting that disk. I plan on keeping this disk as my "natural disaster backup" (in case my apartment building burns down, i still have that disk with my stuff backed up). I want to use the 1.5T disk as my regular/more frequent backup device, but it doesn't seem to be mounting to my F-13 machine. I searched through this forum and found someone advising to run the following: # mount -t vfat /dev/sda1 /mnt this is the output i get when I run that: mount: /dev/sda1 already mounted or /mnt busy mount: according to mtab, /dev/sda1 is mounted on /boot Thing is, shouldn't this disk automatically mount just like the LAST disk in the same enclosure with the same USB cable and power supply? Any help would be greatly appreciated. THANKS!

  Read the article

• DPM 2007 clashing with existing SQL backup job

  - by Paul D'Ambra

  I've recently installed a DPM2007 server on Server 2003 and have set up a protection group against a server 2003 server running SQL 2005 SP3. The SQL server in question has a full backup (as a sql agent job) once a day and transaction log backups hourly. These are zipped up and FTP'd to a server offsite by a scheduled task. Since adding the DPM job I'm receiving many error messages: DPM tried to do a SQL log backup, either as part of a backup job or a recovery to latest point in time job. The SQL log backup job has detected a discontinuity in the SQL log chain for database SERVER_NAME\DB_Name since the last backup. All incremental backup jobs will fail until an express full backup runs. My google-fu suggests that I need to change the full backup my sqlagent job is running to a copy_only job. But I think this means that I can't use that backup with the transaction_logs to restore the database if the building (including the DPM server) burns down. I'm sure I'm missing something obvious and thought I'd see what the hivemind suggests. It is an option to set-up a co-located DPM server elsewhere and have DPM stream the backup but that's obviously more expensive than the current set up. Many thanks in advance

  Read the article

• Dealing with AVCHD. Any free software to extract or edit AVCHD video?

  - by Kelsey

  I have a Panasonic HDC-SD5 video carmera which records in HD format to a memory card. It also came with a DVD burner which burns this format to DVD which I need a blu-ray player to view. I can get about 30 min worth of video on 1 DVD. My problem is the software that comes with the camera is not very good at all so I am constantly just using the 'backup' feature in the included burner (connect drive to camera, push backup, and it spits out up to 4 DVDs worth of HD video). Now that I have the video backed up on DVD in the HD format (blu-ray), is there any free software that I can use to edit this video and create other HD DVD's with my own menus, transitions, etc? I was considering buying Pinnacle Studio but I wanted to exaust any free options before biting the bullet. Any suggestions for software I could use or anything else I could do to make dealing with this AVCHD format any easier that I am unaware of? Edit: Sorry forgot to include that I am running Windows Vista 64-bit. Edit: Still haven't found anything that is truely free. Everything has limitations by either time, watermark the video or degrade the quality. Edit: So I still haven't found really anything, so is there some software I can use to convert the video to another format that I then could use to edit the video?

  Read the article

• Can I use a Windows Server 2003 Domain Controller but my home router for DNS?

  - by NetworkingWannabie

  Hi All Probably easiest to start with a description of my current setup, which works (oh, and this is a home setup not an office or anything): I have an ADSL modem with a static IP address (192.168.128.1), and its DHCP capability is disabled. I have a permanently powered up Windows Server 2003 machine with a fixed IP (192.168.128.2) which provides my domain controller, dhcp, and dns. The default gateway for everything is my ADSL modem everything is setup to use the WS2003 machine as the primary DNS with the ADSL modem as Secondary DNS just in case the server goes down (everything includes the server itself). Lastly, just in case it's relevant, I have my DHCP leases set to infinite (or whatever the right term is). Everything is pretty hunky dory. Except, that is, for the fact that my server is ALWAYS on, and it isn't always used, so I'm burning juice that I don't need to - my server burns around 120W which isn't immense but isn't irrelevant either, so I'd like to put it into a stand-by state when it isn't being used (the more standby the better) and then get the clients to wake it up. Am I correct in assuming that this won't work at the moment - A given client would need an IP address to wake the machine up, and it needs to machine to be awake to get an IP - catch 22? Assuming I'm correct, can I move to using my router (which is always on) for DHCP? What impact will this have on DC and DNS? Alternatively, does anyone have a better way for me to achieve this? Can I get the server to wake up when it sees clients look for a DHCP server, etc? Wow, that came out longer than expected! Thanks for your help.

  Read the article

• Keeping Xv Overlay configuration throughout an X session.

  - by kriss

  After upgrading my Linux system from Ubuntu 9.04 to Ubuntu 10.10, I suceeded correcting most problems (all related to Intel 82865G Integrated Graphics Adapter support and compiz is still not working but that's another matter) but for one I only have a partial solution. Whenever I play a video the colors are much too saturated. This is really a problem for tones of skins that appears reddish (everyone seems to be coming back from a ski vacation with deep sun burns). As this effect only occurs with videos, not with pictures, I finally figured out it was related to Video Overlays configuration and I can correct it typing: xvattr -a XV_SATURATION -v 120 This change the default saturation value, which is 500 and much too high in my case, at eye sight the correct value seems to be between 100 and 150. Now my problem is that I have to type the above command each time I run a video. If I type it before running the video it has no effect, if I close the video and open a new one, I have to type it again, etc. I tried to put it in Xsession and (logically) it has no effect either. How could I do to get the correct setting whenever I run a video without typing the above command every time ?

  Read the article

• Copying windows home server backup offsite

  - by Simon

  What ways are there to copy a windows home server backup to an offsite location? I'm talking specifically (and only) about the automated backup of my entire machine, and not the shared network folders. I am 90% working away from home on my laptop which has a 640GB drive so the shared folders are essentially useless to me. I backup every night, but if my house burns down or broken into the I'm in serious serious trouble ! I'm really looking for some alternative way to back up my entire machine - which much not interfere with the reliability or speed by which my WHS backs up my laptop every night. Either a way to 'export' a complete machine backup from the server, or recommendations on non-conflicting software I can backup to a 1TB drive at work are what I'm looking for. Note: I believe that WHS uses its own completely proprietary backup and doesn't use things like any 'backup bit' or 'archive bit'. I just dont want to install some other backup software that will conflict. PS I'm now running Windows 7 and just realized that I should probably check out the backup functionality it gives me. I assume that won't conflict right! Edit: Thanks for the hosted solutions. I'd also appreciate ways to backup to an 'offsite' location that I control - like my office vs. my home. The hosted solutions I think will be too slow or expensive for my needs.

  Read the article

• DVD/CD burning .zip: is it more reliable, faster, longer lasting to burn a zip of files rather than the files as a folder?

  - by Rob

  Is it more reliable, faster, longer lasting to burn to CD/DVD a zip (or a few large zips) of files rather than the files as a folder? Just thinking if 1000s of small files would not be as efficiently recorded compared with one or a few large zips. Also, even after the burning program verifies the disc, I also use Beyond Compare to compare the files with those on the disc. Always binary compares as identical but I hear the drive stuttering presumably as the head is being shifted only slightly each time to seek the next file, which leads me to think that its best to make one or more zips and copy those locally to compare. Or is it that burning invidual files to the disc is not as readable which causes the head to stutter. There aren't any problems, my disc burns are reliable, just thinking more of efficiency and longevity, the discs burn and verify fast enough on my 18x DVD burner. I'm using ImgBurn mostly. Also used Nero in the past. I burn whole discs closed, finalised. Not sure which write mode but would think Disc At Once from a temporary cached image made by the burning program would be the most reliable.

  Read the article

• Regular Expressions Cookbook Is in The Money—Win a Copy

  - by Jan Goyvaerts

  %COOKBOOKFRAME%You may have heard some people say that most book authors never get any royalties. That’s not true because most authors get an advance royalty that is paid before the book is published. That’s the author’s main incentive for writing the book, at least as far as money is concerned. (If money is your main concern, don’t write books.) What is true is that most authors never see any money beyond the advance royalty. Royalty rates are very low. A 10% royalty of the publisher’s price is considered normal. The publisher’s price is usually 45% of the retail price. So if you pay full price in a bookstore, the author gets 4.5% of your money. If there’s more than one author, they split the royalty. It doesn’t take a math degree to figure out that a book needs to sell quite a few copies for the royalty to add up to a meaningful amount of money. But Steven and I must have done something right. Regular Expressions Cookbook is in the money. My royalty statement for the 3rd quartier of 2009, which is the 2nd quarter that the book was on the market, came with a check. I actually received it last month but didn’t get around to blogging about. The amount of the check is insignificant. The point is that the balance is no longer negative. I’m taking this opportunity to pat myself and my co-author on the back. To celebrate the occassion O’Reilly has offered to sponsor a give-away of five (5) copies of Regular Expressions Cookbook. These are the rules of the game: You must post a comment to this blog article including your actual name and actual email address. Names are published, email addresses are not. Comments are moderated by myself (Jan Goyvaerts). If I consider a comment to be offensive or spam it will not be published and not be eligible for any prize. If you don’t know what to say in the comment, just wish me a happy 100000nd birthday, so I don’t have to feel so bad about entering the 6-bit era. Each person commenting has only one chance to win, regardless of the number of comments posted. O’Reilly will be provided with the names and email addresses of the winners (and those email addresses only) in order to arrange delivery. Each winner can choose to receive a printed copy or ebook (DRM-free PDF). If you choose the printed book, O’Reilly pays for shipping to anywhere in the world but not for any duties or taxes your country may impose on books imported from the USA. If you choose the ebook, you’ll need to create an O’Reilly account that is then granted access to the PDF download. You can make your choice after you’ve won, so it doesn’t influence your chance of winning. Contest ends 28 February 2010, GMT+7 (Thai time). Chosen by five calls to Random(78)+1 in Delphi 2010, the winners are: 48: Xiaozu 45: David Chisholm 19: Miquel Burns 33: Aaron Rice 17: David Laing Thanks to everybody who participated. The winners have been notified by email on how to collect their prize.

  Read the article

• What I Expect From Myself This Year

  - by Lee Brandt

  I am making it a point not to call them resolutions, because the word has become an institution and is beginning to have no meaning. That's why I end up not keeping my resolutions, I think. So in the spirit of holding myself to my own commitments, I will make a plan and some realistic goals. 1.) Lose weight. Everyone has this on their list, but I am going to be conservative and specific. I currently weigh 393lbs. (yeah, I know). So I want to plan to lose 10lbs per month, that's 1lb. every three days, that shouldn't be difficult if I stick to my diet and exercise plan. - How do I do this?     - Diet: vegetarian. Since I already know I have high blood pressure and borderline high cholesterol, a meat-free diet is in order. I was vegan for a little over 2 years in 2006-2008, I think I can handle vegetarian.     - Exercise: at least 3 times (preferably every day) a week for 30 minutes. It has to be something that gets my heart rate up, or burns in my muscles. I can walk for cardio to start and mild calisthenics (girly push-ups, crunches, etc.).         - Move: I spend all my time behind the computer. I have recently started to use a slight variation of the Pomodoro Technique (my Pomodoros are 50 minutes instead of 25). During my 10 minutes every hour to answer emails, chats, etc., I will take a few minutes to stretch. 2.) Get my wife pregnant. We've been talking about it for years. Now that she is done with graduate school and I have a great job, now's the time. We'll be the oldest parents in the PTA most likely, but I don't care. 3.) Blog More. Another favorite among bloggers, but I do have about six drafts for blog posts started. The topics are there all I need to do is flesh out the post. This can be the first hour of any computer time I have after work. As soon as I am done exercising, shower and post. 4.) Speak less. Most people want to speak more. I want to concentrate on the places that I enjoy and that can really use the speakers (like local code camps), rather than trying to be some national speaker. I love speaking at conferences, but I need to spend some more time at home if we're going to get pregnant. 5.) Read more. I got a Kindle for Christmas and I am loving it so far. I have almost finished Treasure Island, and am getting ready to pick my next book. I will probably read a lot of classics for 2 reasons: (1) they teach deep lessons and (2) most are free for the Kindle. 6.) Find my religion. I was raised Southern Baptist, but I want to find my own way. I've been wanting to go to the local Unitarian Church, so I will make a point to go before the end of March. I also want to add a few religious books to my reading list. My boss bought me a copy of Lee Strobel's The Case for Christ: A Journalist's Personal Investigation of the Evidence for Jesus , and I have a copy of Bruce Feiler's Abraham: A Journey to the Heart of Three Faiths (P.S.) . I will start there. Seems like a lot now that I spell it out like this. But these are only starters. I am forty years old. I cannot keep living like I am twenty anymore. So here we go, 2011.

  Read the article

• A Forming Repository of Script Samples for Automating Windows Server 2012 and Windows 8

  - by Jialiang

  Compared with Windows Server 2008/R2 that provides about 230 cmdlets, Windows Server 2012 beats that by a factor of over 10 shipping ~ 2,430 cmdlets.  You can automate almost every aspect of the server.   The new PowerShell 3.0, like Windows Server 2012, has a ton of new features.  In this automation script-centric move, Microsoft All-In-One Script Framework (AIOSF) is ready to support IT Pros with many new services and offerings coming this year.  We sincerely hope that the IT community will benefit from the effort. Here is the first one among our new services and offerings:  The team is preparing a large set of Windows 8 / Windows Server 2012 script samples based on frequently asked IT tasks that we collect in TechNet forums and support calls to Microsoft.   Because the script topics come from frequently asked IT tasks, we hope that these script samples can be helpful to many IT Pros worldwide.   With the General Availability of Windows Server 2012, we release the first three Windows Server 2012 / Windows 8 script samples today.    Get Network Adapter Properties in Windows Server 2012 and Windows 8 (PowerShell) http://gallery.technet.microsoft.com/scriptcenter/Get-Network-Adapter-37c5a913 Description: This script could be used to get network adapter properties and advanced properties in Windows Server 2012 and Windows 8. It combines the outputs of Get-NetAdapter and Get-NetAdapterAdvancedProperty. It can generate a report of network adapter configuration settings. Use Scenarios: In a real world, IT Administrators are required to check the configuration of network adapters after the deployment of new servers. One typical example is the duplex setting of network adapters. Also, IT administrators need to maintain a server list which contains network adapter configuration settings in a regular basis. Before Windows Server 2012, IT administrators often feel difficulties to handle these tasks. Acknowledgement: Thanks Greg Gu from AIOSF for collecting this script topic, and writing the script sample.  Thanks James Adams (Microsoft Premier Field Engineer) for reviewing the script sample and ensuring its quality.   How to batch create virtual machines in Windows Server 2012 (PowerShell) http://gallery.technet.microsoft.com/scriptcenter/How-to-batch-create-9efd1811 Description: This PowerShell Script illustrates how to batch create multiple virtual machines based on comma delimited file by using PowerShell 3.0 in Windows Server 2012. Use Scenarios: IT admin requires to batch creating virtual machines in Windows Server 2012, although they can use few commands due to the lack of programming knowledge. Although it’s a set of Hyper-V command-lets within Windows PowerShell, IT Admins are reluctant to use them except simple a command which is widely used. Acknowledgement: Thanks Anders Wang from AIOSF for collecting this script topic and writing the script sample.  Thanks Christopher Norris for reviewing the script sample and ensuring its quality before publishing.   Remove Windows Store Apps in Windows 8 (PowerShell) http://gallery.technet.microsoft.com/scriptcenter/Remove-Windows-Store-Apps-a00ef4a4 Description: This script can be used to remove multiple Windows Store Apps from a user account in Windows 8. It provides a list of installed Windows Store applications. You can specify the application IDs, and remove them all at once. Use Scenarios: 1. In Windows 8, you can remove a single Windows Store App by right-clicking the tile in the Start menu and choosing the uninstall command.  However, no command is provided for removing multiple Windows Store Apps all at once. If you want to do so, you can use this script sample. 2. Sometimes Windows Store Apps may crash in Windows 8.  Even though you can successfully uninstall and reinstall the App, the application may still crash after the reinstallation.  In this situation, you can use this example script to remove these Windows Store Apps cleanly. Acknowledgement: Thanks Edward Qi from AIOSF for collecting the script idea and composing the script sample.  Thanks James Adams (Microsoft Premier Field Engineer) for reviewing the script sample and ensuring its quality.   This is just the beginning, and more and more script samples are coming.  You can follow our blog (http://blogs.technet.com/b/onescript) to get the latest customer-driven script samples for Windows Server 2012 and Windows 8.

  Read the article

• ArchBeat Link-o-Rama Top 10 for August 2012

  - by Bob Rhubart

  The Top 10 most popular items shared via the OTN ArchBeat Facebook page for the month of August 2012. Now Available: Oracle SQL Developer 3.2 (3.2.09.23) New features include APEX listener, UI enhancements, and 12c database support. The Role of Oracle VM Server for SPARC in a Virtualization Strategy In this article, Matthias Pfutzner discusses hardware, desktop, and operating system virtualization, along with various Oracle virtualization technologies, including Oracle VM Server for SPARC. How to Manually Install Flash Player Plugin to see the Oracle Enterprise Manager Performance Page | Kai Yu So, you're a DBA and you want to check the Performance page in Oracle Enterprise Manager (11g or 12c). So you click the Performance tab and… nothing. Zip. Nada. The Flash plugin is a no-show. Relax! Oracle ACE Director Kai Yu shows you what you need to do to see all the pretty colors instead of that dull grey screen. Relationally Challenged (CX - CRM - EQ/RQ/CRQ) | Chris Warticki Self-proclaimed Oracle Support "spokesmodel" Chris Chris Warticki has some advice for those interested in Customer Relationship Management: "How about we just dumb it down, strip it to the core, keep it simple and LISTEN?! No more focus groups, no more surveys, and no need to gather more data. We have plenty of that. Why not just provide the customer what they are asking for?" Free WebLogic Server Course | Middleware Magic So you want to sharpen your Oracle WebLogic Server skills, but you prefer to skip the whole classroom bit and don't want to be bothered with dealing with an instructor? No problem! Oracle ACE Rene van Wijk, a prolific Middleware Magic blogger, has information on an Oracle WebLogic course you can take on your own time, at your own pace. Oracle VM VirtualBox 4.1.20 released Oracle VM VirtualBox 4.1.20 was just released at the community and Oracle download sites, reports the Fat Bloke. This is a maintenance release containing bug fixes and stability improvements. Optimizing OLTP Oracle Database Performance using Dell Express Flash PCIe SSDs | Kai Yu Oracle ACE Director Kai Yu shares resources based on "several extensive performance studies on a single node Oracle 11g R2 database as well as a two node 11gR2 Oracle Real Application clusters (RAC) database running on Dell PowerEdge R720 servers with Dell Express Flash PCIe SSDs on Oracle Enterprise Linux 6.2 platform." Oracle ACE sessions at Oracle OpenWorld With so many great sessions at this year's event, building your Oracle OpenWorld schedule can involve making a lot of tough choices. But you'll find that the sessions led by Oracle ACEs just might be the icing on the cake for your OpenWorld experience. MySQL Update: The Cleveland MySQL Meetup (Independence, OH) Oracle MySQL team member Benjamin Wood, a MySQL engineer and five year veteran of the MySQL organization, will speak at the Cleveland MySQL Meetup event on September 12. The presentation will include a MySQL 5.5 Overview, Oracle's Roadmap for MySQL, including specifics on MySQL 5.6, best practices and how to overcome development and operational MySQL challenges, and the new MySQL commercial extensions. Click the link for time and location information. Parsing XML in Oracle Database | Martijn van der Kamp Martijn van der Kamp's post deals with processing XML in PL/SQL code and processing the data into the database. Thought for the Day "Walking on water and developing software from a specification are easy if both are frozen." — Edward V. Berard Source: SoftwareQuotes.com

  Read the article

• Where can you find the Oracle Applications User Experience team in the next several months?

  - by mvaughan

  By Misha Vaughan, Applications User ExperienceNovember is one of my favorite times of year at Oracle. The blast of OpenWorld work is over, and it’s time to get down to business and start taking our messages and our work on the road out to the user groups. We’re in the middle of planning all of that right now, so we decided to provide a snapshot of where you can see us and hear about the Oracle Applications User Experience – whether it’s Fusion Applications, PeopleSoft, or what we’re planning for the next-generation of Oracle Applications.On the road with Apps UX...In December, you can find us at UKOUG 2012 in Birmingham, UK: UKOUG, UK Oracle User Group Conference 2012?December 3 – 5, 2012?ICC, Birmingham, UKIn March, we will be at Alliance 2013 in Indianapolis, and our fingers are crossed for OBUG Connect 2013 in Antwerp:? Alliance 2013March 17 - 20, 2013 ?Indianapolis, IndianaOBUG Benelux Connect 2013?March 26, 2013?Antwerp, Belgium?? In April, you will see us at COLLABORATE13 in Denver:? Collaborate13April 7 - April 11, 2013 ?Denver, Colorado?? And in June, we round out the kick-off to summer at OHUG 2013 in Dallas and Kscope13 in New Orleans:? OHUG 2013June 9 -13, 2013?Dallas, Texas ODTUG Kscope13?June 23-27, 2013 ?New Orleans, LA? The Labs & DemosAs always, a hallmark of our team is our mobile usability labs. If you haven’t seen them, they are a great way for customers and partners to get a peek at what Oracle is working on next, and a chance for you to provide your candid perspective. Based on the interest and enthusiasm from customers last year at Collaborate, we are adding more demo-stations to our user group presence in the year ahead. If you want to see some of the work we are doing first-hand but don’t have a lot of time, the demo stations are a great way to get a quick update on the latest wow-factor we are researching. I can promise that you will see whatever we think is new and interesting at the demo stations first. Oracle OpenWorld 2012 Apps UX DemostationFor Applications DevelopersMore and more, I get asked the question, “How do I build an application that looks like a Fusion?” My answer is Fusion Applications Design Patterns. You can find out more about how Fusion Applications developers can leverage ADF and the user experience best practices we developed for Fusion at sessions lead by Ultan O’Broin, Director of Global User Experience, in the year ahead. Ultan O'Broin, On Fusion Design Patterns Building mobile applications are also top of mind these days. If you want to understand how Oracle is approaching this strategy, check out our session on Mobile user experience design patterns with Mobile ADF.  In many cases, this will be presented by Lynn Rampoldi-Hnilo, Senior Manager of Mobile User Experiences, and in a few cases our ever-ready traveler Ultan O’Broin will be on deck. Lynn Rampoldi-Hnilo, on Mobile User Experience Design PatternsApplications User ExperiencesFusion Applications continues to evolve, and you will see the new face of Fusion Applications at our executive sessions in the year ahead, which are led by vice president Jeremy Ashley or a hand-picked presenter, such as one of our Fusion User Experience Advocates.  Edward Roske, CEO InterRel Consulting & Fusion User Experience AdvocateAs always, our strategy is to take our lessons learned and spread them across the Applications product lines. A great example is the enhancements coming in the PeopleSoft user experience, which you can hear about from Harris Kravatz, Senior Manager, PeopleSoft User Experience. Fusion Applications ExtensibilityWe can’t talk about Fusion Applications without talking about how to make it look like your business. If tailoring Fusion applications is a question in your mind, and it should be, you should hit one of these sessions. These sessions will be lead by our own Killian Evers, Senior Director, Tim Dubois, User Experience Architect, and some well-trained Fusion User Experience Advocates.Find out moreIf you want to stay on top of where and when we will be, you can always sign up for our newsletter or check out the events page of usableapps.

  Read the article

• JCP Awards 10 Year Retrospective

  - by Heather VanCura

  As we celebrate 10 years of JCP Program Award recognition in 2012,  take a look back in the Retrospective article covering the history of the JCP awards.  Most recently, the JCP awards were  celebrated at JavaOne Latin America in Brazil, where SouJava was presented the JCP Member of the Year Award for 2012 (won jointly with the London Java Community) for their contributions and launch of the Global Adopt-a-JSR Program. This is also a good time to honor the JCP Award Nominees and Winners who have been designated as Star Spec Leads.  Spec Leads are key to the Java Community Process (JCP) program. Without them, none of the Java Specification Requests (JSRs) would have begun, much less completed and become implemented in shipping products.  Nominations for 2012 Start Spec Leads are now open until 31 December. The Star Spec Lead program recognizes Spec Leads who have repeatedly proven their merit by producing high quality specifications, establishing best practices, and mentoring others. The point of such honor is to endorse the good work that they do, showcase their methods for other Spec Leads to emulate, and motivate other JCP program members and participants to get involved in the JCP program. Ed Burns – A Star Spec Lead for 2009, Ed first got involved with the JCP program when he became co-Spec Lead of JSR 127, JavaServer Faces (JSF), a role he has continued through JSF 1.2 and now JSF 2.0, which is JSR 314. Linda DeMichiel – Linda thus involved in the JCP program from its very early days. She has been the Spec Lead on at least three JSRs and an EC member for another three. She holds a Ph.D. in Computer Science from Stanford University. Gavin King – Nominated as a JCP Outstanding Spec Lead for 2010, for his work with JSR 299. His endorsement said, “He was not only able to work through disputes and objections to the evolving programming model, but he resolved them into solutions that were more technically sound, and which gained support of its pundits.” Mike Milikich –  Nominated for his work on Java Micro Edition (ME) standards, implementations, tools, and Technology Compatibility Kits (TCKs), Mike was a 2009 Star Spec Lead for JSR 271, Mobile Information Device Profile 3. David Nuescheler – Serving as the CTO for Day Software, acquired by Adobe Systems, David has been a key player in the growth of the company’s global content management solution. In 2002, he became Spec Lead for JSR 170, Content Repository for Java Technology API, continuing for the subsequent version, JSR 283. Bill Shannon – A well-respected name in the Java community, Bill came to Oracle from Sun as a Distinguished Engineer and is still performing at full speed as Spec Lead for JSR 342, Java EE 7,  as an alternate EC member, and hands-on problem solver for the Java community as a whole. Jim Van Peursem – Jim holds a PhD in Computer Engineering. He was part of the Motorola team that worked with Sun labs on the Spotless VM that became the KVM. From within Motorola, Jim has been responsible for many aspects of Java technology deployment, from an independent Connected Limited Device Configuration (CLDC) and Mobile Information Device Profile (MIDP) implementations, to handset development, to working with the industry in defining many related standards. Participation in the JCP Program goes well beyond technical proficiency. The JCP Awards Program is an attempt to say “Thank You” to all of the JCP members, Expert Group Members, Spec Leads, and EC members who give their time to contribute to the evolution of Java technology.

  Read the article

• 2014 Conferences - JFokus, JavaLand & GeeCon!

  - by Heather VanCura

  There has been a delay in publishing these past event summaries from early 2014--JFokus in February, JavaLand in March, and GeeCon in May. As we plan for Devoxx UK next week, I found these summaries that did not make it past 'draft' stage.  We had some great successes with the first three events of 2014, a Java developer conference trifecta! Participation topics included Java, the JCP program overall and the Adopt-a-JSR programs.   First up in February was JFokus in Stockholm. The energy and talent in Stockholm is amazing and the conference organizers do a stellar job running it and welcoming the speakers of this event.  I enjoyed the city walk and speaker dinner, as well as many opportunities to interact with conference speakers and attendees, both during and after the conference hours. Reza Rehman invited me to speak during his Java EE 7 lab session about the Adopt-a-JSR program, and I gave a quickie session on the JCP and Adopt-a-JSR.  There was also a late night Birds of a Feather (BoF) session held jointly with Cecelia Borg, Martijn Verburg and Reza Rehman.  This was an interactive conversation with a focus on the Java EE community survey results and encouraging more community participation and collaboration in Java development.  The Java 8 keynote by Georges Saab and Mark Reinhold was also very entertaining,  I was sorry to miss FOSDEM happening the previous weekend this year in Brussels, but I hope to attend in 2015.  Favorite take home gift -- Lambdas cap! In March, the inaugural version of the JavaLand conference happened inside Phantasialand, an amusement park in Germany. Markus Eisele suggested having an Early Adopters area at the conference, which I was keen to implement. In 2013 at Devoxx Belgium we held some activities in the Hackergaren area around Lambdas and Java EE 7, so this was a great opportunity to expand on a more interactive conference format and Andreas Badelt from the program committee helped in the planning for this area.  Daniel Bryant and Mani Sarkar from the London Java Community led some general Adopt-a-JSR discussions and AdoptOpen JDK activities.  JCP Spec Leads, Anatole Tresch from Credit Suisse, leading JSR 354, Money & Currency API, and Ed Burns from Oracle, leading JSR 344, JavaServer Faces 2.2, attended to engage with conference attendees on their JSRs.  Favorite - Stephen Chin's roller coaster video. In May, GeeCon in Krakow was anther awesome conference!  The conference organizers were warm and welcoming and I enjoyed time getting to know the other speakers at the event. There was a JCP and Adopt-a-JSR participation session as well as a moderated panel session on Early Adopters.  We had an amazing panel -- Daniel Bryant, Arun Gupta, Tomasz Borek , and Peter Lawrey. The panel discussed the Adopt-a-JSR and Adopt OpenJDK program, and how the participants work together to get involved and contribute to both the Java SE and Java EE platforms.  If was an interesting discussion and sparked some new ideas on how Java User Groups in Poland and around the world can contribute in a significant and meaningful way to create better and more practical Java standards today and in the future.  Favorite take home gift - GeeCon mug!   These were some of the highlights of the events--looking forward to Devoxx UK next week.  I will publish these details tomorrow!

  Read the article

• Standards Corner: Preventing Pervasive Monitoring

  - by independentid

   Phil Hunt is an active member of multiple industry standards groups and committees and has spearheaded discussions, creation and ratifications of industry standards including the Kantara Identity Governance Framework, among others. Being an active voice in the industry standards development world, we have invited him to share his discussions, thoughts, news & updates, and discuss use cases, implementation success stories (and even failures) around industry standards on this monthly column. Author: Phil Hunt On Wednesday night, I watched NBC’s interview of Edward Snowden. The past year has been tumultuous one in the IT security industry. There has been some amazing revelations about the activities of governments around the world; and, we have had several instances of major security bugs in key security libraries: Apple's ‘gotofail’ bug  the OpenSSL Heartbleed bug, not to mention Java’s zero day bug, and others. Snowden’s information showed the IT industry has been underestimating the need for security, and highlighted a general trend of lax use of TLS and poorly implemented security on the Internet. This did not go unnoticed in the standards community and in particular the IETF. Last November, the IETF (Internet Engineering Task Force) met in Vancouver Canada, where the issue of “Internet Hardening” was discussed in a plenary session. Presentations were given by Bruce Schneier, Brian Carpenter,  and Stephen Farrell describing the problem, the work done so far, and potential IETF activities to address the problem pervasive monitoring. At the end of the presentation, the IETF called for consensus on the issue. If you know engineers, you know that it takes a while for a large group to arrive at a consensus and this group numbered approximately 3000. When asked if the IETF should respond to pervasive surveillance attacks? There was an overwhelming response for ‘Yes'. When it came to 'No', the room echoed in silence. This was just the first of several consensus questions that were each overwhelmingly in favour of response. This is the equivalent of a unanimous opinion for the IETF. Since the meeting, the IETF has followed through with the recent publication of a new “best practices” document on Pervasive Monitoring (RFC 7258). This document is extremely sensitive in its approach and separates the politics of monitoring from the technical ones. Pervasive Monitoring (PM) is widespread (and often covert) surveillance through intrusive gathering of protocol artefacts, including application content, or protocol metadata such as headers. Active or passive wiretaps and traffic analysis, (e.g., correlation, timing or measuring packet sizes), or subverting the cryptographic keys used to secure protocols can also be used as part of pervasive monitoring. PM is distinguished by being indiscriminate and very large scale, rather than by introducing new types of technical compromise. The IETF community's technical assessment is that PM is an attack on the privacy of Internet users and organisations. The IETF community has expressed strong agreement that PM is an attack that needs to be mitigated where possible, via the design of protocols that make PM significantly more expensive or infeasible. Pervasive monitoring was discussed at the technical plenary of the November 2013 IETF meeting [IETF88Plenary] and then through extensive exchanges on IETF mailing lists. This document records the IETF community's consensus and establishes the technical nature of PM. The draft goes on to further qualify what it means by “attack”, clarifying that  The term is used here to refer to behavior that subverts the intent of communicating parties without the agreement of those parties. An attack may change the content of the communication, record the content or external characteristics of the communication, or through correlation with other communication events, reveal information the parties did not intend to be revealed. It may also have other effects that similarly subvert the intent of a communicator.  The past year has shown that Internet specification authors need to put more emphasis into information security and integrity. The year also showed that specifications are not good enough. The implementations of security and protocol specifications have to be of high quality and superior testing. I’m proud to say Oracle has been a strong proponent of this, having already established its own secure coding practices. 

  Read the article

• How the SPARC T4 Processor Optimizes Throughput Capacity: A Case Study

  - by Ruud

  This white paper demonstrates the architected latency hiding features of Oracle’s UltraSPARC T2+ and SPARC T4 processors That is the first sentence from this technical white paper, but what does it exactly mean? Let's consider a very simple example, the computation of a = b + c. This boils down to the following (pseudo-assembler) instructions that need to be executed: load @b, r1 load @c, r2 add r1,r2,r3 store r3, @a The first two instructions load variables b and c from an address in memory (here symbolized by @b and @c respectively). These values go into registers r1 and r2. The third instruction adds the values in r1 and r2. The result goes into register r3. The fourth instruction stores the contents of r3 into the memory address symbolized by @a. If we're lucky, both b and c are in a nearby cache and the load instructions only take a few processor cycles to execute. That is the good case, but what if b or c, or both, have to come from very far away? Perhaps both of them are in the main memory and then it easily takes hundreds of cycles for the values to arrive in the registers. Meanwhile the processor is doing nothing and simply waits for the data to arrive. Actually, it does something. It burns cycles while waiting. That is a waste of time and energy. Why not use these cycles to execute instructions from another application or thread in case of a parallel program? That is exactly what latency hiding on the SPARC T-Series processors does. It is a hardware feature totally transparent to the user and application. As soon as there is a delay in the execution, the hardware uses these otherwise idle cycles to execute instructions from another process. As a result, the throughput capacity of the system improves because idle cycles are no longer wasted and therefore more jobs can be run per unit of time. This feature has been in the SPARC T-series from the beginning, so why this paper? The difference with previous publications on this topic is in the amount of detail given. How this all works under the hood is fully explained using two example programs. Starting from the assembly language instructions, it is demonstrated in what way these programs execute. To really see what is happening we go down to the processor pipeline level, where the gaps in the execution are, and show in what way these idle cycles are filled by other copies of the same program running simultaneously. Both the SPARC T4 as well as the older UltraSPARC T2+ processor are covered. You may wonder why the UltraSPARC T2+ is included. The focus of this work is on the SPARC T4 processor, but to explain the basic concept of latency hiding at this very low level, we start with the UltraSPARC T2+ processor because it is architecturally a much simpler design. From the single issue, in-order pipelines of this processor we then shift gears and cover how this all works on the much more advanced dual issue, out-of-order architecture of the T4. The analysis and performance experiments have been conducted on both processors. The results depend on the processor, but in all cases the theoretical estimates are confirmed by the experiments. If you're interested to read a lot more about this and find out how things really work under the hood, you can download a copy of the paper here. A paper like this could not have been produced without the help of several other people. I want to thank the co-author of this paper, Jared Smolens, for his very valuable contributions and our highly inspiring discussions. I'm also indebted to Thomas Nau (Ulm University, Germany), Shane Sigler and Mark Woodyard (both at Oracle) for their feedback on earlier versions of this paper. Karen Perkins (Perkins Technical Writing and Editing) and Rick Ramsey at Oracle were very helpful in providing editorial and publishing assistance.

  Read the article

• When do you tag your software project?

  - by WilhelmTell of Purple-Magenta

  I realize there are various kinds of software projects: commercial (for John Doe) industrial (for Mr. Montgomery Burns) successful open-source (with audience larger than, say, 10 people) personal projects (with audience size in the vicinity of 1). each of which release a new version of their product on difference conditions. I'm particularly interested in the case of personal projects and open-source projects. When, or under what conditions, do you make a new release of any kind? Do you subscribe to a fixed recurring deadline such as every two weeks? Do you commit to a release of at least 10 minor fixes, or one major fix? Do you combine the two conditions such as at least one condition must hold, or both must hold? I reckon this is a subjective question. I ask this question in light of searching for tricks to keep my projects alive and kicking. Sometimes my projects are active but look as if they aren't because I don't have the confidence to make a release or a tag of any sort for a long time -- in the order of months.

  Read the article

• Python and a "time value of money" problem.

  - by jamieb

  (I asked this question earlier today, but I did a poor job of explaining myself. Let me try again) I have a client who is an industrial maintenance company. They sell service agreements that are prepaid 20 hour blocks of a technician's time. Some of their larger customers might burn through that agreement in two weeks while customers with fewer problems might go eight months on that same contract. I would like to use Python to help model projected sales revenue and determine how many billable hours per month that they'll be on the hook for. If each customer only ever bought a single service contract (never renewed) it would be easy to figure sales as monthly_revenue = contract_value * qty_contracts_sold. Billable hours would also be easy: billable_hrs = hrs_per_contract * qty_contracts_sold. However, how do I account for renewals? Assuming that 90% (or some other arbitrary amount) of customers renew, then their monthly revenue ought to grow geometrically. Another important variable is how long the average customer burns through a contract. How do I determine what the revenue and billable hours will be 3, 6, or 12 months from now, based on various renewal and burn rates? I assume that I'd use some type of recursive function but math was never one of my strong points. Any suggestions please? Edit: I'm thinking that the best way to approach this is to think of it as a "time value of money" problem. I've retitled the question as such. The problem is probably a lot more common if you think of "monthly sales" as something similar to annuity payments.

  Read the article

• efficient android rendering

  - by llll

  I've read quite a few tutorials on game programming on android, and all of them provide basically the same solution as to drawing the game, that is having a dedicated thread spinning like this: public void run() { while(true) { if(!surfaceHolder.getSurface().isValid()) continue; Canvas canvas = surfaceHolder.lockCanvas(); drawGame(canvas); /* do actual drawing here */ surfaceHolder.unlockCanvasAndPost(canvas); } } now I'm wondering, isn't this wasteful? Suppose I've a game with very simple graphics, so that the actual time in drawGame is little; then I'm going to draw the same things on and on, stealing cpu from the other threads; a possibility could be skipping the drawing and sleeping a bit if the game state hasn't changed, which I could check by having the state update thread mantaining a suitable status flag. But maybe there are other options. For example, couldn'it be possible to synchronize with rendering, so that I don't post updates too often? Or am I missing something and that is precisely what lockCanvas does, that is it blocks and burns no cpu until proper time? Thanks in advance L.

  Read the article

• changing the intensity of lighten/darken on bitmaps using PorterDuffXfermode in the Android Paint class

  - by user1116836

  Ok my orignal question has changed. How do i change the intensity of how something like this is effected? DayToNight.setXfermode(new PorterDuffXfermode(Mode.DST_IN)); in my dream world it would have worked like this DayToNight.setXfermode(new PorterDuffXfermode(Mode.DST_IN(10))); the 10 being a level of intensity. An example would be if I had a flickering candle, when the candle burns bright I want the bitmaps I am drawing to the screen to retain their origanol color and brightness, when it flickers I want the bitmaps to be almost blacked out, and I want to darken the Bitmaps as the light dims. I have equations, timers and all that figured out, just not how to actually apply it to change the color/brightness. Maybe burning the images is what im looking for? I just want to change the lightness lol. I feel like using paint.setShader might be a solution, but the information in this area is pretty limited from what i have been able to find. Any help would be appreciated. edit: to be crystal clear, i am looking for a way to lighten/darken bitmaps as I draw them to the canvas

  Read the article

• determining the starting speed for an accelerated animation (in flash/actionscript but it's a math question)

  - by vulkanino

  This question burns my brain. I have an object on a plane, but for the sake of simplicity let's work just on a single dimension, thus the object has a starting position xs. I know the ending position xe. The object has to move from starting to ending position with an accelerated (acceleration=a) movement. I know the velocity the object has to have at the ending position (=ve). In my special case the ending speed is zero, but of course I need a general formula. The only unknown is the starting velocity vs. The objects starts with vs in xs and ends with ve in xe, moving along a space x with an acceleration a in a time t. Since I'm working with flash, space is expressed in pixels, time is expressed in frames (but you can reason in terms of seconds, it's easy to convert knowing the frames-per-second). In the animation loop (think onEnterFrame) I compute the new velocity and the new position with (a=0.4 for example): vx *= a (same for vy) x += vx (same for y) I want the entire animation to last, say, 2 seconds, which at 30 fps is 60 frames. Now you know that in 60 frames my object has to move from xs to xe with a constant deceleration so that the ending speed is 0. How do I compute the starting speed vs? Maybe there's a simpler way to do this in Flash, but I am now interested in the math/physics behind this.

  Read the article

• Learn About Oracle’s Strategy for a Simple, Modern User Experience at OpenWorld 2012

  - by Applications User Experience

  By Kathy Miedema, Oracle Applications User Experience If you’re interested in what the best possible user experience looks like, you’ll want to hear what Oracle’s Applications User Experience team is planning for OpenWorld 2012, Sept. 30-Oct. 4 in San Francisco. This year, we will talk Fusion, Fusion, Fusion. We were among the first to show Oracle Fusion Applications in the last couple of years, and we’ll be showing it again this year so you can see what Oracle is planning for the next generation of enterprise applications. Attend our sessions to learn more about the user experience strategy in which Oracle is investing. Simplicity is the driving force behind the demos that we are unveiling now, which you can see at OpenWorld. We want to create opportunities for productivity and efficiency, and deliver enterprise data across devices to help you do your work in the way best suited to your job and needs, said Jeremy Ashley, Vice President, Oracle Applications User Experience. You can see the new look for Fusion Applications at a general session led by Ashley at 3:30 p.m. on Wednesday, Oct. 3. You’ll also have the chance to learn more about tailoring in Oracle Fusion Applications, and gain a new understanding of the investment in the user experience behind Fusion Applications at our sessions (see session information below). Inside the Oracle Applications User Experience team’s on-site lab at Oracle OpenWorld 2011. Head to the demogrounds to see new demos from the Applications User Experience team, including the new look for Fusion Applications and what we’re building for mobile platforms. Take a spin on our eye tracker, a very cool tool that we use to research the usability of a particular design. Visit the Usable Apps OpenWorld page to find out where our demopods will be located. We are also recruiting participants for our on-site lab, in which we gather feedback on new user experience designs, and taking reservations for a charter bus that will bring you to Oracle headquarters for a lab tour Thursday, Oct. 4, or Friday, Oct. 5. Tours leave at 10 a.m. and 1:45 p.m. from the Moscone Center in San Francisco. You’ll see more of our newest designs at the lab tour, and some of our research tools in action. Can’t participate in a customer feedback session or take a lab tour this time around? Visit Usable Apps to participate or book a tour another time. For more information on any OpenWorld sessions, check the content catalog – also available at www.oracle.com/openworld. For information on Applications User Experience (Apps UX) sessions and activities, go to the Usable Apps OpenWorld page. APPS UX OPENWORLD SESSIONS Oracle’s Roadmap to a Simple, Modern User Experience Presenter: Jeremy Ashley, Vice President Applications User Experience, Oracle; with Debra Lilley, Fujitsu Consulting; Basheer Khan, Innowave; and Edward Roske, InterRelSession ID: CON9467Date: Wednesday, Oct. 3 Time: 3:30 - 4:30 p.m.Location: Moscone West - 3002/3004 Jeremy Ashley Oracle Fusion Applications: Transforming Insight into Action Presenters: Killian Evers and Kristin Desmond, OracleSession ID: CON8718Date: Thursday, Oct. 4Time: 11:15 a.m. - 12:15 p.m.Location: Moscone West - 2008 “FRIENDS OF UX” OPENWORLD SESSIONS Sessions by the Oracle Usability Advisory Board (OUAB) members: Advances in Oracle Enterprise Governance, Risk, and Compliance Manager  Presenters: Koen Delaure, KPMG Advisory NV, and Oracle Usability Advisory Board member; Russell Stohr, Oracle Session ID: CON9389Date: Tuesday, Oct. 2Time: 1:15 - 2:15 p.m.Location: Palace Hotel - Concert Optimize Oracle E-Busines Suite Procure-to-Pay: Cut Inefficiences/Fraud with Oracle GRC Apps Presenters: Koen Delaure, KPMG Advisory NV, and Solveig Wagner, Seadrill Management AS, both Oracle Usability Advisory Board members; and Swarnali Bag, OracleSession ID: CON9401Date: Monday, Oct. 1Time: 12:15 - 1:15 p.m.Location: Intercontinental - Sutter Showcase of JD Edwards EnterpriseOne Mobility Presenters: Jon Wells, Westmoreland Coal Co., Oracle Usability Advisory Board member; Rob Mills and Liz Davson, Town of Oakville; Keith Sholes and Louise Farner, Oracle Session ID: CON9123Date: Tuesday, Oct. 2Time: 1:15 - 2:15 p.m.Location: InterContinental - Grand Ballroom B Sessions by the Fusion User Experience Adovcates (FXA) Usability and Features of Oracle Fusion Applications, Built upon Oracle Fusion Middleware Presenters: Debra Lilley, Fujitsu Consulting and Oracle Usability Advisory Board member; John King, King Training ResourcesSession ID: UGF10371Date: Sunday, Sept. 30Time: 11 a.m. - 11:45 a.m. Location: Moscone West – 2010 Ten Things to Love About Oracle Fusion Project Portfolio Management  Presenter: Floyd Teter, EiS TechnologiesSession ID: CON6021Date: Tuesday, Oct. 2Time: 10:15 - 11:15 a.m.Location: Moscone West – 2003

  Read the article

• Death March

  - by Nick Harrison

  It is a horrible sight to watch a project fail. There are few things as bad. Watching a project fail regardless of the reason is almost like sitting in a room with a "Dementor" from Harry Potter. It will literally suck all of the life and joy out of the room. Nearly every project that I have seen fail has failed because of political challenges or management challenges. Sometimes there are technical challenges that bring a project to its knees, but usually projects fail for less technical reasons. Here a few observations about projects failing for political reasons. Both the client and the consultants have to be committed to seeing the project succeed. Put simply, you cannot solve a problem when the primary stake holders do not truly want it solved. This could come from a consultant being more interested in extended the engagement. It could come from a client being afraid of what will happen to them once the problem is solved. It could come from disenfranchised stake holders. Sometimes a project is beset on all sides. When you find yourself working on a project that has this kind of threat, do all that you can to constrain the disruptive influences of the bad apples. If their influence cannot be constrained, you truly have no choice but to move on to a new project. Tough choices have to be made to make a project successful. These choices will affect everyone involved in the project. These choices may involve users not getting a change request through that they want. Developers may not get to use the tools that they want. Everyone may have to put in more hours that they originally planned. Steps may be skipped. Compromises will be made, but if everyone stays committed to the end goal, you can still be successful. If individuals start feeling disgruntled or resentful of the compromises reached, the project can easily be derailed. When everyone is not working towards a common goal, it is like driving with one foot on the break and one foot on the accelerator. Not only will you not get to where you are planning, you will also damage the car and possibly the passengers as well.   It is important to always keep the end result in mind. Regardless of the development methodology being followed, the end goal is not comprehensive documentation. In all cases, it is working software. Comprehensive documentation is nice but useless if the software doesn't work.   You can never get so distracted by the next goal that you fail to meet the current goal. Most projects are ultimately marathons. This means that the pace must be sustainable. Regardless of the temptations, you cannot burn the team alive. Processes will fail. Technology will get outdated. Requirements will change, but your people will adapt and learn and grow. If everyone on the team from the most senior analyst to the most junior recruit trusts and respects each other, there is no challenge that they cannot overcome. When everyone involved faces challenges with the attitude "This is my project and I will not let it fail" "You are my teammate and I will not let you fail", you will in fact not fail. When you find a team that embraces this attitude, protect it at all cost. Edward Yourdon wrote a book called Death March. In it, he included a graph for categorizing Death March project types based on the Happiness of the Team and the Chances of Success.   Chances are we have all worked on Death March projects. We will all most likely work on more Death March projects in the future. To a certain extent, they seem to be inevitable, but they should never be suicide or ugly. Ideally, they can all be "Mission Impossible" where everyone works hard, has fun, and knows that there is good chance that they will succeed. If you are ever lucky enough to work on such a project, you will know that sense of pride that comes from the eventual success. You will recognize a profound bond with the team that you worked with. Chances are it will change your life or at least your outlook on life. If you have not already read this book, get a copy and study it closely. It will help you survive and make the most out of your next Death March project.

  Read the article

< Previous Page | 11 12 13 14 15 16  | Next Page >