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• How should 4 decimals places behave, being simple yet powerful

  - by vener

  I have a UI question that troubled me on the best method to handle 4 decimal places for prices. In an table already cramped full of data, I would want to simplified the interface to make it not so cluttered. The actual current UI is shown below. http://i41.tinypic.com/bg5tub.jpg The problem is, for a unit price/units/D.Price and Dis.(Discount) to have 4 decimal places ($0.3459) is quite rare but it still happens (5 in 100 entries). This will result a lot of junk decimal places, cluttering up the interface. What is the best solution to this problem? In short, I want to declutter it yet maintain the precision. Note: This is web app

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• Bargain Hunter Round Up – Kicking Off The E-Commerce Holiday Season

  - by Jeri Kelley

  Everyone has a different way to tackle holiday shopping – Black Friday, Small Business Saturday, Cyber Monday, some have it done months in advance, and others wait until the very last minute.   For me, I’m not big into massive crowds so online shopping to the rescue.   Others thrive on the energy of being in the stores on the busiest shopping day of the year.  With last weekend marking the official kick-off to the holiday season, I thought I’d provide a round up of what’s trending:   Online numbers are looking up: According to comScore, for the holiday season-to-date, $16.4 billion has been spent online, marking a 16-percent increase versus the corresponding days last year. Thanksgiving Day – Why wait until Black Friday or Cyber Monday: Online shopping on Thanksgiving Day also increased, totaling $633 million in receipts, a 32 percent increase over Thanksgiving 2011 Black Friday – More than just in-store: Bargain hunters spent $1.042 billion online the day after Thanksgiving, a 26 percent increase of last year's Black Friday, according to new figures released today by market analyst ComScore Cyber Monday Week: Cyber Monday reached $1.465 billion in online spending, up 17 percent versus year ago, representing the heaviest online spending day in history and the second day this season (in addition to Black Friday) to surpass $1 billion in sales                 Cyber Monday is now being dubbed Cyber Week:  “The annual event is increasingly becoming Cyber Week instead of a one-day event as retailers open their arms for Americans who prefer to avoid crowds and compare prices online.” But, Cyber Monday continues its importance, driving a nearly 22% increase in year-over-year (YoY) online sales. Monday sales beat Sunday, the next highest day by a margin of 26.7%. Mobile shopping continues to rise: ChannelAdvisor that said mobile shopping made up 32% of all online spending over the Black Friday weekend Mobile devices were a key part of the online shopping craziness that was November 26th.  Sales from smartphones and tablets doubled this year. I n tablets the growth was 110% and in smartphones - 100% Mobile bar code scans on Black Friday increased 50 percent, according to a report from ScanLife For more on how you can be ready for the holiday season, check out my blog post on commerce strategies for the holidays.

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• SQL Contest – Win USD 300 Worth Gift – Cartoon Contest is Back

  - by pinaldave

  There are two excellent contests and we have lots of winning to do this year end. 1) Win USD 25 Amazon Gift Cards (10 Units) This is very simple, you just have to download SQL Server DB Optimizer. That’s it! There are only two conditions: You must have a valid email address. As USD 25 Amazon Gift Card will be sent to the same address. Download DB Optimizer between today and Dec 8, 2012. Link to Download DB Optimizer. Every day one winner will be notified about their winning USD 25 Amazon Gift Cards for next 10 days. 2) Win Star Wars R2-D2 Inflatable R/C This the coolest thing to win. I personally want one but as I am running a contest, I can’t  participate. You get this cool Remote Controlled Device – you just have to answer following cartoon contest. Read the complete story and think what will be the answer provided by the smart employee. There are only two conditions: Leave your answer in the comment area of this blog post (every comment will be hidden till Dec 8, 2012). Please leave your answer in the comment area between today and Dec 8, 2012. Remember you can participate as many times as you want. Make sure that your answer is correct and creative. The most creative answer will be selected. The decision of contest owner will be final. We may have runner’s up prices but for the moment let us try to win R2-D2. Here is the cool video of R2D2. Now here is the cartoon story, please follow the story and complete the very last cartoon template. Your answer should be correct and should be creative. However, the ideal answer will not be longer than one or two sentences. Hint: (Hint) Well, Leave your answer in the comment area of this blog post. If you do not win R2D2, trust me there are chances you may win a surprise gift from me. Remember your answer should be correct and should be creative. However, the ideal answer will not be longer than one or two sentences. Last day to participate in both of the contest is Dec 8, 2012. We will announce the winner in the week of December 10. Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.SQLAuthority.com) Filed under: PostADay, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL Puzzle, SQL Query, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, SQLAuthority News, SQLServer, T SQL, Technology

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• How one decision can turn web services to hell

  - by DigiMortal

  In this posting I will show you how one stupid decision may turn developers life to hell. There is a project where bunch of complex applications exchange data frequently and it is very hard to change something without additional expenses. Well, one analyst thought that string is silver bullet of web services. Read what happened. Bad bad mistake In the early stages of integration project there was analyst who also established architecture and technical design for web services. There was one very bad mistake this analyst made: All data must be converted to strings before exchange! Yes, that’s correct, this was the requirement. All integers, decimals and dates are coming in and going out as strings. There was also explanation for this requirement: This way we can avoid data type conversion errors! Well, this guy works somewhere else already and I hope he works in some burger restaurant – far away from computers. Consequences If you first look at this requirement it may seem like little annoying piece of crap you can easily survive. But let’s see the real consequences one stupid decision can cause: hell load of data conversions are done by receiving applications and SSIS packages, SSIS packages are not error prone and they depend heavily on strings they get from different services, there are more than one format per type that is used in different services, for larger amounts of data all these conversion tasks slow down the work of integration packages, practically all developers have been in hurry with some SSIS import tasks and some fields that are not used in different calculations in SSAS cube are imported without data conversions (by example, some prices are strings in format “1.021 $”). The most painful problem for developers is the part of data conversions because they don’t expect that there is such a stupid requirement stated and therefore they are not able to estimate the time their tasks take on these web services. Also developers must be prepared for cases when suddenly some service sends data that is not in acceptable format and they must solve the problems ASAP. This puts unexpected load on developers and they are not very happy with it because they can’t understand why they have to live with this horror if it is possible to fix. What to do if you see something like this? Well, explain the problem to customer and demand special tasks to project schedule to get this mess solved before going on with new developments. It is cheaper to solve the problems now that later.

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• Second Edition of Regular Expressions Cookbook Has Been Published

  - by Jan Goyvaerts

  %COOKBOOKFRAME% The first edition of Regular Expressions Cookbook was published in May of 2009. It quickly became a bestseller, briefly holding the #1 spot in computer books on Amazon.com. It also had staying power. The ebook version was O’Reilly’s top seller during the whole year of 2010. So it’s no surprise that our editor at O’Reilly soon contacted us for a second edition. With Steven and I always being very busy, those plans were delayed until finally both of us found the time to update the book. Work started in January. Today you can buy your own copy of the second edition of Regular Expressions Cookbook. O’Reilly’s online shop sells the eBook in DRM-free ePub, Mobi, and PDF formats for $39.99 and the print version for $49.99. These are the list prices for the eBook and the print book. If you’re looking for a discount and free shipping of the print book, you can pre-order on one of the various Amazon sites. Deliveries should start soon. The discount rates differ and are subject to change. Amazon will also pay me an affiliate commission if you use one of these links, which pretty much doubles the income I get from the book. Amazon.com. Free shipping to the USA. Amazon.co.uk. Free shipping to the UK and Ireland. Amazon.fr. Free shipping to France, Monaco, Luxembourg, and Belgium. Amazon.de. Free shipping to Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Luxembourg, Liechtenstein, Belgium, and The Netherlands. If you don’t want to wait for the print book to arrive, the Kindle edition is already available for instant delivery. The Kindle edition works on Amazon’s Kindle hardware, and on PCs via Amazon’s Kindle software (free download). Amazon.com Amazon.co.uk Amazon.fr Amazon.de I’ll blog more about the book in the coming days and weeks with details about what’s new in the second edition.

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• Projected Results: Sound project management practices, combined with a complete technology platform, have an immediate and lasting impact on an organization’s bottom line.

  - by Melissa Centurio Lopes

  Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin-top:0in; mso-para-margin-right:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:10.0pt; mso-para-margin-left:0in; line-height:115%; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:11.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-ascii-font-family:Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-fareast; mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;} Article By: Alan Joch, is a business and technology writer who specializes in enterprise applications, cloud computing, mobile computing, and the Web. It’s no secret that complex, large-scale projects need close management controls to ensure that they’re delivered on time and on budget. But now there’s growing evidence that failing to meet these goals can have far-reaching consequences, not only for the reputations and value of individual organizations but also for the tenure of their top executives. Government watchdogs forced one large contractor to suspend a multibillion-dollar defense program—and delay payment receipts—until a better management system was launched to more accurately track spending, project milestones, and other fundamental metrics. Significant delays in the opening of the £4.3 billion Terminal 5 at Heathrow Airport impaired an airline’s operations and contributed to a drop in its share prices. These real-world examples are noteworthy because of the huge financial risks they created. They’re also far from being isolated cases. Research by the Economist Intelligence Unit found that only 11 percent of companies claimed they delivered expected ROI on major capital projects 90 percent of the time or more. In addition, 12 percent of respondents said they achieved planned ROI less than half the time. According to Phil Thornton, lead consultant at the analyst firm Clarity Economics, the numbers demonstrate obvious challenges related to managing risks, accurately predicting ROI, and consistently delivering bottom-line growth for major capital investments “Portfolio management is a path to improve your organization’s competitive advantage. It helps make sure your organization is investing in the right things and not spending its time on things that are not delivering the intended results for the firm.” Read the full article here

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• Oracle ERP Cloud Solution Defines Revenue Recognition Software Market

  - by Steve Dalton

  Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE Revenue is a fundamental yardstick of a company's performance, and one of the most important metrics for investors in the capital markets. So it’s no surprise that the accounting standard boards have devoted significant resources to this topic, with a key goal of ensuring that companies use a consistent method of recognizing revenue. Due to the myriad of revenue-generating transactions, and the divergent ways organizations recognize revenue today, the IFRS and FASB have been working for 12 years on a common set of accounting standards that apply to all industries in virtually all countries. Through their joint efforts on May 28, 2014 the FASB and IFRS released the IFRS 15 / ASU 2014-9 (Revenue from Contracts with Customers) converged accounting standard. This standard applies to revenue in all public companies, but heavily impacts organizations in any industry that might have complex sales contracts with multiple distinct deliverables (obligations). For example, an auto dealer who bundles free service with the sale of a car can only recognize the service revenue once the owner of the car brings it in for work. Similarly, high-tech companies that bundle software licenses, consulting, and support services on a sales contract will recognize bundled service revenue once the services are delivered. Now all companies need to review their revenue for hidden bundling and implicit obligations. Numerous time-consuming and judgmental activities must be performed to properly recognize revenue for complex sales contracts. To illustrate, after the contract is identified, organizations must identify and examine the distinct deliverables, determine the estimated selling price (ESP) for each deliverable, then allocate the total contract price to each deliverable based on the ESPs. In terms of accounting, organizations must determine whether the goods or services have been delivered or performed to the customer’s satisfaction, then either book revenue in the current period or record a liability for the obligation if revenue will be recognized in a future accounting period. Oracle Revenue Management Cloud was architected and developed so organizations can simplify and streamline revenue recognition. Among other capabilities, the solution uses business rules to efficiently identify and examine contracts, intelligently calculate and allocate deliverable prices based on prescribed inputs, and accurately recognize revenue for each deliverable based on customer satisfaction. "Oracle works very closely with our customers, the Big 4 accounting firms, and the accounting standard boards to deliver an adaptive, comprehensive, new generation revenue recognition solution,” said Rondy Ng, Senior Vice President, Applications Development. “With the recently announced IFRS 15 / ASU 2014-9, Oracle is ready to support customer adoption of the new standard with our Revenue Management Cloud,” said Rondy. Oracle Revenue Management Cloud, an integral part of Oracle Financials Cloud, helps organizations comply with accounting standards, provides them with confidence that reported revenue is materially accurate, and simplifies the accounting process for revenue recognition. Stay tuned to this blog for regular updates on Oracle Revenue Management Cloud. We also invite you to review our new oracle.com ERP pages @ oracle.com/erp. We will be updating these pages very soon with more information about Oracle Revenue Management Cloud.

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• Economic modelling - Resources for valuing goods

  - by Rushyo

  tl;dr: What economic/computer science books would you suggest for learning about economic valuation of goods and simulations thereof? I'm looking to create an economic model for a game based on goods created procedurally. Every natural resource and produced good would be procedurally generated, with certain goods being assigned certain uses. Fakesium might be used for the production of Weapon A and produced from Fakesium factories which use Dilithium and Widgets as reagents, where Widgets are also the product of Foo and Bar The problem is not creating the resources and their various production utlities - but getting the game's AI empires and merchants to correctly value the goods according to their scarcity, utility and production costs. I need to create a simulation of goods which allows the various game factions to assign a common value denominator (credits) to each resource, depending on how much its worth to that empire. I see the simulation being something like: "I have a high requirement for Weapon A. Since I don't have much of Fakesium, which is needed for Weapon A - I must have a high demand for Fakesium. If I can acquire Fakesium, devalue it. If not, increase its value - and also increase demand for Dilithium and Widgets too." This is very naive - because it may be much much cheaper for the empire to simply purchase Dilithium and Widgets directly rather than purchasing Fakesium, for example. Another example is two resources might allow the creation of Weapon A (Fakesium and Lieron), so we'd need to consider that. I've been scratching my head over the problem and it keeps growing. By the time the player joins the world, I'd expect enough iterations of this process to have occurred that prices would have largely normalised - and would then only trigger rarely to compensate for major changes (eg. if the player blows up the world's only Foo mine!) Could anyone suggest resources (books, largely) which outline this style of modelling, preferably in the context of simulations? Since this problem would never occur outside fantasy worlds, I figured this is probably the most likely place to find people who have encountered similar problems and I'm sure there's people who know of good places for Games Developers to start looking at less specific economic theory too. Additionally, does anyone know of any developers with blogs whose games or research applications perform similar modelling?

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• How far is too far?

  - by David Dorf

  Previously I've talked about Safeway's personalized pricing as well as Target's use of analytics to learn about customers.  Then last week I read about Orbitz tailoring their hotel offers based on the browser used.  (Orbitz claims that Mac users are 40% more likely than PC users to book four- or five-star hotels.)  So just how far is too far when tailoring the retail experience? When most consumers read about these types of tactics, they tend to feel violated, as if someone was reading their personal diary.  Nobody wants to be tricked into buying things.  Walking into a grocery store and seeing crates of apples stacked high looks enticing, but the crates are just for display and the apples may be over a year old.  Even though its much cheaper to print markdown tags, many retailers manually write the price tags because consumers think they deal is better if the price is hand-written. The technology already exists to personalize prices and experiences for consumers.  People get upset thinking they paid more for something than a neighbor, but it already happens all the time with cars, flights, and the use of loyalty programs and coupons. There are many variables at play for any purchase.  They only difference is that the customer segments are getting smaller, sometimes reaching a size of one. There's two ways to look at this.  Retailers have always manipulated the environment to get consumers to buy more -- or -- Retailers are getting better at tuning the shopping experience for consumers.  I choose the latter, and so do most consumers by spending their money in the stores they like.  Consumers like to see fresh flowers at the entrance to the grocery store, and they like to see specials scrawled on chalkboards. The key is making sure that consumers benefit from the experience as well.  I'm willing to give up some personal information in exchange for discounts and more relevant marketing, and the next-generation of shoppers are even less concerned about privacy.  Retailers need to use all the tools available to differentiate their offers and connect with their customers. So if Orbitz wants to put three-star hotels at the top of the list for me because I'm using a PC, that's fine by me.

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• sell skimmed dump+pin([email protected])wu transfer,bank transfer,paypal+mailpass

  - by bestseller

  http://megareserve.blogspot.com///////// [email protected]////gmail:[email protected] Sell, Cvv, Bank Logins, Tracks, PayPal, Transfers, WU, Credit Cards, Card, Hacks, Citi, Boa, Visa, MasterCard, Amex, American Express, Make Money Fast, Stolen, Cc, C++, Adder, Western, Union, Banks, Of, America, Wellsfargo, Liberty, Reserve, Gram, Mg, LR, AlertPay ..PAYMENT METHOD LIBERTYRESERVE AND WESTERNUNION ONLY........ Ccv EU is $ 6 per ccv (Visa + Master) Ccv EU is $ 7 per ccv (Amex + Discover) Ccv Au is $ 6 per ccv Ccv Italy is 15 $ per cc sweden 12$ spain 10$ france 12$ Ccv US is $ 1.5 per ccv (Visa) Ccv US is $ 2 per ccv (master) Ccv US is $ 3 per ccv (Amex + Discover) Ccv UK is $ 5 per ccv (Visa + Master) Ccv UK is $ 6 per ccv (Amex + swith) Ccv Ca is $ 6 per ccv (Visa+ Master) Ccv Ca is $ 9 per ccv (Visa Business + Visa Gold) Ccv Germany is 14$ Per Ccv Ccv DOB with US is 15 $ per ccv Ccv DOB with UK is 19 $ per ccv Ccv DOB + BIN with UK 25$ per ccv Ccv US full info is 40 $ per ccv Ccv UK full info is 60 $ per ccv 1 Uk check bins= 12.5$/1cvv 1 Sock live = 1$/1sock live 5day yahoo:[email protected] gmail:[email protected] Balance In Chase:.........70K To 155K ========300$ Balance In Wachovia:.........24K To 80K==========180$ Balance In Boa..........75K To 450K==========400$ Balance In Credit Union:.........Any Amount:=========420$ Balance In Hallifax..........ANY AMOUNT=========420$ Balance In Compass..........ANY AMOUNT=========400$ Balance In Wellsfargo..........ANY AMOUNT=========400$ Balance In Barclays..........80K To 100K=========550$ Balance In Abbey:.........82K ==========650$ Balance in Hsbc:.........50K========650$ and more 1 Paypal with pass email = 50$/paypal 1 Paypal don't have pass email = 20$/Paypal 1 Banklogin us or uk (personel)= 550$ yahoo :[email protected] gmail :[email protected] Track 1/2 Visa Classic, MasterCard Standart US - 13$ UK - 17$ EU - 24$ AU - 26$ Track 1/2 Visa Gold | Platinum | Business | Signature, MasterCard Gold | Platinum US - 17$ UK - 20$ EU - 28$ AU - 30$ Bank transfer Balance 71.000$ CITIBANK SOUTH DAKOTA, N.A. Balance 65.000$ Wachovia: 76.000$ Abbey: 65.000£ Hsbc : 87.000$ Hallifax : 97.000£ Barclays: 110.000£ AHLI UNITED BANK --- 80.000£ LLOYDSTSB ---------- 100.000£ BANK OF SCOTLAND --- 123.000£ BOA ----------210.000$ UBS ---------- 152.000$ RBC BANK ------ 245.000$ BANK OF CANADA -------- 78.000$ BDC ---------- 281.000$ BANK LAURENTIENNE ----- 241.000$ please no test yahoo: [email protected] gmail: [email protected] website ; http://megareserve.blogspot.com Prices For Bin and Its List: 5434, 5419, 4670,374288,545140,454634,3791 with d.o.b,4049,4462,4921.4929.46274547,5506,5569,5404,5031,4921, 5505,5506,4921,4550 ,4552,4988,5186,4462,4543,4567 ,4539,5301,4929,5521 , 4291,5051,4975,5413 5255 4563,4547 4505,4563 5413 5255,5521,5506,4921,4929,54609 7,5609,54609,4543, 4975,5432,5187 ,4973,4627,4049,4779,426565,55 05, 5549, 5404, 5434, 5419, 4670,456730,541361, 451105,4670,5505, 5549, 5404, UK Nomall NO BINS(Serial) with DOB is :10$ UK with BINS(Serial) with DOB is :15$ UK Nomall no BINS(Serial) no DOB is: 6$ UK with BINS(Serial) is :12$ Please do not request : cc for TEST and FREE. DON'T CONTACT ME IF YOU NOT READY NEED TO BUY .

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• Stop Saying "Multi-Channel!"

  - by David Dorf

  I keep hearing the term "multi-channel" in our industry, but its time to move on. It kinda reminds me of the term "ECR" or electronic cash register. Long ago ECR was a leading-edge term, but nowadays its rarely used because its table-stakes. After all, what cash register today isn't electronic? The same logic applies to multi-channel, at least when we're talking about tier-1 and tier-2 retailers. If you're still talking about multi-channel retailing, you're in big trouble. Some have switched over to the term "cross-channel," and that's a step in the right direction but still falls short. Its kinda like saying, "I upgraded my ECR to accept debit cards!" Yawn. Who hasn't? Today's retailers need to focus on omni-channel, which I first heard from my friends over at RSR but was originally coined at IDC. First retailers added e-commerce to their store and catalog channels yielding multi-channel retailing. Consumers could use the channel that worked best for them. Then some consumers wanted to combine channels with features like buy-on-the-Web, pickup-in-the-store. Thus began the cross-channel initiatives to breakdown the silos and enable the channels to communicate with each other. But the multi-channel architecture is full of duplication that thwarts efforts of providing a consistent experience. Each has its own cart, its own pricing, and often its own CRM. This was an outcrop of trying to bring the independent channels to market quickly. Rather than reusing and rebuilding existing components to meet the new demands, silos were created that continue to exist today. Today's consumers want omni-channel retailing. They want to interact with brands in a consistent manner that is channel transparent, yet optimized for that particular interaction. The diagram below, from the soon-to-be-released NRF Mobile Blueprint v2, shows this progression. For retailers to provide an omni-channel experience, there needs to be one logical representation of products, prices, promotions, and customers across all channels. The only thing that varies is the presentation of the content based on the delivery mechanism (e.g. shelf labels, mobile phone, web site, print, etc.) and often these mechanisms can be combined in various ways. I'm looking forward to the day in which I can use my phone to scan QR-codes in a catalog to create a shopping cart of items. Then do some further research on the retailer's Web site and be told about related items that might interest me. Be able to easily solicit opinions and reviews from social sites, and finally enter the store to pickup my items, knowing that any applicable coupons have been applied. In this scenario, I the consumer are dealing with a single brand that is aware of me and my needs throughout the entire transaction. Nirvana.

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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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• Commerce, Anyway You Want It

  - by David Dorf

  I believe our industry is finally starting to realize the importance of letting consumers determine how, when, and where to interact with retailers.  Over the last few months I've seen several articles discussing the importance of removing the barriers between existing channels. Paula Rosenblum of RSR first brought the term omni-channel to my attention back in September. She stated, "omni-channel retail isn’t the merging of channels – rather, it’s the use of all possible channels (present and future) to enhance the customer experience in a profitable way." I added to her thoughts in this blog posting in which I said, "For retailers to provide an omni-channel experience, there needs to be one logical representation of products, prices, promotions, and customers across all channels. The only thing that varies is the presentation of the content based on the delivery mechanism (e.g. shelf labels, mobile phone, web site, print, etc.) and often these mechanisms can be combined in various ways." More recently Brian Walker of Gartner suggested we stop using the term multi-channel and begin thinking more about consumer touch-points. "It is time for organizations to leave their channel-oriented ways behind, and enter the era of agile commerce--optimizing their people, processes and technology to serve today's empowered, ever-connected customers across this rapidly evolving set of customer touch points." Now Jason Goldberg, better known as RetailGeek, says we should start breaking down the channel silos by re-casting the VP of E-Commerce as the VP of Digital Marketing, and change his/her focus to driving sales across all channels using digital media. This logic is based on the fact that consumers switch between channels, or touch-points as Brian prefers, as part of their larger buying process. Today's smart consumer leverages the Web, mobile, and stores to provide the best shopping experience, so retailers need to make this easier. Regardless of what we call it, the key take-away is that "multi-channel" is not only an antiquated term but also an idea who's time has passed.  Today, retailers must look at e-commerce, m-commerce, f-commerce, catalogs, and traditional store sales collectively and through the consumers' eyes.  The goal is not to drive sales through each channel but rather to just drive sales -- using whatever method the customer prefers.  There really should be just one cart.

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• What economic books would you suggest for learning about economic valuation of goods and simulations thereof?

  - by Rushyo

  I'm looking to create an economic model for a game based on goods created procedurally. Every natural resource and produced good would be procedurally generated, with certain goods being assigned certain uses. Fakesium might be used for the production of Weapon A and produced from Fakesium factories which use Dilithium and Widgets as reagents, where Widgets are also the product of Foo and Bar The problem is not creating the resources and their various production utlities - but getting the game's AI empires and merchants to (Addendum: somewhat) correctly value the goods according to their scarcity, utility and production costs. I need to create a simulation of goods which allows the various game factions to assign a common value denominator (credits) to each resource, depending on how much its worth to that empire. I see the simulation being something like: "I have a high requirement for Weapon A. Since I don't have much of Fakesium, which is needed for Weapon A - I must have a high demand for Fakesium. If I can acquire Fakesium, devalue it. If not, increase its value - and also increase demand for Dilithium and Widgets too." This is very naive - because it may be much much cheaper for the empire to simply purchase Dilithium and Widgets directly rather than purchasing Fakesium, for example. Another example is two resources might allow the creation of Weapon A (Fakesium and Lieron), so we'd need to consider that. I've been scratching my head over the problem and it keeps growing. By the time the player joins the world, I'd expect enough iterations of this process to have occurred that prices would have largely normalised - and would then only trigger rarely to compensate for major changes (eg. if the player blows up the world's only Foo mine!) Could anyone suggest resources (books, largely) which outline this style of modelling, preferably in the context of simulations? Since this problem would never occur outside fantasy worlds, I figured this is probably the most likely place to find people who have encountered similar problems and I'm sure there's people who know of good places for Games Developers to start looking at less specific economic theory too. Additionally, does anyone know of any developers with blogs whose games or research applications perform similar modelling? EDIT: I think I should underline that I'm not looking for optimal solutions. I'm looking to make the actors impulsive - making rudimentary decisions based on fuzzy inputs about what they care about or don't. I'm aiming to understand the problem area better not derive answers. All the textbooks I've found seem to be about real-world economics or how to solve complex theoretical problems, neither of which are terribly relevant to the actor's decision making.

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• WebCenter Customer Spotlight: Azul Brazilian Airlines

  - by me

  Author: Peter Reiser - Social Business Evangelist, Oracle WebCenter  Solution SummaryAzul Linhas Aéreas Brasileiras (Azul Brazilian Airlines) is the third-largest airline in Brazil serving  42 destinations with a fleet of 49 aircraft and employs 4,500 crew members. The company wanted to offer an innovative site with a simple purchasing process for customers to search for and buy tickets and for the company’s marketing team to more effectively conduct its campaigns. To this end, Azul implemented Oracle WebCenter Sites, succeeding in gathering all of the site’s key information onto a single platform. Azul can now complete the Web site content updating process—which used to take approximately 48 hours—in less than five minutes. Company OverviewAzul Linhas Aéreas Brasileiras (Azul Brazilian Airlines) has established itself as the third-largest airline in Brazil, based on a business model that combines low prices with a high level of service. Azul serves 42 destinations with a fleet of 49 aircraft. It operates 350 daily flights with a team of 4,500 crew members. Last year, the company transported 15 million passengers, achieving a 10% share of the Brazilian market, according to the Agência Nacional de Aviação Civil (ANAC, or the National Civil Aviation Agency). Business ChallengesThe company wanted to offer an innovative site with a simple purchasing process for customers to search for and buy tickets and for the company’s marketing team to more effectively conduct its campaigns. Provide customers with an  innovative Web site with a simple process for purchasing flight tickets Bring dynamism to the Web site’s content updating process to provide autonomy to the airline’s strategic departments, such as marketing and product development Facilitate integration among the site’s different application providers, such as ticket availability and payment process, on which ticket sales depend Solution DeployedAzul worked with the  Oracle partner TQI to implement Oracle WebCenter Sites, succeeding in gathering all of the site’s key information onto a single platform. Previously, at least three servers and corporate information environments had directed data to the portal. The single Oracle-based platform now facilitates site updates, which are daily and constant. Business Results Gained development freedom in all processes—from implementation to content editing Gathered all of the Web site’s key information onto a single platform, facilitating its daily and constant updating, whereas the information was previously spread among at least three IT environments and had to go through a complex process to be made available online to customers Reduced time needed to update banners and other Web site content from an average of 48 hours to less than five minutes Simplified the flight ticket sales process thanks to tool flexibility that enabled the company to improve Website usability “Oracle WebCenter Sites provides an easy-to-use platform that enables our marketing department to spend less time updating content and more time on innovative activities. Previously, it would take 48 hours to update content on our Web site; now it takes less than five minutes. We have shown the market that we are innovators, enabling customer convenience through an improved flight ticket purchase process.” Kleber Linhares, Information Technology and E-Commerce Director, Azul Linhas Aéreas Brasileiras Additional Information Azul Brazilian Airlines Case Study Oracle WebCenter Sites Oracle WebCenter Sites Satellite Server

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• Showrooming: What's the big deal?

  - by David Dorf

  There's been lots of chatter recently on how retailers will combat showrooming this holiday season.  Best Buy and Target, for example, plan to price-match certain online sites.  But from my perspective, the whole showrooming concept is overblown.  Yes, mobile phones make is easier to comparison-shop, but consumers have been doing that all along.  Retailers have to work hard to merchandise their stores with the right products at the right price with the right promotions.  Its Retail 101. Yeah ok, many websites don't have to charge tax so they have an advantage, but they also have to cover shipping costs. Brick-and-mortar stores have the opportunity to provide expertise, fit, and instant gratification all of which are pretty big advantages. I see lots of studies that claim a large percentage of shoppers are showrooming.  Now I don't do much shopping, but when I do I rarely see anyone scanning UPC codes in the aisles.  If you dig into those studies, the question is usually something like, "have you used your mobile phone to price compare while shopping in the last year."  Well yeah, I did it once -- out of the 20 shopping trips.  And by the way, the in-store price was close enough to just buy the item.  Based on casual observation and informal surveys of friends, showrooming is not the modus-operandi for today's busy shoppers. I never see people showrooming in grocery stores, and most people don't bother for fashion.  For big purchases like appliances and furniture, I bet most people do their research online before entering the store.  The cases where I've done it was to see if a promotion was in fact a good deal.  Or even to make sure the in-store price is the same as the online price for the same brand. So, if you think you're a victim of showrooming, I suggest you look at the bigger picture.  Are you providing an engaging store experience?  Are you allowing customers to shop the way they want to shop, using various touchpoints?  Are you monitoring the competition to ensure prices are competitive?  Are your promotions attracting the right customers? Hubert Jolly, CEO of Best Buy, recently commented that showrooming might just get more people into his stores. "Once customers are in our stores, they're ours to lose."

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• PASS Summit 2011: Save Money Now

  - by Bill Graziano

  Register by March 31st and save $200.  On April 1st we increase the price.  On July 1st we increase it again.  We have regular price bumps all the way through to the Summit.  You can save yourself $200 if you register by Thursday. In two years of marketing for PASS and a year of finance I’ve learned a fair bit about our pricing, why we do this and how you react to it.  Let me help you save some money! Price bumps drive registrations.  We see big spikes in the two weeks prior to a price increase.  Having a deadline with a cost attached is a great motivator to get people to take action. Registering early helps you and it helps PASS.  You get the exact same Summit at a cheaper rate.  PASS gets smoother cash flow and a better idea of how many people to expect.  We also get people that are already registered that will tell their friends about the conference. This tiered pricing lets us serve those that are very price conscious.  They can register early and take advantage of these discounts.  I know there are people that pay for this conference out of their own pockets.  This is a great way for those people to reduce the cost of the conference.  (And remember for next year that our cheapest pricing starts right after the Summit and usually goes up around the first of the year.) We also get big price bumps after we announce the program and the pre-conference sessions.  If you wrote down the 50 or so best known speakers in the SQL Server community I’m guessing we’ll have nearly all of them at the conference.  We did last year.  I expect we will this year too.  We’re going to have good sessions.  Why wait?  Register today. If you want to attend a pre-conference session you can always add it to your registration later.  Pre-con prices don’t change.  It’s very easy to update your registration and add a pre-conference session later. I want as many people as possible to attend the Summit.  It’s been a great experience for me and I hope it will be for you.  And if you are going to go, do yourself a favor and save some money.  Register today!

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• How can we unify business goals and technical goals?

  - by BAM

  Some background I work at a small startup: 4 devs, 1 designer, and 2 non-technical co-founders, one who provides funding, and the other who handles day-to-day management and sales. Our company produces mobile apps for target industries, and we've gotten a lot of lucky breaks lately. The outlook is good, and we're confident we can make this thing work. One reason is our product development team. Everyone on the team is passionate, driven, and has a great sense of what makes an awesome product. As a result, we've built some beautiful applications that we're all proud of. The other reason is the co-founders. Both have a brilliant business sense (one actually founded a multi-million dollar company already), and they have close ties in many of the industries we're trying to penetrate. Consequently, they've brought in some great business and continue to keep jobs in the pipeline. The problem The problem we can't seem to shake is how to bring these two awesome advantages together. On the business side, there is a huge pressure to deliver as fast as possible as much as possible, whereas on the development side there is pressure to take your time, come up with the right solution, and pay attention to all the details. Lately these two sides have been butting heads a lot. Developers are demanding quality while managers are demanding quantity. How can we handle this? Both sides are correct. We can't survive as a company if we build terrible applications, but we also can't survive if we don't sell enough. So how should we go about making compromises? Things we've done with little or no success: Work more (well, it did result in better quality and faster delivery, but the dev team has never been more stressed out before) Charge more (as a startup, we don't yet have the credibility to justify higher prices, so no one is willing to pay) Extend deadlines (if we charge the same, but take longer, we'll end up losing money) Things we've done with some success: Sacrifice pay to cut costs (everyone, from devs to management, is paid less than they could be making elsewhere. In return, however, we all have creative input and more flexibility and freedom, a typical startup trade off) Standardize project management (we recently started adhering to agile/scrum principles so we can base deadlines on actual velocity, not just arbitrary guesses) Hire more people (we used to have 2 developers and no designers, which really limited our bandwidth. However, as a startup we can only afford to hire a few extra people.) Is there anything we're missing or doing wrong? How is this handled at successful companies? Thanks in advance for any feedback :)

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• Benchmarking a file server

  - by Joel Coel

  I'm working on building a new file server... a simple Windows Server box with a few terabytes of disk space to share on the LAN. Pain for current hard drive prices aside :( -- I would like to get some benchmarks for this device under load compared to our old server. The old server was installed in 2005 and had 5 136GB 10K disks in RAID 5. The new server has 8 1TB disks in two RAID 10 volumes (plus a hot spare for each volume), but they're only 7.2K rpm, and of course with a much larger cache size. I'd like to get an idea of the performance expectations of the new server relative to the old. Where do I get started? I'd like to know both raw potential under different kinds of load for each server, as well an idea of what our real-world load looks like and how it will translate. Will disk load even matter, or will performance be more driven by the network connection? I could probably fumble through some disk i/o and wait counters in performance monitor, but I don't really know what to look for, which counters to watch, or for how long and when. FWIW, I'm expecting a nice improvement because of the benefits of having two different volumes and the better RAID 10 performance vs RAID 5, in spite of using slower disks... but I'd like to get an idea of how much.

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• ATI gpu (video accel, decode, encode, ATI Stream, DXVA)

  - by Shiki

  Okay its a long question title for sure. I'm looking for a new video card (yes,SU is not a page for that, but wait). I've been a loyal NVidia customer ever since, now using a 8600gts. Old but still somewhat good, its a bit slow though. I want an upgrade because 8600gts wont support better vdpau and new features. I checked out the prices and the documents, I would need a GTX260 card. Which costs ..well.. a lot. ATI performs much better for that price. (At least on every test it outperforms GTX260). However, as far as I know there is no gpu accel with ATI. The things you can use is DXVA only, no other method. Could you correct me out there? Will be there a gpu accel for ATI also? Or is there one available? (DXVA is not bad, but kinda slow compared to NVIdia's CUDA.) What about openCL? How does ATI support that? (I'm talking about the 5850 ATI card at the minute, I would buy that instead of the NVidia.)

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• Using pre-made patch cables on a punch down block?

  - by Trevor Harrison

  I need to add a 24 port switch to my wiring closet. In the (distant) past, I usually just punched each port of the switch to a 110 block on the wall (using hand-made cables), and cross connect between that and the 110 block that has the runs to each workstation. To save time, I'm thinking of buying 12 pre-made drop cables, cutting them in half (so 24 single ended cables), and punching those to my 110 block. The things I'm worried about are wire type (ie. solid vs. strands) and color scheme. I really don't know if they use different wire types (still?), but I remember that being an issue at one point. Can anyone comment on this? (I definitely won't feel comfortable trying to punch stranded wiring on my 110 block) Also, picking up a random pre-built cable I had laying around, I noticed that the color scheme used didn't appear to be T568B, but T568A, which would clash with the rest of my wall. Anyone know of an online source that specifies these things? I've looked at www.cablesforless.com (which does have nicer prices) and www.cablestogo.com (which seem stupid expensive) so far. Cables For Less doesn't specify wiring scheme, Cables To Go does specify T568B. Both seem to specify stranded wires instead of solid.

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• Chipset fan on the frtiz - compressed air hasn't fixed anything - is there anything I can do?

  - by Anthony

  Yesterday, my computer started to make an annoying whining noise. Knowing that this is likely a fan issue, I opened the case and proceeded to determine which fan was causing the issue. I got some compressed air and tried cleaning out the dust around it (and the rest of the computer while I was at it). This hasn't seemed to fix the issue. Now, if it were just any fan, I would probably just replace the fan - they're relatively cheap after all. However, this is a special fan. Aside: For what its worth, I feel bad that the graphics card blocks part of the fan, but it is the only slot the graphics card fits, so I had no choice. After pulling out my motherboard user guide, it looks like this is a fan placed directly on top of the chipset. To be perfectly honest, I have no clue what the purpose of the chipset is - but it sounds important. After some quick research, I see that it is responsible for providing the bridge between my CPU, RAM and graphics, among other things. Just a quick search at Newegg tells me that chipset fans can be purchased at pretty reasonable prices (< 20 dollars). Is it practical to replace this fan? It is an old computer as computers go and I wouldn't be terribly upset to upgrade the motherboard and processor, so perhaps this is a sign. Hardware Specs: Motherboard: Asus A8N-E Chipset: NVIDIA nForce4 Ultra

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• Dedicated server with a lot of storage and good support - and cost-effective

  - by Martin Burger

  Hello, I am from Germany and looking for a dedicated server located in the US with a lot of storage: 750 - 1500 GB. CPU speed and amount of memory are secondary, the server will host large amounts of media files via http and ftp - the basic task is to help people exchange media files. In Germany, there are some good offers, like "Root Server EQ6" at www.hetzner.de. For example, that company provides support of high quality, and their plans are very cost-effective. The plan mentioned above costs about $90 per month and provides two 1500 GB SATA-II HDDs (Software-RAID 1). In the US, I found (amongst others) Go Daddy and rackspace. Go Daddy offers some "Storage Monster" plans that include 2 x 1,000 GB hard drives for about $180 per month - already twice as much as Hetzner above. However, I found some blog and forum entries that complain about the support provided by Go Daddy. Rackspace seems to provide decent support, but they are very "upscale". Their dedicated servers are customizable and start at $419 - thus, about 4.5 times as much as Hetzner. Can anybody recommend a solution / plan that is comparable to the one by Hetzner? Or are prices for dedicated servers in general much higher than in Germany? Regards, Martin

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• Creating basic, redundant gigE or IB storage network for Xen?

  - by StaringSkyward

  With only a modest budget, I want to move my 4 xen servers over to network storage -either NFS or iSCSI which will be determined based on how well it performs when we test it (we need good throughput and it must continue to work through link and switch failure tests). We may add another couple of xen servers at some point when this is done. I don't know much about the design and operation of storage networks, so would really appreciate some hints from those with experience. The budget is around $3,800 excluding the storage appliance. I am currently thinking these are my options to remain on budget: 1) Go for used infiniband hardware and aim for 10gb performance. 2) Stick with gig ethernet and buy some new switches (cisco or procurve) to create a storage-only ethernet LAN. Upgrade to 10gigE later but try to use hardware capable of it where possible to reduce upgrade costs. I have seen used, warrantied infiniband switches at reasonable prices (presumably because big companies are converging on 10gbit ethernet?) and the promise of cheap 10gb is attractive. I know nothing about IB, so here come the questions: Can I buy 2 x switches and have multiple HBAs in my xen and storage nodes to get redundancy and increased performance without complexity or expensive management software costs? If so, can you point me to some examples? Do NFS and iSCSI work just the same regardless? Is IB a sensible choice or could/should I use ethernet or FC on the same budget - I'm keen not to get boxed into a corner for future upgrades, however. For the storage I am likely to build a storage server using nexentastor with the intention that I can later add more disks, SSDs and add another server to provide a failover option at the storage level. An HP LeftHand starter SAN is also under consideration, too. Thanks in advance.

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• AMD 700, 800 series chipset. I'm lost.

  - by Shiki

  I've been an Intel / NVidia user ever since I started using computers. Intel really gone up with the prices, and they won't get cheaper. So I decided to get an AMD. But WHICH one? I mean.. not shopping question but.. what are the differences? Like: 880GMA comes only with a single PCI ex and it looks like a chinese replica (no offense). While 890FX comes with 5PCI-ex for QuadCrossfire. Also.. what's the deal with 7xx series? I mean.. its the same price. Yet its older? Or why is it 7xx? Isn't there a single chipset between? Not chinese YET it's durable/fine for long-term usage? What it should know (desktop stuff): NVidia GPU (Zalman AMP2 GTX 260^2 (one card)) Phenom 1090T cpu A somewhat good audio. Any ideas which is the chipset I'm searching for? If this sounds too much of a shopping question, feel free to edit. I just want some clarification on these chipsets.

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