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• The State of the Internet -- Retail Edition

  - by David Dorf

  Over at Business Insider, there's a great presentation on the State of the Internet done in the Mary Meeker style.  Its 138 slides so I took the liberty of condensing it down to the 15 slides that directly apply to the retail industry.  However, I strongly recommend looking at the entire deck when you have time.  And while you're at it, Business Insider just launched a retail portal that's dedicated to retail industry content.  Please check it out as well.  My take-aways are below after the slide show. &amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;span id=&amp;amp;amp;amp;quot;XinhaEditingPostion&amp;amp;amp;amp;quot;&amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;/span&amp;amp;amp;amp;gt; [Source: Business Insider] Here are a few things I took away from the statistics: Facebook and Twitter are in their infancy.  While all retailers should have social programs, search is still the driver and therefore should receive the lions share of investment.  Facebook referrals are up 92% year-over-year, but Google still does 80% of the referrals. E-commerce continues to grow at breakneck speed, but in-store commerce is still king. Stores are not showrooms yet.  And social commerce pure-plays like Gilt and Groupon are tiny but worthy of some attention. There are more smartphones than PCs on the internet, and the disparity will continue to grow. PC growth will be flat and Tablet use will continue to grow. Mobile accounts for 12% of all internet traffic. A quarter of smartphone sales come from China, so anyone with a presence there better have a strong mobile strategy. 38% of people have used their smartphone to make a purchase, and many use their smartphones inside stores.  Smartphones are a critical consumer tool for shopping. Mobile is starting to drive significant traffic to e-commerce sites, especially tablets.  Tablet strategies are crucial for retailers. Mobile payments from the likes of Paypal and Square are growing quickly.  It will be interesting to see how NFC plays in this area. Mobile operating systems are losing market share to iOS and Android.  I wonder in Microsoft can finally make a dent? The internet is being dominated by mobile devices, and retailers had better have a strong mobile strategy to meet consumer demand.

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• Will Online Learning Save Higher Education (and does it need saving)?

  - by user739873

  A lot (an awful lot) of education industry rag real estate has been devoted to the topics of online learning, MOOC’s, Udacity, edX, etc., etc. and to the uninitiated you’d think that the education equivalent of the cure for cancer had been discovered. There are certainly skeptics (whose voice is usually swiftly trampled upon by the masses) who feel we could over steer and damage or destroy something vital to teaching and learning (i.e. the classroom experience and direct interaction with human beings known as instructors), but for the most part prevailing opinion seems to be that online learning will take over the world and that higher education will never be the same. Now I’m sure that since you all know I work for a technology company you think I’m going to come down hard on the side of online learning proselytizers. Yes, I do believe that this revolution can and will provide access to massive numbers of individuals that either couldn’t afford (from a fiscal or time perspective) a traditional education, and that in some cases the online modality will actually be an improvement over certain traditional forms (such as courses taught by an adjunct or teaching assistant that has no business being a teacher). But I think several things need immediate attention or we’re likely to get so caught up in the delivery that we miss some of the real issues (and opportunities) around online learning. First and foremost, we’ve got to give some thought to how traditional information systems are going to accommodate thousands (possibly hundreds of thousands) of individual students each taking courses from many, many different “deliverers” with an expectation that successful completion of these courses will result in credit at many or most institutions. There’s also a huge opportunity to refine the delivery platform (no, LMS is not a commodity when you are talking about online delivery being your sole mode of operation) as well as the course itself by mining all kinds of data from the interactions that the students have with the material each time they take it. Social data analytics tools will be key in achieving this goal. What about accreditation (badging or competencies vs. traditional degrees)? And again, will the information systems in place today adapt to changes in this area fast enough? The type of scale that this shift in learning could drive has the potential to abruptly overwhelm just about every system in place today in higher education. I would like to (with a not so gentle reminder) refer you back to a blog entry I wrote when I first stepped into my current role at Oracle in which I talked about how higher ed needs an “Oracle” more than at any other time in it’s evolution (despite the somewhat mercantilist reputation it has in some circles). There just aren’t that many organizations that can deliver the kinds of solutions “at scale” that this brave new world of online education will demand. The future may be closer than we think. Cole

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• Data structures for a 2D multi-layered and multi-region map?

  - by DevilWithin

  I am working on a 2D world editor and a world format subsequently. If I were to handle the game "world" being created just as a layered set of structures, either in top or side views, it would be considerably simple to do most things. But, since this editor is meant for 3rd parties, I have no clue how big worlds one will want to make and I need to keep in mind that eventually it will become simply too much to check, handling and comparing stuff that are happening completely away from the player position. I know the solution for this is to subdivide my world into sub regions and stream them on the fly, loading and unloading resources and other data. This way I know a virtually infinite game area is achievable. But, while I know theoretically what to do, I really have a few questions I'd hoped to get answered for some hints about the topic. The logic way to handle the regions is some kind of grid, would you pick evenly distributed blocks with equal sizes or would you let the user subdivide areas by taste with irregular sized rectangles? In case of even grids, would you use some kind of block/chunk neighbouring system to check when the player transposes the limit or just put all those in a simple array? Being a region a different data structure than its owner "game world", when streaming a region, would you deliver the objects to the parent structures and track them for unloading later, or retain the objects in each region for a more "hard-limit" approach? Introducing the subdivision approach to the project, and already having a multi layered scene graph structure on place, how would i make it support the new concept? Would you have the parent node have the layers as children, and replicate in each layer node, a node per region? Or the opposite, parent node owns all the regions possible, and each region has multiple layers as children? Or would you just put the region logic outside the graph completely(compatible with the first suggestion in Q.3) When I say virtually infinite worlds, I mean it of course under the contraints of the variable sizes and so on. Using float positions, a HUGE world can already be made. Do you think its sane to think beyond that? Because I think its ok to stick to this limit since it will never be reached so easily.. As for when to stream a region, I'm implementing it as a collection of watcher cameras, which the streaming system works with to know what to load/unload. The problem here is, i will be needing some kind of warps/teleports built in for my game, and there is a chance i will be teleporting a player to a unloaded region far away. How would you approach something like this? Is it sane to load any region to memory which can be teleported to by a warp within a radius from the player? Sorry for the huge question, any answers are helpful!

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• Why can't a blendShader sample anything but the current coordinate of the background image?

  - by Triynko

  In Flash, you can set a DisplayObject's blendShader property to a pixel shader (flash.shaders.Shader class). The mechanism is nice, because Flash automatically provides your Shader with two input images, including the background surface and the foreground display object's bitmap. The problem is that at runtime, the shader doesn't allow you to sample the background anywhere but under the current output coordinate. If you try to sample other coordinates, it just returns the color of the current coordinate instead, ignoring the coordinates you specified. This seems to occur only at runtime, because it works properly in the Pixel Bender toolkit. This limitation makes it impossible to simulate, for example, the Aero Glass effect in Windows Vista/7, because you cannot sample the background properly for blurring. I must mention that it is possible to create the effect in Flash through manual composition techniques, but it's hard to determine when it actually needs updated, because Flash does not provide information about when a particular area of the screen or a particular display object needs re-rendered. For example, you may have a fixed glass surface with objects moving underneath it that don't dispatch events when they move. The only alternative is to re-render the glass bar every frame, which is inefficient, which is why I am trying to do it through a blendShader so Flash determines when it needs rendered automatically. Is there a technical reason for this limitation, or is it an oversight of some sort? Does anyone know of a workaround, or a way I could provide my manual composition implementation with information about when it needs re-rendered? The limitation is mentioned with no explanation in the last note in this page: http://help.adobe.com/en_US/as3/dev/WSB19E965E-CCD2-4174-8077-8E5D0141A4A8.html It says: "Note: When a Pixel Bender shader program is run as a blend in Flash Player or AIR, the sampling and outCoord() functions behave differently than in other contexts.In a blend, a sampling function will always return the current pixel being evaluated by the shader. You cannot, for example, use add an offset to outCoord() in order to sample a neighboring pixel. Likewise, if you use the outCoord() function outside a sampling function, its coordinates always evaluate to 0. You cannot, for example, use the position of a pixel to influence how the blended images are combined."

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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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• Are there any concerns with using a static read-only unit of work so that it behaves like a cache?

  - by Rowan Freeman

  Related question: How do I cache data that rarely changes? I'm making an ASP.NET MVC4 application. On every request the security details about the user will need to be checked with the area/controller/action that they are accessing to see if they are allowed to view it. The security information is stored in the database. For example: User Permission UserPermission Action ActionPermission A "Permission" is a token that is applied to an MVC action to indicate that the token is required in order to access the action. Once a user is given the permission (via the UserPermission table) then they have the token and can therefore access the action. I've been looking in to how to cache this data (since it rarely changes) so that I'm only querying in-memory data and not hitting a database (which is a considerable performance hit at the moment). I've tried storing things in lists, using a caching provider but I either run in to problems or performance doesn't improve. One problem that I constantly run in to is that I'm using lazy loading and dynamic proxies with EntityFramework. This means that even if I ToList() everything and store them somewhere static, the relationships are never populated. For example, User.Permissions is an ICollection but it's always null. I don't want to Include() everything because I'm trying to keep things simple and generic (and easy to modify). One thing I know is that an EntityFramework DbContext is a unit of work that acts with 1st-level caching. That is, for the duration of the unit of work, everything that is accessed is cached in memory. I want to create a read-only DbContext that will exist indefinitely and will only be used to read about permission data. Upon testing this it worked perfectly; my page load times went from 200ms+ to 20ms. I can easily force the data to refresh at certain intervals or simply leave it to refresh when the application pool is recycled. Basically it will behave like a cache. Note that the rest of the application will interact with other contexts that exist per request as normal. Is there any disadvantage to this approach? Could I be doing something different?

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• EBS Accounts Payables Customer Advisory

  - by cwarticki

  Blogging to let you know of an important set of Oracle Payables patches that were released for R12.1 customers.  Accounts Payable Customer Advisory: Dear Valued Oracle Support Customer, Since the release of R12.1.3 a number of recommended Payables patches have been made available as standalone patches, to help address important business process incidents. Adoption of these patches is highly recommended. To further facilitate adoption of these Payables patches Oracle has consolidated them into a single Recommended Patch Collection (RPC). The RPC is a collection of recommended Payables patches created with the following goals in mind: Stability: Help address issues that are identified by Oracle Development and Oracle Software Support that may interfere with the normal completion of important business processes such as period close. Root Cause Fixes: Help make available root cause fix for data integrity that may delay period close, normal invoice flow and other business actions. Compact: Keep the file footprint as small as possible to help facilitate the install process and minimize testing. Granular: Collection of patches based on functional area that allows customer to apply, based on their individual needs and goals, all three RPC’s at once or in phases. Payables: -          New AP RPC (14273383:R12.AP.B) has all data corruption root cause fixes known to date plus tons of other crucial fixes (Note: 1397581.1). -          Companion must have RPCs: o   Note: 1481221.1: R12.1: Payments Recommended Patch Collection (IBY RPC), August 2012 o   Note: 1481235.1: R12.1: E-Business Tax Recommended Patch Collection (ZX RPC), August 2012 o   Note: 1481222.1: R12.1: Sub Ledger Accounting (SLA) Recommended Patch Collection (XLA RPC), August 2012 -          This time we beat the system far harder on testing and it held up remarkably well. We could not get any data corruption events in the Invoice Cancel/Discard flow (that is the #1 generator) neither we could cause Orphan Events in the system. Therefore this is very good code. Financials: -          ALL FIN modules now have RPCs: full listing is in (Note: 954704.1)

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• Help with Strategy-game AI

  - by f20k

  Hi, I am developing a strategy-game AI (think: Final Fantasy Tactics), and I am having trouble coming up for the design of the AI. My main problem is determining which is the optimal thing for it to do. First let me describe the priority of what action I would like the AI to take: Kill nearest player unit Fulfill primary directive (kill all player units, kill target unit, survive for x turns) Heal ally unit / cast buffer Now the AI can do the following in its turn: Move - {Attack / Ability / Item} (either attack or ability or item) {Attack / Ability / Item} - Move Move closer (if targets not in range) {Attack / Ability / Item} (if move not available) Notes Abilities have various ranges / effects / costs / effects. Each ai unit has maybe 5-10 abilities to choose from. The AI will prioritize killing over safety unless its directive is to survive for x turns. It also doesn't care about ability cost much. While a player may want to save a big spell for later, the AI will most likely use it asap. Movement is on a (hex) grid num of player units: 3-6 num of ai units: 3-7 or more. Probably max 10. AI and player take turns controlling ONE unit, instead of all at the same time. Platform is Android (if program doesnt respond after some time, there will be a popup saying to Force Quit or Wait - which looks really bad!). Now comes the questions: The best ability to use would obviously be the one that hits the most targets for the most damage. But since each ability has different ranges, I won't know if they are in range without exploring each possible place I can move to. One solution would be to go through each possible places to move to, determine the optimal attack at that location - which gives me a list of optimal moves for each location. Then choose the optimal out of the list and execute it. But this will take a lot of CPU time. Is there a better solution? My current idea is to move as close as possible towards the closest, largest group of people, and determine the optimal attack/ability from there. I think this would be a lot less work for the CPU and still allow for wide-range attacks. Its sub-optimal but the AI will still seem 'smart'. Other notes/questions: Am I over-thinking/over-complicating it? Better solution? I am open to all sorts of suggestions I have taken a look at the spell-casting question, but it doesn't take into account the movement - so perhaps use that algo for each possible move location? The top answer mentioned it wasn't great for area-of-effect and group fights - so maybe requires more tweaking? Please, if you mention a graph/tree, let me know basically how to use it. E.g. Node means ability, level corresponds to damage, then search for the deepest node.

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• Pathfinding for fleeing

  - by Philipp

  As you know there are plenty of solutions when you wand to find the best path in a 2-dimensional environment which leads from point A to point B. But how do I calculate a path when an object is at point A, and wants to get away from point B, as fast and far as possible? A bit of background information: My game uses a 2d environment which isn't tile-based but has floating point accuracy. The movement is vector-based. The pathfinding is done by partitioning the game world into rectangles which are walkable or non-walkable and building a graph out of their corners. I already have pathfinding between points working by using Dijkstras algorithm. The use-case for the fleeing algorithm is that in certain situations, actors in my game should perceive another actor as a danger and flee from it. The trivial solution would be to just move the actor in a vector in the direction which is opposite from the threat until a "safe" distance was reached or the actor reaches a wall where it then covers in fear. The problem with this approach is that actors will be blocked by small obstacles they could easily get around. As long as moving along the wall wouldn't bring them closer to the threat they could do that, but it would look smarter when they would avoid obstacles in the first place: Another problem I see is with dead ends in the map geometry. In some situations a being must choose between a path which gets it faster away now but ends in a dead end where it would be trapped, or another path which would mean that it wouldn't get that far away from the danger at first (or even a bit closer) but on the other hand would have a much greater long-term reward in that it would eventually get them much further away. So the short-term reward of getting away fast must be somehow valued against the long-term reward of getting away far. There is also another rating problem for situations where an actor should accept to move closer to a minor threat to get away from a much larger threat. But completely ignoring all minor threats would be foolish, too (that's why the actor in this graphic goes out of its way to avoid the minor threat in the upper right area): Are there any standard solutions for this problem?

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• Software engineering project idea feedback [on hold]

  - by Chris Sewell

  I'm a third year student currently undergoing my project/dissertation section of my degree. I have drafted a proposal for my final year project and would appreciate any feedback. The feedback can be anything constructive either specific to this proposal, the area that I will be working and researching in or my ideas. I will accept all input. Aims My aim is to attempt a proof of concept and prototype a runtime-as-a-service (RaaS). This cloud based runtime will allow clients to dynamically offload tasks or create cloud applications. Currently software-as-a-service (SaaS) cloud applications are purpose built and have a predefined scope in which they can assist or serve the client; this scope cannot be changed without physical alteration to the client and server software. With RaaS the client potentially could define any task it wanted at any time depending on its environment variables, the client and server would then communicate parameters and returns for that task. For the client to utilize a RaaS it must be able to conceive and then define a task using an appropriate XML vocabulary. As the scope of the cloud solution is defined by the client at its runtime, the cloud solution only has to exist for as long as the client requires it to as opposed to a client using a dedicated service. Deliverables The crux of the project will require an XML vocabulary in which the client and server will communicate. I’ll prototype the server application that will dynamically create and manage cloud solutions. The solution will be coded using an interpreted language, such as python or javascript, which can evaluate expressions in runtime or a language that can dynamically compile such as C# or Java. As a further proof of concept I will also produce a mock client that offloads tasks to the server. The report will attempt to explain the different flavours of cloud computing solutions including infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS), platform-as-a-service (PaaS) and SaaS including real world examples and where the use of a RaaS could have improved the overall example solution. Disclaimer: I'm not requesting stakeholders in my project nor am I delegating work. Any materials other than feedback, advice or directions will not be utilized.

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• Solaris 11

  - by user9154181

  Oracle has a strict policy about not discussing product features until they appear in shipping product. Now that Solaris 11 is publically available, it is time to catch up. I will be shortly posting articles on a variety of new developments in the Solaris linkers and related bits: 64-bit Archives After 40+ years of Unix, the archive file format has run out of room. The ar and link-editor (ld) commands have been enhanced to allow archives to grow past their previous 32-bit limits. Guidance The link-editor is now willing and able to tell you how to alter your link lines in order to build better objects. Stub Objects This is one of the bigger projects I've undertaken since joining the Solaris group. Stub objects are shared objects, built entirely from mapfiles, that supply the same linking interface as the real object, while containing no code or data. You can link to them, but cannot use them at runtime. It was pretty simple to add this ability to the link-editor, but the changes to the OSnet in order to apply them to building Solaris were massive. I discuss how we came to invent stub objects, how we apply them to build the OSnet in a more parallel and scalable manner, and about the follow on opportunities that have emerged from the new stub proto area we created to hold them. The elffile Utility A new standard Solaris utility, elffile is a variant of the file utility, focused exclusively on linker related files. elffile is of particular value for examining archives, as it allows you to find out what is inside them without having to first extract the archive members into temporary files. This release has been a long time coming. I joined the Solaris group in late 2005, and this will be my first FCS. From a user perspective, Solaris 11 is probably the biggest change to Solaris since Solaris 2.0. Solaris 11 polishes the ground breaking features from Solaris 10 (DTrace, FMA, ZFS, Zones), and uses them to add a powerful new packaging system, numerous other enhacements and features, along with a huge modernization effort. I'm excited to see it go out into the world. I hope you enjoy using it as much as we did creating it. Software is never done. On to the next one...

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• What is SOA ?

  - by llaszews

  First, let’s mention what SOA is not: • SOA is not the same thing as web services. Web Services implies the use of standard such as Java/JAX-RPC, .NET or REST. Web Services also implies the use of a WSDL, SOAP, and/or J2EE Connector Architecture (J2EE CA) and HTTP. SOA architectures can be implemented using J2EE CA, XML file transfer or Remote Procedural Call (RPC) over File Transfer Protocol (FTP), TCP/IP, Remote Method Invocation (RMI) or other protocols. In other words, Web Services are a very specific set of technologies. SOA is a concept and can be implemented in many different ways. Some very rudimentary, such as transfering flat files between applications. • SOA will not solve all of your problems. It will make your business more agile, increase business visibility, reduce integration costs and provide better reuse. However, if you don’t need help in these area or expect SOA to cure all of your IT problems, you are looking in the wrong place. • The concepts behind SOA are not new, but SOA is also not mature. SOA as it stands today has really only been around for 5 years. The concepts of standards based protocol handlers, predefined communication schemas and remote method invocation have been around for decades. So, what is SOA? SOA is an architectural blueprint, a way of developing applications, and a set of best practices. SOA is not an ‘out of the box’ solution you buy, install and then have up and running in a matter of months. SOA is a journey to a better way of doing business and the technology architecture to support this better way of doing business. SOA is also a broader set of technologies including more then just web services. Techologies like an Enterpirse Service Bus (ESB), Business Processs Execution Language (BPEL), message queues and Business Activity Monitoring (BAM) all are part of a SOA architecture. So, what is SOA? SOA is an architectural blueprint, a way of developing applications, and a set of best practices. SOA is not an ‘out of the box’ solution you buy, install and then have up and running in a matter of months. SOA is a journey to a better way of doing business and the technology architecture to support this better way of doing business. SOA is also a broader set of technologies including more then just web services. Techologies like an Enterpirse Service Bus (ESB), Business Processs Execution Language (BPEL), message queues and Business Activity Monitoring (BAM) all are part of a SOA architecture. Read more here: Oracle Modernization Solutions

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• How do I set image position in conky

  - by realitygenerator

  I copied and modified an existing .conkyrc file from the ubuntu forum and I'm trying to place the LinuxMint logo in a specific position Below are my conkyrc file and the screenshot # UBUNTU-CONKY # A comprehensive conky script, configured for use on # Ubuntu / Debian Gnome, without the need for any external scripts. # # Based on conky-jc and the default .conkyrc. # INCLUDES: # - tail of /var/log/messages # - netstat shows number of connections from your computer and application/PID making it. Kill spyware! # # -- Pengo # # Create own window instead of using desktop (required in nautilus) own_window yes own_window_type desktop own_window_transparent yes own_window_hints undecorated,below,sticky,skip_taskbar,skip_pager # Use double buffering (reduces flicker, may not work for everyone) double_buffer yes # fiddle with window use_spacer right # Use Xft? use_xft yes xftfont URW Gothic:size=8 xftalpha 0.8 text_buffer_size 2048 # Update interval in seconds update_interval 3.0 # Minimum size of text area # minimum_size 250 5 # Draw shades? draw_shades no # Text stuff draw_outline no # amplifies text if yes draw_borders no uppercase no # set to yes if you want all text to be in uppercase # Stippled borders? stippled_borders 3 # border margins border_margin 9 # border width border_width 10 # Default colors and also border colors, grey90 == #e5e5e5 default_color grey own_window_colour brown own_window_transparent yes # Text alignment, other possible values are commented #alignment top_left #alignment top_right #alignment bottom_left #alignment bottom_right. alignment top_middle # Gap between borders of screen and text gap_x 10 gap_y 10 #Display temp in fahrenheit temperature_unit fahrenheit #Choose which screen on which to display # stuff after 'TEXT' will be formatted on screen TEXT $color ${color green}SYSTEM ${hr 2}$color $nodename $sysname $kernel on $machine LinuxMint 11 "Katya" (Oneric) ${image ~/Conky/Logo_Linux_Mint.png -s 80x60 -f 86400} ${color green}CPU ${hr 2}$color ${freq}MHz Load: ${loadavg} Temp: ${hwmon temp 1} $cpubar ${cpugraph 000000 ffffff} NAME PID CPU% MEM% ${top name 1} ${top pid 1} ${top cpu 1} ${top mem 1} ${top name 2} ${top pid 2} ${top cpu 2} ${top mem 2} ${top name 3} ${top pid 3} ${top cpu 3} ${top mem 3} ${top name 4} ${top pid 4} ${top cpu 4} ${top mem 4} ${color green}MEMORY / DISK ${hr 2}$color RAM: $memperc% ${membar 6}$color Swap: $swapperc% ${swapbar 6}$color Root: ${fs_free_perc /}% ${fs_bar 6 /}$color hda1: ${fs_free_perc /media/sda1}% ${fs_bar 6 /media/sda1}$color ${color green}NETWORK (${addr eth1}) ${hr 2}$color Down: $color${downspeed eth1} k/s ${alignr}Up: ${upspeed eth1} k/s ${downspeedgraph eth1 25,140 000000 ff0000} ${alignr}${upspeedgraph eth1 25,140 000000 00ff00}$color Total: ${totaldown eth1} ${alignr}Total: ${totalup eth1} ${execi 30 netstat -ept | grep ESTAB | awk '{print $9}' | cut -d: -f1 | sort | uniq -c | sort -nr} ${color green}LOGGING ${hr 2}$color ${execi 30 tail -n3 /var/log/messages | awk '{print " ",$5,$6,$7,$8,$9,$10}' | fold -w50} ${color green}FORTUNE ${hr 2}$color ${execi 120 fortune -s | fold -w50} I want to put the mint logo right after the word (oneric). Any help would be greatly appreciated.

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• Segmentation and Targeting: Your Tools for Personalizing the Online Customer Experience

  - by Christie Flanagan

  In order to deliver the kind of personalized and engaging online experiences that customers expect today, look to segmentation and targeting.  Segmentation is the practice of dividing your site visitors into distinct groups based on shared characteristics or behavior – for example, a segment may consist of site visitors who have visited pages related to certain product type, or they may consist of visitors within the same age group or geographic area.  The idea is that those within a segment are more likely to have common needs, problems or interests that can be served by your business. Targeting is the process by which the most relevant content, whether an article promotion or other piece of content, is delivered to your visitors based on their segment membership. Segmentation and targeting are used to drive greater engagement on your web presence by delivering content to your site visitors that is tailored to their interests, behavior or other attributes.  You may have a number of different goals for your segmentation and targeting efforts: Up-sell or cross-sell to your customers Conduct A/B testing on your offers and creative Offer discounts, promotions or other incentives for the time and duration that you specify Make is easier to find relevant information about products and services Create premium content model There are two different approaches you can take toward segmentation and targeting for you online customer experience initiatives. The first is more of a manual process, in which marketers manage the process of determining which segments to create and which content to target to those segments. The benefit of this approach is that it gives marketers a high level of control over the whole process which works well when you have a thorough understanding of your segments and which content is most likely to serve their needs.  Tools for marketer managed segmentation and targeting are often built right in to your WEM platform, as they are with Oracle WebCenter Sites. The downside is that the more segments and content that you have, the more time consuming and complicated in can be to manage manually.The second approach relies on predictive intelligence to automate the segmentation and targeting process.  This allows optimization of the process to occur in real time. This approach helps reduce the burden of manual segmentation and targeting and can result in new insights into segments that you may never have thought of on your own.  It also provides you with the capability to quickly test new offers and promotions on your site.  Predictive segmentation and targeting can be achieved by using Oracle WebCenter Sites and Oracle Real-Time Decisions together. *****Get a taste for how Oracle WebCenter Sites and Oracle Real-Time Decisions combine to deliver powerful capabilities for predictive segmentation and targeting by watching this on demand webcast introducing Oracle WebCenter Sites 11g or by reading IDC’s take on the latest release of Oracle’s web experience management solution.  Be sure to return to the Oracle WebCenter blog on Thursday for a closer look at how to optimize the online customer experience using these two products together.

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• Oracle HCM User Group (OHUG) 2014

  - by CaroleB

  Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 We Have Your Answers at the Oracle Support Central for Oracle E-Business Suite. Bring your toughest questions to Support Central and meet an Oracle Support expert to get your answers! Don’t miss your opportunity to spend focused time working with a Support Engineer or Manager one-on-one. Support Engineers: Here to Help You Succeed Let us help you solve problems without having to log an SR. We can help you streamline and simplify your daily operations or reduce your risks. We can show you how to maximize up-time and lower your organizations costs through preventative maintenance. Learn about Oracle HCM Cloud, or our new tools and processes that get you answers faster, such as analyzers and patch wizards. Check out the Product Information Centers, Newsletters, and My Oracle Support searches tips and tricks. Stop by and meet a Support Engineer that you may have worked with on a past Service Request. Get an explanation for a product area that you may have more questions on. Oracle Support is ready to help you with the Oracle HCM applications that you rely on to run your business. Support Central: HCM Support Leadership Here for You The Oracle Support Central is open Tuesday through Thursday.  We have a Support Leadership team of managers here to discuss your crucial milestones or your intentions to upgrade or configuring Oracle HCM products. We can provide heightened monitoring and engagement for a successful milestone. We are here for any ad-hoc account reviews that you would like to initiate on your OHUG trip. Location: Las Vegas: Mirage: Montego A Contact: Gregory Clark or Carole Black    /* 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:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-ascii- mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast- mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-hansi- mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;}

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• Announcing Key Functional White Papers for SIM and ReIM

  - by Oracle Retail Documentation Team

  Oracle Retail has published two new documents on My Oracle Support (https://support.oracle.com)  that provide partners and retailers with deeper functional information about two products: Oracle Retail Store Inventory Management (SIM) and Oracle Retail Invoice Matching. Oracle Retail Store Inventory Management Item Configuration White Paper (Doc ID 1507221.1) There is functionality within the Store Inventory Management system related to item configuration that spans across multiple concepts that apply to the application as a whole rather than to a specific area. This white paper covers numerous topics around item configuration including: Item Transaction Levels Item Long Description Pack Size Standard Unit of Measure Standard Unit of Measure Conversion Pack Items Simple Pack Conversion Items (Notional Packs) Ranging Items Item Status Non-Sellable Items Type-2 Item Recognition UPC-E Barcodes Non-Inventory Items Consignment and Concession Items Quick Response Codes Oracle Retail Invoice Matching Financial Transactions (Doc ID 1500209.1) This document explains the financial transactions that are posted by Oracle Retail Invoice Matching (ReIM). The scope of the document is limited to ReIM transactions only, and does not explain Retail Merchandising System (RMS), Finance, or Account Receivable transactions. ReIM follows the double-entry accounting standard, which works by recording the debit and credit of each financial transaction belonging to each party involved. Each transaction means a profit to one account (debit) and a loss to another account (credit). Full invoice match processing is completed in ReIM with payment recommendations communicated to Oracle Accounts Payable. ReIM matches merchandise orders and receipts against merchandise invoices, performing automated and manual matching, as well as discrepancy-resolution processing. Matched invoices are posted to interface staging tables specifying the amount and date to pay, vendor, site ID, General Ledger Chart of Accounts (GL CoA) information, and payment terms. Other payables documents, including debit memos, credit memos and credit notes are also interfaced to Accounts Payable through the ReIM staging tables (IM_AP_STAGE_HEAD and IM_AP_STAGE_DETAIL). For information about how ReIM engages in this processing, see the latest Oracle Retail Invoice Matching Operations Guide. Certain ReIM transactions are not interfaced to Oracle Payables, but instead are interfaced to Oracle General Ledger through the IM_FINANCIAL_STAGE table. When analyzing transactions posted through the staging tables, retailers should note the transaction type, Standard/Credit, as well as the sign in the amount field. Technically, a negative sign on a credit transaction changes the transaction to a debit entry, and vice versa. This document is concerned about the financial meaning of the transactions, and will avoid a discussion of negative numbers in T-charts.

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• How to make an object move again after being stopped by collision in Unity?

  - by Matthew Underwood

  I have a player object which position is always centered on the main camera's viewport. This object has a Rigidbody 2D, a box and circle collider. The player moves around a level, the level has a polygon collider attached. I move the camera until the object hits against the collider, which stops the movement of the camera by setting its speed to 0. The problem happens when I want to move the camera / player object away from the collider. As the speed is already at 0, it cannot move away from the collider. The script attached to the player object, checks for collisions and applies the speed to 0 on the main camera's test script. using UnityEngine; using System.Collections; public class move : MonoBehaviour { public float speed; public test testing; // Use this for initialization void Start () { speed = 10F; testing = Camera.main.GetComponent<test>(); } // Update is called once per frame void FixedUpdate () { Vector3 p = Camera.main.ViewportToWorldPoint(new Vector3(0.5F, 0.5F, Camera.main.nearClipPlane)); transform.position = new Vector3(p.x, p.y, -1); } void OnCollisionEnter2D(Collision2D col) { testing.speed = 0; } void OnCollisionExit2D(Collision2D col) { testing.speed = 10F; } } This is the script attached to the main camera; just a simple script that changes the camera's position. using UnityEngine; using System.Collections; public class test : MonoBehaviour { public float speed; public float translationY; public float translationX; // Use this for initialization void Start () { speed = 10F; } void FixedUpdate () { translationY = Input.GetAxis("Vertical") * speed * Time.deltaTime; translationX = Input.GetAxis("Horizontal") * speed * Time.deltaTime; transform.Translate(translationX, translationY, 0); } } The player object isn't kinematic and is a fixed angle, the colliders aren't triggers and the polygon collider isn't a trigger either. The player is the red square, the collider is the pink area. -- EDIT -- From the latest change the collider set up for the player So if the X speed was disabled. It wouldnt move into the side of the polygon colider which is good, but yet you couldnt move away from it. And moving down would move inside the colider.

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• Ubuntu Linux won't display netbook's native resolution

  - by Daniel

  FYI: My Netbook model is HP Mini 210-1004sa, which comes with Intel Graphics Media Accelerator 3150, and has a display 10.1" Active Matrix Colour TFT 1024 x 600. I recently removed Windows 7 Starter from my netbook, and replaced it with Ubuntu 12.10. The problem is the OS doesn't seem to recognise the native display resolution of 1024x600 i.e. the bottom bits of Ubuntu is hidden beneath the screen & the only 2 available resolutions are: the default 1024x768 and 800x600. I've also thought about replacing Ubuntu with Lubuntu or Puppy Linux, as the system does run a bit slow, but I can't, as then I won't be able to access the taskbar and application menu which will be hidden beneath the screen. Only Ubuntu with Unity is currently usable, as the Unity Launcher is visible enough. I was able to define a custom resolution 1024x600 using the Q&A: How set my monitor resolution? but when I set that resolution, there appears a black band at the top of the screen and the desktop area is lowered, with bits of it hidden beneath the screen. I tried leaving it at this new resolution and restarting the system to see if the black band would disappear & the display will fit correctly, but it gets reset to 1024x768 at startup and displays following error: Could not apply the stored configuration for monitors none of the selected modes were compatible with the possible modes: Trying modes for CRTC 63 CRTC 63: trying mode 800x600@60Hz with output at 1024x600@60Hz (pass 0) CRTC 63: trying mode 800x600@56Hz with output at 1024x600@60Hz (pass 0) CRTC 63: trying mode 640x480@60Hz with output at 1024x600@60Hz (pass 0) CRTC 63: trying mode 1024x768@60Hz with output at 1024x600@60Hz (pass 1) CRTC 63: trying mode 800x600@60Hz with output at 1024x600@60Hz (pass 1) CRTC 63: trying mode 800x600@56Hz with output at 1024x600@60Hz (pass 1) CRTC 63: trying mode 640x480@60Hz with output at 1024x600@60Hz (pass 1) Trying modes for CRTC 64 CRTC 64: trying mode 1024x768@60Hz with output at 1024x600@60Hz (pass 0) CRTC 64: trying mode 800x600@60Hz with output at 1024x600@60Hz (pass 0) CRTC 64: trying mode 800x600@56Hz with output at 1024x600@60Hz (pass 0) CRTC 64: trying mode 640x480@60Hz with output at 1024x600@60Hz (pass 0) CRTC 64: trying mode 1024x768@60Hz with output at 1024x600@60Hz (pass 1) CRTC 64: trying mode 800x600@60Hz with output at 1024x600@60Hz (pass 1) CRTC 64: trying mode 800x600@56Hz with output at 1024x600@60Hz (pass 1) CRTC 64: trying mode 640x480@60Hz with output at 1024x600@60Hz (pass 1)

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• Should I continue to pursue programming based on my experience?

  - by El Be

  The reason I ask this question is because I am not sure my troubles come from a lack of confidence, or something much deeper like lack of passion. I'm hoping experienced programmers and developers can help identify the cause of my troubles. To be brief my undergraduate major was in Computer Science, but in a small school and I had the highest gpa in my year in computer science. The first time I ever programmed was once in the 5th grade (using logo) and when I was a freshman in college. I enjoyed programming when I was in school. Then I did an internships where I was expected to produce image processing software and program microchips. I was unsuccessful and produced little results and I hated the job, because I had to figure out everything for myself, did not have any help, and there was a lot of pressure to produce results. Although I tried I could not figure out what to do and was stuck all the time and made me dislike the job. When the internship ended I went to a PhD program for computer science at a prestigious computer science school. I had a very hard time with the course, met people who have been programming since they were 6 and made plenty of applications in their spare time (which I never did, although I tried). I even met many sophomores who understood more than I did. The combination of this and other things have made me feel that programming is not for me, but sometimes I consider a career in programming. I still consider programming as a career because of the career potential (not only just because of money). Based on my experience do you believe my confidence has just been shaken and I should continue to prepare for a programming career, or do you see a lack of passion and it would make it tough to continue programming. thank you for reading and for your advice Thank you for everyone's advice so far! Also: I dropped out of the ph.D program for computer science and switched to a master's in computer graphics. Its more applied, but I still find it hard to be motivated (due to either lack of confidence or passion), but since programming is such a big field I am looking for that niche area that I feel good programming in.

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• Dual booting windows 8/ubuntu 12.04. Grub doesn't appear and machine never boot in ubuntu

  - by black sensei

  i got a new ACER predator AG3620-UR308 which came with windows 8, so i wanted to run ubuntu 12.04.2 on it as a dual booting. To be honest, i've been doing dual booting for a while now so, i did the right thing. the box came with 2TB HDD. so i made 4 partitions with a raw partition just after the windows installation partition I always do manual installation so even if ubuntu didn't detect windows 8, it was ok for me. So i created swap area and finished the installation etc....Grub was install on the only drive there which is sda. After reboot, grub doesn't even come up.So it always boot in windows 8. I did repeat the installation process twice and yield same result. which is weird because this method always works for me so far.Even the laptop am using to write this post is a dual booting windows 7/ mint nadia installed the same way. Is there anything new in windows 8 that i didn't make provision for? Before starting the installation, all i read about was that , windows 8 should be installed first and ubuntu after. I went ahead and disable secure boot from the BIOS and enabled CSM (don't even know what it means) according to Acer custhelp site . I boot from USB and did fdisk -l bellow is the result: ubuntu@ubuntu:~$ sudo fdisk -l WARNING: GPT (GUID Partition Table) detected on '/dev/sda'! The util fdisk doesn't support GPT. Use GNU Parted. Disk /dev/sda: 2000.4 GB, 2000398934016 bytes 255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 243201 cylinders, total 3907029168 sectors Units = sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 4096 bytes I/O size (minimum/optimal): 4096 bytes / 4096 bytes Disk identifier: 0x8c361cb5 Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System /dev/sda1 1 3907029167 1953514583+ ee GPT Partition 1 does not start on physical sector boundary. Disk /dev/sdb: 8178 MB, 8178892800 bytes 255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 994 cylinders, total 15974400 sectors Units = sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes Disk identifier: 0x0006a87e Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System /dev/sdb1 * 2048 15972351 7985152 b W95 FAT32 ubuntu@ubuntu:~$ Can anybody shed some light? thank you in advance

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• Access Control Service v2: Registering Web Identities in your Applications [code]

  - by Your DisplayName here!

  You can download the full solution here. The relevant parts in the sample are: Configuration I use the standard WIF configuration with passive redirect. This kicks automatically in, whenever authorization fails in the application (e.g. when the user tries to get to an area the requires authentication or needs registration). Checking and transforming incoming claims In the claims authentication manager we have to deal with two situations. Users that are authenticated but not registered, and registered (and authenticated) users. Registered users will have claims that come from the application domain, the claims of unregistered users come directly from ACS and get passed through. In both case a claim for the unique user identifier will be generated. The high level logic is as follows: public override IClaimsPrincipal Authenticate( string resourceName, IClaimsPrincipal incomingPrincipal) {     // do nothing if anonymous request     if (!incomingPrincipal.Identity.IsAuthenticated)     {         return base.Authenticate(resourceName, incomingPrincipal);     } string uniqueId = GetUniqueId(incomingPrincipal);     // check if user is registered     RegisterModel data;     if (Repository.TryGetRegisteredUser(uniqueId, out data))     {         return CreateRegisteredUserPrincipal(uniqueId, data);     }     // authenticated by ACS, but not registered     // create unique id claim     incomingPrincipal.Identities[0].Claims.Add( new Claim(Constants.ClaimTypes.Id, uniqueId));     return incomingPrincipal; } User Registration The registration page is handled by a controller with the [Authorize] attribute. That means you need to authenticate before you can register (crazy eh? ;). The controller then fetches some claims from the identity provider (if available) to pre-fill form fields. After successful registration, the user is stored in the local data store and a new session token gets issued. This effectively replaces the ACS claims with application defined claims without requiring the user to re-signin. Authorization All pages that should be only reachable by registered users check for a special application defined claim that only registered users have. You can nicely wrap that in a custom attribute in MVC: [RegisteredUsersOnly] public ActionResult Registered() {     return View(); } HTH

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• How to appear very professional on my first freelance project?

  - by iamserious

  I need some help on appearing very professional on my first freelance project. How / What should you do to achieve this? Background: I started as a full time web developer 18 months ago, two promotions later I am now a senior software engineer. I've never had any problems with designing / developing / coding a complicated system. I thought I could use some help for Christmas and I started bidding for a project and now I have one - from a very reputable lawyers association in London. I have no problem dealing with the actual implementation of the system, but I have no idea how to appear professional throughout the whole process. About the project: This lawyers association are starting a distant training courses and in addition to having a website to show off all their clients etc, they want a students area where their students would log in, download course materials allocated to them etc.. and an admin section where they assign courses to students / create new ones / upload materials etc.. Questions breakdown: 1) How should I start with the requirement gathering? Is using scrum a good idea, or should I use something like Volere Template - and what should I do with it? should I submit a copy to the client etc.. 2) How often should I meet the client? Would once a fortnight would be good? 3) What are the processes / protocols that I need to follow so that they would be satisfied with me and think that I am very professional 4) How much should I charge for the product? 5) How should I get a quote / contract / receipt for the whole project? 6) What are the steps that professional freelancers go through, during the life cycle of a project? My Research so far Looking at How much should I charge doesn't help.. I live in London, zone 1, though I have no idea how much a project of this size would cost. Help on this would be appreciated. How to be professional articles talks about the work / time management etc and not the actual process, what would real people do etc.. it's like academia theory, but not practical. If this needs revising, please let me know, do not close it because of whatever reason, I will edit the question or details to fit the needs. Thanks for reading a lengthy question.

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• Designing Snake AI

  - by Ronald

  I'm new to this gamedev stackechange but have used the math and cs sites before. So, I'm in a competition to create AI for a snake that will compete with 3 other snakes in 5 minute rounds where the rules are much like the traditional Nokia snake game except that there are 4 snakes, the board is 50x50 and there are a number of small obstacles on the field. Like the Nokia game, your snake grows when you get to the fruit and if you crash into yourself, another snake or the wall you die. The game runs with a 50ms delay between moves and the server sends the new game state every 50ms which the code must analyze and what not and output the next move. The winner is the snake who had the longest length at any point in the game. Tie breakers are decided by kills. So far what I have done is implemented an A* graph search from each snake to determine if my snake is the closest to the apple and if it is, it goes for the apple. Otherwise, I made a neat little algorithm to determine the emptiest area of the board, which my snake goes for, to anticipate the next apple. Other than this I have some small survivability checks to ensure my snake isn't walking into a trap that it can't get out and if it does get stuck, I have something to give it a better chance of getting out. ... Anyway, I've tested my snake on a test server and it does quite well. Generally, my strategy of only going for the apple when its a sure thing and finding space when its not makes it grow faster than any other snakes (some snakes do a similar thing but often just go to the middle or a corner) sometimes it wins these trial games but is more often than not beaten by the same snake who seems to have the edge on survivability(my snake grows quicker but then dies somehow and this other snake just plods slowly along and wins on consistency. So I was wondering about any ideas anyone has to try and improve my snake. Or maybe ideas at a new approach to take. My functions and classes are good so changes that might seem drastic shouldn't be too bad. I encourage all ideas. Any thoughts ??

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• In-Store Tracking Gets a Little Harder

  - by David Dorf

  Remember how Nordstrom was tracking shopper movements within their stores using the unique number, called a MAC, emitted by the WiFi radio in smartphones?  The phones didn't need to connect to the network, only have their WiFi enabled, as most people do by default.  They did this, presumably, to track shoppers' path to purchase and better understand traffic patterns.  Although there were signs explaining this at the entrances, people didn't like the notion of being tracked.  (Nevermind that there are cameras in the ceiling watching them.)  Nordstrom stopped the program. To address this concern the Future of Privacy, a Washington think tank, created Smart Store Privacy, a do-not-track service that allows consumers to register their MAC address in much the same way people register their phone numbers in the national do-not-call list.  A group of companies agreed to respect consumers' wishes and ignore smartphones listed in the database.  The database includes Bluetooth identifiers as well.  Of course you could simply turn your bluetooth and WiFi off when shopping as well. Most know that Apple prefers to use BLE beacons to contact and track smartphones within their stores.  This feature extends the typical online experience to also work in physical stores.  By identifying themselves, shoppers can expect a more tailored shopping experience much like what we've come to expect from Amazon's website, with product recommendations and offers that are (usually) relevant. But the upcoming release of iOS8 is purported to have a new feature that randomizes the WiFi MAC address of smartphones during the "probing" phase.  That is, before connecting to the WiFi network, a random MAC number is used so as to keep the smartphone's real MAC address secret.  Unless you actually connect to the store's WiFi, they won't recognize the MAC address. The details on this are still sketchy, but if the random MAC is consistent for a short period, retailers will still be able to track movements anonymously, but they won't recognize repeat visitors.  That may be sufficient for traffic analytics, but it will stymie target marketing.  In the case of marketing, using iBeacons with opt-in permission from consumers will be the way forward. There is always a battle between utility and privacy, so I expect many more changes in this area.  Incidentally, if you'd like to see where beacons are being used this site tracks them around the world.

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• Calculating a circle or sphere along a vector

  - by Sparky

  Updated this post and the one at Math SE (http://math.stackexchange.com/questions/127866/calculating-a-circle-or-sphere-along-a-vector), hope this makes more sense. I previously posted a question (about half an hour ago) involving computations along line segments, but the question and discussion were really off track and not what I was trying to get at. I am trying to work with an FPS engine I am attempting to build in Java. The problem I am encountering is with hitboxing. I am trying to calculate whether or not a "shot" is valid. I am working with several approaches and any insight would be helpful. I am not a native speaker of English nor skilled in Math so please bear with me. Player position is at P0 = (x0,y0,z0), Enemy is at P1 = (x1,y1,z1). I can of course compute the distance between them easily. The target needs a "hitbox" object, which is basically a square/rectangle/mesh either in front of, in, or behind them. Here are the solutions I am considering: I have ruled this out...doesn't seem practical. [Place a "hitbox" a small distance in front of the target. Then I would be able to find the distance between the player and the hitbox, and the hitbox and the target. It is my understanding that you can compute a circle with this information, and I could simply consider any shot within that circle a "hit". However this seems not to be an optimal solution, because it requires you to perform a lot of calculations and is not fully accurate.] Input, please! Place the hitbox "in" the player. This seems like the better solution. In this case what I need is a way to calculate a circle along the vector, at whatever position I wish (in this case, the distance between the two objects). Then I can pick some radius that encompasses the whole player, and count anything within this area a "hit". I am open to your suggestions. I'm trying to do this on paper and have no familiarity with game engines. If any software folk out there think I'm doing this the hard way, I'm open to help! Also - Anyone with JOGL/LWJGL experience, please chime in. Is this making sense?

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