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• Why ADF Developers Should Attend ODTUG This Year

  - by shay.shmeltzer

  If you are using Oracle ADF or planning to pick it up in the next year, I would encourage you to try and attend this year's ODTUG K-Scope conference. If you are not familiar with it, ODTUG - the Oracle Development Tools User Groups - holds a yearly conference that is very technical in nature. It is not a huge conference in terms of the number of attendees, but this just means that you have more opportunities to interact with Oracle ACEs, Oracle Product Managers, and other developers. The conference is known to be a no-fluff, no-marketing, technical conference. This year however there is one key new thing that should be of interest to readers of this blog. A new track called the "Fusion Middleware" track has been formed and it has lots of sessions for any level of ADF developer. The track is run by several Oracle ACEs who are also involved in the ADF Enterprise Methodology Group. They have sessions for every level of ADF awareness - from the beginner to the expert, and you can also learn about related technologies such as WebCenter and SOA Suite. Most of the sessions are run by users who share their real world experience with the technology. And me and other PMs will also be running a few sessions and hands-on labs there. Check out the list of sessions in the Fusion Middleware track. And don't miss the Sunday symposium too.

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• Friday Fun: Building Blasters 2

  - by Mysticgeek

  After dealing with unnecessary spreadsheets and TPS reports all week, it’s time to waste time playing a flash game. Today we take a look at Building Blasters 2 where you strategically place explosives to bring down structures. Building Blasters 2 You need to place explosives carefully to clear areas in the red level, keep bystanders safe, and manage your budget. After placing the explosives on the structure, you can set the amount of time that passes before they blow. This comes in handy when you reach advanced levels. When you’re ready to start the demolition click on the Detonate button and watch the buildings fall. If you don’t achieve the objectives, you will get the Demolition Error screen and can replay the level. After you’ve received enough money, you’ll get a message between missions telling you there is enough money to buy items in the shop. You can get enhanced destructive devices such as nitroglycerin, a wrecking ball, call in an air strike and more… If you’re sick of the pointy haired boss dragging you down all week, pretend the structures are the office building and destroy away. Building Blasters 2 is a great way to have fun and let off steam so you can enjoy your weekend. Play Building Blasters 2 For additional fun games to play, make sure and check out the How-To Geek Arcade. Similar Articles Productive Geek Tips Friday Fun: Demolition CityFriday Fun: Cargo BridgeFriday Fun: Portal, the Flash VersionFriday Fun: VehiclesFriday Fun: Play Bubble Quod TouchFreeze Alternative in AutoHotkey The Icy Undertow Desktop Windows Home Server – Backup to LAN The Clear & Clean Desktop Use This Bookmarklet to Easily Get Albums Use AutoHotkey to Assign a Hotkey to a Specific Window Latest Software Reviews Tinyhacker Random Tips Xobni Plus for Outlook All My Movies 5.9 CloudBerry Online Backup 1.5 for Windows Home Server Snagit 10 10 Superb Firefox Wallpapers OpenDNS Guide Google TV The iPod Revolution Ultimate Boot CD can help when disaster strikes Windows Firewall with Advanced Security – How To Guides

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• How can we make agile enjoyable for developers that like to personally, independently own large chunks from start to finish

  - by Kris

  We’re roughly midway through our transition from waterfall to agile using scrum; we’ve changed from large teams in technology/discipline silos to smaller cross-functional teams. As expected, the change to agile doesn’t suit everyone. There are a handful of developers that are having a difficult time adjusting to agile. I really want to keep them engaged and challenged, and ultimately enjoying coming to work each day. These are smart, happy, motivated people that I respect on both a personal and a professional level. The basic issue is this: Some developers are primarily motivated by the joy of taking a piece of difficult work, thinking through a design, thinking through potential issues, then solving the problem piece by piece, with only minimal interaction with others, over an extended period of time. They generally complete work to a high level of quality and in a timely way; their work is maintainable and fits with the overall architecture. Transitioning to a cross-functional team that values interaction and shared responsibility for work, and delivery of working functionality within shorter intervals, the teams evolve such that the entire team knocks that difficult problem over. Many people find this to be a positive change; someone that loves to take a problem and own it independently from start to finish loses the opportunity for work like that. This is not an issue with people being open to change. Certainly we’ve seen a few people that don’t like change, but in the cases I’m concerned about, the individuals are good performers, genuinely open to change, they make an effort, they see how the rest of the team is changing and they want to fit in. It’s not a case of someone being difficult or obstructionist, or wanting to hoard the juiciest work. They just don’t find joy in work like they used to. I’m sure we can’t be the only place that hasn’t bumped up on this. How have others approached this? If you’re a developer that is motivated by personally owning a big chunk of work from end to end, and you’ve adjusted to a different way of working, what did it for you?

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• Facebook Stories for Retailers

  - by David Dorf

  Getting people to "like" a brand is important because it opens the door to a possible B2C relationship. Once a person likes that brand, the brand can post to their newsfeed with promotions, announcements, and surveys. At least for me, I "hide" the noisy brands and just monitor the ones that keep posts under 4 times a week. I see lots of people, especially with fashion brands, comment on postings at which point the posting is seen by their network. A metric I've heard (but not verified) is that for every person that comments, ten of their friends see the original posting. That's a pretty cheap way to communicate to potential customers in a viral way. Over at mainstreet.com they compiled the a list of the top liked retailers on Facebook as of Feb 1, 2011. They are listed below: 19,414,892 Starbucks 11,302,939 Victoria's Secret 7,925,184 Zara 7,032,398 McDonald's 6,117,222 H&M 5,400,586 Taco Bell 4,665,760 Subway 4,494,849 Lacoste 4,185,570 Hollister 3,973,181 Forever 21 So I guess the public likes their fast-food and fashion. To take this to the next level, Facebook is now displaying Sponsored Stories, which I saw for the first time on my page this weekend. I found this picture at the Wall Blog that depicits Sponsored Stories very well. Over on the right-hand column of a person's page, where they see advertisements and such, Facebook will post stories involving their network of friends and their interaction with sponsored brands. Now their "likes" can suddenly become your ads. "Jessica and Philip like Starbucks. What are you waiting for?" This is another great way to take messages viral by accessing social graphs. As usual there will be a certain level of outcry from privacy advocates, but given the other more iniquitous issues, I believe this will fall by the wayside. Retailers should consider using Sponsored Stories to increase their Likes, and thus increase their voice in the social world.

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• Thinktecture IdentityServer v1.0

  - by Your DisplayName here!

  Yeah – it is finally done. I just uploaded the v1 bits to Codeplex and the documentation to our server. Here’s the official blurb… Thinktecture IdentityServer is an open source security token service based on Microsoft .NET, ASP.NET MVC, WCF and WIF. High level features Multiple protocols support (WS-Trust, WS-Federation, OAuth2, WRAP, JSNotify, HTTP GET) Multiple token support (SAML 1.1/2.0, SWT) Out of the box integration with ASP.NET membership, roles and profile Support for username/password and client certificates authentication Support for WS-Federation metadata Support for WS-Trust identity delegation Extensibility points to customize configuration and user management handling Disclaimer I did thorough testing of all features of IdentityServer - but keep in mind that this is an open source project and I am the only architect, developer and tester on the team. IdentityServer also lacks many of the enterprise-level features like configuration services, proxy support, operations integration etc. I only recommend using IdentityServer if you also understand how it works (to be able to support it). I am offering consulting to help you with customization and lock down - contact me. Download. Documentation. Up next is v1 of the Azure version. Have fun!

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• Java SE 7u10: Enhanced Security Features and Support for New Platforms

  - by Tori Wieldt

  On December 11, 2012 Oracle released Java SE 7 Update 10 (Java SE 7u10). This release includes enhanced security features and support for new platforms. Enhanced Security Features The JDK 7u10 release includes the following security enhancements: The ability to disable any Java application from running in the browser. This mode can be set in the Java Control Panel or (on Microsoft Windows platform only) using a command-line install argument. The ability to select the desired level of security for unsigned applets, Java Web Start applications, and embedded JavaFX applications that run in a browser. Four levels of security are supported. This feature can be set in the Java Control Panel or (on Microsoft Windows platform only) using a command-line install argument. New dialogs to warn you when the JRE is insecure (either expired or below the security baseline) and needs to be updated. For more information, read Henrik Stahl's blog Oracle JDK 7u10 Released with New Security and the documentation Setting the Level of Security for the Java Client. New Supported Platforms Java SE 7 Update 10 (Java SE 7u10) supports Windows 8 Desktop Mode1 with IE 10, and Mac OS 10.8.? For more information, refer to the Oracle Certified System Configurations page.  Download and Release Notes Java SE 7u10 is available on OTN Download Page. To learn more about the release, please see the Java SE 7u10 Release Notes. For information about the other Java releases last week, read the Java Source blog "Java SE Updates." 

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• Ralink RT3060 wireless device configuration on ubuntu 12.04

  - by Stephan

  concerning How do I get a Ralink RT3060 wireless card working? I'm running Ubuntu 12.04 with a 'LWPX07 Edimax EW-7711In 150M 1T1R WL PCI Card' which has a rt3060 chip. Out of the box the card is recognized as rt2800sta. I tried solution one, that didn't work. Still the card connects to the wireless network, but it seems to slow to load any pages. Then I tried solution 2, but then the network-manager doesn't see any wireless device. $ iwconfig lo no wireless extensions. ra0 Ralink STA Link Quality:0 Signal level:0 Noise level:0 Rx invalid nwid:0 invalid crypt:0 invalid misc:0 eth0 no wireless extensions. $ lsmod Module Size Used by rt3562sta 882296 0 $ lspci -v 05:02.0 Network controller: Ralink corp. RT3060 Wireless 802.11n 1T/1R Subsystem: Edimax Computer Co. Device 7711 Flags: bus master, slow devsel, latency 64, IRQ 23 Memory at ff9f0000 (32-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=64K] Capabilities: <access denied> Kernel driver in use: rt2860 Kernel modules: rt3562sta, rt2800pci Am I missing a configuration step? How do I tell the network card which driver to use? Thanks in advance Stephan I found the problem. As described in stevens blog http://steveswinsburg.wordpress.com/2011/03/12/how-to-install-a-d-link-dwa-525-wireless-network-card-in-ubuntu-10-04/ sudo su make && make install "You need to use ‘sudo su’ and not just ‘sudo’ so it creates the directories properly." That is the problem with the solution describe above.

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• Should I give the answer to a failed interview coding exercise?

  - by GlenH7

  We had a senior level interview candidate fail a nuance of the FizzBuzz question*. I mean, really, utterly, completely, failed the question - not even close. I even coached him through to thinking about using a loop and that 3 and 5 were really worth considering as special cases. He blew it. Just for QA purposes, I gave the same exact question to three teammates; gave them 5 minutes; and then came back to collect their pseudo-code. All of them nailed it and hadn't seen the question before. Two asked what the trick was... On a different logic exercise, the candidate showed some understanding of some of the features available within the language he chose to use (C#). So it's not as if he had never written a line of code. But his logic still stunk. My question is whether or not I should have given him the answer to the logic questions. He knew he blew them, and acknowledged it later in the interview. On the other hand, he never asked for the answer or what I was expecting to see. I know coding exercises can be used to set candidates up for failure (again, see second link from above). And I really tried to help him home in on answering the core of the question. But this was a senior level candidate and Fizz-Buzz is, frankly, ridiculously easy even with accounting for interview jitters. I felt like I should have shown him a way of solving the problem so that he could at least learn from the experience. But again, he didn't ask. What's the right way to handle that situation? *Okay, that's not the link to the actual FizzBuzz question, but it is a good P.SE discussion around FizzBuzz and links to the various aspects of it.

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• Using HTML5 Today part 2&ndash;Fixing Semantic tags with a Shiv

  - by Steve Albers

  Semantic elements and the Shiv! This is the second entry in the series of demos from the “Using HTML5 Today” talk. For the definitive discussion on unknown elements and the HTML5 Shiv check out Mark Pilgrim’s Dive Into HTML5 online book at http://diveintohtml5.info/semantics.html#unknown-elements Semantic tags increase the meaning and maintainability of your markup, help make your page more computer-readable, and can even provide opportunities for libraries that are written to automagically enhance content using standard tags like <nav>, <header>,  or <footer>. Legacy IE issues However, new HTML5 tags get mangled in IE browsers prior to version 9.  To see this in action, consider this bit of HTML code which includes the new <article> and <header> elements: Viewing this page using the IE9 developer tools (F12) we see that the browser correctly models the hierarchy of tags listed above: But if we switch to IE8 Browser Mode in developer tools things go bad: Did you know that a closing tag could close itself?? The browser loses the hierarchy & closes all of the new tags.  The new tags become unusable and the page structure falls apart. Additionally block-level elements lose their block status, appearing as inline.    The Fix (good) The block-level issue can be resolved by using CSS styling.  Below we set the article, header, and footer tags as block tags. article, header, footer {display:block;} You can avoid the unknown element issue by creating a version of the element in JavaScript before the actual HTML5 tag appears on the page: <script> document.createElement("article"); document.createElement("header"); document.createElement("footer"); </script> The Fix (better) Rather than adding your own JS you can take advantage of a standard JS library such as Remy Sharp’s HTML5 Shiv at http://code.google.com/p/html5shiv/.  By default the Modernizr library includes HTML5 Shiv, so you don’t need to include the shiv code separately if you are using Modernizr.

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• Speaking at SPTechCon Boston 2012

  - by Brian Jackett

  I will be speaking at SPTechCon Boston 2012.  This will be my 3rd time speaking at SPTechCon and 4th time attending.  The conference has steadily been growing over the past few years and is one of the biggest non-Microsoft run conferences for SharePoint in the US.  I’ll be presenting two topics which I have given before but this time around with some updated content.  Registration is currently open and you can save $200 (on top of the current early bird discount of $400) by using the code "JACKETT” during registration.  I highly recommend joining for valuable learning and networking.   Where: SPTechCon Boston 2012 Title: PowerShell for the SharePoint 2010 Developer Audience and Level: Developer, Intermediate Abstract: PowerShell is not just for SharePoint 2010 administrators. Developers also get access to a wide range of functionality with PowerShell. In this session we will dive into using PowerShell with the .Net framework, web services, and native SharePoint commandlets. We will also cover some of the more intermediate to advanced techniques available within PowerShell that will improve your work efficiency. Not only will you learn how to automate your work but also learn ways to prototype solutions faster. This session is targeted to developers and assumes a basic familiarity with PowerShell. Slides and Code download: coming soon   Title: Integrating Line-of-Business Applications with SharePoint 2010 Audience and Level: Developer, Intermediate Abstract: One of the biggest value-adding enhancements in SharePoint 2010 is the Business Connectivity Services (BCS). In this session, we will overview the BCS, demonstrate connecting line-of-business applications and external systems to SharePoint through external content types, and walk through surfacing that data with external lists. This session is targeted at developers. No prior experience with the BCS is required, but a basic understanding of SharePoint Designer 2010 and SharePoint solutions is suggested. Slides and Code download: coming soon         -Frog Out

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• Pathfinding and BSP with Box2D

  - by Amplify91

  I'm looking into implementing AI in my 2D side-scrolling platformer, and I'm looking into using algorithms such as A*. For many kinds of pathfinding, we need some sort of grid or systems of nodes or polygon areas. My problem is that I am using Box2d for physics and I am not sure how best to create a structure that my AI can use besides placing individual nodes manually (something I really want to avoid) and using some sort of steering behavior. My level design is tile-based with each tile being about half of the height/width of my main character. The tiles are not all square (some are sloped). I'd like to have a system that can see what the terrain looks like for pathfinding and also keep track of the positions of other actors such as enemies. I'd like to avoid directly placing any nodes into my level design except for possible endpoints or goals. This question is related: How do you do AI path following within a 2d physics engine like farseer/box2d?, but it doesn't specify what kind of structure I could use instead of a list of nodes. I'm looking for some kind of grid or type of BSP that I can query for algorithms like A*.

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• Android threads trouble wrapping my head around design

  - by semajhan

  I am having trouble wrapping my head around game design. On the android platform, I have an activity and set its content view with a custom surface view. The custom surface view acts as my panel and I create instances of all classes and do all the drawing and calculation in there. Question: Should I instead create the instances of other classes in my activity? Now I create a custom thread class that handles the game loop. Question: How do I use this one class in all my activities? Or do I have to create a separate instance of the extended thread class each time? In my previous game, I had multiple levels that had to create an instance of the thread class and in the thread class I had to set constructor methods for each separate level and in the loop use a switch statement to check which level it needs to render and update. Sorry if that sounds confusing. I just want to know if the method I am using is inefficient (which it probably is) and how to go about designing it the correct way. I have read many tutorials out there and I am still having lots of trouble with this particular topic. Maybe a link to a some tutorials that explain this? Thanks.

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• How important do you find exception safety to be in your C++ code?

  - by Kai

  Every time I consider making my code strongly exception safe, I justify not doing it because it would be so time consuming. Consider this relatively simple snippet: Level::Entity* entity = new Level::Entity(); entity->id = GetNextId(); entity->AddComponent(new Component::Position(x, y)); entity->AddComponent(new Component::Movement()); entity->AddComponent(new Component::Render()); allEntities.push_back(entity); // std::vector entityById[entity->id] = entity; // std::map return entity; To implement a basic exception guarantee, I could use a scoped pointer on the new calls. This would prevent memory leaks if any of the calls were to throw an exception. However, let's say I want to implement a strong exception guarantee. At the least, I would need to implement a shared pointer for my containers (I'm not using Boost), a nothrow Entity::Swap for adding the components atomically, and some sort of idiom for atomically adding to both the Vector and Map. Not only would these be time consuming to implement, but they would be expensive since it involves a lot more copying than the exception unsafe solution. Ultimately, it feels to me like that time spent doing all of that wouldn't be justified just so that the a simple CreateEntity function is strongly exception safe. I probably just want the game to display an error and close at that point anyway. How far do you take this in your own game projects? Is it generally acceptable to write exception unsafe code for a program that can just crash when there is an exception?

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• CRM Evolution 2014: Mediocrity is the New Horrible in Customer Service

  - by Tuula Fai

  "Mediocrity is the new horrible in customer service," Blair McHaney, Gold's Gym Almost everyone knows that customers' expectations have risen. But, after listening to two days of presentations at CRM Evolution, I think it’s more accurate to say that customers' expectations have skyrocketed. Fortunately, most companies have gotten the message and are taking their customer service to a higher level. For those who've been hesitant to 'boldly go where their customer service organization has not gone before,' take heart. I’ve got some statistics that will encourage you to take those first few steps. Why should I change? By engaging customers online, ancestry.com achieved a 99.5% customer satisfaction score (CSAT) while improving retention and saving millions on greater efficiency, including a 38%-50% drop in inbound calls and emails.1 By empowering employees to delight customers, Gold’s Gym achieved a 77.5% Net Promoter Score (NPS) and 22% customer churn rate. No small feat when you consider the industry averages are 40% NPS and 45% churn.2 By adapting quickly to social media, brands like Verizon have benefited from social community members spending 2.5x-10x more than average customers.3 ‘The fierce urgency of now’ is upon us in customer service. You can take your customer service to a higher level! To find out more, click here CRM Evolution Customer Service Experience Footnotes: 1. Arvindh Balakrishnan, Is Your Customer Service Modern?2. Blair McHaney, Wire Your Organization with Customer Feedback3. Becky Carroll, The Power of Communities for Improving the Service Experience and Building Advocates

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• Stackify Gives Devs a Crack at the Production Server

  - by Matt Watson

  Originally published on SDTimes.com on 7/9/2012 by David Rubinstein.It was one of those interviews where you get finished talking about a company’s product, and you wonder aloud, “Well, THAT makes sense! Why hasn’t anyone thought of that before?” Matt Watson, CEO of Kansas City, Mo.-based startup Stackify, was telling me that the 10-person company is getting ready to launch its product in August (it’s in beta now) that will give developers an app-centric look into production servers so they can support and troubleshoot apps and fix bugs. Of course, this hasn’t happened in the past because of the security concerns of IT administrators, and a decided lack of expertise on the part of developers. Stackify installs on a server and acts like a proxy for developers, collecting data about the environment, discovering all the applications, scanning for config file changes, and doing server monitoring. “We become the central point that developers can see everything they need to know about their applications,” he said. “Developers can look at the files that are deployed, and query databases in a safe way.”  In his words:“The big thing we’re hoping is just giving them (developers) visibility. Most companies want to hire the junior developers that they pay $50,000 a year right out of college to do application support and troubleshooting and fix bugs, but those people don’t have access to production servers to troubleshoot. It becomes very difficult for them to do their job, so they end up spending all of their day bugging the senior developers, the managers or the system administrators to track down this stuff, which creates a huge bottleneck. And so what we can do is give that visibility to those lower-level people so that they can do this work and free up the higher-level people so they can be working on the next big thing.”Stackify itself might just prove to be the next big thing.

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• Spotlight on mkyong

  - by MarkH

  Occasionally, I'd like to share a blog I've discovered or that someone has passed along to me. Criteria are few, but in a nutshell, it must be: Java-related. (Doh!) Interesting. A good blog is exciting to read at some level, whether due to perspective, eye-catching writing, or technical insight. It doesn't have to read like a Stephen King novel, but it should grab you somehow. Technically deep or technically broad. A site that dives deeply, quickly is a great reference for particular topics/tasks. On the other hand, one that covers a lot of ground at a high-but-still-technical level can be a handy site to visit occasionally as well. Both are what I consider "bookmarkable", but for different reasons. Drumroll, please... With that in mind, this Blog Spotlight is cast upon mkyong.com, a site I stumbled across that offers a little bit of everything for various Java dev audiences. The title indicates the site is for "Java web development tutorials", and indeed it does have these: JSF, Spring, Struts, Hibernate, JAX-WS, JAX-RS, and numerous other topics are addressed to varying degrees. The site isn't devoted exclusively to server-side tutorials, though. Recent posts include mobile development topics, and the links at the bottom of the page connect you to reference pages and other useful sites. I've poked around through a couple of the tutorials and, while they won't take you from "zero to hero", they do seem to provide a nice overview of the subject at hand. They also offer an occasional explanatory comment that is missing from far too many texts, sites, and doc pages. It's not a perfect site, but I like it. The Bottom Line mkyong.com offers a nice "summary site" of server-side tutorials, mobile dev posts, and reference links. Check it out! All the best,Mark 

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• LibGdx efficient data saving/loading?

  - by grimrader22

  Currently, my LibGDX game consists of a 512 x 512 map of Tiles and entities such as players and monsters. I am wondering how to efficiently save and load the data of my levels. At the moment I am using JSON serialization for each class I want to save. I implement the Json.Serializable interface for all of these classes and write only the variables that are necessary. So my map consists of 512 x 512 tiles, that's 260,000 tiles. Each tile on the map consists of a Tile object, which points to some final Tile object like a GRASS_TILE or a STONE_TILE. When I serialize each level tile, the final Tile that it points to is re-serialized over and over again, so if I have 100 Tiles all pointing to GRASS_TILE, the data of GRASS_TILE is written 100 times over. When I go to load/deserialize my objects, 100 GrassTile objects are created, but they are each their own object. They no longer point to the final tile object. I feel like this reading/writing files very slow. If I were to abandon JSON serialization, to my knowledge my next best option would be saving the level data to a sql database. Unless there is a way to speed up serializing/deserializing 260,000 tiles I may have to do this. Is this a good idea? Could I really write that many tiles to the database efficiently? To sum all this up, I am trying to save my levels using JSON serialization, but it is VERY slow. What other options do I have for saving the data of so many tiles. I also must note that the JSON serialization is not slow on a PC, it is only VERY slow on a mobile device. Since file writing/reading is so slow on mobile devices, what can I do?

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• How Visual Studio 2010 and Team Foundation Server enable Compliance

  - by Martin Hinshelwood

  One of the things that makes Team Foundation Server (TFS) the most powerful Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) platform is the traceability it provides to those that use it. This traceability is crucial to enable many companies to adhere to many of the Compliance regulations to which they are bound (e.g. CFR 21 Part 11 or Sarbanes–Oxley.)   From something as simple as relating Tasks to Check-in’s or being able to see the top 10 files in your codebase that are causing the most Bugs, to identifying which Bugs and Requirements are in which Release. All that information is available and more in TFS. Although all of this tradability is available within TFS you do need to understand that it is not for free. Well… I say that, but if you are using TFS properly you will have this information with no additional work except for firing up the reporting. Using Visual Studio ALM and Team Foundation Server you can relate every line of code changes all the way up to requirements and back down through Test Cases to the Test Results. Figure: The only thing missing is Build In order to build the relationship model below we need to examine how each of the relationships get there. Each member of your team from programmer to tester and Business Analyst to Business have their roll to play to knit this together. Figure: The relationships required to make this work can get a little confusing If Build is added to this to relate Work Items to Builds and with knowledge of which builds are in which environments you can easily identify what is contained within a Release. Figure: How are things progressing Along with the ability to produce the progress and trend reports the tractability that is built into TFS can be used to fulfil most audit requirements out of the box, and augmented to fulfil the rest. In order to understand the relationships, lets look at each of the important Artifacts and how they are associated with each other… Requirements – The root of all knowledge Requirements are the thing that the business cares about delivering. These could be derived as User Stories or Business Requirements Documents (BRD’s) but they should be what the Business asks for. Requirements can be related to many of the Artifacts in TFS, so lets look at the model: Figure: If the centre of the world was a requirement We can track which releases Requirements were scheduled in, but this can change over time as more details come to light. Figure: Who edited the Requirement and when There is also the ability to query Work Items based on the History of changed that were made to it. This is particularly important with Requirements. It might not be enough to say what Requirements were completed in a given but also to know which Requirements were ever assigned to a particular release. Figure: Some magic required, but result still achieved As an augmentation to this it is also possible to run a query that shows results from the past, just as if we had a time machine. You can take any Query in the system and add a “Asof” clause at the end to query historical data in the operational store for TFS. select <fields> from WorkItems [where <condition>] [order by <fields>] [asof <date>] Figure: Work Item Query Language (WIQL) format In order to achieve this you do need to save the query as a *.wiql file to your local computer and edit it in notepad, but one imported into TFS you run it any time you want. Figure: Saving Queries locally can be useful All of these Audit features are available throughout the Work Item Tracking (WIT) system within TFS. Tasks – Where the real work gets done Tasks are the work horse of the development team, but they only as useful as Excel if you do not relate them properly to other Artifacts. Figure: The Task Work Item Type has its own relationships Requirements should be broken down into Tasks that the development team work from to build what is required by the business. This may be done by a small dedicated group or by everyone that will be working on the software team but however it happens all of the Tasks create should be a Child of a Requirement Work Item Type. Figure: Tasks are related to the Requirement Tasks should be used to track the day-to-day activities of the team working to complete the software and as such they should be kept simple and short lest developers think they are more trouble than they are worth. Figure: Task Work Item Type has a narrower purpose Although the Task Work Item Type describes the work that will be done the actual development work involves making changes to files that are under Source Control. These changes are bundled together in a single atomic unit called a Changeset which is committed to TFS in a single operation. During this operation developers can associate Work Item with the Changeset. Figure: Tasks are associated with Changesets   Changesets – Who wrote this crap Changesets themselves are just an inventory of the changes that were made to a number of files to complete a Task. Figure: Changesets are linked by Tasks and Builds   Figure: Changesets tell us what happened to the files in Version Control Although comments can be changed after the fact, the inventory and Work Item associations are permanent which allows us to Audit all the way down to the individual change level. Figure: On Check-in you can resolve a Task which automatically associates it Because of this we can view the history on any file within the system and see how many changes have been made and what Changesets they belong to. Figure: Changes are tracked at the File level What would be even more powerful would be if we could view these changes super imposed over the top of the lines of code. Some people call this a blame tool because it is commonly used to find out which of the developers introduced a bug, but it can also be used as another method of Auditing changes to the system. Figure: Annotate shows the lines the Annotate functionality allows us to visualise the relationship between the individual lines of code and the Changesets. In addition to this you can create a Label and apply it to a version of your version control. The problem with Label’s is that they can be changed after they have been created with no tractability. This makes them practically useless for any sort of compliance audit. So what do you use? Branches – And why we need them Branches are a really powerful tool for development and release management, but they are most important for audits. Figure: One way to Audit releases The R1.0 branch can be created from the Label that the Build creates on the R1 line when a Release build was created. It can be created as soon as the Build has been signed of for release. However it is still possible that someone changed the Label between this time and its creation. Another better method can be to explicitly link the Build output to the Build. Builds – Lets tie some more of this together Builds are the glue that helps us enable the next level of tractability by tying everything together. Figure: The dashed pieces are not out of the box but can be enabled When the Build is called and starts it looks at what it has been asked to build and determines what code it is going to get and build. Figure: The folder identifies what changes are included in the build The Build sets a Label on the Source with the same name as the Build, but the Build itself also includes the latest Changeset ID that it will be building. At the end of the Build the Build Agent identifies the new Changesets it is building by looking at the Check-ins that have occurred since the last Build. Figure: What changes have been made since the last successful Build It will then use that information to identify the Work Items that are associated with all of the Changesets Changesets are associated with Build and change the “Integrated In” field of those Work Items . Figure: Find all of the Work Items to associate with The “Integrated In” field of all of the Work Items identified by the Build Agent as being integrated into the completed Build are updated to reflect the Build number that successfully integrated that change. Figure: Now we know which Work Items were completed in a build Now that we can link a single line of code changed all the way back through the Task that initiated the action to the Requirement that started the whole thing and back down to the Build that contains the finished Requirement. But how do we know wither that Requirement has been fully tested or even meets the original Requirements? Test Cases – How we know we are done The only way we can know wither a Requirement has been completed to the required specification is to Test that Requirement. In TFS there is a Work Item type called a Test Case Test Cases enable two scenarios. The first scenario is the ability to track and validate Acceptance Criteria in the form of a Test Case. If you agree with the Business a set of goals that must be met for a Requirement to be accepted by them it makes it both difficult for them to reject a Requirement when it passes all of the tests, but also provides a level of tractability and validation for audit that a feature has been built and tested to order. Figure: You can have many Acceptance Criteria for a single Requirement It is crucial for this to work that someone from the Business has to sign-off on the Test Case moving from the  “Design” to “Ready” states. The Second is the ability to associate an MS Test test with the Test Case thereby tracking the automated test. This is useful in the circumstance when you want to Track a test and the test results of a Unit Test designed to test the existence of and then re-existence of a a Bug. Figure: Associating a Test Case with an automated Test Although it is possible it may not make sense to track the execution of every Unit Test in your system, there are many Integration and Regression tests that may be automated that it would make sense to track in this way. Bug – Lets not have regressions In order to know wither a Bug in the application has been fixed and to make sure that it does not reoccur it needs to be tracked. Figure: Bugs are the centre of their own world If the fix to a Bug is big enough to require that it is broken down into Tasks then it is probably a Requirement. You can associate a check-in with a Bug and have it tracked against a Build. You would also have one or more Test Cases to prove the fix for the Bug. Figure: Bugs have many associations This allows you to track Bugs / Defects in your system effectively and report on them. Change Request – I am not a feature In the CMMI Process template Change Requests can also be easily tracked through the system. In some cases it can be very important to track Change Requests separately as an Auditor may want to know what was changed and who authorised it. Again and similar to Bugs, if the Change Request is big enough that it would require to be broken down into Tasks it is in reality a new feature and should be tracked as a Requirement. Figure: Make sure your Change Requests only Affect Requirements and not rewrite them Conclusion Visual Studio 2010 and Team Foundation Server together provide an exceptional Application Lifecycle Management platform that can help your team comply with even the harshest of Compliance requirements while still enabling them to be Agile. Most Audits are heavy on required documentation but most of that information is captured for you as long a you do it right. You don’t even need every team member to understand it all as each of the Artifacts are relevant to a different type of team member. Business Analysts manage Requirements and Change Requests Programmers manage Tasks and check-in against Change Requests and Bugs Testers manage Bugs and Test Cases Build Masters manage Builds Although there is some crossover there are still rolls or “hats” that are worn. Do you thing this is all achievable? Have I missed anything that you think should be there?

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• Webmaster Tools, www and no-www, duplicate content and subdomains

  - by Jay

  I have not come to any conclusive answers on the following after many hours of research on many websites to the specific issue that I am trying to figure out. My company has two websites a main one at www.example.com and one at subdomain.example.com which is a subdomain of the first and is our self hosted blog. The way Google sees these with the www or no-www (called naked for now on) is that each of these actually are different when the www or naked version is used/not used in the front of the domain. I completely understand this. It is also advised that both should be set up in the Google Webmaster Tools, which I have done. Correct me if I am wrong on that in regard to having both set up. Now the way it appears is that we can set a preferred domain up in Webmaster Tools only at the root domain level. The subdomain can not have this and actually says the following "Restricted to root level domains only". So it appears that the domain should follow what the root domain says which on our preferred one says to display the www.example.com. and not the naked version. That is one issue I have in that one displays one way and the other displays another. Is it that we have the wrong redirects in place for the subdomain? Another question is does this have any affect on SEO in regards to duplicate content on the web in how we have set this up?

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• Android threads trouble wrapping my head around design

  - by semajhan

  I am having trouble wrapping my head around game design. On the android platform, I have an activity and set its content view with a custom surface view. The custom surface view acts as my panel and I create instances of all classes and do all the drawing and calculation in there. Question: Should I instead create the instances of other classes in my activity? Now I create a custom thread class that handles the game loop. Question: How do I use this one class in all my activities? Or do I have to create a separate thread each time? In my previous game, I had multiple levels that had to create an instance of the thread class and in the thread class I had to set constructor methods for each separate level and in the loop use a switch statement to check which level it needs to render and update. Sorry if that sounds confusing. I just want to know if the method I am using is inefficient (which it probably is) and how to go about designing it the correct way. I have read many tutorials out there and I am still having lots of trouble with this particular topic. Maybe a link to a some tutorials that explain this? Thanks.

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• My boss is feuding with his boss. My workload is expanding What should I do?

  - by steve

  These two have always had a somewhat shaky relationship when they were on the same level. The other guy was recently promoted to director and now my boss reports to him. On the surface, they appear to get along when they get together, but my boss despises the man and badmouths him every chance that he gets (to peers, subordinates, etc). He believe that the director is setting him up to fail. The Director and upper management is holding my boss responsible for the not-so-great performance by the team as of late. He's been playing games to make my boss look bad. Due to lay offs, we don't have the manpower to deliever the results that we did before...but expectations have not lowered...and my boss is taking the heat for it. Now he's on the warpath and starting to micromanage. He's giving everyone more work. He's forcing us midlevel guys to take responsibility for the level one techs' performance. I'm spending less and less time coding....and more time babysitting vendors, techs, etc. I'm not so sure that's a bad thing because I'm sorta burnt out on coding, but I don't really care for the idea of having to be responsible for others poor performance....isn't that the manager's job? Anyway, do you guys have any suggestions on dealing with the situation?

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• Five Ideas: Project Management

  - by Sylvie MacKenzie, PMP

   Except from Profit Magazine “For everyone to put on the project manager hat and standardize the way every single thing is done means that now the whole organization is on the same page as to what needs to occur from the time a hurricane hits Haiti and when a boat pulls in to unload supplies.” —Rich D’Addario, consulting project manager in the Primavera Global Business Unit at Oracle, on helping AmeriCares deliver aid to Haiti “Primavera P6 Analytics generates information that can help organizations improve their utilization and trim down overall operating costs. But more importantly, it gives organizations improved visibility.” —Yasser Mahmud, vice president of product strategy and industry marketing in Oracle’s Primavera Global Business Unit “Organizations are constantly looking for ways to improve the speed and precision of their decisions and work without creating environments and systems that limit their personnel through rigid structures and inflexible processes. The latest release of Primavera Portfolio Management meets this demand by further streamlining processes and supporting enhanced decision-making, helping drive better value from portfolios. In addition, the new UI clearly demonstrates Oracle's commitment to providing a seamlessly integrated enterprise project portfolio management product suite.” —Mike Sicilia, senior vice president, Oracle's Primavera “Make it a business project, not an IT project. All levels of functional management must have ownership, responsibility, and accountability for the success of the implementation.” —from Eaton Operations Services Manager Marcos Baccetto's 9 Project Management Tips “AEC firms must strategically pursue standardization opportunities in the project management area while preserving the spirit of entrepreneurism and flexibility at an individual project manager level. An enterprise technology platform doesn't only help with standardization of key project management processes across the enterprise; it also improves performance management, team collaboration and client specific reporting at an individual project level.” —Maneesh Chhabra is a director of Industry Strategy and Insight at Oracle

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• Architectural Composition Languages

  - by C. Lawrence Wenham

  Recently stumbled upon this paper (PDF) talking about ACLs, or Architectural Composition Languages. They're a fusion of two earlier lines of research: Architectural Definition Languages (such as UML) and Object Composition Languages (such as XAML, WWF, or scripting languages). The goal of an ACL is to have a high-level description of a program's architecture which can also be compiled into a runnable program. The high-level description assists automated analysis, while the 'executability' means changes can be tested immediately. You would still author the components of the program in a conventional programming language (C, Java, Python, etc), but they would be composed into a complete program by the ACL. One of the expected benefits is that a program can be ported to a different platform by swapping in "similar but different" components. I've been hankering for something like this for a long time (see this answer I gave on a StackOverflow question a few years ago). The paper mentions that the researchers were working on a language called ACL/1 that initially targeted Java, but would be ported to support .Net as well. However, I can't find any more mention of ACL/1 anywhere. Has there been any more work done on this? Are there any other implementations of the ACL concept that are available for use or experimentation?

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• In the days of modern computing, in 'typical business apps' - why does performance matter?

  - by Prog

  This may seem like an odd question to some of you. I'm a hobbyist Java programmer. I have developed several games, an AI program that creates music, another program for painting, and similar stuff. This is to tell you that I have an experience in programming, but not in professional development of business applications. I see a lot of talk on this site about performance. People often debate what would be the most efficient algorithm in C# to perform a task, or why Python is slow and Java is faster, etc. What I'm trying to understand is: why does this matter? There are specific areas of computing where I see why performance matters: games, where tens of thousands of computations are happening every second in a constant-update loop, or low level systems which other programs rely on, such as OSs and VMs, etc. But for the normal, typical high-level business app, why does performance matter? I can understand why it used to matter, decades ago. Computers were much slower and had much less memory, so you had to think carefully about these things. But today, we have so much memory to spare and computers are so fast: does it actually matter if a particular Java algorithm is O(n^2)? Will it actually make a difference for the end users of this typical business app? When you press a GUI button in a typical business app, and behind the scenes it invokes an O(n^2) algorithm, in these days of modern computing - do you actually feel the inefficiency? My question is split in two: In practice, today does performance matter in a typical normal business program? If it does, please give me real-world examples of places in such an application, where performance and optimizations are important.

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• Experience the Oracle Support Stars Bar

  - by Oracle OpenWorld Blog Team

  By Gina WolfDon't miss the opportunity to meet with the stars of Oracle Support, live and in person at the Moscone West Level 2 lobby. Ask our experts your toughest questions about the Oracle hardware, software, and engineered systems you use to run your business. Explore new Oracle Support innovations including Oracle Platinum Services, My Oracle Support Mobile, and the Oracle Enterprise Manager Ops Center Everywhere program. Learn the latest best practices for problem prevention, rapid resolution, and product upgrades. In addition, discover how Oracle Advanced Customer Support Services can help you maximize the performance of all mission-critical Oracle systems. Come meet the stars behind your support: our trusted experts are ready to assist! The Oracle Support Stars Bar at the Moscone West Level 2 lobby is open all conference week at the following times: Sunday, September 30, 12:00 p.m. – 4:00 p.m. Monday, October 1, 10:00 a.m. – 6:00 p.m. Tuesday, October 2, 10:00 a.m. – 6:00 p.m. Wednesday, October 3, 9:00 a.m. – 5:00 p.m. Thursday, October 4, 9:00 a.m. – 1:00 p.m. Attend one or more of the 27 Oracle Customer Support Services sessions during Oracle OpenWorld to learn how Oracle Support enables you to gain maximum value from your Oracle hardware and software investments.

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