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• Integrated webcam in lenovo t410 not working with 12.04

  - by kristianp

  I have a Lenovo T410 with an inbuilt webcam and I haven't been able to get the webcam working. I tried skype, cheese, both just give me a black window. The microphone works fine with skype, by the way. Can anyone provide any clues please? The webcam is enabled in the bios, but there is no light indicating the webcam is on (not sure if there should be, though). I tried this on Kubuntu 11.10 and have upgraded to 12.04 with the same results. The Fn-F6 keyboard combination doens't seem to do anything either. EDIT: I got the webcam replaced, it looks like it was a hardware problem, because it works fine now. Thanks guys. $ ls /dev/v4l/* /dev/v4l/by-id: usb-Chicony_Electronics_Co.__Ltd._Integrated_Camera-video-index0 /dev/v4l/by-path: pci-0000:00:1a.0-usb-0:1.6:1.0-video-index0 And lsusb: $ lsusb Bus 001 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0002 Linux Foundation 2.0 root hub Bus 002 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0002 Linux Foundation 2.0 root hub Bus 001 Device 002: ID 8087:0020 Intel Corp. Integrated Rate Matching Hub Bus 002 Device 002: ID 8087:0020 Intel Corp. Integrated Rate Matching Hub Bus 001 Device 003: ID 147e:2016 Upek Biometric Touchchip/Touchstrip Fingerprint Sensor Bus 001 Device 004: ID 0a5c:217f Broadcom Corp. Bluetooth Controller Bus 001 Device 005: ID 17ef:480f Lenovo Integrated Webcam [R5U877] Bus 002 Device 003: ID 05c6:9204 Qualcomm, Inc. Bus 002 Device 004: ID 17ef:1003 Lenovo Integrated Smart Card Reader Here is the output from guvcview, minus lots of lines describing the available capture formats. It says "unable to start with minimum setup. Please reconnect your camera.". guvcview 1.5.3 ALSA lib pcm_dmix.c:1018:(snd_pcm_dmix_open) unable to open slave ALSA lib pcm.c:2217:(snd_pcm_open_noupdate) Unknown PCM cards.pcm.rear ALSA lib pcm.c:2217:(snd_pcm_open_noupdate) Unknown PCM cards.pcm.center_lfe ALSA lib pcm.c:2217:(snd_pcm_open_noupdate) Unknown PCM cards.pcm.side ALSA lib audio/pcm_bluetooth.c:1614:(audioservice_expect) BT_GET_CAPABILITIES failed : Input/output error(5) ALSA lib audio/pcm_bluetooth.c:1614:(audioservice_expect) BT_GET_CAPABILITIES failed : Input/output error(5) ALSA lib audio/pcm_bluetooth.c:1614:(audioservice_expect) BT_GET_CAPABILITIES failed : Input/output error(5) ALSA lib audio/pcm_bluetooth.c:1614:(audioservice_expect) BT_GET_CAPABILITIES failed : Input/output error(5) ALSA lib pcm_dmix.c:957:(snd_pcm_dmix_open) The dmix plugin supports only playback stream ALSA lib pcm_dmix.c:1018:(snd_pcm_dmix_open) unable to open slave Cannot connect to server socket err = No such file or directory Cannot connect to server socket jack server is not running or cannot be started video device: /dev/video0 Init. Integrated Camera (location: usb-0000:00:1a.0-1.6) { pixelformat = 'YUYV', description = 'YUV 4:2:2 (YUYV)' } { discrete: width = 640, height = 480 } Time interval between frame: 1/30, .... { discrete: width = 1600, height = 1200 } Time interval between frame: 1/15, vid:17ef pid:480f driver:uvcvideo checking format: 1196444237 libv4l2: error setting pixformat: Device or resource busy VIDIOC_S_FORMAT - Unable to set format: Device or resource busy Init v4L2 failed !! Init video returned -2 trying minimum setup ... video device: /dev/video0 Init. Integrated Camera (location: usb-0000:00:1a.0-1.6) { pixelformat = 'YUYV', description = 'YUV 4:2:2 (YUYV)' } { discrete: width = 640, height = 480 } .... vid:17ef pid:480f driver:uvcvideo checking format: 1448695129 libv4l2: error setting pixformat: Device or resource busy VIDIOC_S_FORMAT - Unable to set format: Device or resource busy Init v4L2 failed !! ERROR: Minimum Setup Failed. Exiting... VIDIOC_REQBUFS - Failed to delete buffers: Invalid argument (errno 22) cleaned allocations - 100% Closing portaudio ...OK Terminated.

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• How do developer get rid of silly requirements?

  - by sugar

  Hmm ! First of all let me give you the note of the requirement. So that you can have idea what kind of problem I am facing. Words From Project Manager : Hey ! Sugar, I am assigning you a task for developing a framework. This framework is supposed to be developed for all iOS application. Please go through brief of the required framework. It should be able to detect the thickness of my Thumb. It should be able to detect whether User is using thumb or Fingers If user is using thumbs/Fingers, Framework should calculate the size of thumb/fingers. Once size is been calculated, all elements of user interface should arranged & resized automatically. ( not specified how & where as its framework - it should be smart enough to arrange automatically ) If thumb size is larger elements should get arranged near by center area of iPad/iPhone If thumb size is smaller elements should get arranged near by corners of iPad/iPhone If thumb size is larger, fonts of all elements should get smaller. ( assuming = aged person ) If thumb size is smaller, fonts of all elements should get larger. ( assuming smaller thumb = low aged person ) Summary : This framework is required for creating user-friendly user-interfaces programmatically. We need to develop a very developer-friendly framework. Framework should be developed in such a way that we can use in as many projects as needed. Well, I am a developer. What I want to have as an answer is as follows. How to describe them - the way of they thinking is bit ridiculous ? How do I explain them - we can better concentrate on developing actual projects ? How do I convince them - that this kind of things even if possible, is not recommended to develop such things ? How do I say politely, gently & respectfully NO to this ? What should I say, So that they can not point at my experience ? ( e.g. you are 3 years experienced guy & you must have abilities to develop such things ) Feeling horror. Please help. Thanks in advance, Sugar. Note : Please help me to tag this question properly. I am stuck & this is real situation. Frustrated & tensed. You guys might have faced such requirements from TopLevel. requesting you to help with your experience. Well ! I came to know that - those TOPLEVEL guys don't have any idea of iPad, iPhone, Apple etc. I would do one thing. Sir, before we go further for framework development. It is strongly recommended to read Apple Human Interface Guidlines.

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• ResourceSerializable: an alternate to ORM and ActiveRecord

  - by Levi Morrison

  A few opinionated reasons I don't like the traditional ORM and ActiveRecord patterns: They work only with a database. Sometimes I'm dealing with objects from an API and other objects from a database. All the implementations I have seen don't allow for that. Feel free to clue me in if I'm wrong on this. They are brittle. Changes in the database will likely break your implemenation. Some implementations can help reduce this, but a few of the ones I've seen don't. Their very design is influenced by the database. If I want to switch to using an API, I'll have to redesign the object to get it to work (likely). It seems to violate the single-responsibility pattern. They know what they are and how they act, but they also know how they are created, destroyed and saved? Seems a bit much. What about an approach that is somewhat more familiar in PHP: implementing an interface? In php 5.4, we'll have the JsonSerializable interface that defines the data to be json_encoded, so users will become accustomed to this type of thing. What if there was a ResourceSerializable interface? This is still an ORM by name, but certainly not by tradition. interface ResourceSerializable { /** * Returns the id that identifies the resource. */ function resourceId(); /** * Returns the 'type' of the resource. */ function resourceType(); /** * Returns the data to be serialized. */ function resourceSerialize(); } Things might be poorly named, I'll take suggestions. Notes: ResourceId will work for API's and databases. As long as your primary key in the database is the same as the resource ID in the API, there is no conflict. All of the API's I've worked with have a unique ID for the resource, so I don't see any issues there. ResourceType is the group or type associated with the resource. You can use this to map the resource to an API call or a database table. If the ResourceType was person, it could map to /api/1/person/{resourceId} and the table persons (or people, if it's smart enough). resourceSerialize() returns the data to be stored. Keys would identify API parameters and database table columns. This also seems easier to test than ActiveRecord / Orm implemenations. I haven't done much automated testing on traditional ActiveRecord/ORM implemenations, so this is merely a guess. But it seems that I being able to create objects independently of the library helps me. I don't have to use load() to get an existing resource, I can simply create one and set all the right properties. This is not so easy in the ActiveRecord / Orm implemenations I've dealt with. Downsides: You need another object to serialize it. This also means you have more code in general as you have to use more objects. You have to map resource types to API calls and database tables. This is even more work, but some ORMs and ActiveRecord implementations require you to map objects to table names anyway. Are there other downsides that you see? Does this seem feasible to you? How would you improve it? Note: I almost asked this on StackOverflow because it might be too vague for their standards, but I'm still not really familiar with programmers.stackexchange.com, so please help me improve my question if it doesn't shape up to standards here.

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• C#: A "Dumbed-Down" C++?

  - by James Michael Hare

  I was spending a lovely day this last weekend watching my sons play outside in one of the better weekends we've had here in Saint Louis for quite some time, and whilst watching them and making sure no limbs were broken or eyes poked out with sticks and other various potential injuries, I was perusing (in the correct sense of the word) this month's MSDN magazine to get a sense of the latest VS2010 features in both IDE and in languages. When I got to the back pages, I saw a wonderful article by David S. Platt entitled, "In Praise of Dumbing Down"  (msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/magazine/ee336129.aspx).  The title captivated me and I read it and found myself agreeing with it completely especially as it related to my first post on divorcing C++ as my favorite language. Unfortunately, as Mr. Platt mentions, the term dumbing-down has negative connotations, but is really and truly a good thing.  You are, in essence, taking something that is extremely complex and reducing it to something that is much easier to use and far less error prone.  Adding safeties to power tools and anti-kick mechanisms to chainsaws are in some sense "dumbing them down" to the common user -- but that also makes them safer and more accessible for the common user.  This was exactly my point with C++ and C#.  I did not mean to infer that C++ was not a useful or good language, but that in a very high percentage of cases, is too complex and error prone for the job at hand. Choosing the correct programming language for a job is a lot like choosing any other tool for a task.  For example: if I want to dig a French drain in my lawn, I can attempt to use a huge tractor-like backhoe and the job would be done far quicker than if I would dig it by hand.  I can't deny that the backhoe has the raw power and speed to perform.  But you also cannot deny that my chances of injury or chances of severing utility lines or other resources climb at an exponential rate inverse to the amount of training I may have on that machinery. Is C++ a powerful tool?  Oh yes, and it's great for those tasks where speed and performance are paramount.  But for most of us, it's the wrong tool.  And keep in mind, I say this even though I have 17 years of experience in using it and feel myself highly adept in utilizing its features both in the standard libraries, the STL, and in supplemental libraries such as BOOST.  Which, although greatly help with adding powerful features quickly, do very little to curb the relative dangers of the language. So, you may say, the fault is in the developer, that if the developer had some higher skills or if we only hired C++ experts this would not be an issue.  Now, I will concede there is some truth to this.  Obviously, the higher skilled C++ developers you hire the better the chance they will produce highly performant and error-free code.  However, what good is that to the average developer who cannot afford a full stable of C++ experts? That's my point with C#:  It's like a kinder, gentler C++.  It gives you nearly the same speed, and in many ways even more power than C++, and it gives you a much softer cushion for novices to fall against if they code less-than-optimally.  A bug is a bug, of course, in any language, but C# does a good job of hiding and taking on the task of handling almost all of the resource issues that make C++ so tricky.  For my money, C# is much more maintainable, more feature-rich, second only slightly in performance, faster to market, and -- last but not least -- safer and easier to use.  That's why, where I work, I much prefer to see the developers moving to C#.  The quantity of bugs is much lower, and we don't need to hire "experts" to achieve the same results since the language itself handles those resource pitfalls so prevalent in poorly written C++ code.  C++ will still have its place in the world, and I'm sure I'll still use it now and again where it is truly the correct tool for the job, but for nearly every other project C# is a wonderfully "dumbed-down" version of C++ -- in the very best sense -- and to me, that's the smart choice.

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• Surviving MATLAB and R as a Hardcore Programmer

  - by dsimcha

  I love programming in languages that seem geared towards hardcore programmers. (My favorites are Python and D.) MATLAB is geared towards engineers and R is geared towards statisticians, and it seems like these languages were designed by people who aren't hardcore programmers and don't think like hardcore programmers. I always find them somewhat awkward to use, and to some extent I can't put my finger on why. Here are some issues I have managed to identify: (Both): The extreme emphasis on vectors and matrices to the extent that there are no true primitives. (Both): The difficulty of basic string manipulation. (Both): Lack of or awkwardness in support for basic data structures like hash tables and "real", i.e. type-parametric and nestable, arrays. (Both): They're really, really slow even by interpreted language standards, unless you bend over backwards to vectorize your code. (Both): They seem to not be designed to interact with the outside world. For example, both are fairly bulky programs that take a while to launch and seem to not be designed to make simple text filter programs easy to write. Furthermore, the lack of good string processing makes file I/O in anything but very standard forms near impossible. (Both): Object orientation seems to have a very bolted-on feel. Yes, you can do it, but it doesn't feel much more idiomatic than OO in C. (Both): No obvious, simple way to get a reference type. No pointers or class references. For example, I have no idea how you roll your own linked list in either of these languages. (MATLAB): You can't put multiple top level functions in a single file, encouraging very long functions and cut-and-paste coding. (MATLAB): Integers apparently don't exist as a first class type. (R): The basic builtin data structures seem way too high level and poorly documented, and never seem to do quite what I expect given my experience with similar but lower level data structures. (R): The documentation is spread all over the place and virtually impossible to browse or search. Even D, which is often knocked for bad documentation and is still fairly alpha-ish, is substantially better as far as I can tell. (R): At least as far as I'm aware, there's no good IDE for it. Again, even D, a fairly alpha-ish language with a small community, does better. In general, I also feel like MATLAB and R could be easily replaced by plain old libraries in more general-purpose langauges, if sufficiently comprehensive libraries existed. This is especially true in newer general purpose languages that include lots of features for library writers. Why do R and MATLAB seem so weird to me? Are there any other major issues that you've noticed that may make these languages come off as strange to hardcore programmers? When their use is necessary, what are some good survival tips? Edit: I'm seeing one issue from some of the answers I've gotten. I have a strong personal preference, when I analyze data, to have one script that incorporates the whole pipeline. This implies that a general purpose language needs to be used. I hate having to write a script to "clean up" the data and spit it out, then another to read it back in a completely different environment, etc. I find the friction of using MATLAB/R for some of my work and a completely different language with a completely different address space and way of thinking for the rest to be a huge source of friction. Furthermore, I know there are glue layers that exist, but they always seem to be horribly complicated and a source of friction.

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• BI&EPM in Focus June 2012

  - by Mike.Hallett(at)Oracle-BI&EPM

  General News Thomas Kurian Discusses Oracle Exalytics, SAP HANA (replay | preso | press)  Accenture & Oracle Study: The Challenges of Corporate Financial Reporting  (link) Flash Demo: Oracle Hyperion Planning on Exalytics in the Public Sector (link) Flash Demo: OBIEE & Exalytics in Retail (link) Customers Italian Partner Alfa Sistemi implemented at Autovie Venete S.p.A. Integrates Business Intelligence and Performance Management to Improve Efficiency and Speed for Managing Public Works Projects (English version)  / Autovie Venete implementa un sistema integrato di Business Intelligence e Performance Management per migliorare l’efficienza e la tempestività dell’attività di Controlling di Commessa (Italian version). FANCL Gains 360-Degree View of Customers across Multiple Sales Channels, Reduces Reports by 75% Korea Yakult Improves Profit & Loss Analysis with Oracle Hyperion Planning and OBIEE Hill International Streamlines Forecasting, Improves Visibility into Project Productivity and Profitability Children’s Rights in Society Better Supports Organizational Mission with Advanced, Integrated, and Streamlined Business Intelligence Tools Profit: International utility Enel monitors the performance of global subsidiaries with Oracle Hyperion Applications (link) Profit: Charting a New Course: Korean Air gains altitude by leveraging its greatest asset: information (link)   Events June 12: Breaking Away from the Excel Add-In: Welcome to Hyperion Smart View 11.1.2.2 (link) June 13: Upgrading OBIEE 10g to 11g: Best Practices and Lessons Learned (performance architects) (link) June 14, The Netherlands: Strategies for Business Excellence, New Release of Oracle Hyperion EPM Suite (link) June 21: Comprehensive and Accurate Forecasting for Healthcare (link) June 26: What Exactly is Exalytics? (KPI Partners) (link) Webcast Replay: Is Your Company Able to Navigate Through Market Volatility? (link)  Webcast Replay: Is Hope and Email The Core of Your Reconciliation Process? (link) Webcast Replay: Troubleshooting EPM Reporting & Analysis 11.1.2.x  (link) Webcast Replay: Is your Organization Flying Blind when it comes to Understanding Profitability?  (link) Enterprise Performance Management Final Oracle EPM  Information Panel (CIP) survey on cost, profitability and performance reporting/scorecards is now OPEN (link) New on EPM Blog: What's Going on With IFRS? (link) How does Crystal Ball integrate with EPM Solutions? New collateral and demos on Crystal Ball Solution Factory!  (link) New Youtube Video: Business Case Analysis with Oracle Crystal Ball (link) Crystal Ball 11.1.2.2 is released! Grouped Assumptions in Sensitivity Charts, Data Filtering When Fitting Distributions and Parameter Edits When Fitting Distributions to name a few. Get full details from the online New Features Guide (link) New DRM Oracle-by-Examples now available (link) Support Blog: Hyperion Ledgerlink Sample Record and Windows 7: Now you see it, now you don’t  (link) Use Enterprise Manager FMW Control to Troubleshoot Oracle EPM 11.1.2 Family of Products (link) Business  Intelligence Whitepaper: Real-Time Operational Reporting for E-Business Suite via GoldenGate Replication to an Operational Data Store.  How Oracle enabled real-time operational reporting for its $20B services contract business with Golden Gate & OBIEE (link) KPI Partners ebook: Understanding Oracle BI Components and Repository Modeling Basics (link) “Getting Started with Oracle Endeca Information Discovery” video tutorials now available (link) Oracle BI Publisher Conversion Center: Convert from Crystal, Actuate, or Oracle Reports to Oracle BI Publisher (link) Oracle Fusion Applications: Monthly Partner Updates Webcast Replays to help BI partners understand how OBI, Essbase, BI-Apps and Fusion work together: More on Fusion CRM: Fusion Marketing More on Fusion CRM: Fusion CRM Sales Start-Up Packs and Expert Services for Implementation Partners Introducing the Oracle Fusion Accounting Hub Implementing Fusion Applications using Oracle's Composers Oracle Fusion Applications Co-Existence

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• Drinking Our Own Champagne: Fusion Accounting Hub at Oracle

  - by Di Seghposs

  A guest post by Corey West, Senior Vice President, Oracle's Corporate Controller and Chief Accounting Officer There's no better story to tell than one about Oracle using its own products with blowout success. Here's how this one goes. As you know, Oracle has increased its share of the software market through a number of high-profile acquisitions. Legally combining companies is a very complicated process -- it can take months to complete, especially for the acquisitions with offices in several countries, each with its own unique laws and regulations. It's a mission critical and time sensitive process to roll an acquired company's legacy systems (running vital operations, such as accounts receivable and general ledger (GL)) into the existing systems at Oracle. To date, we've run our primary financial ledgers in E-Business Suite R12 -- and we've successfully met the requirements of the business and closed the books on time every single quarter. But there's always room for improvement and that comes in the form of Fusion Applications. We are now live on Fusion Accounting Hub (FAH), which is the first critical step in moving to a full Fusion Financials instance. We started with FAH so that we could design a global chart of accounts. Eventually, every transaction in every country will originate from this global chart of accounts -- it becomes the structure for managing our business more uniformly. In conjunction, we're using Oracle Hyperion Data Relationship Management (DRM) to centralize and automate governance of our global chart of accounts and related hierarchies, which will help us lower our costs and greatly reduce risk. Each month, we have to consolidate data from our primary general ledgers. We have been able to simplify this process considerably using FAH. We can now submit our primary ledgers running in E-Business Suite (EBS) R12 directly to FAH, eliminating the need for more than 90 redundant consolidation ledgers. Also we can submit incrementally, so if we need to book an adjustment in a primary ledger after close, we can do so without re-opening it and re-submitting. As a result, we have earlier visibility to period-end actuals during the close. A goal of this implementation, and one that we successfully achieved, is that we are able to use FAH globally with no customization. This means we have the ability to fully deploy ledger sets at the consolidation level, plus we can use standard functionality for currency translation and mass allocations. We're able to use account monitoring and drill down functionality from the consolidation level all the way through to EBS primary ledgers and sub-ledgers, which allows someone to click through a transaction appearing at the consolidation level clear through to its original source, a significant productivity enhancement when doing research. We also see a significant improvement in reporting using Essbase cube and Hyperion Smart View. Specifically, "the addition of an Essbase cube on top of the GL gives us tremendous versatility to automate and speed our elimination process," says Claire Sebti, Senior Director of Corporate Accounting at Oracle. A highlight of this story is that FAH is running in a co-existence environment. Our plan is to move to Fusion Financials in steps, starting with FAH. Next, our Oracle Financial Services Software subsidiary will move to a full Fusion Financials instance. Then we'll replace our EBS instance with Fusion Financials. This approach allows us to plan in steps, learn as we go, and not overwhelm our teams. It also reduces the risk that comes with moving the entire instance at once. Maria Smith, Vice President of Global Controller Operations, is confident about how they've positioned themselves to uptake more Fusion functionality and is eager to "continue to drive additional efficiency and cost savings." In this story, the happy customers are Oracle controllers, financial analysts, accounting specialists, and our management team that get earlier access to more flexible reporting. "Fusion Accounting Hub simplifies our processes and gives us more transparency into account activity," raves Alex SanJuan, Senior Director, Record to Report Strategic Process Owner. Overall, the team has been very impressed with the usability and functionality of FAH and are pleased with the quantifiable improvements. Claire Sebti states, "Our WD5 close activities have been reduced by at least four hours of system processing time, just for the consolidation group." Fusion Accounting Hub is an inspiring beginning to our Fusion Financials implementation story. There's no doubt it's going to be an international bestseller! Corey West, Senior Vice President Oracle's Corporate Controller and Chief Accounting Officer

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• Why Ultra-Low Power Computing Will Change Everything

  - by Tori Wieldt

  The ARM TechCon keynote "Why Ultra-Low Power Computing Will Change Everything" was anything but low-powered. The speaker, Dr. Johnathan Koomey, knows his subject: he is a Consulting Professor at Stanford University, worked for more than two decades at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, and has been a visiting professor at Stanford University, Yale University, and UC Berkeley's Energy and Resources Group. His current focus is creating a standard (computations per kilowatt hour) and measuring computer energy consumption over time. The trends are impressive: energy consumption has halved every 1.5 years for the last 60 years. Battery life has made roughly a 10x improvement each decade since 1960. It's these improvements that have made laptops and cell phones possible. What does the future hold? Dr. Koomey said that in the past, the race by chip manufacturers was to create the fastest computer, but the priorities have now changed. New computers are tiny, smart, connected and cheap. "You can't underestimate the importance of a shift in industry focus from raw performance to power efficiency for mobile devices," he said. There is also a confluence of trends in computing, communications, sensors, and controls. The challenge is how to reduce the power requirements for these tiny devices. Alternate sources of power that are being explored are light, heat, motion, and even blood sugar. The University of Michigan has produced a miniature sensor that harnesses solar energy and could last for years without needing to be replaced. Also, the University of Washington has created a sensor that scavenges power from existing radio and TV signals.Specific devices designed for a purpose are much more efficient than general purpose computers. With all these sensors, instead of big data, developers should focus on nano-data, personalized information that will adjust the lights in a room, a machine, a variable sign, etc.Dr. Koomey showed some examples:The Proteus Digital Health Feedback System, an ingestible sensor that transmits when a patient has taken their medicine and is powered by their stomach juices. (Gives "powered by you" a whole new meaning!) Streetline Parking Systems, that provide real-time data about available parking spaces. The information can be sent to your phone or update parking signs around the city to point to areas with available spaces. Less driving around looking for parking spaces!The BigBelly trash system that uses solar power, compacts trash, and sends a text message when it is full. This dramatically reduces the number of times a truck has to come to pick up trash, freeing up resources and slashing fuel costs. This is a classic example of the efficiency of moving "bits not atoms." But researchers are approaching the physical limits of sensors, Dr. Kommey explained. With the current rate of technology improvement, they'll reach the three-atom transistor by 2041. Once they hit that wall, it will force a revolution they way we do computing. But wait, researchers at Purdue University and the University of New South Wales are both working on a reliable one-atom transistors! Other researchers are working on "approximate computing" that will reduce computing requirements drastically. So it's unclear where the wall actually is. In the meantime, as Dr. Koomey promised, ultra-low power computing will change everything.

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• Computing a normal matrix in conjunction with gluLookAt

  - by Chris Smith

  I have a hand-rolled camera class that converts yaw, pitch, and roll angles into a forward, side, and up vector suitable for calling gluLookAt. Using this camera class I can modify the model-view matrix to move about the 3D world just fine. However, I am having trouble when using this camera class (and associated model-view matrix) when trying to perform directional lighting in my vertex shader. The problem is that the light direction, (0, 1, 0) for example, is relative to where the 'camera is looking' and not the actual world coordinates. (Or is this eye coordinates vs. model coordinates?) I would like the light direction to be unaffected by the camera's viewing direction. For example, when the camera is looking down the Z axis the ground is lit correctly. However, if I point the camera straight at the ground, then it goes dark. This is (I think) because the light direction is parallel with the camera's 'up' vector which is perpendicular with the ground's normal vector. I tried computing the normal matrix without taking the camera's model view into account, but then none of my objects were rotated correctly. Sorry if this sounds vague. I suspect there is a straight forward answer, but I'm not 100% clear on how the normal matrix should be used for transforming vertex normals in my vertex shader. For reference, here is pseudo code for my rendering loop: pMatrix = new Matrix(); pMatrix = makePerspective(...) mvMatrix = new Matrix() camera.apply(mvMatrix); // Calls gluLookAt // Move the object into position. mvMatrix.translatev(position); mvMatrix.rotatef(rotation.x, 1, 0, 0); mvMatrix.rotatef(rotation.y, 0, 1, 0); mvMatrix.rotatef(rotation.z, 0, 0, 1); var nMatrix = new Matrix(); nMatrix.set(mvMatrix.get().getInverse().getTranspose()); // Set vertex shader uniforms. gl.uniformMatrix4fv(shaderProgram.pMatrixUniform, false, new Float32Array(pMatrix.getFlattened())); gl.uniformMatrix4fv(shaderProgram.mvMatrixUniform, false, new Float32Array(mvMatrix.getFlattened())); gl.uniformMatrix4fv(shaderProgram.nMatrixUniform, false, new Float32Array(nMatrix.getFlattened())); // ... gl.drawElements(gl.TRIANGLES, this.vertexIndexBuffer.numItems, gl.UNSIGNED_SHORT, 0); And the corresponding vertex shader: // Attributes attribute vec3 aVertexPosition; attribute vec4 aVertexColor; attribute vec3 aVertexNormal; // Uniforms uniform mat4 uMVMatrix; uniform mat4 uNMatrix; uniform mat4 uPMatrix; // Varyings varying vec4 vColor; // Constants const vec3 LIGHT_DIRECTION = vec3(0, 1, 0); // Opposite direction of photons. const vec4 AMBIENT_COLOR = vec4 (0.2, 0.2, 0.2, 1.0); float ComputeLighting() { vec4 transformedNormal = vec4(aVertexNormal.xyz, 1.0); transformedNormal = uNMatrix * transformedNormal; float base = dot(normalize(transformedNormal.xyz), normalize(LIGHT_DIRECTION)); return max(base, 0.0); } void main(void) { gl_Position = uPMatrix * uMVMatrix * vec4(aVertexPosition, 1.0); float lightWeight = ComputeLighting(); vColor = vec4(aVertexColor.xyz * lightWeight, 1.0) + AMBIENT_COLOR; } Note that I am using WebGL, so if the anser is use glFixThisProblem(...) any pointers on how to re-implement that on WebGL if missing would be appreciated.

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• Sneak Peak: Social Developer Program at JavaOne

  - by Mike Stiles

  By guest blogger Roland Smart We're just days away from what is gunning to be the most exciting installment of OpenWorld to date, so how about an exciting sneak peak at the very first Social Developer Program? If your first thought is, "What's a social developer?" you're not alone. It’s an emerging term and one we think will gain prominence as social experiences become more prevalent in enterprise applications. For those who keep an eye on the ever-evolving Facebook platform, you'll recall that they recently rebranded their PDC (preferred developer consultant) group as the PMD (preferred marketing developer), signaling the importance of development resources inside the marketing organization to unlock the potential of social. The marketing developer they're referring to could be considered a social developer in a broader context. While it's true social has really blossomed in the marketing context and CMOs are winning more and more technical resources, social is starting to work its way more deeply into the enterprise with the help of developers that work outside marketing. Developers, like the rest of us, have fallen in "like" with social functionality and are starting to imagine how social can transform enterprise applications in the way it has consumer-facing experiences. The thesis of my presentation is that social developers will take many pages from the marketing playbook as they apply social inside the enterprise. To support this argument, lets walk through a range of enterprise applications and explore how consumer-facing social experiences might be interpreted in this context. Here's one example of how a social experience could be integrated into a sales enablement application. As a marketer, I spend a great deal of time collaborating with my sales colleagues, so I have good insight into their working process. While at Involver, we grew our sales team quickly, and it became evident some of our processes broke with scale. For example, we used to have weekly team meetings at which we'd discuss what was working and what wasn't from a messaging perspective. One aspect of these sessions focused on "objections" and "responses," where the salespeople would walk through common objections to purchasing and share appropriate responses. We tried to map each context to best answers and we'd capture these on a wiki page. As our team grew, however, participation at scale just wasn't tenable, and our wiki pages quickly lost their freshness. Imagine giving salespeople a place where they could submit common objections and responses for their colleagues to see, sort, comment on, and vote on. What you'd get is an up-to-date and relevant repository of information. And, if you supported an application like this with a social graph, it would be possible to make good recommendations to individual sales people about the objections they'd likely hear based on vertical, product, region or other graph data. Taking it even further, you could build in a badging/game element to reward those salespeople who participate the most. Both these examples are based on proven models at work inside consumer-facing applications. If you want to learn about how HR, Operations, Product Development and Customer Support can leverage social experiences, you’re welcome to join us at JavaOne or join our Social Developer Community to find some of the presentations after OpenWorld.

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• #OOW 2012: Big Data and The Social Revolution

  - by Eric Bezille

  As what was saying Cognizant CSO Malcolm Frank about the "Futur of Work", and how the Business should prepare in the face of the new generation  not only of devices and "internet of things" but also due to their users ("The Millennials"), moving from "consumers" to "prosumers" :  we are at a turning point today which is bringing us to the next IT Architecture Wave. So this is no more just about putting Big Data, Social Networks and Customer Experience (CxM) on top of old existing processes, it is about embracing the next curve, by identifying what processes need to be improve, but also and more importantly what processes are obsolete and need to be get ride of, and new processes put in place. It is about managing both the hierarchical and structured Enterprise and its social connections and influencers inside and outside of the Enterprise. And this does apply everywhere, up to the Utilities and Smart Grids, where it is no more just about delivering (faster) the same old 300 reports that have grown over time with those new technologies but to understand what need to be looked at, in real-time, down to an hand full relevant reports with the KPI relevant to the business. It is about how IT can anticipate the next wave, and is able to answers Business questions, and give those capabilities in real-time right at the hand of the decision makers... This is the turning curve, where IT is really moving from the past decade "Cost Center" to "Value for the Business", as Corporate Stakeholders will be able to touch the value directly at the tip of their fingers. It is all about making Data Driven Strategic decisions, encompassed and enriched by ALL the Data, and connected to customers/prosumers influencers. This brings to stakeholders the ability to make informed decisions on question like : “What would be the best Olympic Gold winner to represent my automotive brand ?”... in a few clicks and in real-time, based on social media analysis (twitter, Facebook, Google+...) and connections link to my Enterprise data. A true example demonstrated by Larry Ellison in real-time during his yesterday’s key notes, where “Hardware and Software Engineered to Work Together” is not only about extreme performances but also solutions that Business can touch thanks to well integrated Customer eXperience Management and Social Networking : bringing the capabilities to IT to move to the IT Architecture Next wave. An example, illustrated also todays in 2 others sessions, that I had the opportunity to attend. The first session bringing the “Internet of Things” in Oil&Gaz into actionable decisions thanks to Complex Event Processing capturing sensors data with the ready to run IT infrastructure leveraging Exalogic for the CEP side, Exadata for the enrich datasets and Exalytics to provide the informed decision interface up to end-user. The second session showing Real Time Decision engine in action for ACCOR hotels, with Eric Wyttynck, VP eCommerce, and his Technical Director Pascal Massenet. I have to close my post here, as I have to go to run our practical hands-on lab, cooked with Olivier Canonge, Christophe Pauliat and Simon Coter, illustrating in practice the Oracle Infrastructure Private Cloud recently announced last Sunday by Larry, and developed through many examples this morning by John Folwer. John also announced today Solaris 11.1 with a range of network innovation and virtualization at the OS level, as well as many optimizations for applications, like for Oracle RAC, with the introduction of the lock manager inside Solaris Kernel. Last but not least, he introduced Xsigo Datacenter Fabric for highly simplified networks and storage virtualization for your Cloud Infrastructure. Hoping you will get ready to jump on the next wave, we are here to help...

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• How to Waste Your Marketing Budget

  - by Mike Stiles

  Philosophers have long said if you find out where a man’s money is, you’ll know where his heart is. Find out where money in a marketing budget is allocated, and you’ll know how adaptive and ready that company is for the near future. Marketing spends are an investment. Not unlike buying stock, the money is placed in areas the marketer feels will yield the highest return. Good stock pickers know the lay of the land, the sectors, the companies, and trends. Likewise, good marketers should know the media available to them, their audience, what they like & want, what they want their marketing to achieve…and trends. So what are they doing? And how are they doing? A recent eTail report shows nearly half of retailers planned on focusing on SEO, SEM, and site research technologies in the coming months. On the surface, that’s smart. You want people to find you. And you’re willing to let the SEO tail wag the dog and dictate the quality (or lack thereof) of your content such as blogs to make that happen. So search is prioritized well ahead of social, multi-channel initiatives, email, even mobile - despite the undisputed explosive growth and adoption of it by the public. 13% of retailers plan to focus on online video in the next 3 months. 29% said they’d look at it in 6 months. Buying SEO trickery is easy. Attracting and holding an audience with wanted, relevant content…that’s the hard part. So marketers continue to kick the content can down the road. Pretty risky since content can draw and bind customers to you. Asked to look a year ahead, retailers started thinking about CRM systems, customer segmentation, and loyalty, (again well ahead of online video, social and site personalization). What these investors are missing is social is spreading across every function of the enterprise and will be a part of CRM, personalization, loyalty programs, etc. They’re using social for engagement but not for PR, customer service, and sales. Mistake. Allocations are being made seemingly blind to the trends. Even more peculiar are the results of an analysis Mary Meeker of Kleiner Perkins made. She looked at how much time people spend with media types and how marketers are investing in those media. 26% of media consumption is online, marketers spend 22% of their ad budgets there. 10% of media time is spent with mobile, but marketers are spending 1% of their ad budgets there. 7% of media time is spent with print, but (get this) marketers spend 25% of their ad budgets there. It’s like being on Superman’s Bizarro World. Mary adds that of the online spending, most goes to search while spends on content, even ad content, stayed flat. Stock pickers know to buy low and sell high. It means peering with info in hand into the likely future of a stock and making the investment in it before it peaks. Either marketers aren’t believing the data and trends they’re seeing, or they can’t convince higher-ups to acknowledge change and adjust their portfolios accordingly. Follow @mikestilesImage via stock.xchng

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• First Impressions of a MacBook (from a PC guy)

  - by dgreen

  Disclaimer: I've been a PC guy my entire working career. I'd probably characterize myself as a power user. Never afraid to bust out the console line. But working with a Mac is totally foreign to me. So for those Mac guys who are curious, this is how your world appears from the outside to a computer literate person :)My Macbook Air has arrived! And it's a thing of beauty:First, the specs: 13" MacBook Air, 2.0GHz Core i7 processor. Upgraded to 8GB of RAM for an additional $100, SSD flash storage  = 256GB. The plan is ultimately to use this baby for some iOS development but also some decent lifting in Windows with Visual Studio. Done a lot of reading  and between VMWare Fusion, Parallels and Bootcamp...I'm going to go with VMWare Fusion for $49.99And now my impressions (please re-read disclaimer before proceeding!):I open the box and am trying to understand exactly how the magsafe connector works (and how to disconnect it).  Why does it have two socket outlet plugs? Who knows.  I feel like Hansel in Zoolander. The files are "in" the computer.Stuck in my external hard drive (usb). So how do I get to the files? To the Googles!Argh...it can't read my external NTFS drive. Fat32 can't support field over 4GB…problematic since some of my existing VMWare image files are much larger than 4GB. Didn't see this coming.Three year old loves iPhoto. Super easy to use. Don't even know what I'm doing but I've already (accidentally) discovered the image filtering options. Fun stuff.First thing I downloaded ever => Chrome. I need something to ground me, something familiar. My token, if you will (sorry, gratuitous Inception joke).Ok, I get it… Finder == windows explorer. But where is my hierarchical structure? I miss the tree :(On that note, yeah…how do I see what "path" my files reside in? I'm afraid to know the answer. You know what scares more though…this notion of a smart folder. Feel like the godfather - just get the job done, I don't care how you handle it, I don't want to know...just get it done. What the hell is AirDrop?Mail…just worked. Still in shock that they have a free client for yahoo mail (please no yahoo jokes).mail -> deleting a message takes 5 seconds. Have they heard of async?"Command" key instead of "Control" ok, then what the $%&^! is the control key for then"aliases" == shortcuts I thinkI don't see the file system. And I'm scared. All these things I'm downloading…these .dmg files (bad name) where are they going? Can't seem to delete when they're doneUgh...realized need to buy a mini-to-vga adaptor if I want to use my external monitor ($13 on ebay, $39 in apple store).Windows docking is trickiest for me…this notion of detached windows with a menu bar at the top. I don't like this paradigm, it's confusing. But maybe because I've been using Windows for too long.Evernote, Dropbox desktop clients seem almost identical…few quirks here and there I need to get used to.iTunes is still a bit gross. In a weird way it's actually worse on a Mac if thats possible. This is not the MacBook's fault…this is a software design issue. Overall: UI will take some getting used to. Can't decide if this represents the future and I'm stuck in the past…or this is the past and I've been spoiled by the future (which would be Windows…don't be hating I happen to be very productive in Win7)  So there you go - my 90 minute first impression of the MacBook universe.

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• Type checking and recursive types (Writing the Y combinator in Haskell/Ocaml)

  - by beta

  When explaining the Y combinator in the context of Haskell, it's usually noted that the straight-forward implementation won't type-check in Haskell because of its recursive type. For example, from Rosettacode [1]: The obvious definition of the Y combinator in Haskell canot be used because it contains an infinite recursive type (a = a -> b). Defining a data type (Mu) allows this recursion to be broken. newtype Mu a = Roll { unroll :: Mu a -> a } fix :: (a -> a) -> a fix = \f -> (\x -> f (unroll x x)) $ Roll (\x -> f (unroll x x)) And indeed, the “obvious” definition does not type check: ?> let fix f g = (\x -> \a -> f (x x) a) (\x -> \a -> f (x x) a) g <interactive>:10:33: Occurs check: cannot construct the infinite type: t2 = t2 -> t0 -> t1 Expected type: t2 -> t0 -> t1 Actual type: (t2 -> t0 -> t1) -> t0 -> t1 In the first argument of `x', namely `x' In the first argument of `f', namely `(x x)' In the expression: f (x x) a <interactive>:10:57: Occurs check: cannot construct the infinite type: t2 = t2 -> t0 -> t1 In the first argument of `x', namely `x' In the first argument of `f', namely `(x x)' In the expression: f (x x) a (0.01 secs, 1033328 bytes) The same limitation exists in Ocaml: utop # let fix f g = (fun x a -> f (x x) a) (fun x a -> f (x x) a) g;; Error: This expression has type 'a -> 'b but an expression was expected of type 'a The type variable 'a occurs inside 'a -> 'b However, in Ocaml, one can allow recursive types by passing in the -rectypes switch: -rectypes Allow arbitrary recursive types during type-checking. By default, only recursive types where the recursion goes through an object type are supported. By using -rectypes, everything works: utop # let fix f g = (fun x a -> f (x x) a) (fun x a -> f (x x) a) g;; val fix : (('a -> 'b) -> 'a -> 'b) -> 'a -> 'b = <fun> utop # let fact_improver partial n = if n = 0 then 1 else n*partial (n-1);; val fact_improver : (int -> int) -> int -> int = <fun> utop # (fix fact_improver) 5;; - : int = 120 Being curious about type systems and type inference, this raises some questions I'm still not able to answer. First, how does the type checker come up with the type t2 = t2 -> t0 -> t1? Having come up with that type, I guess the problem is that the type (t2) refers to itself on the right side? Second, and perhaps most interesting, what is the reason for the Haskell/Ocaml type systems to disallow this? I guess there is a good reason since Ocaml also will not allow it by default even if it can deal with recursive types if given the -rectypes switch. If these are really big topics, I'd appreciate pointers to relevant literature. [1] http://rosettacode.org/wiki/Y_combinator#Haskell

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• Tweeting about Oracle Applications Usability: Points to Consider

  - by ultan o'broin

  Here are a few pointers to anyone interested in tweeting about Oracle Applications usability or user experience (UX). These are based on my own experiences and practice, and may not necessarily reflect the views of Oracle, of course (touché, see the footer). If you are an Oracle employee and tweet about our offerings, then read up and follow the corporate social media policy. For the record, I tweet under the following account names: @ultan, @localization, @gamifyOracle, and @usableapps. The last two are supposedly Oracle subject-dedicated, but I mix it up on occassion. Fill out your Twitter account profile, and add a profile picture too. Disclose your interest. Don’t leave either the profile or image blank if you want to be taken seriously (or followed by me). Don’t tweet from a locked down Twitter account, as the message cannot be circulated to anyone who doesn't follow you. Open up the account if you really want to get that UX message out. Stay on message. The usable apps website, Misha Vaughan's VoX blog, and the Oracle Applications blog are good sources of UX messages and information, but you can find many other product team, individual, and corporate-wide sources with a little bit of searching. Set up a Google Alert with pertinent related keywords to get a daily digest of new information right in your inbox. Be original about it. Add your own insight and wit to the message, were relevant. Just circulating and RTing stock headlines adds no value to your effort or to the reader, and is somewhat lazy, in my opinion. Leave room for RTing of your tweet. So, don’t max out those 140 characters. Keep it under 130 if you want to be RTed without modification (or at all-I am not a fan of modifying tweets [MT], way too much effort for the medium). Remove articles and punctuation marks and use fragments, abbreviations, and so on at will to keep the tweet short enough, but leave keywords intact, as people search on those. Follow any Fusion UX Advocates who are on Twitter too (you can search for these names), and not just Oracle employees. Don't just follow people you like or think like you, or those who you think like you or are like-minded. Take a look at who is following or being followed by other tweeters and er, follow up. Create and socialize others to use an easily remembered or typed hashtag, or use what’s already popularized (for an event or conference, for example). We used #gamifyOracle for the applications UX gamification design jam, and other popular applications UX ones are #fusionapps and #usableapps (or at least I’m trying to popularize it). But, before you start the messaging, if you want to keep a record of the hashtag traffic, then set it up with an archiving service. Twitter’s own tweet lifespan is short. Don't mix up hashtags (#) with Twitter handles (@) that have the same name. Sending a tweet to @gamifyOracle will just be seen by @gamifyOracle (me) and any followers we have in common. Sending it to #gamifyOracle is seen by anyone following or searching for that hashtag. No dissing the competition. But there is no rule about not following them on Twitter to see the market reactions to Oracle announcements and this can even let you can tailor your own message accordingly. Don’t be boring. Mix it up a bit. Every 10th or so tweet, divert into other areas of interest, personal ones, even. No constant “I just received K+ in this and that” or “I just checked into wherever” on foursquare pouring into the Twittersteam, please. I just don’t care and will probably unfollow such people pretty quickly. And now, your Twitter tips and experiences with this subject? Them go in the comments...

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• Come see us at JavaU at JavaOne!

  - by tmcginn

  In just a little under a month, JavaOne will be in full swing (no pun intended) and thousands of Java developers will gather to hear the latest Java news, immerse themselves in Java technology and learn some new things. This year, I am fortunate enough to be able to attend, along with my Java curriculum development colleagues Matt Heimer and Mike Williams. We start our week at JavaOne teaching a one-day session at JavaU on Sunday morning. If you have never attended a training session through JavaU, you should check it out. There are some terrific sessions this year, and it might help to justify your trip to JavaOne if you can say it was for training! This year I am teaching a one day session on Java SE 7 New Features - a great session for anyone interested in the specific details of what is new in Java SE 7. Matt is teaching a one-day session on Developing Portable Java EE applications with the Enterprise JavaBeans 3.1 API and Java Persistence 2.0 API  EJB, and Mike is doing a one-day session on developing Rich Client applications with Java SE 7 using Java FX 2. I asked Matt and Mike to tell me what developers can expect from their sessions. Matt: "My session will get you up to speed on everything you need to know to create portable Java EE 6 applications using EJB 3.1 and JPA 2. I am going to cover why everyone can benefit from using EJBs (and why developers should relearn them if they haven't looked at them for years). Students who attend my session will see JPA examples showcasing how to use relational databases in an enterprise applications without programming to JDBC and without writing SQL statements. EJB and JPA benefit from being paired together, so I will also show how transaction management is easier in a container. I encourage students to bring a laptop and code as they learn!" Mike: "My session covers how to develop a rich client application using Java FX 2. Starting with the basic concepts of JavaFX, students will see how a JavaFX application is built from its layout, to its controls, to its data structures. In addition, more advanced controls like charts, smart tables, and transitions will be added to the application. Finally, a quick review of JavaFX concurrency and data binding is included. Blended with the core concepts the session will include some of the latest JavaFX technology. This includes using Scene Builder to create a JavaFX UI and connecting your XML UI definition to Java code.  In addition, packaging of the JavaFX application will be covered with some examples of the new native packaging features." As I mentioned, my session covers the changes in the Java for SE 7, including the  language changes that were voted into Java SE 7 from Project Coin. I will also look at how you can take advantage if the the new I/O library (NIO.2) for writing applications that work with files, directories and file systems. We will also look at the changes in Asynchronous I/O that are a part of the changes in NIO/2. We will spend some time looking at the changes to the Java Virtual Machine as well, including support for dynamically typed languages (JSR-292). We will spend some time looking at the Java Concurrency enhancements (JSR-166), including the new Fork/Join framework. And we'll round out the day with a look at changes in Swing, XML and a number of smaller changes in the API's. And, if these topics aren't grabbing your interest, take a look at the other 10 sessions that range from topics on architecture to how to pass the Oracle Certified Programmer I and II exams. See you soon!

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• Gartner PCC: A Shovel & Some Ah-Ha's

  - by kellsey.ruppel

  When Gartner Vice President and leading analyst Whit Andrews kicked off the Gartner Portals, Content & Collaboration Summit on Monday, March 12 at the Gaylord Palms in Orlando, FL by bringing a shovel to the stage, eyebrows raised and a few thoughts went through my head. Either this guy plans to go help the construction workers outside construct that new pool at the Gaylord or he took a wrong turn and is at the wrong conference. Oh and how did he get that shovel through airport security? As Whit explained more his objective became more clear…take everything anyone has ever told you about portals and throw it out the window, as portals have evolved and times they are most certainly changing. The future Web is here, available not only on browsers but also via a broad spectrum of access points, including automobiles, consumer electronics and more and more mobile devices. Not merely prevalent, the future Web is also multimedia-driven and operates in real time, driven by mobility, social media, streaming video and other dynamic services. Applications and user experiences are in the midst of an evolution — from the early, simple mobile Web models to today’s Web 2.0 mobile apps and, ultimately, to a world of predominantly Web apps. Additionally, cloud services will forever change how portals and user experience are designed, built, delivered, sourced and managed. So what does this mean for you? Today’s organizations need software that will enable them to not just do their jobs, but to do it in a way that is familiar and easy for them.  What does this mean for IT? Use software and technology as an enabler, not as a roadblock. Overall, we had a great week in Orlando learning about how to improve the user experience, manage content explosion, launch social initiatives, transition to mobile environments and understand cloud and SaaS options.  We had some great conversations throughout the conference and at the Oracle booth. Lots of demonstrations were given of Oracle WebCenter Sites and Oracle Social Network. And as Christie mentioned earlier this week, our Vice President of Product Management and Strategy for WebCenter Loren Weinberg presented on the topic of customer engagement and talked about how organization’s relationships with their customers have fundamentally changed today and the resulting impact that has on their priorities.  Loren also talked about the importance of customer engagement, why that matters now more than ever, and what you can do to help your company or organization succeed in this new world. The question asked in every keynote and session was a simple one: What is your “ah-ha” moment? I personally had quite a few, some of which I’ve captured below. 70% of internal social initiatives eventually fail. By 2014, refusing to communicate with consumers via social media will be as harmful as ignoring emails/phone calls is today. Customer engagement = multi-channel + social & interactive + personal & relevant + optimized. If people choose to talk about your product/company/service, it's because it's remarkable. -- Seth Godin's keynote (one of the highlights of the conference!) The Web will become the primary method used for delivering content and applications to mobile devices. By 2015, 20% of smart phone users worldwide will conduct commerce using context-enriched services on a weekly basis.  86% of customers will pay more for a better customer experience. 6 P's of Quality User Experience. Product. Enabled by: People, Patterns, Process, Profit, Priorities. Did you attend the Gartner Summit? What were your ah-ha moments?

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• On The Road with the HR Community

  - by Kathryn Perry

  A guest post by Steve Boese, Director, Talent Strategy, Oracle One of the best ways to connect with and to get a feel for what is on the minds of Human Resources leaders is to get out of the office and hit the road. I’ve had the great honor to attend and/or present at a number of events recently, including the massive SHRM Annual Conference, the HR Florida Conference, and Taleo World in Chicago. These events, and many others, offer solution providers, talent management professionals, business leaders, and even more casual observers of the Human Resources field with tremendous opportunities to connect, to share information, and to learn from each other. Attending the conferences also give people a sense of how they can improve and enhance their skills and knowledge, learn about the latest workforce technologies, and bring new and innovative ideas back to their organizations. And sure, the parties and conference swag can be pretty nice as well! If you attend a few of these industry events, one of the most beneficial by-products that you can emerge with -- whether you are on the front lines in HR at your organization, or as we are at Oracle, in the business of developing and delivering innovative and impactful technology solutions to our customers -- is to get a larger sense of the big ideas and major trends, concerns, and challenges facing organizations all across the landscape, and to be able to better understand how your strategies and solutions can be improved with this greater perspective. So what are HR folks discussing and debating? What questions and problems keep them up at night? What are the bloggers and large community of HR social media enthusiasts buzzing about? From my perspective some of the common themes you see over and again across the HR community break down (broadly), into three main areas: Talent attraction - How can we locate, attract, recruit, and hire the best talent possible? What new strategies, approaches, and technologies can help us in this critically important area? What role do external social networks like LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter play in the increasingly competitive search for talent? Talent Retention - How can we make sure to keep that talent on our team? What engagement, development, recognition, and compensation tools can help us in this regard? How can we continue, (or become), an employer of choice? What is our unique and compelling employer value proposition? Talent Empowerment - How can we put our employees in the best position to succeed? What can we do to better align our talent with the organization’s mission and goals, while simultaneously providing the best and most driven to succeed individuals a clear path to achieve their career goals and aspirations? How can new technologies, particularly social and collaboration tools help in this area? While these are the ‘big themes’ that I know I have seen this year, certainly they are not really new, nor are they likely to fundamentally change in the next year or two. I think the reason is that at the core of any successful enterprise is a collection of smart, interested, engaged, challenged, and empowered group of people. And that was likely the case 10 or 20 years ago, and will probably be the case 10 or 20 years into the future. But what has changed, and what you can see -- evidenced by simply following the Twitter backchannel for an event and by reading some of the many fantastic HR blogs out there -- is that the HR professional's ability, along with technology solution providers like Oracle, to connect, to more openly share information with each other, and to make each other better in the process, (and to create new, improved, and more innovative solutions), has never been greater. And I think it is with this heretofore unprecedented level of opportunity to connect with other members of the community that HR professionals will be better equipped to help their organizations attract, retain, and empower their teams. We at Oracle HCM look forward to continuing to meet, engage, and connect with the HR community in the coming months. Until then -- follow us on Twitter and Facebook.

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• To SYNC or not to SYNC – Part 4

  - by AshishRay

  This is Part 4 of a multi-part blog article where we are discussing various aspects of setting up Data Guard synchronous redo transport (SYNC). In Part 1 of this article, I debunked the myth that Data Guard SYNC is similar to a two-phase commit operation. In Part 2, I discussed the various ways that network latency may or may not impact a Data Guard SYNC configuration. In Part 3, I talked in details regarding why Data Guard SYNC is a good thing, and the distance implications you have to keep in mind. In this final article of the series, I will talk about how you can nicely complement Data Guard SYNC with the ability to failover in seconds. Wait - Did I Say “Seconds”? Did I just say that some customers do Data Guard failover in seconds? Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus. Data Guard has an automatic failover capability, aptly called Fast-Start Failover. Initially available with Oracle Database 10g Release 2 for Data Guard SYNC transport mode (and enhanced in Oracle Database 11g to support Data Guard ASYNC transport mode), this capability, managed by Data Guard Broker, lets your Data Guard configuration automatically failover to a designated standby database. Yes, this means no human intervention is required to do the failover. This process is controlled by a low footprint Data Guard Broker client called Observer, which makes sure that the primary database and the designated standby database are behaving like good kids. If something bad were to happen to the primary database, the Observer, after a configurable threshold period, tells that standby, “Your time has come, you are the chosen one!” The standby dutifully follows the Observer directives by assuming the role of the new primary database. The DBA or the Sys Admin doesn’t need to be involved. And - in case you are following this discussion very closely, and are wondering … “Hmmm … what if the old primary is not really dead, but just network isolated from the Observer or the standby - won’t this lead to a split-brain situation?” The answer is No - It Doesn’t. With respect to why-it-doesn’t, I am sure there are some smart DBAs in the audience who can explain the technical reasons. Otherwise - that will be the material for a future blog post. So - this combination of SYNC and Fast-Start Failover is the nirvana of lights-out, integrated HA and DR, as practiced by some of our advanced customers. They have observed failover times (with no data loss) ranging from single-digit seconds to tens of seconds. With this, they support operations in industry verticals such as manufacturing, retail, telecom, Internet, etc. that have the most demanding availability requirements. One of our leading customers with massive cloud deployment initiatives tells us that they know about server failures only after Data Guard has automatically completed the failover process and the app is back up and running! Needless to mention, Data Guard Broker has the integration hooks for interfaces such as JDBC and OCI, or even for custom apps, to ensure the application gets automatically rerouted to the new primary database after the database level failover completes. Net Net? To sum up this multi-part blog article, Data Guard with SYNC redo transport mode, plus Fast-Start Failover, gives you the ideal triple-combo - that is, it gives you the assurance that for critical outages, you can failover your Oracle databases: very fast without human intervention, and without losing any data. In short, it takes the element of risk out of critical IT operations. It does require you to be more careful with your network and systems planning, but as far as HA is concerned, the benefits outweigh the investment costs. So, this is what we in the MAA Development Team believe in. What do you think? How has your deployment experience been? We look forward to hearing from you!

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• Problems with 3D Array for Voxel Data

  - by Sean M.

  I'm trying to implement a voxel engine in C++ using OpenGL, and I've been working on the rendering of the world. In order to render, I have a 3D array of uint16's that hold that id of the block at the point. I also have a 3D array of uint8's that I am using to store the visibility data for that point, where each bit represents if a face is visible. I have it so the blocks render and all of the proper faces are hidden if needed, but all of the blocks are offset by a power of 2 from where they are stored in the array. So the block at [0][0][0] is rendered at (0, 0, 0), and the block at 11 is rendered at (1, 1, 1), but the block at [2][2][2] is rendered at (4, 4, 4) and the block at [3][3][3] is rendered at (8, 8, 8), and so on and so forth. This is the result of drawing the above situation: I'm still a little new to the more advanced concepts of C++, like triple pointers, which I'm using for the 3D array, so I think the error is somewhere in there. This is the code for creating the arrays: uint16*** _blockData; //Contains a 3D array of uint16s that are the ids of the blocks in the region uint8*** _visibilityData; //Contains a 3D array of bytes that hold the visibility data for the faces //Allocate memory for the world data _blockData = new uint16**[REGION_DIM]; for (int i = 0; i < REGION_DIM; i++) { _blockData[i] = new uint16*[REGION_DIM]; for (int j = 0; j < REGION_DIM; j++) _blockData[i][j] = new uint16[REGION_DIM]; } //Allocate memory for the visibility _visibilityData = new uint8**[REGION_DIM]; for (int i = 0; i < REGION_DIM; i++) { _visibilityData[i] = new uint8*[REGION_DIM]; for (int j = 0; j < REGION_DIM; j++) _visibilityData[i][j] = new uint8[REGION_DIM]; } Here is the code used to create the block mesh for the region: //Check if the positive x face is visible, this happens for every face //Block::VERT_X_POS is just an array of non-transformed cube verts for one face //These checks are in a triple loop, which goes over every place in the array if (_visibilityData[x][y][z] & 0x01 > 0) { _vertexData->AddData(&(translateVertices(Block::VERT_X_POS, x, y, z)[0]), sizeof(Block::VERT_X_POS)); } //This is a seperate method, not in the loop glm::vec3* translateVertices(const glm::vec3 data[], uint16 x, uint16 y, uint16 z) { glm::vec3* copy = new glm::vec3[6]; memcpy(&copy, &data, sizeof(data)); for(int i = 0; i < 6; i++) copy[i] += glm::vec3(x, -y, z); //Make +y go down instead return copy; } I cannot see where the blocks may be getting offset by more than they should be, and certainly not why the offsets are a power of 2. Any help is greatly appreciated. Thanks.

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• C++ OpenGL wireframe cube rendering blank

  - by caleb.breckon

  I'm just trying to draw a bunch of lines that make up a "cube". I can't for the life of me figure out why this is producing a black screen. The debugger does not break at any point. I'm sure it's a problem with my pointers, as I'm only decent at them in regular c++ and in OpenGL it gets even worse. const char* vertexSource = "#version 150\n" "in vec3 position;" "void main() {" " gl_Position = vec4(position, 1.0);" "}"; const char* fragmentSource = "#version 150\n" "out vec4 outColor;" "void main() {" " outColor = vec4(1.0, 1.0, 1.0, 1.0);" "}"; int main() { initializeGLFW(); // Initialize GLEW glewExperimental = GL_TRUE; glewInit(); // Create Vertex Array Object GLuint vao; glGenVertexArrays(1, &vao); glBindVertexArray(vao); // Create a Vertex Buffer Object and copy the vertex data to it GLuint vbo; glGenBuffers( 1, &vbo ); float vertices[] = { 1.0f, 1.0f, 1.0f, // Vertex 0 (X, Y, Z) -1.0f, 1.0f, 1.0f, // Vertex 1 (X, Y, Z) -1.0f, -1.0f, 1.0f, // Vertex 2 (X, Y, Z) 1.0f, -1.0f, 1.0f, // Vertex 3 (X, Y, Z) 1.0f, 1.0f, -1.0f, // Vertex 4 (X, Y, Z) -1.0f, 1.0f, -1.0f, // Vertex 5 (X, Y, Z) -1.0f, -1.0f, -1.0f, // Vertex 6 (X, Y, Z) 1.0f, -1.0f, -1.0f // Vertex 7 (X, Y, Z) }; GLuint indices[] = { 0, 1, 1, 2, 2, 3, 3, 0, 4, 5, 5, 6, 6, 7, 7, 4, 0, 4, 1, 5, 2, 6, 3, 7 }; glBindBuffer( GL_ARRAY_BUFFER, vbo ); glBufferData( GL_ARRAY_BUFFER, sizeof( vertices ), vertices, GL_STATIC_DRAW ); //glBindBuffer( GL_ELEMENT_ARRAY_BUFFER, vbo); //glBufferData( GL_ELEMENT_ARRAY_BUFFER, sizeof( indices ), indices, GL_STATIC_DRAW ); // Create and compile the vertex shader GLuint vertexShader = glCreateShader( GL_VERTEX_SHADER ); glShaderSource( vertexShader, 1, &vertexSource, NULL ); glCompileShader( vertexShader ); // Create and compile the fragment shader GLuint fragmentShader = glCreateShader( GL_FRAGMENT_SHADER ); glShaderSource( fragmentShader, 1, &fragmentSource, NULL ); glCompileShader( fragmentShader ); // Link the vertex and fragment shader into a shader program GLuint shaderProgram = glCreateProgram(); glAttachShader( shaderProgram, vertexShader ); glAttachShader( shaderProgram, fragmentShader ); glBindFragDataLocation( shaderProgram, 0, "outColor" ); glLinkProgram (shaderProgram); glUseProgram( shaderProgram); // Specify the layout of the vertex data GLint posAttrib = glGetAttribLocation( shaderProgram, "position" ); glEnableVertexAttribArray( posAttrib ); glVertexAttribPointer( posAttrib, 3, GL_FLOAT, GL_FALSE, 0, 0 ); // Main loop while(glfwGetWindowParam(GLFW_OPENED)) { // Clear the screen to black glClearColor( 0.0f, 0.0f, 0.0f, 1.0f ); glClear( GL_COLOR_BUFFER_BIT ); // Draw lines from 2 vertices glDrawElements(GL_LINES, sizeof(indices), GL_UNSIGNED_INT, indices ); // Swap buffers glfwSwapBuffers(); } // Clean up glDeleteProgram( shaderProgram ); glDeleteShader( fragmentShader ); glDeleteShader( vertexShader ); //glDeleteBuffers( 1, &ebo ); glDeleteBuffers( 1, &vbo ); glDeleteVertexArrays( 1, &vao ); glfwTerminate(); exit( EXIT_SUCCESS ); }

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• How would I handle input with a Game Component?

  - by Aufziehvogel

  I am currently having problems from finding my way into the component-oriented XNA design. I read an overview over the general design pattern and googled a lot of XNA examples. However, they seem to be right on the opposite site. In the general design pattern, an object (my current player) is passed to InputComponent::update(Player). This means the class will know what to do and how this will affect the game (e.g. move person vs. scroll text in a menu). Yet, in XNA GameComponent::update(GameTime) is called automatically without a reference to the current player. The only XNA examples I found built some sort of higher-level Keyboard engine into the game component like this: class InputComponent: GameComponent { public void keyReleased(Keys); public void keyPressed(Keys); public bool keyDown(Keys); public void override update(GameTime gameTime) { // compare previous state with current state and // determine if released, pressed, down or nothing } } Some others went a bit further making it possible to use a Service Locator by a design like this: interface IInputComponent { public void downwardsMovement(Keys); public void upwardsMovement(Keys); public bool pausedGame(Keys); // determine which keys pressed and what that means // can be done for different inputs in different implementations public void override update(GameTime); } Yet, then I am wondering if it is possible to design an input class to resolve all possible situations. Like in a menu a mouse click can mean "click that button", but in game play it can mean "shoot that weapon". So if I am using such a modular design with game components for input, how much logic is to be put into the InputComponent / KeyboardComponent / GamepadComponent and where is the rest handled? What I had in mind, when I heard about Game Components and Service Locator in XNA was something like this: use Game Components to run the InputHandler automatically in the loop use Service Locator to be able to switch input at runtime (i.e. let player choose if he wants to use a gamepad or a keyboard; or which shall be player 1 and which player 2). However, now I cannot see how this can be done. First code example does not seem flexible enough, as on a game pad you could require some combination of buttons for something that is possible on keyboard with only one button or with the mouse) The second code example seems really hard to implement, because the InputComponent has to know in which context we are currently. Moreover, you could imagine your application to be multi-layered and let the key-stroke go through all layers to the bottom-layer which requires a different behaviour than the InputComponent would have guessed from the top-layer. The general design pattern with passing the Player to update() does not have a representation in XNA and I also cannot see how and where to decide which class should be passed to update(). At most time of course the player, but sometimes there could be menu items you have to or can click I see that the question in general is already dealt with here, but probably from a more elobate point-of-view. At least, I am not smart enough in game development to understand it. I am searching for a rather code-based example directly for XNA. And the answer there leaves (a noob like) me still alone in how the object that should receive the detected event is chosen. Like if I have a key-up event, should it go to the text box or to the player?

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• Calculating for leap year [migrated]

  - by Bradley Bauer

  I've written this program using Java in Eclipse. I was able to utilize a formula I found that I explained in the commented out section. Using the for loop I can iterate through each month of the year, which I feel good about in that code, it seems clean and smooth to me. Maybe I could give the variables full names to make everything more readable but I'm just using the formula in its basic essence :) Well my problem is it doesn't calculate correctly for years like 2008... Leap Years. I know that if (year % 400 == 0 || (year % 4 == 0 && year % 100 != 0)) then we have a leap year. Maybe if the year is a leap year I need to subtract a certain amount of days from a certain month. Any solutions, or some direction would be great thanks :) package exercises; public class E28 { /* * Display the first days of each month * Enter the year * Enter first day of the year * * h = (q + (26 * (m + 1)) / 10 + k + k/4 + j/4 + 5j) % 7 * * h is the day of the week (0: Saturday, 1: Sunday ......) * q is the day of the month * m is the month (3: March 4: April.... January and Feburary are 13 and 14) * j is the century (year / 100) * k is the year of the century (year %100) * */ public static void main(String[] args) { java.util.Scanner input = new java.util.Scanner(System.in); System.out.print("Enter the year: "); int year = input.nextInt(); int j = year / 100; // Find century for formula int k = year % 100; // Find year of century for formula // Loop iterates 12 times. Guess why. for (int i = 1, m = i; i <= 12; i++) { // Make m = i. So loop processes formula once for each month if (m == 1 || m == 2) m += 12; // Formula requires that Jan and Feb are represented as 13 and 14 else m = i; // if not jan or feb, then set m to i int h = (1 + (26 * (m + 1)) / 10 + k + k/4 + j/4 + 5 * j) % 7; // Formula created by a really smart man somewhere // I let the control variable i steer the direction of the formual's m value String day; if (h == 0) day = "Saturday"; else if (h == 1) day = "Sunday"; else if (h == 2) day = "Monday"; else if (h == 3) day = "Tuesday"; else if (h == 4) day = "Wednesday"; else if (h == 5) day = "Thursday"; else day = "Friday"; switch (m) { case 13: System.out.println("January 1, " + year + " is " + day); break; case 14: System.out.println("Feburary 1, " + year + " is " + day); break; case 3: System.out.println("March 1, " + year + " is " + day); break; case 4: System.out.println("April 1, " + year + " is " + day); break; case 5: System.out.println("May 1, " + year + " is " + day); break; case 6: System.out.println("June 1, " + year + " is " + day); break; case 7: System.out.println("July 1, " + year + " is " + day); break; case 8: System.out.println("August 1, " + year + " is " + day); break; case 9: System.out.println("September 1, " + year + " is " + day); break; case 10: System.out.println("October 1, " + year + " is " + day); break; case 11: System.out.println("November 1, " + year + " is " + day); break; case 12: System.out.println("December 1, " + year + " is " + day); break; } } } }

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• Syntax of passing lambda

  - by Astara

  Right now, I'm working on refactoring a program that calls its parts by polling to a more event-driven structure. I've created sched and task classes with the sced to become a base class of the current main loop. The tasks will be created for each meter so they can be called off of that instead of polling. Each of the events main calls are a type of meter that gather info and display it. When the program is coming up, all enabled meters get 'constructed' by a main-sub. In that sub, I want to store off the "this" pointer associated with the meter, as well as the common name for the "action routine. void MeterMaker::Meter_n_Task (Meter * newmeter,) { push(newmeter); // handle non-timed draw events Task t = new Task(now() + 0.5L); t.period={0,1U}; t.work_meter = newmeter; t.work = [&newmeter](){newmeter.checkevent();};<<--attempt at lambda t.flags = T_Repeat; t.enable_task(); _xos->sched_insert(t); } A sample call to it: Meter_n_Task(new CPUMeter(_xos, "CPU ")); 've made the scheduler a base class of the main routine (that handles the loop), and I've tried serveral variations to get the task class to be a base of the meter class, but keep running into roadblocks. It's alot like "whack-a-mole" -- pound in something to fix something one place, and then a new probl pops out elsewhere. Part of the problem, is that the sched.h file that is trying to hold the Task Q, includes the Task header file. The task file Wants to refer to the most "base", Meter class. The meter class pulls in the main class of the parent as it passes a copy of the parent to the children so they can access the draw routines in the parent. Two references in the task file are for the 'this' pointer of the meter and the meter's update sub (to be called via this). void *this_data= NULL; void (*this_func)() = NULL; Note -- I didn't really want to store these in the class, as I wanted to use a lamdba in that meter&task routine above to store a routine+context to be used to call the meter's action routine. Couldn't figure out the syntax. But am running into other syntax problems trying to store the pointers...such as g++: COMPILE lsched.cc In file included from meter.h:13:0, from ltask.h:17, from lsched.h:13, from lsched.cc:13: xosview.h:30:47: error: expected class-name before ‘{’ token class XOSView : public XWin, public Scheduler { Like above where it asks for a class, where the classname "Scheduler" is. !?!? Huh? That IS a class name. I keep going in circles with things that don't make sense... Ideally I'd get the lamba to work right in the Meter_n_Task routine at the top. I wanted to only store 1 pointer in the 'Task' class that was a pointer to my lambda that would have already captured the "this" value ... but couldn't get that syntax to work at all when I tried to start it into a var in the 'Task' class. This project, FWIW, is my teething project on the new C++... (of course it's simple!.. ;-))... I've made quite a bit of progress in other areas in the code, but this lambda syntax has me stumped...its at times like thse that I appreciate the ease of this type of operation in perl. Sigh. Not sure the best way to ask for help here, as this isn't a simple question. But thought I'd try!... ;-) Too bad I can't attach files to this Q.

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• Type of computer for a developer on the road

  - by nabucosound

  Hi developers: I am planning to be traveling through eurasia and asia (russia, china, korea, japan, south east asia...) for a while and, although there are plenty of marvelous things to see and to do, I must keep on working :(. I am a python developer, dedicated mainly to web projects. I use django, sqlite3, browsers, and ocassionaly (only if I have no choice) I install postgres, mysql, apache or any other servers commonly used in the internets. I do my coding on vim, use ssh to connect, lftp to transfer files, IRC, grep/ack... So I spend most of my time in the terminal shells. But I also use IM or Skype to communicate with my clients and peers, as well as some other software (that after all is not mandatory for my day-to-day work). I currently work with a Macbook Pro (3 years old now) and so far I am very happy with the performance. But I don't want to carry it if I am going to be "on transit" for long time, it is simply huge and heavy for what I am planning to load in my rather small backpack (while traveling, less is more, you know). So here I am reading all kind of opinions about netbooks, because at first sight this is the kind of computer I thought I had to choose. I am going to use Linux for it, Microsoft is not my cup of tea and Mac is not available for them, unless I were to buy a Macbook air, something that I won't do because if I am robbed or rain/dust/truck loaders break it I would burst in tears. I am concerned about wifi performance and connectivity, I am going to use one of those linux distros/tools to hack/test on "open" networks (if you know what I mean) in case I am not in a place with real free wifi access and I find myself in an emergency. CPU speed should be acceptable, but since I don't plan to run Photoshop or expensive IDEs, I guess most of the time I won't be overloading the machine. Apart from this, maybe (surely) I am missing other features to consider. With that said (sorry about the length) here it comes my question, raised from a deep ignorance regarding the wars betweeb betbooks vs notebooks (I assume tablet PCs are not for programming yet): If I buy a netbook will I have to throw it away after 1 month on the road and buy a notebook? Or will I be OK? Thanks! Hector Update I have received great feedback so far! I would like to insist on the fact that I will be traveling through many different countries and scenarios. I am sure that while in Japan I will be more than fine with anything related to technology, connectivity, etc. But consider that I will be, for example, on a train through Russia (transsiberian) and will cross Mongolia as well. I will stay in friends' places sometimes, but most of the time I will have to work from hostel rooms, trains, buses, beaches (hey this last one doesn't sound too bad hehe!). I think some of your answers guys seem to focus on the geek part but loose the point of this "on the road" fact. I am very aware and agree that netbooks suck compared to notebooks, but what I am trying to do here is to find a balance and discover your experiences with netbooks to see first hand if a netbook will be a fail in the mid-long term of the trip for my purposes. So I have resumed the main concepts expressed here on this small list, in no particular order: keyboard/touchpad feel: I use vim so no need of moving mouse pointers that much, unless I am browsing the web, but intensive use of keyboard screen real state: again, terminal work for most of the time battery life: I think something very important weight/size: also very important looks not worth stealing it, don't give a shit if it is lost/stolen/broken: this may depend on kind of person, your economy, etc. Also to prevent losing work, I will upload EVERYTHING to the cloud whenever I'll have a chance. wifi: don't want to discover my wifi is one of those that cannot deal with half the routers on this planet or has poor connectivity. Thanks again for your answers and comments!

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